If she put her spear against Death’s Champion’s throat, she could claim the battle won, and she wouldn’t lose any more demons.
Shadows writhed around her body like black flames around a yule log, dancing as if they had minds of their own. They were her only friends, the only bits of existence that still found their way to her side rather than being forced there. Once upon a time, the Prince of Bones had run to greet her, to take her in a warm hug in an otherwise cold world. Once, her sister, Maeve Arden, had done her best to be at her side. Before that, her mother, Brenna, had raised her with a deep love in a world so different from this place. Even Vyran had become cold and aloof.
Now, though, she was alone. The Champion of Darkness had no one anymore. Nothing but duty and the fear of Nyxthos’s rage convinced her to leave her bed in the mornings. Now she saw the world for what it was. Lost. This war and the gods who demanded it had ruined it. They’d ruined the ones who fought, her more than most.
How many times had she lingered in the Void and wondered just how far she could drift before Nyxthos would drag her back and torture her for considering fleeing? How many times had she longed to never leave that place of silent nothingness?
So it was that on this day, she just wanted the battle to end. She pressed her spear to Azric Cyrus’s chest just above his heart, the spear’s crystalline black tip solid enough to pierce flesh or even dragon scale.
But it could not pierce flames, could not exist in their presence. Just as Inni and the Prince’s father had taught him so long ago, shadows are weak to flames. As the world around them exploded with the fire that was Echo’s true weakness, she understood what was happening.
“You’re really going to do it?” she asked softly as she saw not the Prince of Bones, but the seven-year-old who had offered her his stuffed dragon. Little Inni. The same dragon who had somehow warded off the night terrors for the last twenty-three years, a wondrous thing after what felt like a lifetime of them beforehand.
Azric Cyrus had tears in his eyes as he stood up in front of his Aunt. He loved her, had always loved her. “I have to. You won’t agree with me.”
“I don’t want you to hurt more, Azric. Lysara will torture you if you try to defy her. I know what that’s like.”
He nodded. “I have to do this, Aunt Echo. I have to save them. All of them. It doesn’t matter how many times she hurts me, as long as Nyth survives, it will be worth it.”
The Queen of Shadows shook her head at her nephew. “I won’t do it. I won’t let you convince them all to do something that will get you tortured for an eternity. Lysara can change time in her world. She can make minutes seem like years or even decades.”
The Prince nodded to his aunt as he took another step toward her. She didn’t back away, though. “It doesn’t matter, Echo. Pain doesn’t matter anymore. You don’t know how many years of it I’ve already lived through.”
She chuckled as a tear ran down her cheek. He saved her twenty-three years ago when she’d run from the war to hide in her brother-in-law’s Keep. She’d been on the verge of breaking. She’d hurt too many people, seen too many battles. Her soul couldn’t take it any longer. Then this beautiful boy had come to her in the middle of the night and had given her his dragon.
And things had been better.
But the cracks were showing again. The night terrors had come back. Even with the stuffed dragon beside her, some mornings she woke up exhausted with her blankets tied in knots. It wasn’t the memories of her time in the Realm of Night, though. Instead, these nightmares were of the future, of the sea of pain and suffering that was the only thing she could imagine her life being filled with.
“Do what you must do, Azric. I won’t stop you, but I won’t stand aside for you to ask Lysara to have a reason to break you. To make you…like me.”
The Prince of Bones reached for his aunt’s cheek, and he wiped her tears away. The flames around them died for just a moment, leaving them in the afternoon sun rather than an inferno. In Echo’sarms, shadows coalesced into a form that she knew so well. A little stuffed dragon, but this one was black. This one was like Vyran.
“This one is yours,” he whispered. “And you’ll be able to take it with you. Always. Even after you are done here.”
A shard of bone barely larger than a needle pierced her breast, sliding between ribs and stabbing her through the heart. Her eyes went wide. Not because of the pain. No, like the Prince had said, pain didn’t matter anymore. It was seeing the tears in his eyes and knowing she didn’t have to be afraid any longer. She knew that in the Void, there was no reason to be afraid.
“Go rest and take little Vyran with you. You don’t have to be a monster anymore, Aunt Echo,” he whispered. “I’ll be the monster, so you don’t have to.”
As she lay dying in his arms, he brushed his fingers through her hair, just like she’d done when he was tiny. He sang one of their favorite songs to dance to.
Then Vyran was there, and the dragon whispered, “Rest, sweet Echo. Return to the Void and breathe easy again. I will find your soul when this world is better, when there aren’t so many things to be afraid of.”
And there, among the only ones in this terrible world that she still loved, Echo Vael returned to the Void, to join her mother to swim in the Endless Sea again.
Chapter 57
No one shall have any god before me. You, my favored people, will seek all others out and destroy them. You shall bring me proof of their destruction, and I shall reward you for your faith.
~Edicts of Elthir
Fiona
My back hits hard stone with a thud, and I can’t move. Only one leg works, and I can’t seem to leverage it to get into a sitting position. Isola’s scream echoes in my mind. The image of a dagger in Jorren’s chest won’t leave my thoughts. My mother and father’s voices are still there, still telling me they love me.
Behind it all is Kaelith’s warning not to walk off the ledge, not to give up. I didn’t, and my heart is breaking because of it. Isola and Jorren died because of me, just like my parents.
I can’t move, and all I can see are the stars above me. The moon is gone, and the sun will rise soon, but the world around me is still shrouded in darkness. They say it’s always darkest just before thedawn, and I understand the phrase now. I feel like my heart can’t handle anything else.
