I clutch the crown to my chest, keeping to the darkness, ready to strike out if I have to, prepared to turn her to stone or dust or blood to protect what’s mine.
“Oh, no.” Dusana’s brown eyes widen as her gaze rushes over me. “Cailey! Mother Solas!” Her desperate scream fades as she whispers, “I think we’re too late.”
“It’s never too late,” Mother Solas says, striding through the light toward me, her form backlit in a way that makes her white hair shine silver like mine used to.
The strands of hair now billowing around my face are the color of the darkest night. More than black. They are streaming strands of darkness pouring down my sides. My arms, where I can see them, are charred and my nails are sharp.
I have become the darkness.
Just before she would reach me, Mother Solas bends to the ground, scooping something up.
She stops and holds it out to me.
Her hand is wrinkled with age, but it doesn’t shake.
Within her fingers is the silver pin, shaped like a crescent moon. Its glistening, silver surface is as bright as Cailey’s power.
“We’re here with you,” she says, her voice quiet even though the wind is picking up around us. “You don’t have to do this alone.”
Her voice reminds me of a small moment in time, when Erik stood beside me, his hand brushing mine. Mother Solas had given me this very same pin, but it wasn’t the gift that mattered.
It was the fact that Erik had made sure it had been kept safe for me.
Erik.
My thoughts are suddenly splitting apart.
I have power.
I am powerless.
I will kill them all.
I have to save them.
My heart is pounding so hard it’s about to tear in half. One part yearning for the light, the other for the dark.
Take control. Take control. Take control…
I stumble back a step, clutching my head in my hands, and then I sink to the ash, the black crown gripped in my left hand, its cold surface pressed against my temple.
“We’re here,” Mother Solas says, lowering herself to the ash in front of me, her intelligent, compassionate eyes refusing to look away. “Asha Silverspun, you know this in your heart: We are the magics you need. It will take all four of us. You will not die alone this day.”
I take a deep, shuddering breath, tasting the awful, blood-filled ash on my tongue, my voice broken and sounding far away in my own ears. “I don’t want to go.”
Tears fill Mother Solas’s eyes. “I know.”
I gasp against the pain in my heart. “I have the power to stay.”
“You do,” she whispers. “The choice is yours.”
In the distance, Cailey lowers her arms, backing up in our direction, drawing in toward Dusana and Mother Solas, all of them reaching for me, their arms slipping around me.
Cailey’s light continues to glow around us, but her face is drawn and pale.
I sense that her energy is almost gone.
The darkness will swallow us all soon.
