“So even the mighty Sovereign Alpha can fear something,” comes Nocturn’s voice, the sound like snarling wolves and choking avalanches.
With effort, I keep my face placid, staring him down, even though I know it’s useless.
He can see right into my mind and take what’s hidden at will.
In the blink of an eye, Nocturn’s blue-fire shadows are at my throat, squeezing, their strength lifting me from the murky ground. My feet dangle desperately, and I gasp for breath.
Can I use my own magic here, or will it be useless since it stems from him? Would he kill me? And what would happen if I die here, in this shadow realm? Will my body remain in the real world, living on, separated from my mind?
Striking before I can think, with every ounce of strength in my body, I try to blast his shadows away.
The hurricane force of my power—power that is so strong now it could level a small fortress in the waking world—only loosens his grip for a moment, and that enrages him further.
“Youdareto use my gifts against me?” slithers his voice. The sound comes from my mind as well as the world around me, compounding in my head until I feel I’m going mad.
Nocturn’s shadows engulf me, wrapping around me until my arms are locked in place by my body, thentwistinguntil my limbs are contorted and pulled at strange angles.
Tendons scream and muscles tear.
Through my constricted throat, I give a strangled shout, but the sound is cut off by the layers of shadow around us, my voice as impotent as my magic here.
“I gave you a command, and you disobeyed me, wretch!” Nocturn is closer now, and the strange blue shadow that comes off him is almost blinding, a paradox of shadow and light. “The Tearsmustbe put together!”
I know I have no chance of escaping his magic until he’s ready to let me go, but still my body fights the pain, the constraints—decades of training too ingrained to let me surrender.
Nocturn laughs as he watches me struggle and writhe. The sound of it is harsh and unnerving, metal screeching on metal.
“Why?” I gasp out, and Nocturn allows the shadows on my throat to ease enough for me to speak to him. “Why me, why now? Why have you not freed yourself before this, in all these millennia?”
The noose around my neck grows tight again, and tears squeeze from the corners of my eyes as I fight for breath.
Nocturn grows in front of me, doubling in size, tripling,more. He crouches down over me until I’m as small as the tiniest insect looking up at a massive giant above.
“Do you not think I’ve tried?!Shehad me so tightly imprisoned. It is only now, with her Tears nearly reunited, that I can come to your family like this, show myself fully, and not just issue wretched whispers in the night.”
His voice swells until my eardrums might burst. “The closer the Tears are, the closer I come to freedom. It calls to me, singing in the night.Would you deny me my freedom?!”
I know he can read my thoughts, but I’m unable to hide my immediate reaction to this:
Abso-fucking-lutely, I would stop this monster from being unleashed.
My family may be indebted to him; he may be the dark source of our power and strength. But I know with all my being there is a very good reason Nocturn has been bound away from our world, trapped all these years.
I willnotbe the one to unleash this madness on our world. The moment I’m away from this place, I’m going to help Meryn do what she said: separate all the tears and hide them away forever.
As soon as I think the words, I’m shoving them away, back into the furthest corner of my mind, where even I am barely aware of them.
But it isn’t fast enough. He hears my thoughts. Hears my disobedience.
And Nocturn’s rage multiplies a thousandfold.
The entire realm around us seems to shake and twist, the world tearing itself apart as if Nocturn’s moods can shred it like paper. Nocturn flickers between his massive stature and the form I’m used to and something else, something like a twisting gale of shadow, a frightening eternal void.
“If you won’t do it, I’ll do it myself!” The words come from nowhere and everywhere.
Suddenly, the binds around me fall away. The relief of being out of his painful vise lasts for only half a moment. Then the uncanny pool of dark energy pulls itself into a wave of shadow and flies straight toward me.
The shadow slams into me,throughme, and I’m falling, endlessly falling through nothingness, dark power all around me and above me and below me, and—
