‘Hold your anchor,’Val whispered.‘Hold your mother’s laugh.’
But it wasn’t my mother's laugh that anchored me in that moment. It was Kaelric’s green eyes, the way he called me little human, the soft touch of his lips, the promise I’d become his queen. The urge to obey Harrow drained away. I smiled at him and kept coming.
He scowled and pressed harder, blade rising and falling like a hammer. We traded short, brutal blows, and I nicked his forearm this time. Valkaryn shot bursts of deadly light at him, and Mind Render swallowed each one like a starving shadow.
But it was draining him. I could see it in the way his face paled, and he swayed on his feet. He blinked rapidly as if his vision was blurry.
With a growl, he reached out and caught my braid and yanked. Stars burst behind my eyes as Mind Render opened a cut on my inner thigh. I ripped free and drove a kick at his knee. He folded for a blink, then straightened.
“Finish her!” he screamed to the sword he held. “She’s only a girl,” he said as if in disbelief.
Only a girl?
I crashed into him. The impact sent little sparks along the marble. He feinted high and went low. I hopped over his blade and staggered backward after landing.
‘Your body is tiring,’Val warned.‘Should I kill him now?’
Surprise rushed through me at that.
‘Can you?’She’d tried to hit him multiple times with killing blows, and Mind Render had swallowed them all.
‘Oh, I’ve been sucking his life force energy out since you made that first cut across his knuckles.’
I grinned, and Harrow paled even further, swallowing hard.
I forced him back toward the balcony that overlooked the city. Night wind curled around us and tugged at his cloak. Below, Lunaria glowed like a bowl of embers. Somewhere out there, Maelis and Godric were running for the trees. Kaelric waited for me at the gates.
Harrow tried to shove me back from the balcony. Mind Render pulsed, shadows spilling out of him and swirling around me. My heels skidded as the shadows pushed me back.
Then a command came again, not just a word, but the physical force of a blow across my head.
Kneel.
‘No,’ I grinned, and Val poured her power through my arms as the pressure in my head loosened. Harrow saw the failure to control me in my face, and for the first time, he looked truly angry.
“Die!” he said again, as if repetition would bring about success.
He rushed me, and I slid aside to let him pass. My blade kissed his cheek and opened a red line there. He went still, touched the blood with two fingers, and looked at it as if it had insulted him.
“Enough,” he said, and flicked Mind Render in a short dismissive cut that was not meant to land. It was meant tofocus. The air thickened as the shadows bent inward. The floor trembled as if something below turned in its sleep.
‘Brynn,’Val said, calm now.‘Ready?’
“Do it,” I said to Valkaryn out loud so that he would know I was in control of his fate.
I stepped and caught his blade in a bind, steel against steel. For an instant, we were face to face. His eyes were like the coins in a dead man’s hand, and I wondered if anything was left of his soul or if Mind Render had consumed it all over the years.
Light roared up Valkaryn from the hilt to the tip, not a flare but a column, clean and white, threaded with a violet so bright it made me squint. Harrow pushed back with shadows so thick that they engulfed Valkaryn completely and covered half of my arm. The fight was soundless, and neither of us moved, staring each other down as our swords battled on a magical plane. The shadows began to dim Val’s light as it leaked through in small shafts like sunlight after a long rain. A wind picked up around the room, and the table to the right shot backward.
He pressed into me and I into him. Our blades felt like night and day had decided to meet. Dark shadows swirled against the buttery light that grew wider and wider. My muscles shook, and I knew Val was pulling every ounce of energy from me. I also knew that she was right, and this would have killed my human body. The cut on my thigh ran hot down my boot.
Harrow snarled, and his shadows thickened around me.
‘Anchor,’Val said.
I thought of Sable’s hair caught in my sweater. Mira’s laugh in the kitchen. Fiona’s new house with its gravity-fed water. Kaelric’s lips on mine and his promise of forever with an Aerlyn ring. I anchored my mind in the beautiful things I had in this life, and held on to them tightly as the balcony shook again.
That’s when I felt something from Valkaryn.
