“Find somewhere to put it, my love. You don’t have to carry it all. Here, let me show you.”
Something breezes past my fingers. I’m aware of Leon in front of me, but only as a vague shadow through the haze of power sparking inside my eyeballs.
“I can’t do it unless you help me, love.”
He’s trying to move my hands, locked in place by my immortal strength.
“It’s too much,” I shriek. “Too much.”
“I know. Your soul wasn’t built for this. Let’s free it, together.”
That breeze brushes against my hands again. This time I lean into it, trying to touch it with the tips of my fingers. My handsrelease from my head, and instinctively I move them downward, but my head starts to throb dangerously the moment I let go of it. It’s going to break, I know it.
“LEON.”I scream his name across the mooring, unable to speak any more.
“I know, Ana. Let go. Let go NOW.”
And on his final word, my hands connect with something soft and alive.
It’ssoalive. A thing with its own, vast consciousness and a soul that stretches on for acres, shared between a billion different organisms—growing and moving and breathing in harmony.
The Miravow.
I can feel it beneath my hands, thrumming like a heartbeat. Without another thought, I pour the energy into it.
My body aches with relief as the pressure on it drops, but it’s not enough. I need this boundless power exorcised from my body. I don’t want to live forever. I don’t want to livelike this,being a conduit for endless power always flooding through me. That power was begging to be used, and if it wasn’t let loose, it was going to destroy me.
But the Miravow?
The Miravow can be eternal without catastrophe. Individual organisms would wither and die, and their energy would still continue on, feeding the forest, inhabiting a new part of it. That is true immortality, and the Miravow could use it without becoming twisted or dark. It is always flowing back into itself, withering and flourishing in a vast cycle.
I keep pushing, holding on to Leon’s words of encouragement as I expel every drop of magic I can from my palms into the mossy earth. A soft glow runs across the ground and sinks into the soil like a fresh spring. Near me is one of the puddles of inky darkness Caledon left behind, and it ripples as that light approaches it.
There’s a flare of bright white, and when it settles, the puddle has disappeared.
“It’s fixing all of them,” Hyllus says, lifting a finger to point around us.
Slowly, the power I’m gifting to the Miravow starts to undo Caledon’s damage, erasing the darkness of his pollution. Withered ground blossoms with fresh flowers, and grass grows, a luscious green returning to its stalks.
I watch, and pour my immortality away, until I’m sure not a shred of it remains. My body is in pain—human pain,mortalpain—and I relish it. My senses feel dulled, and my exhaustion sits right down in my bones.
But I’m me. Human, and gloriously vulnerable.
“Welcome back,”Leon says, pulling me into a tight embrace as I stand. This time, I actually feel it, his arms holding me firm, their warmth radiating into me.
“Care to enlighten us about what just happened?” Tira asks, bemused.
“Like I said before,” Leon explains, looking around at the others but not letting go of me just yet. “Caledon had a void inside of him that allowed him to absorb power. When he became immortal, the power it unlocked didn’t overwhelm him.Whatever he wasn’t using just drained away into the black hole inside him. But Ana’s soul was overloaded with it, and it tried to break her apart so the power could be released.”
“Gods,” Etusca says, clutching her hands to her face. “We could have killed you!”
“It’s okay,” I say. “I got rid of it. And I’m human again now.”
“But where did the power go?” Captain Drisha asks. I gesture to the forest around us.
“I gave it away,” I say simply. After all, that’s all magic is—a gift from the gods.
Chapter 37
