Page 137 of Ash of Midnight and Gold

“Trouble...” Caspian rasped, his voice a low, harsh vibration that rattled the basalt floor beneath us.

“I’m here,” I whispered, tears of relief scalding my eyes as I reached out to touch his face.

As my hand moved, my gaze dropped down to my own skin.

My transformation was the mirror image of his.

The dark, chaotic ink that had once covered my forearms in stark, pitch-black swirls had receded. My pale skin was now covered in sweeping, radiant swirls of brilliant solar gold—a luminous, celestial pattern that glowed softly against my flesh. The dark black ink was still there, but it sat faint, dormant, and hidden beneath the surface of the gold, kept completely in check by the pitch-black handprint branded over my lower stomach—Soren’s eternal seal resting like a shield over my mended flesh.

We were no longer two separate forces clashing inside the ring. We were the light and the dark, balanced, bound, and forged in the silver deep.

“You did it,” Dax breathed, looking between the two of us, a breathless, hysterical laugh escaping his lips. “You insane bastards actually survived the drop.”

Before Aerynn could speak, before Caspian could reach his hand out to touch mine, a sound echoed from the dark archway leading deeper into the cavern.

Clap.

The slow, rhythmic sound of a single pair of hands clapping echoed off the wet basalt walls—a mocking, deliberate cadence that instantly froze the blood in my veins.

“Exquisite,” a smooth, melodic voice purred from the shadows. “A truly touching display of tragic, romantic resilience.”

I snapped my head toward the cavern opening.

My posture locked into a rigid, lethal wire as I rose up onto my knees, my gold-swirled skin flaring with a protective heat. Beside me, Dax’s hand instantly snapped to his hilt, and Aerynn stepped in front of me, his blade clearing its scabbard with a sharp shhhk.

Stepping out from the shadowed archway, his dark boots crunching over the wet gravel, was Mal.

Maloce stood completely unharmed. The dark onyx armor of More Alora was pristine, his dark hair falling straight across his forehead.

His eyes—once a warm hazel—were now burning with a blinding, terrifying crimson light, overflowing with an unhinged, apocalyptic rage that filled the cavern with the smell of wet copper and burning sulfur.

Standing right at his heels, moving like a faithful, poisonous serpent, was Kaelor Ashborne. Kaelor’s eyes were fixed on us with a sickly, triumphant grin, his hands resting on two dark-forged daggers at his belt.

“Mal,” I spat, my voice cut from broken glass.

“Maloce, Princess,” he corrected softly, taking two slow, weightless steps toward us. He tilted his head, his crimson eyes inspecting the gold swirls on my skin, then moving to Caspian, who was slowly pushing his massive, darkness-bound frame up from the stone. “Did you really believe you could flee? Did you think plunging into a puddle of ancient water would free you?”

Red magic began to twist at his long fingers—a thick, sickening mist of blood magic that hummed with the dark edge of More Alora.

“The blood was paid,” Maloce whispered, his voice rising, resonating off the high basalt ceiling like a chorus of demons. “Your little guard died for nothing. The High Council has already signed the decrees. My father’s legions are marching through the mountain passes as we speak.”

With a sudden, violent flick of his wrist, Maloce dissipated.

His body dissolved into a cloud of swirling, crimson smoke that expanded through the cavern.

The red mist danced around the chamber, moving with terrifying, unnatural speed, spinning in dizzying circles around us. Maloce’s voice echoed from everywhere and nowhere at once, a haunting, disembodied roar that vibrated straight through our skulls:

“Fjörn’s throne is burning!” the voice thundered from the red smoke. “The West will claim the citadel! The Realm will bleed, and there is nowhere in this world—or the mortal one—where you can hide from the void!”

“GET BEHIND ME!” Caspian roared, his deep voice cracking the stone as he surged to his feet, his eyes burning as he threw his broad frame in front of mine, drawing his massive broadsword.

Dax and Aerynn raised their steel, forming a defensive triangle around me as the crimson smoke swirled faster and faster, blinding our vision, choking the air with the smell of blood.

“You think you won a spear, Tauriel?!” Maloce’s voice hissed from the mist, right beside my ear. “You brought the key to our apocalypse!”