Page 72 of A Heart of Ice and Shadow

Gwen called on the darkness inside her. It stirred, newly awoken. Her ears rang; her body felt not entirely her own. You are mine, she told it. The magick, the darkness—it was not bad or evil or wrong. It merely was. And it answered.

Everything fell away. All Gwen knew was the darkness. It stretched before her, around her, through her. It was clear to her now. The magick had always been hers. It had just been locked away. Waiting patiently. She did not need to claim it. All she had to do was let go and wield it.

“Mistress,” Aldor muttered warily. His grip loosened.

When Gwen opened her eyes, a haze of dark blue magick swirled around them, whipping the falling snow. “Let. Me. Go,” she demanded.

Nestra sneered at her. “You think yourself powerful?” she hissed, the honey in her voice turning sour. She snatched Gwen by the face, digging her nails into her cheeks. “You are nothing. Soon you will be nothing but ash and dust, like your father.”

Gwen only felt more emboldened by Nestra’s words. Her skin hummed as she summoned the shadows. They blended with her magick and swirled around them like a dark storm.

“Your tricks are of no use,” Nestra declared. “My destiny is written. It’s finally time you serve your purpose.” She snatched Gwen’s cut arm and continued the spell under her breath.

A blinding shock rioted through Gwen, stealing her senses, until everything was nothing. Flickers of memory began to flash in her mind. Small childhood joys. These past few weeks at Volkov. The last tendrils of memories she held of her mother. They all cascaded through her in an instant. Then there was Sirus. He was not any one memory. His presence and the way he made her feel. Like she’d found something she never even knew was missing. She wasn’t ready to let him go.

With a gasp, Gwen’s vision cleared. Her body felt like it was being burned from the inside out. Nestra glared down at her with triumph in her eyes. “The Star will be mine,” she declared with a black smile. She lifted the black blade in her hand, and Gwen went stiff. A sickening, wet thunk filled her ear as the dark priestess plunged the blade into Aldor’s chest behind her.

He sucked in a breath, lowering his sword from Gwen’s throat and dropping his grip. Nestra held Gwen’s arm firmly, yanking her away.

With horror, Gwen looked back at Aldor, unable to believe what had just happened. The betrayal and shock in his mirrored eyes was almost heartbreaking.

“You have served me well, half-breed son of Greystone,” Nestra told him. “But only the sacrifice of one who trusts me would bring about my destiny.”

Aldor dropped his sword and looked down at the blade lodged in him. He gasped a small sob of shock, then dropped to his knees. Anger, raw and visceral, took shape in those mirror eyes. “You promised me?—”

Nestra chuckled a cruel laugh. “Did you truly believe I was ever going to let a half-breed stand at my side when I became queen? That I would care if your soul was returned?”

Aldor’s rage became palpable. He tried to stand, but his body gave out, and he fell forward into the snow and dirt. He struggled to push himself up, fighting to the last breath. His eyes slid from Nestra to Gwen. Resignation filled his face as his body trembled. With a last sputtered gasp, his head dropped, and his body stilled.

“The blood is spilled.” Nestra spoke loudly and with pride. “The pathetic life taken. Give me what is mine.” She began to mutter more of her spell as she shoved Gwen down over Aldor’s corpse. The moment Gwen touched him, her head felt like it was going to split in half. She heard herself scream from somewhere in the distance. The magick inside her became violent as it was torn out of her. Gwen’s whole body felt like it was being ripped apart piece by piece.

There was a hiss and a burst of energy. Gwen gasped in a lungful of air and coughed as the pain subsided. She was on the ground, lying next to Aldor’s lifeless body. A flash of silver made her turn. Sirus snarled as he nearly struck Nestra, but she slid out of the way in the last moment, like a shifting shadow. The dark priestess grabbed Sirus’s sword, the one she’d abandoned, and took on his third blow. Gwen’s heart leapt. He was conscious.

She tried to stand, but her legs were like jelly. Her arm bled from the deep cuts Nestra had carved into her. She heard them fighting and tried to clear her dizzy head. She had to help Sirus.

“I should have finished you before,” Nestra seethed. Gwen managed to stand as the priestess tossed a ball of dark flame into Sirus’s stomach, and he stumbled back. She struck him with another, and he braced himself against it, his jacket and shirt catching dark fire.

“Run!” he snarled at Gwen. Her heart lurched at the rawness in his command. The fear. “Go!”

Gwen clutched her bleeding arm as he tore his burning jacket and shirt from his torso and threw them into the snow. He squared off against Nestra again, his skin steaming and bloodied.

In her dream, she’d always felt this fear. A fear for him as he prepared to take on the dark thing that lurked in the forest. But it wasn’t fear she felt as she looked at him now. Her skin sizzled with magick. He was beautiful and fearless, but he wouldn’t win against Nestra. He couldn’t. But there was a chance, a small one, that she could.

Gwen pushed through and stumbled forward. “I’m the one you want,” she reminded Nestra, her voice so dark it didn’t even sound like her own. “Leave him out of this.”

Sirus snarled, lunging forward to protect Gwen when Nestra turned her black eyes back on her. The dark priestess dropped the sword and spread her black wings, rising up into the sky and out of his reach. She landed sharply in front of Gwen and lifted her hand, summoning a wall of dark fire from the ground to block Sirus’s assault at her back. The flames spread, surrounding them in a tight circle. The priestess glared down at Gwen, her face covered in the creeping tendrils of the corrupt magick she wielded. Her skin was sallow, her bones growing more visible with each passing minute, her white hair thin and brittle. A glint of obsessed, carnal hunger fell over her face. Gwen shuddered, and Nestra flashed a blackened smile.

“You are right, child,” she agreed. “It is time to take what is mine.” Nestra flicked her wrist, and the black blade she’d plunged into Aldor’s chest appeared in her hand. She ran it across her own palm. Instead of blood, shadows crept out of the cut. “It is time I fulfill my destiny.” Nestra snatched Gwen by the front of her sweater and plunged the blade into her stomach.

The pain was distant. Somewhere at the edge of her mind. All Gwen could manage was a gasp of air as everything began to burn. The priestess pulled the blade out and ran the blood across her palm.

Gwen’s body vibrated violently. A haze of blue filled the air as she began to glow with magick. Tears fell as she watched Nestra’s palm glow the same blue. The priestess grinned with utter delight. “So much power,” she declared with greedy satisfaction. The magick ran up her arm through her veins as she continued her spell.

The ancient words tickled the edge of Gwen’s mind. It was old magick, blended with spells not from this realm, but one beyond. Gwen looked at Nestra. Her pale skin was cracking like a broken sidewalk under the weight of the magick she was stealing. Magick she thought she could control.

In the distance, beyond Nestra’s fiery wall, Gwen heard Sirus roar with fury. The sound tore at her heart. Gwen summoned all the strength she had left and took hold of Nestra’s arm. The evil woman’s black eyes widened as she clutched onto her. Within the dark wall of flames, Gwen summoned the shadows, but these were not mere shadows from beyond. They seeped out of her. A darkness born from a time before light itself existed. From a time when darkness consumed everything.

Little blue cracks began to appear over Nestra’s face. Tendrils of shadow and flame leaching out. Her expression twisted into one of fury, and she tried to pull away, but Gwen held her close, letting the full force of the magick inside her seep into the dark priestess.

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