Page 90 of The Salvation

“Quintessa!” Drago calls out behind me, his heavy gait lumbering inside.

I don’t turn around. Desperation and purpose tingle in every line of my hand. Once my fingers cross the currents of that soul, it grows icier, biting me, as if resisting. A cry breaks from my throat from the cold pain carving into me.

“Oh, gods, no. Merikh...” Mayce’s voice follows my dragon’s as the two kneel beside me.

“Don’t touch him!” My spine stiffens from Shadow’s command, but I still don’t turn. “No one touch him buther.”

I keep going. I’ve been cold before. I’ve been numb before. I press on through those protesting soul currents, dipping my other hand inside to unite around the heart, around the soul. The incandescent currents shift, seeming to change direction. Energy surges into my hands, and I gasp from the strange wave-like sensation. Is the soul trying to...speak?

Quintessa.

The ethereal tether latches onto my half-soul. So strong, it couples to mine, dragging me into its embrace. Everything around me turns dark.

I’m inside his abyss—locked within a cocoon somewhere inside this place between life and death. Pain and torment from his darkness, his beautiful broken darkness, engulf me from head to toe.

I try not to cringe at how blood still trickles down my face and chest because blood is alchemy, soul matter. It always transfers beyond the visceral.

And something else...I smile at the return of my wings. The delicate, membranous gray wings of a spirit moth. Shimmering like translucent armor.

“Little dove.”

At the first purring of his breath upon my neck, I spin around to meet Merikh. And grab his hand before he can even think of escaping me. He is even more beautiful in this soul realm. A severe, fateful beauty with a soul that bruises as it loves deeper and stronger and greater than any other. Because the ones with the most broken hearts must have the greatest, fiercest, and all-consuming love.

When I look up into his eyes, at the moonlit orbs of silver water gazing back at me, I grip his hand and command, “You’re coming back with me.”

“Quintessa, I?—”

“Don’t even think about it,” I hiss and press my naked, bloodied body against his. My voice is a determined knife I carve through him. “You said the story of the soul is written in the blood with all its secrets, demons, and monsters. Well, here I am, picking up the damn pen and writing a new chapter because you arenotending it here,” I warn him with fury bleeding through my voice. “I’m not...I’m not done playing with your monsters yet, Merikh Howle.”

My nerves spin in the silence. His breath feathers across my body. His soul thunders against mine. Together, we let it linger, let it thicken. Like we are in the deepest trench of the Sea of Bones, we explore one another’s scars. He traces my tattoos. The dam of tears in my eyes breaks free as I study the sculpted lines of his face, the diamond-sharp cheekbones. Exquisite and excruciating in all his shadows and intensity.

And finally, Merikh inhales, touches his hand to the swell of my breast, to the symbol he carved in the flesh, and says, “

“Is your half-soul strong enough to save my monstrous one with all its scars and dead weight, little dove?”

I meet his eyes dead-on, recognizing the challenge, how he’s throwing down. It rattles me to my core. My whole body shakes. And his eyes darken with a violent beauty and unholy darkness as he goes to war against my half-spirit.

This time, I’ll win.

So, I ball my hand into the strongest fist I have ever made and hurl it with all the feminine fury and force of my soul—right against his jaw. This time, he doesn’t just stagger. He stumbles, nearly falls while gripping his wounded jaw.

“You’re still an asshole,” I tell him, glaring at him and raising a stabbing finger. “Myasshole. And asshole I have no choice but to love.”

Just like before, one smoldering, penetrative look from those dark, soul-crushing eyes sends embers sparking along my nerve endings.

“Don’t be such a baby. You are Merikh fucking Howle!” I raise my voice to a near shout as he advances toward me, all blood and fury and punishment. “You are the thief who ate Malachor’s heart and became the God of Blood and the Lord of the Court of Hollows. But you listen to me, Merikh,” I seethe as he claims my face in his hands, wrenching my jaw up until his mouth is a thread from mine. “You are the epitome of supreme power. ButIam the force that feeds that power. I am the reason your muscles swell, your fingers flex, and your veins throb with hunger. I am not just a half-soul anymore, you beautiful broody bastard!”

At the first sign of my wings shifting, transforming from the harking profession of my soul, I grin. I glance at them and thenbeam to Merikh as he parts his lips, a muscle bouncing in his jaw from the evolution.

“I am fire...” I say with pride shimmering in my voice from the scales and sinew that have formed to become great and immense—silver dragon wings.

“I am wind,” I add with the dragon scales fusing to welcome my spirit moth wings that burst with currents that are but an echo of a storm.

“I am earth.” My smile grows as I beat those wings, pumping them to create an illusion, one of all of us with me holding Aislynn and my four monstrous boys surrounding me.

“And Merikh Howle, I am blood. Your blood,” I finalize like I am proclaiming the last damn trump.

The vampire wings break through, erupting from my shoulders and slamming me against him. White, silver, ghostly with sinew like steel—great and radiant havens.

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