Page 107 of Bright Soul

“I’ll be fine. Trust,” he said.

I stood aside with Cress, who watched them with shadows of black and purple flickering over her eyes. I’d seen it enough to know that Braza was lending her soul sight so she could watch what was going on.

“Their souls are still bleached.” She leaned over to whisper to me, gesturing to the two unconscious people on either ends of the containment room. “I see the corruption as swirls of brighter white. Lucas is trying to get a hold of it to pull it out.”

Sweat visibly beaded Lucas’s forehead. He concentrated, flexing his fingers like he could grab and tug Myuna’s influence out as easily as pulling a weed. As the minutes rolled on, it was clear it wasn’t that easy.

I ended up behind Cress, cuddling her to my front while she watched and updated me occasionally of how he was doing. His success was obvious from her gasp before she said, “He’s holding the corruption separate from that person’s soul. It looks like he’s absorbing it.”

“Is that safe for him?” I asked, looking between her and Phaeron.

The dimensional watched intently before nodding toward me. “In this case, it seems power is power,” he said.

“Alotof power,” Lucas murmured. “I don’t even know what to do with it.”

“How fortuitous, for I have a plan that hinges on that feeling,” Phaeron said.

Blinking, Lucas moved on to the next person to remove their corruption too. “I mean, sure. Whatever you want. You saved my life, after all.”

There was a heaviness to his reaction and response. “We shall face many soon that we will not be able to save. But there is one person who we must, who is corrupted more dangerously than anyone in these containment rooms. After seeing how your magic works, I believe you are up to this task.”

“Who?” Cress asked. The spike of dread from her hit me like a sucker punch.

“I suggest you gather up Geo and head to a private room. I will tell you the news and my plan as soon as we finish up here,” Phaeron promised. “You will want to be sitting down for this, bright soul.”

CRESS

Phaeron didn’t hide the truth from me—he’d suspected for days that Myuna had ascended Carly. It hurt, but he’d had a reason to keep it private as he sought a solution for the situation first.

I could hardly breathe. Grant had spotted her commanding torchbearers separately from the goddess while wielding a staff formed of white light. Carly was bleached more severely than Lucas, according to the changeling, overriding even the magical blue dye in her hair to render her fully white, like Myuna had once done to Endaeron.

“She is still alive, so there is hope we can pry the seed of corruption out of her before Myuna transforms her into a second Hungering Darkness,” Phaeron was saying.

At some point, I’d tuned out, curling into a ball with my chin on my knees. Ugly tears and sobs ripped from me despite being pressed between Ben and Geo on the couch. “She picked my sister on purpose,” I croaked.

“Indeed. She wanted to hurt us,” Phaeron said more quietly. He stood apart, watching my breakdown, shame radiating from him. “Apologies will not suffice, I know. I failed her when shewas brought before Myuna the first time and did not attempt to rescue her before… I did not know that she was capable of turning your sister against us quite like this.”

I sniffled, scrubbing at my face. “How could you have known?”

It was personal…it had to be. Myuna had to know the prophecy she feared most was on the cusp of coming true. Phaeron’s mate, assisted by his daughter, was coming to cut that bitch’s head off. And like a cornered animal, Myuna had struck out in the only way she could. She’d put us in a situation where the easiest victory was closed to us. Neither Phaeron nor I would sacrifice Carly, but if we didn’t, her torchbearers would kill our defenders and friends with free access to their magic.

My grief twined quickly with a new burn in my chest, hatred blazing to life like I’d never felt before. There were few people I’d truly wanted to kill, but they were the villains of my life. Those who were now deceased, Garroway or Blaize Starsurge, for what they’d done to me, my family, or to others. But Myuna…I would commit any kind of violence necessary to ensure she joined them in hell.

Understanding seemed to glimmer in Phaeron’s gemstone eyes. “Do you want to hear my plan to fix this?” he asked.

I nodded, and he shared it. We’d prepare one last containment room layered with librarian witch runes and powered by Braza. Lucas would remain behind in the room to await delivery of Carly, though he’d have a fallback in putting them both into stasis if removing her corruption was beyond his abilities.

Geo had already agreed to be the retriever. He didn’t flinch when I slanted a look his way. “You could’ve told me about this too, you know,” I grumbled.

“My apologies,” he said in that grinding way that suggested he’d been in gargoyle form recently.

“In the meantime, I will be storing the second half of Braza’s power in this,” Phaeron added, withdrawing the dragon scale from his pocket and handing it to me.

It was ringed with runes on its front and back, currently a dormant black. “It just needs a librarian witch’s blessing before it can hold a soul and hook into the spells that would reanimate it in a gargoyle’s body,” he added.

“Wait, what?” Ben asked.

“He copied the runes from my heart last night,” Geo supplied. “I shall explain the situation to Ben.”

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