Page 86 of What Is Dark Within Me

“Then tell that to the Second,” she pleaded. “He’s going to send you back—”

“It doesn’t matter. I broke a bargain, and the price was high. You need to take up my title, like you promised.”

“Nic, please. I can’t do this without you.”

“Shh,” he said against her mouth. She could feel his tears against her face as if they were her own. “I’ll find you again, I swear. I’ll crawl through any hell to get to you. He could make me forget a thousand lives, and I wouldstill find you.”

And she remembered deeper still. Her first human life, very long ago, somewhere on the southern Mediterranean—now, a mere whisper inside of her. She was in a bed, feverish. A hunting bow leaned against the wall. Nicolas had a black candle on the table in front of him as he said, “I found a way for us to be together always, my dove.”

THEY DO NOT FEED ME ENOUGH. BUT YOU… SO MUCH OTHERLANDER MAGIC IN YOUR VEINS. IT WILL BE A FEAST. PERHAPS MY EYES WILL SEE THE SUN AGAIN.

As the images slowed, it was simply her and the ocean. It reminded her of her earliest days in Miami. Of wading out into the Atlantic on a calm morning until she found a sandbar where the water was shallow enough for her to sit and feel like she was surrounded by water on all sides.

Fire, Aleja. You need fire, said another voice, nearly drowned out by that of the Astraelis.

She felt the Astraelis reach out, a sensation as tactile as Roland’s hand on the back of her neck, but Aleja wasn’t trying to stop the eruption of fire about to burst forth from her body. Not because she was out of control, but because she knew exactly what she needed to do.

The memories were already fading into dream-like, fragmented images, but what they’d made her feel did not retreat with them. She knew what had compelled her to undertake the Trials for the first time, to join the Dark Saints at Nicolas’s side, to follow him onto the battlefield of an endless, unwinnable war.

The Astraelis saw themselves as shepherds, and like all shepherds, they occasionally needed to slaughter a lamb to fill their tables. And these humans who relied on their favor turned a blind eye, because they never thought it’d bethemto be hauled onto the chopping block.

The smell of singed grass was familiar. The first thing she saw was a cluster of dandelion leaves turning black as her fire raced across them. In the background, she heard Violet shouting. So was Roland. Fuck. He was going to retaliate and when he did, she wasn’t sure if she’d be able to fight him.

Make sure he doesn’t get the chance.

She sent another wave of fire without pausing to aim. There was no strategy other than to let the wrath in her flow outwards until every house in the village was a smoldering rubble.

But Roland had power as well—and his wasn’t at half its usual strength. Shadows slithered toward her like hundreds of black centipedes, crawling out from beneath every plant and rock. Something yanked at her ankle. She fell, expecting to be dragged toward the well, but it didn’t appear that was what he had in mind. At least, not yet.

Roland smelled of burning hair and linen, but his face was unmarred. She struggled against the shadows wrapping around her ankles and wrists. When Aleja tried to send out another burst of flame, it was smothered, putting itself out against her skin—the first time her own magic burned her.

“Are you going to stop struggling or is your friend going to pay the price for your outburst?”

“Fuck you,” Violet snarled in a moment of clarity. She pulled herself upright on a wood pile. “If you’re going to kill us anyway, we’re not going down without a fight.”

It wasn’t as if Aleja had forgotten Violet was a witch powerful enough to trap a hellhound in a scrying mirror, but she looked too weak to stand, let alone summon the flare she sent in Roland’s direction. The sphere dissolved with a wave of his hand, but it was enough of a distraction for Aleja to kick both of her feet into his left knee. The attack caught him unaware, and he stumbled back with a hiss of pain.

She surged forward, aiming her bound hands for the sickle. When Roland lunged to retrieve it, she drove her elbow in his face. Her elbow hit the ridge of his nose, and dark blood splattered over them both as he exhaled.

“You fucking cunt!” Roland screamed. The shadows tightened around Aleja’s wrists and ankles, but another voice answered before she could say anything.

“I know you didn’t just call my wife a cunt, Roland. Apologize.”

The shadow of two black wings spread across the clearing. Violet gasped, backing away with wobbly steps. Nicolas had dried blood under his left nostril, and a thin gash across the opposite cheek, but Aleja’s relief at his presence felt like cool raindrops hitting the fire inside her.

“Let a Remnant get a lucky strike in? You’re losing your touch, Nic,” Roland growled.

Aleja couldn’t look away from Nicolas’s face. The memories the Astraelis had shown her felt like fragments of a dream, but sheknewthat look now. It was the look that preceded a slaughter.

“I didn’t hear you apologize,” he said, stepping closer.

She struggled against her binds, but knew Roland would not be a fool to discount her just because Nicolas had shown up. The sickle was a few feet away on the cobblestones. Roland’s shadows might dampen her flames, but a sharp object was a sharp object.

“Enough—”

“Apologize.”

A thick cloud that’d been sliced open by the mountain regrouped in time to swallow the sun, darkening the valley beneath.

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