Page 17 of Hunted By Darkness

“I didn’t really understand it at the time, but…it feels connected somehow. You remember when I told you she said that I’d cross paths with the Soul of Life and the Soul of Death? In my dream, you thought the figure in the fog was the Soul of Death. Said it was what I claimed, but you thought he was an imposter. What if he’s one of the people she mentioned? What if he’s the person we’ve been looking for?”

“You mean what your mother mentioned before? The souls whose paths you’d cross? But you’re saying that in this dream I thought he was an imposter and didn’t want you to go to him?” Silas mused, the muscles in his chest tautening. He was agitated by the thought. His heart thundered under my palms. “You’re saying that one of us had it wrong in this dream of yours? But you still feel as though he was the Soul of Death?”

Thinking quickly, I lifted my head. “That’s exactly it. The voices were calling me there. To him. It felt like I’d been searching for him.”

“But one of these so-called souls will determine whether the world is saved or ended, is it? That these so-called Soul of Life and Soul of Death are the end all be all, yeah?” Silas suggested before I could mutter the words myself.

Another piece clicked into place, and somehow I knew we were onto something. Maybe these were the souls my mother mentioned. Maybe whoever it was in my dream was one of them. Mother couldn’t be certain Silas was one of them, but she did think he was. Maybe this other person was someone I needed to find to save the world, as weird as it was to admit such a thing to myself.

“I don’t know how to explain it, but I know for certain I was in the right place. He was who I was looking for.”

Silas went rigid under me. “Rilas…?”

“I can’t be sure it was him.”

His voice was dangerously low. “He called you his Fated One, little rebel. If he’s the Soul of Death, then I was right to keep you from him. I’d bury my own sword in my chest before I let him have you.”

Something in my gut told me it wasn’t Rilas.

“It wasn’t him.”

“You can’t be—”

“It wasn’t him,” I said again, punctuating every word. “I know it wasn’t him, Silas.”

“So what do you mean this bit about balance and corrupting your gem with darkness?” He pried.

“I can’t be sure,” I mumbled.

Silas hummed and twisted my hair around his fingers. “If it’s about balance, then embracing both parts of you, the light and dark, that’s something very few can do. That sort of balance is hard to strike. Death isn’t meant to be either side of the coin. It’s always been portrayed as impartial. Both light and dark.”

“Grey,” I whispered.

Silas smirked and dropped a kiss on my mouth. “That’s it, little rebel. Death is neither light nor dark. Death is grey.”

I sat up and looked at the gem hanging around my neck. Tiny specks existed in all the white, but otherwise it was relativelyunscathed by the choices I’d made. “I sought him out to corrupt the gem, why? Why would I want to corrupt it?”

Silas reached out and cradled the gem in his palm. “To find balance, yeah? Muck up all this clear white with a little darkness? Maybe it was meant to bring a little more balance to your power. Not sure why you’d need that bloody faceless cockwobble to do it, though.”

“The only thing is, Grandmother told me not to let the gem become corrupted,” I argued. “This was meant to warn me because I couldn’t undo the corruption of my soul.”

“Or it was meant to guide you,” Silas rebuked. “If this dream wasn’t a dream at all, princess, then maybe this gem helps you find the perfect balance of both light and dark.”

Grandmother had been very pointed in her comments about the gem and corruption, that I couldn’t repair it once I’d stained my soul. What if she gave me that warning knowing one day I’d need to use it as a guide?

It wasn’t a totally crazy thought. Mother had made it clear they couldn’t mess with fate. Fate always found a way of rebuking efforts made to alter it. Much of what they’d done came at different points, never all at the same time, and what happened in the future fell on me to decide. They could only give me the tools to make the right decision when the time came. What if the gem was another tool?

I stared at the glistening surface. “Do you think the text calls for balance? Do you think casting it requires me to draw out the darkness inside me and corrupt the gem?”

My eyes went wide, and I scrambled off the bed. Silas barely caught up with me by the time I got downstairs and flipped through the journal. It was a very small section, but both mother and grandmother circled it several times as if to emphasize its importance. I wasn’t sure what it meant, but now I had an idea.

I found the page and read it off for confirmation. Silas hovered close to my back, his head dropping into view as I pointed to a small section. “Using the old magic requires the balance of both life and death. One cannot be without the other. There is always a cost when summoning this magic, and it always requires the darkness inside you.”

Rilas mentioned the darkness inside me enough times for the words to feel ominous, but in my grandmother’s writing, even more so. Doing what I was about to do came at a cost—the light in my soul. It was why she warned me to avoid corruption, because I’d need to balance it when the time came to send him back. If I didn’t…

The world would end.

But how would I know when I’d reached the right balance? What if my soul suffered too much corruption or not enough? What then?

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