Page 150 of Queen of Legends and Lies
“Go back to your mother, Narc. She’s waiting for you.”
He writhes and flails, his form disintegrating into ash even as he tries desperately to flee.
The altar shatters in the heat. Then starts to melt. The eyril roots run out, fizzle, and collapse. There’s nothing left to shield their god.
There is no escape.
Bluish purple eyes glare at me with vengeance and possibly confusion.
The urge to explain myself to this almost alive god loosens my tongue. “Removing free will wasn’t your call. We decidewhat is best for us.” Rose whimpers, and I hold her tighter as the light gets even brighter. “Right or wrong, humans must be allowed to make choices. How are we supposed to grow, to learn, if your drachen are in control?”
The eye that was formed last falls from the socket, hanging by a spongy string of flesh as his raw-boned fingers scramble on the melting stones, his skull shaking as more bits of it break and flake away.
Narc’s jaw falls off his skull and bounces off what remains of the altar. His bones glow. Or maybe they’re being devoured by the white-hot flames. I can’t tell anymore. Purifying phoenix fire consumes him utterly, leaving nothing behind except a fine, gray powder that vanishes into the scorched earth.
It’s over.
It’s done.
I’m done.
I sag to my knees, cradling Rose close as relief crashes over me in a dizzying wave. The land is cleansed. And the corrupted? They look dead, too, but only time will tell.
We’ve won the war.
But even as the fleeting thought crosses my mind, I realize something is very wrong.
The phoenix fire is still burning strong.
It rages on, growing wilder by the second, until the very air shimmers with its force. Panic seizes me. I try to call the flames back, to somehow trap them inside myself once more. But it’s like trying to catch a hurricane in my cupped hands.
This fire has a will of its own, a hunger that won’t be denied.
I call the flames again, more insistent.
The inferno surges back toward me, a searing wall of energy that slams into my body like a battering ram. I scream as it engulfs me and fiery pain shoots through my every nerve and synapse.
The sensation is beyond anything I’ve ever known.
Yet even as my vision is overcome by blinding light, even as my flesh chars and my bones crumble to dust, I have a strange sense of peace. Of belonging. The phoenix fire isn’t destroying me…it’s welcoming me home.
My last thought as the luminosity takes me is a fervent prayer to the gods.
Please, spare Rose. Let her live. Let her have the future I’ll never see.
Then the light fills me, consumes me…swallowing me until I’m no more.
Chapter Forty-Eight
Weightless and unmoored, I drift in an infinite void. Darkness engulfs me, yet glimmers of light trickle past me through the endless expanse.
Throughme.
I can actually taste the light, feel the glow teasing and tickling my nerves. It’s relaxing, inviting, comforting.
Ethereal melodies join the light, weaving discordant harmonies across the nothingness. But just like when I was a little girl and would sneak away from the estate to sprawl out in the prickly field of wildflowers with my sister, the music is part of the pleasure. Part of the experience. And it’s sublime.
How can it be so dark and yet simultaneously luminescent? Silent but thrumming with melody?
