Page 63 of War Of Fire and Fortune
“It is far too late for her. Maybe if you wouldn’t have run off all those years ago, I wouldn’t have had to use her soul to protect myself against your shadows,” he revealed, taking a fighting stance.
“Valos, you didn’t.”
“I did. I sacrificed her to fortify me so no Celestials could get into my mind. How does it feel, Atreya, to know you killed yourown daughter? You made me do this. When you left, I always knew you would try to come back to finish me off.” Our blades clashed as he continued, tears trailing down my cheeks.
“YOU BASTARD!” I screamed, and my whole body steeled. I had survived all these years knowing they were in his hands, but since I had taught my boys to keep their shadows at bay, I knew they would come to me. Everything they’d endured, Kade’s torment, Rhet’s decisions, they had all been their choices. Everything Valla had done? It hadn’t been her will, but his, and now she was just a hollow shell under his control. It made my heart shatter into a million pieces.
“And then finally to complete my plan, I found a small village of Celestials, and you know what I did? I killed them all but a mother and her child, and I used her child against her to do my bidding. Now, you’re all going to die by the very savior you cherish."
I wasn’t paying attention to his words. The last thing this man could ever do to hurt me, he’d done. He’d killed one of my kids. My little girl. I had never felt such raw fucking rage as I did in that very moment. My shadows clouded my mind, my eyes going black, before they rose around me. For the first time in my life, Valos looked at me hesitantly. His eyes didn’t gleam with victory. He raised his blade to attack, but I moved quicker. My shadows snatched it and tossed it to the battlefield. Chaos reigned around us, but in that moment, there was only him and me.
“You can’t kill me, Atreya.” He smirked, his hand palming the ruby dagger on his hip, thinking I didn’t know his secrets or how that enchantment worked because he had made sure there was no record of it. That was why he’d kept it hidden in his desk, why he’d tried to burn the library of knowledge all those years ago. He didn’t want his plans to be ruined or for someone else to come along and have knowledge of the power one could have. And he was right. Until I destroyed that blade, the same blade hemust’ve killed Valla with, I couldn’t kill him, or so the book that Kade had gotten his hands on had said.
Then we would have to kill Valla, as ending the person she was tethered to would only cause her to fall into madness completely, as she wouldn’t have a will to follow. But Valla was already mad, and it had gotten worse over the years. My daughter was already gone. I moved, and he thought I was going for him, but I wasn’t. I sent a tendril of shadow directly into the ruby of the blade. Valla’s warmth was trapped in the stone, and tears pricked behind my eyes as I made the shadows disperse inside it and it exploded out of Valos’s hand. He cried out, and I watched as an orb of light floated from the shattered blade and came toward me, swiping my cheek as if trying to rub away my tears, or maybe it was a thank you before it disappeared into nothing. Valos’s eyes went wide, and then I sent every ounce of shadow I could muster directly into his body, piercing straight through his armor to skin and bones and directly out the other side of him. His breath shuddered from his lungs as he released a weak laugh.
“You can’t stop my plans. She’ll make her kill all of you, and I, even in death, will be the victor. Do you hear me!?” he rasped. Blood leaked from his nose and mouth. “This is my empire! All of it! I-I am powerful! Do you see me now, Father!? I am—” His head drooped, and my shadows released him before he crumbled to the bloody ground.
A sob escaped me as I fell to my knees. But then I looked up and realized I had been so engrossed in the battle with Valos that I had missed the other Celestial Fae on the battlefield. I hadn’t realized she was controlling Emelyn. The Peacebringer—Our savior.
And as I looked across the battlefield, Valla was aiming her lightning toward Emelyn, and then Kade Hollowed and I screamed.
Chapter Forty-Seven
Emelyn
Ididn’t have time to let the revelation sink in that Atreya was Kade and Rhet’s mother, the Empress of Ember. I had to keep fighting. Fire rained down from the skyships, Woodhaven was burning, and we were losing. There were too many soldiers and not enough of us.
I wouldn’t hold back this time.
“Awataro, I call for you.” I said it almost to myself as I continued slashing through men. The magic in my chest poured out of me. My eyes began to glow, and I could feel the raw power of the Peacebringer take over.
Suddenly, screams louder than the rest came from my right, and when I looked, it was him. The Kappa was ripping Ember soldiers apart and feasting on them the moment their eyes wentwide with fear, while others just started running from him. He must’ve felt my eyes because he looked to me then. His sharp-toothed, bloodied smile flashed my direction before he pounced on his next victim. Dirty water sloshed from his cap as he leapt from soldier to soldier, tearing through their throats and eating their innards. He was a living nightmare on the hunt, and the sight made my stomach churn, but I shoved that down and kept going. Kade stayed at my back, and we fought in perfect motion together as more soldiers surrounded us.
Then, Woodhaven lowered their front wall with their earth bending, the ground trembling so roughly that it made my joints crack from the force. And then I saw them. The golems. Hundreds of them that they had created over the last few months. They charged toward the battle with Shay and Baron leading them and hope filled my chest. We might have a chance.
But then something clouded my mind. Cold, icy dread coursed through my veins, and I realized I was surrounded by the enemy. Rage filled me, rooting me where I was, and then I wasn’t thinking anymore. I was attacking. The Peacebringer inside me stirred with a hunger for blood that wasn’t mine. It was someone else. And I couldn’t stop it from taking me. All of me. The monster was unleashed, and I would kill everything in my path.
Shadows gripped me, but I fought them. Whoever this man was would die with everyone else. I tried to attack him, but he blocked my blows. He was trying to say something to me, but it didn’t make any sense. I moved to attack again, and he pinned me and stilled behind me. I knocked him back and was ready to attack when he took a few steps back.
“I’m sorry,” he murmured, and then he was gone. No bother, I had plenty of other enemies to deal with. I let my power free. Tendrils of water lifted me, air wrapped around me, fire blazed in my fists, and the earth shook under me. Any rebel that came near me got speared through with my tendrils of water, and ifthey made it past that, then they were swallowed by the ground at my feet, I moved through them slowly, plucking their lives away one after the other. I realized the golems in the distance were gaining ground on the field, smashing and destroying my men left and right, but I smiled to myself. With a flick of my wrist, the hundreds of golem soldiers turned back to dust, and then I moved back to the rebellion soldiers.
I’d kill them all.
A man with wings attacked me from the sky, tackling me to the ground, knocking me off my stilts of water. Refusing to let me mow down any more of their men. No matter. I’d kill him too.
“Emelyn!” he roared. “Stop this! It’s me, Ace!” I didn’t listen to him. I thought it was odd hearing his voice though. I liked the sound of it. Shaking the thought away, I grabbed my battle axe. He blocked my moves efficiently, and I realized we fought similarly.How strange.
I needed to end this quickly if he was as skilled as I in battle. We danced around each other fluidly, and I thought his movements were beautiful. His wings so graceful. But I was growing tired of this back and forth. I swung at him with my battle axe, but he dodged it and flipped the weapon out of my hands, using his air bending to knock it far away from me. As I was bending it back to my waiting palm, he rushed me so I couldn’t get it back, but I was still quicker. I grabbed a blade from a fallen soldier and speared him straight through his center. He grabbed my hand on the hilt and squeezed it as if to . . .comfort me?
Something was off. This was wrong.
My brow furrowed as I pushed through the haze in my mind. Someone was in my head. I shook it, trying to get them out. But they pushed back harder.No. Get out!
“Hey,” Ace said, his voice graveled. “If I’m going to die, I’m happy it was by your hand.” That snapped something in me.I shoved the intruder out of my head and blinked away the confusion.
“There she is,” Ace said as I looked down and saw the blade through his gut, and I was the one wielding it.
“No,” I cried. “No, no, Ace.” He gurgled then, and I pulled out the blade in my panic. He dropped to his knees in front of me. “Ace, ACE! No!” I was still thrumming with power, my eyes bright with light as tears free fell from them.
