Page 48 of Song of Night

I take a deep breath and call on my magic. I feel that force that is Night, that violet expanse beneath the city. Knowing now where it comes from sends a shiver of awe along my collarbone. I don’t try to send the magic anywhere, or do anything with it like I usually do. No bending shadows, no blasts of battle magic. I just hold it, and I see Night within my mind’s eye.

And as I’d hoped I would, as my instincts told me I would, I feel a tug in my belly, and there’s a flare of light on the map of the city that I see in my head.

My heart sinks.

“Angelus sector,” I say softly. “She’s somewhere beneath there, in the area near Ellielle’s tower.”

Chapter Thirty-Four

ASHER

I let out a low growl. “Right in the midst of the battle. Of course that’s where the goddess is.”

“We were going to join the battle either way,” Zara says. “Apparently fate is drawing us there, one way or another.”

“I’m getting a little tired of fate dictating my life.”

I walk over to the fire and stare into its flickering depths. I want to tell Zara she’s wrong, that her visions are crazy, that there’s no actual dark goddess beneath the city who’s been controlling our lives. But I’ve lived as the anchor of the source of that wild magic for over two hundred years. I know in my heart that what she says is true. It seems so right, so obvious, that part of me must have known this whole time. Some instinct, some inner truth.

And Zara is right about us, too. This should make things easy. Should erase all of my conflict. Night—the goddess—chose Zara for some reason, brought us together and set the wheels in motion for everything that’s happened. I don’t have to worry any longer about being in love with my hated brother’s protégé, the one he sent to kill me. Once the goddess gets what she wants, I won’t feel this way anymore.

“What will we tell the others?” Zara asks from across the room.

“I will tell Malara and Helios that we have a crucial mission to rebalance the magic of Night. We will ride into battle with the warriors—no one else needs to know that we have a different goal. The less who know, the better, in case anyone is captured by the enemy.”

Zara nods. “Are you ready, then?”

Her eyes hook onto mine, and I can see the flames of the fireplace shimmering there. She’d put her clothes back on while I stood before the fire, and she looks utterly deadly and dangerous as she slides her daggers into place along her thigh, her face stern and fierce. She is shadow and death and wild magic; she is the song of Night.

I close the distance between us and crush her against me, my lips devouring hers, my tongue claiming her mouth. I want to taste her heat and her passion, I want to feel that spark of power between us before everything changes. One last moment that is ours, and ours alone. Something that fate cannot contrive, something that belongs to me, to us.

When I pull back, I run my hand through her hair, cupping her cheek in my palm. Her eyes glimmer with tears, her face filled with such sorrow it cuts me like a knife.

“It’s not time to say farewell quite yet,” she whispers.

“Just in case, then,” I say softly. “In case we don’t get a chance to say it later.”

She nods and steps away from me. I dress quickly, and we head down to the courtyard to ride to war.

Chapter Thirty-Five

ZARA

The scout we’d left near the river comes running up to the palace gates as we begin to ride out.

“The enemy has pushed us back to the river!” he shouts.

Asher’s face is grim as he nods. Malara and Helios ride at his left, and I ride at his right. I look north, and I can see fires burning even from this distance, can hear the cacophony of battle. The horse I’m riding prances anxiously beneath me.

It’s been nearly three hours. I turn and look south, wondering how Jaylen has fared in rallying the Factionless. Asher’s three wolves growl and stalk around us, their coats glowing in the darkness. A halfmoon has just risen above the swirling mist of the Waste.

The fact that Vyrin’s army has reached the river means that much further Asher and I have to travel through a swarming battle, as if things weren’t looking grim enough already. But the odds have always been nearly impossible. If we see another dawn, it will be a miracle. And that miracle won’t be delivered by any deity, because I know now that there is a higher power, and we’re the ones who have to rescue her.

Asher signals the warriors and we begin to move toward the river, toward the battle that will decide all. A thousand strong, fighting for survival. We’d done this just three days before, thinking then we faced the battle of our lives. Little did any of us know how much worse things could get. The irony is that it took an even greater enemy to make us finally join forces and quit fighting amongst ourselves.

When we reach the river, it looks as if we’ve reached the gates of Hell. Seeing it from a distance had been horrifying enough. But now, standing at the edge of the destruction…

The entire northern half of Night is burning, as far as I can see in either direction. The catapults have advanced further south, and as I watch, one of them flings a fireball that arcs over the river and hits a stone church on the other side, in Daemonium territory. Flames encompass the building in a matter of seconds. It is no ordinary fire, as I’d suspected earlier. Only fae alchemy could make something burn so quickly.

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