The scorpion’s claw moves away from Sebastian, and then the stinger whips down. It strikes Sebastian on the chest. It stays there as the tail muscles flex, and I can almost see the venom moving into him. Then the stinger goes up and Bas sags against the ground.
Daryn is screaming. We’re all yelling. Jode is the only one still in his right mind. He steps in front of us and holds us back. We can’t stop this. It already happened. We can’t stop it.
Then I hear Daryn speak words I never thought she’d say.
“I’ll do it!” she yells. “I’ll give them you!”
Samrael smiles. “I thought so.” On the ground by his feet, Bas is gasping for breath. “Better hurry.”
As Daryn comes to stand in front of Marcus, thoughts crash through my mind.
What are we doing?
How can we do this?
How can we not?
“Give me your arm,” Daryn says. Her eyes are distant. She’s somewhere else. She’s trying to get through a situation where every possible outcome is terrible.
Marcus’s face is tight with anger as he extends his arm.
Daryn reaches out and frames the cuff with her hands. Her eyes drift almost closed. Soft, warm light builds within her palms. Gold, like her. And the cuff around Marcus’s wrist loosens. It dissolves into pale ashes. Into a small tornado, circling Marcus’s arm.
There is no wonder or awe on Daryn’s face as she steps back, the ashes moving with her. Only focus. A focus that’s beyond. She brings her hands together and the ashes consolidate, until Marcus’s cuff is re-formed and pressed between her palms. She slips it over her wrist. Then she moves to Jode and begins again.
Under her guidance, her control, his cuff becomes a brilliant circle of light, and then transforms back into the cuff, resting in the palm of her hand.
I don’t feel surprise as I watch her. The barriers of what’s possible broke down when I first folded in with Riot. And I always knew there was something more to her. The feeling that’s building inside me is dread.
I’m so sorry.
What did she mean? What does she know?
Daryn slips Jode’s cuff over her wrist. It rests next to Marcus’s.
Only Sebastian’s cuff is left now.
She glances at me, and walks away. As she strides to Sebastian and Samrael, I tell myself it wasn’t good-bye I just saw in her eyes.
She reaches them and kneels at Bas’s side. Ronwae has backed off. There’s no need to restrain Bas anymore. Even from where I stand, I can see that he’s starting to convulse from the poison.
Daryn runs her hands over his forehead and it seems to steady him. Samrael stands close as she takes Bas’s cuff, but his eyes are on me. He knows what it does to me, seeing him so close to her.
When Daryn has Sebastian’s cuff, she stands and Samrael hands her mine.
She has them all now. All four.
“Do it,” he says. He tips his head to Sebastian. “Quickly, if you hope to help him.”
Daryn takes the four cuffs into her open palms. Each of them loosens and dissolves, transforming into dust. Into light and shadow and fire. They hover above her palms, turning in circles. But then they meld together and form a sphere. A small marbled globe, floating above her open hands.
Daryn steps back and the sphere expands, reaching her height and then larger. Twice her height. It turns in front of her, a world spinning above the trampled grass. A small universe of fire and water, ice and steel. Every element. Every star and every ocean. It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
Miraculous.
It’s the only word.
Samrael comes to Daryn’s side and gazes at it with a look of triumph. “Now cede it to me,” he says.
Daryn shakes her head, and tenses. Then I hear the distant howl of wind as a point of pure darkness appears on the sphere.
Samrael is focused on it, like he’s the one feeding it, building it.
He is.
I know he’s tainting it. I know how it feels to be tainted by the Kindred.
As the darkness expands, I see that it’s a tunnel.
A porthole.
And through it, mountains appear. They’re the same jagged Wyoming peaks, but they’re cloaked in ice and it’s night there. The ground is a smooth sheet of ice and the trees are coated with frost.
The wind howls louder and pushes at my back. It scatters leaves and rustles the trees around the clearing.
It’s the pull of that place. An evil, leeching hunger. The kind I’ve seen in Ra’om’s eyes.
Daryn staggers away from the porthole, but Samrael steps closer. He stands before it, gazing at the frozen world inside. His dark clothes whip with the force of the wind. He’s mesmerized by what he sees. A refuge. A kingdom. An empire made of the same malevolent hunger that exists inside him. That feeds him.
I don’t see Sebastian until he’s running.
Running with effort. Like every step is a struggle.
But Samrael has his back turned and he’s not expecting the collision.
Sebastian slams into him and they catapult forward.
They pitch into the porthole—and are instantly sucked inside.
Vanished.
Gone.
I loose sight of them and the passage pinholes shut. The sphere unravels in a violent tumble of elements, disappearing in a swirl at Daryn’s hands.