Page 127 of Memory of Ashes

A creature lunged for Tharos, then recoiled before its tendrils reached his chest. The blue fragment beneath the skin of his arm flared. The creature circled him and fixed its attention on Amelia.

She stepped back.

“The Lifesource… it repels them.” She’d wondered why they hadn’t attacked the city. The memory of the stone walls reacting beneath Casyl’s grip came to her mind. “It’s in the walls, too.”

The monsters gathered, as if they would overpower them. Another tendril reached out but this time it barely recoiled.

“It doesn’t seem to be stopping them completely,” Tharos said.

Of everyone gathered outside the city walls, she was the only one without fragments buried beneath her skin.

She watched the creature turn towards her. “They want me. We can use that to draw them away.”

The fae stood around her in a protective stance.

The earth trembled, and black smoke rose from the gaping chasm in the distance.

The monsters stopped as if waiting to see what monstrosity would arise to join them.

The trembling increased, cracking the dry earth beneath them.

A figure rose from the chasm, cradled by smoke. When it cleared, a man stood before them. His raven-black hair melted into the shadows that swirled around him. Deep blue veins subtly spidered across his skin and travelled up his neck. His blue eyes glowed with a different light, but it was still him.

He looked directly at Amelia as a sob escaped her.

It was him. The thought repeated in her mind. But how could it be?

The shadows carried him closer, drifting along the ground. Her knees gave way, but before she hit the ground, he was there, his strong hands holding her.

“Amelia,” he breathed. “You’re alive.” He raised his hand towards her face. His touch was like ice.

How was he here? She didn’t understand. The rift was closed.

“Yes,” she cried.

A memory flashed through her mind: Casyl screaming her name as she plunged the dagger into her chest. He’d believed she was dead.

“But what happened to you? How are you here?”

“Did you think that death would keep me from you?”

Everything else disappeared. The army, the monsters, the city. None of it mattered.

Words stuck in her throat.

“Casyl,” she cried. “How?”

He followed her gaze down to the black tendrils of smoke that surrounded him.

“I kept thinking I’d imagined your voice, that you were dead,” he said.

The creatures behind them became still. They hovered, as if waiting. The iridescent veins beneath his skin dimmed.

Tharos noticed it too. His grip tightened on his sword. “What happened to you?” he asked quietly. “What are they?”

Casyl followed Tharos’s gaze towards the waiting creatures. His jaw tightened.

“I belong to them now.”