Page 111 of The Ember and the Emerald

“No. He’s wrong.” I couldn’t lose two loved ones in a single day. Let me be the sacrifice. If I died, so be it. Maybe I was always supposed to take the monstra down with me.

But though I strained within, the Ember did not ignite. It did, however, speak again. Understand later. Fight now.

My father stood atop the rise now, deliberately drawing more and more monstra uphill, at a point overlooking his kingdom. His armor was scorched, cracked, but he stood tall, defiant as the sun at dusk. The beasts had stopped attacking him, at least. They knew they could kill him at any moment and were content to watch him and discover what he planned.

“Ahav!” I shouted, wrenching free and running for him. “Dad.”

His gaze found me, and something in his expression—peace, apology, love—split me straight down the center. “My Moriah,” he called. He slammed a fist above his breastplate. A salute from one soldier to another. “I love you, my brave girl. Never forget that.”

Blood soaked through his armor, one hand pressed uselessly to his side. He looked smaller like that, bowed, mortal in a way he had never been in my mind.

My vision tunneled, the world blurring at the edges, as if reality itself were fraying. A tug in my chest, like a cord being ripped free, a tide yanked out at sea without warning. My breath hitched, stalled, and refused to return. Not again, not him, not now. “I will be the sacrifice. Me!”

Give me everything, and I’ll give it back.

Jasher caught me by the waist, yanking me back just before I breached the masses. Wings swiping this direction and that, he blocked any fire thrown our way.

Ahav sank to his knees.

“No,” I shouted, throat scraped raw. “No. You don’t get to do this. Not after her.”

But he did.

The monstra unleashed, and I couldn’t stop it. Flames swallowed him in a blink. Ahav threw back his head and spread his arms. In those molten flames, he burned, his body ashing before my eyes.

Something inside me snapped, clean and final. A dam gave way. The Ember wanted my life? My will? Expected me to yield now, before I understood? Give everything?

You want a broken heart shredded beyond repair? It’s yours, I said, making the Ember’s will my own.

And like that, it detonated. Heat ripped through my veins, incandescent and merciless. I’d only had glimpses before. I realized that now. Too hot, so hot. Blazing. Blistering.

The Ember surged until my skin seemed to melt. It didn’t drink up my water but used it as fuel. Filling me. Still heating. Filling me further. Soon I would burst. Too much! Heating until the air around me screamed.

A scream tore free from me. Raw, feral, unrecognizable. The sound split the sky.

Golden armor materialized over me, made of water and words and love and spirit. Or so it seemed. My hands went steady in an instant, the rest of me terrifyingly calm.

I rose, fire coiling around me, grief forged into something sharp and lethal. They hadn’t crystallized. I didn’t know why. Yet. No matter.

They had taken my sister. They had taken my father. And now, finally, I would take their everything. Whatever the cost.

There was no easing into what happened next. Power detonated inside me. As much as I could handle. More than I could handle, even with all my new inner nooks and crannies. Water wings didn’t just bloom from my back. They erupted, tearing free in a violent spray of pain and ecstasy colliding as a single furious beat of air that launched me skyward.

The monstra noticed. They rushed to surround me, snarling and confident they could end me too. Jasher flew among them, as if tugged by an invisible force, just as I’d foreseen. Muscles strained as he fought to… break from their ranks?

Perhaps. But would he? I knew what was coming next.

My grief iced over, and I smiled at my audience. “Come,” I whispered, crooking my finger. “Try to kill me.”

They did. With fire, tooth, and claw. Child’s play. Golden armor flashed over me as I cut through the masses. The ease of my triumph surprised me. I glided through pockets of air, yanking out the water from in their blood. Bodies crystallizing as they dropped by the dozens.

I lost sight of the monstra as individuals. I simply saw tangled coils of light and shadow. But there was one coil—familiar—that avoided me. When I got close, it—he—backed off, never attacking. In fact, he seemed to toss the others my way, in offering.

Wait. Down there. What was that? My gaze zeroed on another coil, bigger than the others. Ian? He stood on trembling ground. Ground growing and growing, rising into a hill. A mountain. Oh, yes. Ian. Even through the haze, I knew him. That face. Jasher’s face, worn by something that had never been Jasher at all. The one who had unmade me, loop after loop. Who had turned the man I loved into a weapon and pointed him at my throat. Ian. Finally. Finally.

“Come,” he said in a mimicry of me, motioning me over. “Try to kill me.”

Oh yes. Ian. He ripped off his shirt to prove it.