Page 321 of The Edge of Darkness

A shadow quickly slammed into the queen and snatched her wrist, wringing the weapon from her grip.

Skadi stepped up to her and searched her eyes. A hint of a smile crept across her lips. “You were so close.”

The queen didn’t say a word. She held Skadi’s stare. And when Eathril released his hold on the blade he still held above her, Corinne caught it with her free hand, and plunged it into Skadi’s heart.

The world seemed to narrow as the scene shifted around me.

Silas grabbed Niall and ported him out of Skadi’s reach just as she whipped her hand through the air, but her attempt to command her shadows failed. They twisted and writhed, shrinking in on themselves and evaporating like smoke. She staggered sideways, staring down and gaping at the knife in her heart with utter disbelief. When she lifted her gray eyes to me, they flickered. The life in them was fading, blink by blink.

Blood dribbled from the corner of her mouth as she let out a small, pained grunt. Then she collapsed to the ground, and did not rise again.

I didn’t know where the queen had gone, or how she had managed to do what she’d just done, but somehow, she had wounded the goddess . . . fatally, it seemed.

Torin and Lyceius both stared in shock . . . until the atmosphere shuddered a second later.

A wave of wind and pressure blasted against us from the east . . . from the valley.

The Aether. Aremis must have unleashed it.

Lyceius spun in search of the source, but my focus went straight to my mate, who was lying in Silas’s arms, breathing heavily.

Heal. Heal, I pleaded in my mind.

Silas was saying something to him that I could not make out. All I could hear was the echoing sound of my mate being skewered with a poisoned blade, and Silas having his wings ripped away from his flesh.

Both of them shook, their bodies fighting against the damage that had been done.

I mapped the pain in Niall’s pinched brow, and the strain in his clenched jaw. His hand clutched the wound at his side where blood was still seeping out.

And above him . . . Silas . . . with his missing wings . . .

I felt like I was going to be sick.

There was a wave taking form within me, growing from the depths of my soul. Higher and higher it climbed, like a Dreki clawing its way from the trenches of the mountains, eager to burst into the open sky and unfurl its wings in the daylight.

I inhaled a shaky breath, fighting back a sob that wanted to rattle free.

And then, just like the wind stirring before a storm, I felt Lyceius hurtle his power in my direction. His malicious intent rippled through the air, and that wave inside me came barreling up to meet it.

Light funneled through my veins, and I let out a yell as my power slammed into his. Something inside me had snapped. My well was blown wide open, and the pain, the heartbreak of loss, the desperation, all of it was fuel to my fury.

He snarled as he drew closer, his power reforming around him in a fervent tempest of dark energy, the force of which was more potent than before. With the way Skadi’s body lay motionless in the dirt, I presumed she was either dead or dying, and if her blood-oath had been relinquished in that process, Lyceius now had the full breadth of what remained of his power back, and he was using it.

But it did not matter to me what the fallen god had in his arsenal.

I had more.

And it was time to end this. To end him.

I drew in a breath.

And detonated.

Light ripped through me like a dam had broken loose, flowing from what felt like an endless well.

I unleashed everything at Lyceius. My skin illuminated with a blinding white light, so bright that tears streamed from my own eyes at the reflection, and so cold that my skin pebbled, and a shudder rocked through me. The power was so vast—seemingly endless. It tore free from my body like white flames. Its roar was a mesmerizing hum in my mind, a song of destruction. At that moment, I realized how easy it would be to slip into the well and slide under the surface. To stay there for a while, and let the world fall to the wayside. To revel in my power.

Lyceius was thrown back as the potent beam of energy pounded against his defenses like a battering ram. Slowly, the darkness around him began to unravel. My light was obliterating his corrupt power, shredding it into a million tattered fragments.