Page 327 of The Edge of Darkness

“Maeson, I can’t bear the thought of you getting hurt.”

“And I can’t bear the thought of losing you!” Her voice broke.

Tears threatened to rise up, and the Aether jolted inside my chest, rebuking the sentiment.

I swallowed hard. “Whatever happens, just know that I will fight with everything I have to get back to you.” The words were as sincere as I could say them, but worry was still woven around their roots, strapped between the emotion I desperately wanted to feel, and the unrest of the Aether.

Her bottom lip quivered as she nodded. “I’ll be right here.”

Around us, clamor ensued, as Roirdan, and several Dionach’s who had joined him, kept the creatures from getting too close to us.

Nivelle was bent over the black flame, moving her hands in rhythmic motions, and I was beginning to feel . . . strange. My hand was throbbing—the blood had stopped flowing, and the skin was already scabbing over. But there was something else . . . Something was tugging against the fibers of my soul. It was as if the black flame was an anchor point, and every aspect of my existence was linked to it.

I steadied myself and watched the witch pull strands of flames into the air with her fingers.

“The sacrifice is good,” she said, more to herself than to me.

She reached for the pouch she’d set aside, and withdrew a handful of seeds from it. Zaldora. For blinding the Aether.

“Light them,” she instructed Maeson as she scattered the seeds between us.

Maeson let go of my hand and snapped a flame to life, but I quickly protested.

“No . . . don’t.”

“But we need to block the Aether⁠—”

“I don’t want to subdue it. I need to . . . reason with it.”

Both females looked at me like I’d lost my mind, but I ignored them.

The Aether wasn’t a parasite. It existed within me—alongside me. It was an entity, just like I was a living being, and something told me that treating it as such, with respect, was the only way this was going to work in my favor.

Nivelle leveled a look at me. “Once the spell is spoken, the seeds won’t have any effect on the entity if you decide otherwise.”

“I understand,” I replied.

She pushed out a breath and shook her head. “So be it. You must say the words with me, though, as your blood is bound to the objects.”

I nodded, and together, we recited the spell.

“Blood of my blood, bone from my flesh,

stone of the hearth, bird from the nest.

Untangle my bonds, these words are my thresh,

Release me, oh burden, unbind and let rest.”

“Again,” she commanded, lifting flames with the movements of her hands, as if offering them to some deity above.

I repeated the spell, alone this time, and as I said it, my body became immensely attuned to whatever the words had conjured up. The flame beckoned me with each flicker, like a force I could not turn away from.

Nivelle’s body suddenly arched, and she threw her head back, gasping. My blood ran cold at what I saw. She was not the same as before. Her eyes were as black as the night, with dark, vein-like striations bleeding out from them across her cheeks. The markings on her forehead and chin were not glowing blue. Instead, they were red, like a Dionach’s. The witch had descended to whatever depths it required to perform dark magic, and she looked absolutely terrifying.

Beside me, Maeson had gone as pale as the moon, her eyes wide with horror.

The witch turned, slowly, and met Maeson’s wide-eyed stare. “I did warn you about dark magic,” I heard her say, her voice many in one.