Page 183 of The Reaping Rose

Malachi lifts the orb, unleashing it on her. The pure condensed light pushes me back a step, and I think maybe we haven't come with enough. Until Esen raises her hand to meet the magic. She lifts a dark claw, dragging the sharp nail of it across the surface, tapping once. It’s so simple, yet the air chokes from the beach.

The void ripples from Esen’s fingers, and she taps the glass containing the orb again. All that power stops in one breath. Color retreats as it cracks. A web of darkness crawls over the object. It splinters and dulls.

It dies.

Esen pulls back, relaxing her arms while Malachi holds the muted orb up between us. The magic that screamed from within quiets. The pulse stops.

So why does Malachi gleam like Esen has handed him exactly what he wanted?

Chapter 62

Elorie

“Something’s wrong,” I say through the thread, and there’s a hollowness to it that wasn’t there before.

“We always suspected it was a trap.” Wilder’s attempt to be comforting falls flat.

“Not like this.”

He brought me here to lure me out. To convince me to offer my magic to his cause. But Esen? He couldn’t have expected her. So why does his grin grow even further?

Blue returns to his eyes. The gold that once stained one drips from his lashes like liquid. The shimmer of light I remember from when I first stepped into his presence coats his skin. A warm sheen casts light on a dark beach.

Overhead, the moon hangs even lower, taunting me.

What have I done?

“You found her.” Malachi smiles at Esen.

She wiggles her fingers, but the orb is no longer pulsing. There is nothing else to mute. Atlas is the one to reach for her, pulling her away from Malachi before he can attack. Esen’s wide eyes dart between the king and his sister.

“I told you that you brought me what I needed, Elorie. Although, I have to admit, I did not expect a human girl. I did not realize the void could be contained in another form of flesh and bone. Not when my sister barely wrangles the rest of her soul.”

The rest of her soul?

My eyebrows pinch, my gaze darting between Hazel and Esen. One drinks magic, the other pacifies it. Two sides of a similar coin. But while the liquid darkness climbing Hazel’s arms is thick and moving, the black webs on half of Esen’s face reflect no light.

“My father told me a secret before I slit his throat.” Malachi’s eyes burn as he glances at his sister. “He told me of our mother’s true powers, and with that, I realized what a gift she held, even though he’d executed her like it was a curse.”

Hazel’s eyes are nearly pitch black as she watches her brother turn to the rest of the group.

“Maybe you didn’t know that my dear Hazel was a twin. Hemlin died in childbirth, as many twins do, and that was the last my father allowed the kingdom to speak of him. When Hemlin died, my mother drowned in his loss. It overwhelmed her to the point that she rested her hands over his chest, and she raised him from the dead.”

“She was a necromancer?”

“Yes.” Malachi’s gaze shifts to me. “There is a reason necromancy is forbidden. Mostly because it animates without life or thought, but there are other risks, ones that taint us now. You see, when my mother tried to bring Hemlin back, his soul was already tangled with death. It could not come back to him from where it was in Sarrow. So in his resurrection, she gave him life, but it was not his own. It was stolen from a part of my sister.”

“Malachi…” Hazel’s eyes widen.

He turns to her, and it’s clear she has never been told this story. “Father said Hazel’s magic was light when she was born. She shone brighter than any sun. Brighter than me. But to steal something so vital from her—a piece of her soul—left only darkness once my mother was done.”

Hazel’s cheeks dull. Although she’s perfectly still, I sense something inside her fracturing.

“As for Hemlin… his skin crawled with what was stolen. Magic that was not his. Magic that had been split between life and death. Magic that was no longer whole, but twins in the darkness.” Malachi eyes his sister. “When Hazel’s soul was split, half of her magic remained within her, but it was not whole, so it changed—darkened. It turned to shadows so hungry they drank all magic they touched, seeking out something to cure the emptiness. While the other half—the half in Hemlin—could not drink at all. It was magic in a body that was meant to be dead, and because of that, it turned into nothing. It became silence. To life, to magic. It became the undoing of what we are.”

“It became the void,” I whisper.

Malachi nods. “My father ended Hemlin’s life to stop the void from spreading through our realm. A dead being cannot contain such a thing, and it would have destroyed us. But when Father did that, he was also killing a piece of Hazel’s soul. It was thought the void was freed then, dropped into another realm—another object. A problem for another place. But to see it thriving in a human can only mean one thing: the void never left my sister’s soul at all, it seems. It clung to her until it found its way back through the fates and into another body.”