Promise of Shadows (22 page)

“Not now, Ramun Sol.” A woman’s voice carries out to us from inside the hotel room. “Honestly, one would think that you were vættir, the way you continue to pander to this notion of revenge.” The pressure on my back disappears, and I roll over in relief. But the sensation is short-lived. My vision fills with a woman’s smiling face looking down at me. There’s no mistaking who she is. Hera, Queen of the Æthereals.
Despair washes over me. Things just went from bad to impossible.
“Exalted, I didn’t realize that you were going to be in the area.” Ramun Sol’s voice quavers.
“Am I to now coordinate my movements with you, Ramun Sol? Are you my event planner?” Hera’s face disappears. She steps over me like I’m a discarded gum wrapper and approaches Sol. I manage to roll over enough to watch her approach the minor Æthereal. Hera wears tight white pants, white knee-high boots, and an equally white blouse. Her dark hair is pulled up in a high ponytail and hangs down to the middle of her back. She looks like something out of a comic book.
So that’s what a goddess wears to a genocide.
Hera stops a few feet away from Ramun Sol and studies him. “I await your response, Ramun Sol.”
He falls to his knees, his eyes downcast. “No, Exalted. Your movements are none of my concern.”
Hera looks over her shoulder at me. Her too-red lipstick reminds me of blood. “Gather the Nyx and the monster, summon my Acolytes, and meet me at the Point. With her darkness to power the spell, we no longer need to wait. Tonight the vættir will be abolished.”
Hera disappears in a flash of light, and I groan as I try to sit up. Tallon is there, trying to help me to my feet, but I shake him off. He gives me a look before reluctantly letting me go. Yeah, like I want the boy who betrayed me to help me kill myself.
Because I heard what the bitch-goddess said, and there’s no way I’m letting Hera use me to power her spell.
Sol forgets about me long enough to turn to Tallon. “You brought her here.”
Tallon shrugs, his lips twisted up in a smirk. “Yeah, maybe. I did ask you nicely to call her. You should learn about keeping promises. There might be a way around a lot of things, but there’s no way around a promise.”
“A promise kept,”I mutter. I glance up at Tallon. Without looking at me, he taps a couple of times on my damper. My brain is slow, but I’m pretty sure it’s some sort of sign. Especially since he just gave Sol a lecture about promises. Did Tallon plan this whole thing?
I glance down at the damper encircling my arm, and it hits me. The dampers were created by the Æthereals to control vættir. But I’m not just any vættir.
I’m the Nyx. I am a dark goddess made flesh.
And it’s time I started acting like it.
I climb unsteadily to my feet. Ramun Sol looks at me and laughs.
“You really don’t know when to quit, do you?” he sneers. He begins to glow, summoning his solar flare again. I run forward and tackle him around the middle, eyes squeezed shut against the glare of him. We slam into the balcony railing. He groans, and I take the opportunity to shove my hand up under the T-shirt he wears. I call for the darkness, and I’m surprised and relieved when a thin tendril of it comes rushing back. I send it racing along Ramun Sol’s bare skin, and he screams.
“Get her off of me!”
“Tell me what Hera was talking about when she said to take us to the Point,” Tallon says. He sounds bored.
“It’s a park with a fountain. It sits right on the Node where the three rivers come together in Pittsburgh.” Ramun Sol screams again, and I laugh. The wisps of darkness rising off my bare arms are getting thicker. Stronger. And so is the tendril tearing at the Æthereal’s skin.
Elation washes over me. My shadows are back.
Ramun Sol sees them the same time I do. “No. No, it can’t be. The damper—”
“Those dampers were designed for the average vættir, offspring of minor Æthereals like you. Do you really think something like that would work on Hades’s daughter?”
Ramun Sol looks at me and shakes his head. “No. No, it can’t be. You’ll destroy us all.”
I can’t help it. I smile. “No, just you.” I lean close so that only he can hear my next words. “I hope this hurts. A lot.”
I clamp my hands around his throat, and I think about Cass, the way she looked as he took her life. The darkness swells forth, shadows gobbling up the light and leaving us in deepest night. Around us the lights explode, swaddling the hotel in complete darkness. It’s only when shadows remain that the dark actually attacks Ramun Sol.
His screams are loud enough to shatter the windows.
The darkness clutches at the brightness of him, devouring it and growing stronger. I can sense that it wants more, it wants freedom to hunt like it did before. Part of me wants to give it that freedom, send it out into the world to hunt the Acolytes. But that won’t help me stop Hera, and it won’t free Whisper and Cass’s shades.
“Not yet,” I whisper to the erebos, soothing it like a pet. The darkness seems to like that. It curls around me, healing the last of my injuries before settling back into the markings on my skin. “Soon.”
I blink, and the world slowly comes back into focus. Tallon is hauling me up from where I’ve slumped onto the balcony. “Come on, we need to get going. Hera is expecting us.”
“How’d you know the damper wouldn’t work?” I ask.
“Someone tried to damper me, once. It didn’t go so well.”
I open my mouth to ask him more, but he cuts me off. “We have to find Alora and Blue and get out of here.”
I let Tallon pull me from the balcony and into the room. His grip is firm on my upper arm, his fingers warm. A chill sweeps over me as he reaches down and snags my backpack, slinging it over his shoulder. But then his touch is back, and we’re out of the dark room and into the hallway, which is dimly lit by the emergency lamps on the wall. Blue and Alora stand near the stairway, their faces worried.
“What’s going on?” Blue asks.
Tallon shrugs. “Just tying up some loose ends. I’ll fill you guys in on the way.”
“Way where?” Alora asks, looking mussed and a little put out.
“We found out where Hera’s taking the shades. We have to get going, though. We don’t have much time.” He steers me toward the stairs, and I push him away.
“I can walk,” I say. I’m unsteady, but I’m still the first one to the stairs. I pause and turn around, looking over my shoulder at everyone. “What?”
“Where are we going?” Alora asks, tugging at her hair.
I lean against the doorframe. My head is dizzy, like I just got off a carnival ride. I take the ruined damper off my arm and drop it on the floor. “We’re going to stop Hera,” I answer, even though that isn’t what Alora meant. I take a deep breath, and to myself I say, “I’ve got a promise to keep.”

“It looks like we’re about an hour away,” Tallon says. He sits in the front seat next to Blue, playing navigator for a change. From Alora’s posture she isn’t happy to be stuck in the backseat with me, and I share the feeling. I have some things I want to say to Tallon, but unless I want to share them with the entire car, they’re going to have to wait.

So as we drive, I stare out the window and fume. Why didn’t Tallon tell me that his plan was to pretend to give me up to Ramun Sol? If I was a little more prepared, maybe I wouldn’t have freaked out so much.
But more important is the fact that Hera is Tallon’s grandmother. How does that work? Especially since he’s working just as hard as the rest of us to see her fail.
We stop for gas and all pile out to go to the bathroom. We don’t know what waits for us in Pittsburgh, but if I’m going to die I want to make sure I don’t end up wetting my pants in the process. In the ladies’ room I corner Alora, who looks at me with startled violet eyes. “Don’t hurt me,” she says. The lime scent of her fear is no competition for the funk of the bathroom.
“Pffft, I’m not going to hit you,” I say.
“Yeah, but that’s the same look you had on your face last time. Sorry if I’m a little unconvinced.”
I get a glimpse of myself in the mirror and sigh. My hair sticks out in all directions like a crazy woman’s, the blue curls looking unkempt. My silver eyes are too wide, and darkness leaks from the corners of them. I close my eyes and reopen them, and the darkness disappears. I force what I hope is a reassuring grin.
“Sorry, just a little on edge. Look, I wanted to ask you what you know about Tallon’s father.”
Alora looks away. “We don’t talk about that.”
I cross my arms. “Well, we’re talking about that. I want to know how his mom ended up getting pregnant by T—” Alora clamps her hand across my mouth and looks around.
“Don’t say his name. I’m serious. If you do, he’ll be able to find Tallon.” I nod, but Alora doesn’t remove her hand. “Promise you won’t say his name.”
“Mmmpphhhff,” I say.
Alora removes her hand and sighs. She begins talking, her words coming fast and hard. “Tallon’s father is one of the lowest of the dark lords, the monster-that-will-come-when-called. Janda,Tallon’s mom, was carried off by him in the middle of a mission. She used to work with our moms a lot on missions. Like Tallon, she could trip the Rift.” I frown. “Tallon’s mom was a Harpy?”
Alora shakes her head. “No. She was a minor Æthereal. Not strong enough to be Exalted, and too weak to survive in the Æthereal Realm. She’s my mom’s half sister, and she’s the one who convinced Mom to move to Ulysses’s Glen when the Aerie threw her out.” The Aerie threw out Nanda? I suspect there’s a story there, but it’ll have to wait for another time. I don’t want to interrupt Alora.
Her eyes get a faraway look.“By the time our moms found Janda she was pregnant and convinced she was in love with the creature. No one really knows how Tallon was conceived; it should’ve been impossible.”
She swallows hard and continues. “Most of the healers thought that he would die in the womb. His mother was pregnant with him for over a year. One of my cousins says that when he was born, his eyes were all black, no white at all, and his teeth were pointed.” Sadness crosses Alora’s face and she shrugs. “A lot of the family still won’t talk to him. They just refer to him as ‘that dark one.’ Janda sent him to live in the Æthereal Realm with one of her sisters when he was little. She wasn’t very strong, and she was scared of him.”
I shake my head. How did I not know any of this? “But what about when you guys came to visit? I can’t remember a time when Tallon wasn’t there.”
Alora shrugs. “He would run away a lot as a kid. Every time, he would show up at our house and stay with us until someone came for him. I don’t think my mom ever told yours who Tallon was, and when she finally did, they stopped talking.”
I nod. That would’ve been the day my mom saw Tallon use the erebos. My mother wasn’t a kind woman, but she was shrewd. It wouldn’t have been hard for her to figure out that Tallon wasn’t the poor orphan vættir she thought he was.
Alora adjusts her hair in the mirror and continues. “When Janda died, Blue and Owen moved in with us, and Tallon did too. No one came to take him back to the Æthereal Realm. I think they knew that he didn’t belong there. I mean, Tallon is strange. Not only can he use the Paths like a Hecate, but he can cross the Rift. And he wields erebos like one of the lords of the Underworld. Who knows what else he can do? It’s not many Æthereals that have that much power without being an Exalted.”
Alora’s words freeze my brain. Tallon is an Æthereal. Not a vættir. It’s difficult to breathe, and not just because of the funky bathroom air. Why didn’t I put that together before now? Did I just not want to see the truth? Tallon’s ability to trip the Rift, to use both the æther and the erebos. Tallon is an Æthereal. Anything I feel for him is “forbidden,” just like Whisper and Hermes.
And I don’t care.
My shock must show on my face, because Alora’s gaze meets mine. The sadness is gone, and all that remains is a fierceness. “I’ve seen the way you look at him. I was always jealous of how close the two of you were when we were little, but now I think you could be really good for him. Tallon needs someone who won’t fear his darkness.”
“Oh,” I say. That’s not something I ever expected to hear from Alora. Maybe I’ve misjudged her.
Alora sighs and pats my arm. The darkness there rises up to stroke her, and she yanks her hand back with a nervous laugh. “Power like Tallon’s makes others jealous, and mean. I know you think Tallon’s cold and distant, but he has good reason. Life really hasn’t given him a lot to smile about. Hopefully you can change that.”
I stare at Alora as she walks out of the rest room. Is that why Tallon freaked out on me in the hotel room? Did he think that he was somehow going to ruin me because he’s really a god? If so, then he’s an idiot. I’m not going to let some archaic law stop me from being happy.
I hope I have a chance to set Tallon straight.
I leave the bathroom, confused and on edge. Back at the car, everyone is waiting for me, and I get in without a word. As we drive the last few miles to where Hera and her Acolytes wait for us, I’m not thinking of my impending doom or the army waiting to kill us.
I’m thinking of the boy in the front seat, and wondering if I make him feel as conflicted as he makes me.

Signs warned us that the park closed at dusk and that violators would be prosecuted, but we continued on. I think we all figure that preventing genocide justifies a little trespassing.

We get out of the car and sort of look around. It’s warm out, even with the breeze coming in off the water.Trees edge along either side of the park, which is in the shape of a giant triangle. At the tip a fountain shoots water up into the air. We all look to Tallon for direction, since he has the phone with the Internet connection.

“It looks like this is definitely the place. This website says French settlers built a fort here back in the day. Fort Duquesne. The foundation is the only thing left.”

Alora’s gaze gets distant and she nods. “Oh yeah, the Strands are really tangled around this place. Lots of lives passed through here.”
I want to point out that we’re smack-dab in the middle of a major city, and that maybe the Node has nothing to do with the Strands. But Alora was nice enough when I asked her about Tallon. So I keep my mouth shut.
I look out across the grass, but there’s no sign of anything except maybe some rocks far off. “You think they knew it was a Node?”
Blue shrugs. “A lot of the first settlers were vættir trying to escape persecution in Europe. It makes sense that they would’ve chosen a Node along one of the Paths. That way they could return home if they needed to.”
I nod and swallow a sigh. Nerves make my hands shake, and my stomach is sick. I want to be anywhere but here, but I need to see this through. I have to set Cass and Whisper free, if nothing else.
Tallon looks back at the rest of us. “You guys stay hidden while I check it out. Hera’s expecting me, but if she sees the rest of you, she’ll know something is up.”
“She’s Æthereal, Tallon. Won’t she know something is up anyway?” Tallon gives me a look that screams,
Shut up
. I throw my hands up in the air. “Fine. Never mind.”
“Wait,” Alora says, putting her hand on Tallon’s arm. “Let me check the Strands first.” Alora’s gaze focuses on something far away. I shift from foot to foot, anxious for something. Maybe she’ll tell us we were wrong. Maybe this has all been a huge misunderstanding. I cross my fingers and hope that I won’t have to die.
But I’m not that lucky. After a long moment Alora finally sighs and shrugs. “I can’t see anything. The Strands are too jumbled.”
I swallow hard, my fear souring my stomach. I’m trying very hard not to be sick. “Is that a good thing?”
She purses her lips. “It isn’t a bad thing. For now we should probably just go along with Tallon’s plan.”
We duck into the trees while Tallon walks toward the fountain and the remains of the fort. As he walks across the open area, the tiny hairs on my arms stand up straight. He’s so exposed. If Hera were to attack right now, there wouldn’t be anything to protect him. The erebos crawls under my skin, trying to reassure me. I rub my arms, but the sensation doesn’t go away. Blue bumps his shoulder into mine.
“What’s wrong?” he whispers.
“What do you mean?”
“You’re jumpy as hell. More than usual, in fact. You’re making me nervous.”
“Sorry. I just feel . . .” I grab Blue’s arm as something runs toward Tallon. “Do you see that?”
Blue squints toward the field, shaking his head. “See what?”
“There! The kobalos running toward Tallon.”
He looks at me like I’m crazy. “That’s a kobalos? Are you sure? It looks like a monkey.”
“Blue, why would a monkey be running around a park in Pittsburgh?”
His lips tighten. “We have to warn him.”
The longer I watch the kobalos run across the grass the more I see Cass’s last few moments. The memory is too much, and the erebos urges me to action. I break cover and sprint toward the kobalos loping toward Tallon.
I run full out, my arms swinging and a stitch forming in my side. It’s not a large distance, but the kobalos is much closer to Tallon than it is to me. If I don’t hurry, it will attack him from behind.
“Tallon, watch out!” I scream. I will the darkness to attack the demon spirit, and it happily obliges. Strands of darkness shoot from my hands, wrapping around the kobalos and snuffing out the æther of its life force. The thing disappears before my eyes, and as I draw even with Tallon, he turns to glare at me.
“What the hell is wrong with you?”
“The kobalos, didn’t you see it?” I gasp, my hands braced on my knees as I fight to catch my breath.
Tallon sighs. “I didn’t see anything.” He looks around, his hands on his hips. “It doesn’t matter. There’s nothing here. Hera tricked us.”
“Oh, I did, but not in the manner you think.” Hera stands behind me in the middle of the ruins of Fort Duquesne. Her white outfit glows in the low light, and the darkness inside of me jumps in anticipation.
The dark is much more anxious to get at her than I am.
Tallon shoves me behind him, and his twin swords flash into existence in his hands. “Where are the shades?”
Hera’s lips twist into a slow smile. “And why would I tell you that?”
Tallon grins, the expression cold. “Good. So you do have them. I wasn’t sure about that.”
Hera’s smug expression twists into one of rage. “I should have killed you while you were still in your mother’s womb,” she says. She points a single finger in my direction. “But I will settle for destroying your girlfriend.”
Hera moves, faster than either of us could have ever imagined. She’s a blur of white as she knocks Tallon to the side and grabs me by the throat. My feet dangle in the air. Tallon jumps to his feet, but some kind of invisible barrier keeps him from me and Hera. Far off, Alora and Blue come running out of the woods, a golden wave of kobaloi bearing down on them. I want to warn Tallon, to make him turn to help them. But I have my own problems.
I gasp and struggle, and the bitch smiles at me, like I just told a joke. “Where is it?” she asks, her voice a singsong. “Show me your darkness, little Nyx.”As though she called for it, the darkness leaps off my arms, swirling around us.
I pry at Hera’s cold fingers as my shadows rise up, trying to attack her. Æther leaks from her eyes, shining and bright, and she laughs. The darkness seeks out a weakness in her defenses, more and more of the erebos swelling forth in response to her æther. The erebos should be devouring the æther, but the more dark I summon the more the bright blinds me.
Hera is too strong. Spots begin to appear in front of my eyes. My blood pounds in my ears as the dark rises up, undisciplined and unruly. I think about Cass and Whisper. I’ve failed them.
Beyond Hera the kobaloi climb all over Blue and Alora, burying them in an angry golden sea. Too late Tallon sees the danger and runs to help. My friends are outnumbered a hundred to one. They’re no match for the angry spirits. And I’m in this cloud of æther, slowly dying, the darkness swirling around me without purpose.
I’ve failed everyone.
I’m not the Nyx.
My eyes meet Hera’s, and she grins at me. It’s a smile of triumph. “I thought you would be stronger.”
Her words cut through me, unleashing something red and hot and angry. Her ridicule mingles with so many others’, and the bitterness from a lifetime of failing to live up to expectations rises within me.
I will show them all.
I failed their Trials, but it means nothing. Because no matter what they say, I know who I am.
I am the Nyx. But first and foremost, I am a Harpy.
I extend my talons and dig them into Hera’s wrist. Then, before she has a chance to react, I move my hands quickly outward. She screams as I sever the tendons in her wrist; dropping me and taking a few steps back. I gasp for air and drag myself to my feet, calling the darkness back to me. I don’t know what Hera’s up to, but she wants the darkness. My darkness.
She’s not getting it.
The darkness comes quickly, swirling around me anxiously before settling around my head and shoulders like a hooded cloak. Hera’s hand repairs itself, and she laughs.
“So, the little bird’s beak is sharper than it looks. Excellent. I worried your death would be boring.” She holds out her hand and the æther swirling around us coalesces into a giant sword. I swallow hard.
“Oh, it’s that kind of party.” I jump backward as she swings the thing at me.
“It is, indeed, that type of party.” She twirls the sword faster and faster, chasing me around the inside of the barrier. If I don’t do anything, I’m going to be very dead, very quickly. I move out of the way a split second too late, and she opens a line on my chest. The æther burns, and it’s all I can do not to scream in agony as I dance backward.
Hera pauses to laugh at me. “See? Even heroes bleed.”
I’m going to be a dead hero in about two seconds.
I need some sort of weapon,
I think. The darkness answers, and I jerk as a couple of throwing axes appear in my hands. Throwing axes? I would’ve preferred infinity knives, but now is not the time to be picky.
I duck out of the way of Hera’s next swing and respond by throwing one of the axes at her. Her body shimmers for a second, and the ax flies right through her. She then resolves back into a solid form. “Throwing axes. How quaint.”
I don’t say anything, because I can see what she can’t. The first throwing ax has lodged into the barrier separating me from my friends. Dark energy crackles along the invisible wall. I throw the second ax just as Hera parries with her silver sword. The ax lands next to its twin, the dark energy radiating across the bright nothing until the barrier shatters with a scream.
“No!” Hera screams. The dark’s response is immediate. It shoots out from me, seeking out the kobaloi and devouring their brightness. A few of the creatures try to run, but the darkness is fast and hungry.
I run away from Hera and into the crowd of kobaloi, wading through the quickly disappearing creatures and trying to find my friends. I know they’re somewhere beneath the golden, writhing bodies. I’ve just gotten a glimpse of Tallon when Hera grabs me by the back of my neck.
“I am tired of this game, little bird. Now it ends.” A sharp coldness rips through my middle, and I look down. The pain is too much for me to do anything but gasp. The silver sword glimmers at me, my blood streaking it gaily. I wrap my hands around the blade jutting out from my stomach. I’m not quite sure it’s really there.
“No!”The shout draws my attention toward the field of retreating kobaloi. Alora lies on the ground, dead or unconscious. Blue has gone dragon, his giant jaws snapping up what few fleeing kobaloi he can grab. Tallon sprints toward me and Hera, his dark hair streaking out like a comet’s tail. Behind me, Hera laughs.
“You are too late. Her blood shall unlock the Paths. She will do what I have been working toward for centuries.” She pulls the sword out, and the pain is excruciating. I scream and clutch at the blade. A few weak shadows lash out, but I’m no match for Hera now. The darkness tries to repair the damage to my middle, but there are some things that even vættir healing cannot fix.
This might be one of them.
Hera releases me and I fall to the ground. She takes her bloody sword to the center of the fort’s remains. I roll over to watch her. I clutch my stomach, as though I can stop my life from draining out between my fingers. She shoves the sword into the center of the Node, burying the thing up to the hilt. I have the urge to laugh. With that kind of strength there was no way I ever had a chance of defeating her.
Tallon skids to a stop beside me just as Hera begins to recite something in a language I don’t understand. His hands find my middle, pushing down over mine. “It’s okay, it’s okay. We’ll fix it. The dark will fix you.”
I shake my head, tears leaking from the corners of my eyes. I can’t bear to tell him that there’s something wrong with me. The sword was made of æther, and that element has never been my friend. I can feel it killing me from the inside out. I don’t have much time left.
“What’s she saying?” I ask. Tallon turns to Hera and then turns back to me.
“It’s High Æthereal. She’s asking the spirits to open the gate, to bring the blood of her blood to her. But we don’t have time for her. We need to get you somewhere safe.”
I shake my head. “No, she’s doing it. She’s going to kill the shadow vættir. We have to stop her.”
Tallon shakes his head. “You need a healer.”
“No, I need to see what she’s doing. Help me sit up.” I have a feeling. It’s just a hunch, but something that Hades told me about the shades niggles at the back of my brain.
Tallon scowls at me before lifting me into a sitting position. I swallow a moan and watch Hera, and it all suddenly clicks. She needed the shades to power the spell, but she needed my blood to summon them through the Paths.
“Those are my shades,” I murmur, remembering my father’s words. It all makes sense. Hera may have trapped the shades and kept them from traveling to the afterlife, but she couldn’t command them to do what she needed them to do. That would take a dark lord’s power.
Or the blood of the daughter of a dark lord.
Everything slips into place. Hera must have suspected that either Whisper or I were Hades’s daughter, since Persephone knew about his fling with my mother. When Whisper didn’t go along with Ramun Mar’s questioning, he killed her. Not because she was sleeping with Hermes, but because Hera wanted the blood of Hades’s daughter for her spell. But Ramun Mar made a mistake, and I walked in on the aftermath.
Hermes must have known the truth about my parentage, which is why he told me Whisper was killed because of their relationship. Like my mother, he was counting on my ignorance keeping me safe until I was strong enough to fulfill the Prophecy of the Promise. Well, that and Cass’s protection.
Hera would’ve known that I was Hades’s daughter after I killed her Acolyte with the dark lightning. Plus she had Whisper’s shade all this time. She would’ve been able to question her, and she would’ve known that I used dark lightning to kill Ramun Mar. Since I was in the custody of the High Æthereal Council, Hera just had to wait for them to hand down a death sentence. It must have pissed Hera off when the High Council gave me a sentence in Tartarus instead of death. I wonder how much Hermes and Hades had to do with that bit of good luck.
I hope my good fortune can hold for a little longer.
“Help me up,” I say, trying to struggle to my feet. I’m bleeding all over the place, and even though the darkness is trying to heal me, I can sense its frustration. The æther in my belly burns like acid. I imagine it eating away vital organs, and force the thought away. I have one last thing to do. To fulfill a promise.
This all started with Hera. If I beat her, I can end it once and for all.
I push Tallon away, and stumble toward Hera. He grabs me by the arm and hauls me back. “Don’t,” he says, voice rough. “If you try to stop her now, you’re dead.”
“Tallon, I’m already dead.” Pain shoots through my middle again, but I’m careful not to let any of my distress show. There’s too much of the dark in me now, and Hera’s bright sword has done more damage than it should’ve. But I don’t tell Tallon any of this.
I gently remove his fingers from my arm. Behind him, the darkness is beginning to whip around Hera. I can sense the shades approaching down the Paths, pulled from wherever Hera’s kept them hidden. I have to get to her before they do.
I shuffle toward Hera. I’ve only gone a couple of steps before I start to go down. I brace for impact, but Tallon is there. He scowls at me. “You need help.”