The Offering (27 page)

I needed all the hatred and rage to overcome any doubts or fears that might remain. To spur my strength.

I felt the warm steel of the blade pressed against the bare skin of my back.

I can do this
, I repeated silently.

A look of bliss broke over Elena's face. “Take me. Take me instead.”

The words, this time, hit me like a lightning bolt, piercing my core. I opened myself up to them, hoping against hope that this would work. That the transfer would take place and Sabara would leave my body, and I would remain whole.

I worried about that, too. That with Sabara's evacuation of me she'd take my life force with her—that we were eternally intertwined and would be forced to spend an eternity bound to each other. I worried that I, too, would be trapped in Elena's body.

Or worse, that Sabara would vacate my body for Elena's and I'd fade away to nothing without her. That my body would simply be left empty. A withered shell.

But there was no going back now. Sabara uncoiled from within me, plumes of her Essence releasing me. I hadn't expected to feel every nerve, every neuron, separating like currents of electricity—charged and piercing. It was as if Sabara were wholly being ripped away, torn from me, leaving everything inside me raw and angry and throbbing.

But in the wake of all that agony was another sensation. I could feel my old self resurfacing—all the good returning. I could feel all the memories Sabara had tried to block breaking free like a dam opened wide. But unlike before, when I'd had only a glimpse of my former nature, I was truly letting her go, and I could feel the blackness that
was
her vacating me as she moved from my center and spread to my extremities, searching for a way out.

My heart began to beat its own rhythm as my own Essence awakened once more. Light flooded my veins, and heat surged all the way to my toes. My injured ribs and elbow no longer ached.

“Take me . . . take me . . . take me . . . take me . . .” Elena repeated the words over and over, and I let her.

I kept my eyes closed, until I felt the final surge. It was jarring—the jolt as Sabara left me—and my eyes shot open. I watched Elena, her own eyes wide with shock as the transfer took place.

I couldn't think clearly, but even from the haze I was in, I saw the moment when Elena sensed Sabara slipping into place. When she felt the black soul—Sabara's Essence—taking control.
Elena's expression clouded over, and then her mouth formed an alarmed
O
, as she recognized, at last, what she'd done. What was happening to her. I hadn't witnessed it before, when Sabara's—or rather Layla's—Essence had made its exchange to me, so watching now was . . . fascinating . . . horrifying . . . exhilarating.

Behind me I heard shouts coming from the entrance, and a scuffle, but I didn't turn to see who it was or what was going on. Brook was shouting too, and still struggling to break free, but I ignored them all.

And then, right before the light faded from Elena's eyes, she gasped a single name, “Sage?”

At no point did I turn to gauge Niko's reaction to any of this, because I knew he cared nothing about the dying queen before him. All he cared about was the new one who was coming back to life—Sabara.

Sabara,
I thought vaguely, still aware of the fray taking place behind me.
Sabara was coming back to life.

An explosion rang through the space of the tent, clearing my mind, just enough.

I was here, still alive. Still whole.

Everything clicked into place then, as I realized what I needed to do.

I reached for the knife at my back at the same time that I saw Sabara take full and complete control of her new body. Cinnamon-colored eyes that had once belonged to Elena, queen of Astonia, now blazed with the fire of their new resident as they lit on me.

I had only seconds, if that, to stop her, and I launched
myself at her, my blade ready. My will determined.

But halfway to her, I felt it.

My airway . . . shutting in on itself.

Sabara was strong enough already, and she had every intention of killing me first. Her hand raised, her fist closed, and she unleashed her powers on me.

The result was instantaneous, and debilitating.

My eyes grew huge as I gasped, greedily sucking in as much air as I could. I was ravenous for it. Insatiable. Terror seized me all at once, and I told myself to keep going.

And I tried, willing myself to stab her . . . to stab her . . .
to stab her
 . . .

But ultimately I did what everyone did when under Sabara's spell. I panicked while I choked and gagged and gulped for my last few precious breaths. I released the knife, let it fall to the ground as my hands closed around my own throat. I opened my mouth as wide as I could. And when none of that worked, when I could feel Sabara's choke hold growing, intensifying, I dropped to my knees as my vision began to blur around the edges.

I hadn't been fast enough, I admitted.

I'd been bested by a ghost.

sage

Caspar had left Xander and Sage outside the encampment, warning them to stay put, to keep away from the fighting. But Xander had been insistent. Despite his injuries, he'd refused to just sit back and watch, knowing Charlie was in there somewhere, being held hostage by Elena.

Sage hadn't disagreed. She knew her sister, and what she was capable of.

So she and Xander had done what anyone in their situation would have: they'd killed every soldier who'd gotten in their way. Or at least Sage had, diverting as much notice as she could away from Xander, who'd moved more slowly than she had, and more tentatively, guarding his bandaged arm to keep it from being jostled and jarred.

Even with only one hand, and a fever that continued to keep him weak on his feet, he'd proven to be deadly. His aim was true, and he'd saved her butt more than once. At least until his gun had jammed and he'd thrown it aside.

Somehow they'd made it to the centrally located tent with
the biggest banners waving from the top of it—the one where she'd known she'd find her sister, cowering from the fighting, the way a good queen did. Elena preferred to let her soldiers die in her stead.

Sage had never understood such nonsense. To her, a good queen belonged on the battlefield with her troops. Taking up arms and leading them into war only when war couldn't be avoided.

Unlike her sister, who preferred to kill by proxy, Sage knew what it was like to wash blood from her hands.

She and Xander had much in common in that regard.

“Stay here,” she whisper-shouted above the battle that continued to storm around them.

She didn't expect him to obey, any more than she would have if he had given her the order. And when she slipped through the tent flaps, her knife drawn in the hopes of offing at least one of her sister's guards before she was noticed, she could feel him breathing down the back of her neck.

Her blade moved like hot metal through butter as it slid across the first guard's throat. She might've dropped the bird-masked woman without so much as a single sound, if it hadn't been for the one last sputtering noise that erupted from the bloodied wound. But that was enough, and the second guard saw her, and threw himself at her.

Sage tried to brace herself, but it was no good. She was already hunched over, trying to relieve the first guard of her weapon—a rifle with a strap that had been secured around the woman's shoulder. When the second guard crashed into
her, she went down hard, landing on top of the dead woman, the beak of the mask grazing the side of her cheek.

She lifted her head, and that was when she heard her sister calling her name. Her voice was so weak, so distant . . . so pitiable. “Sage?”

She wanted to feel something for Elena, but she couldn't muster anything.

This was the sister who'd used her as a weapon. The sister who'd envied her to the point of suspicion. She'd worried that Sage would someday usurp her position on the throne, that Sage could never be happy being only a princess of the realm.

So Elena had put her in harm's way again and again, always with the purpose of serving her queendom. But Sage had always suspected the truth. That her sister had secretly hoped she would never return.

And now here she was, watching all of her sister's hopes and dreams come true.

Except they weren't, it seemed. Not from the look of abject horror on her sister's face.

Not from the fading expression in her eyes.

Yet Sage felt nothing. Not for her sister.

The soldier on top of Sage punched her in the jaw. Her teeth clattered together, but it wasn't a solid blow, and she didn't see stars the way she had in the past when she'd been clocked in that same spot. She wriggled out from under him and grappled for the rifle of the lifeless soldier lying beside her. At the same time, with the knife in her other hand, she sawed at the strap restraining it.

The rifle came free with a snap, and she scurried away from the dead woman, moving just far enough so she could leverage the gun against her shoulder. She aimed it at the soldier who had attacked her.

He paused. And then she pulled the trigger.

His mask, and everything behind it, exploded.

That was when she saw Queen Charlaina, whom she'd met at the ball in Vannova. Sage couldn't see exactly what was happening, but it looked as if the queen had a weapon—a small sword or a knife of some sort—and that she meant to kill Elena.

Sage clambered to her feet to get a better look, but what she saw made her stand stock-still.

Elena—or whoever she was now, because she was no longer the sister she'd always known; she stood wrong, and her expression was all wrong—lifted her fist and pointed it at Charlaina, stopping the queen of Ludania in her tracks.

The younger queen dropped her knife and fell to her knees. Her eyes bulged as she dug at her neck like there was a noose secured around it.

“Charlie,” she heard the dark-haired girl, the one with the huge brown eyes, shout as she was held back by two more soldiers in the tent with them. “Breathe, Charlie! Breathe!”

Charlaina's eyes grew wider for a moment, and then they relaxed, everything about her going limp, and the dark-haired girl screamed, “Kill her! Kill Queen Elena!”

Sage glanced at the rifle in her hand, and hesitated. It was one thing to feel apathetic about a sister who'd shunned her her entire life. It was another thing altogether to actually kill her.

But as it turned out, she wasn't the one the dark-haired girl was shouting at, because Xander was there, moving so fast, he was practically a blur in her vision.

He swooped in like a bird of prey, seeming to come from nowhere as he snatched up Charlaina's discarded knife. And before Elena or either of the remaining two guards could stop him, his blade was buried five inches deep in Elena's chest.

niko

Everything he'd ever wanted was within his grasp.

He and Sabara—
his Layla
—were going to be together again, at long last.

He watched her move from one queen to the next, holding his breath, the way he had so many times before. The way she transitioned was so smooth. Effortless. Like watching a dancer.

He heard the commotion behind him, and he turned in time to see Sage cutting the throat of one of the guards who stood watch. The other guard, caught unaware, was unprepared with his weapon, but he tackled the troublesome princess.

It was no matter; she was too late.

And then everything went wrong. And it all happened so fast.

The gunshot booming through the tent and echoing in his head.

Charlaina falling to her knees. Almost finished . . . almost . . .

And then Xander . . . Xander appeared from nowhere, and
before Niko could move, or breathe, Xander had the knife. . . .

And blood. So much blood. Elena's . . . Sabara's . . . Layla's . . . all intertwined now.

The whole thing was all over in a blink.

He heard himself before he heard anything else, his cry a sharp keening sound, louder, surely, than the gunshot or any bomb had been. Dropping to his hands and knees, he hovered above Layla's new form and stared down at her face, wondering at the fragility of her life. “No, no, no, no, no . . .” He couldn't say anything else, and he couldn't find the strength to touch her as he watched her—the real her, the her he'd been waiting for all these years—flicker, and then fade, behind those new soft brown eyes.

He knew the moment she was gone. The moment the body was nothing more than an empty husk, its stare fixed skyward on the tent's canvas ceiling.

He felt as empty as that body he gazed down upon.

“NO!” he screamed. But this time he leveled his rage at Xander, who still held the bloodied weapon in his only hand. “We should've killed you,” he screeched.

The two guards who had been restraining Brooklynn released her, and they all stood there watching as Niko jumped to his feet and threw himself at Xander, ramming him with his shoulder. The two of them went sprawling, and he heard the knife land somewhere too far away from them to be of any use.

He didn't care. He planned to beat the life out of Xander with his fists.

When he heard the blast, he knew that definitively it had come from a firearm. That it had without a doubt come from
behind him. But the sensation, the one centered between his shoulder blades, was indescribable.

It was as if he'd been stung . . . or impaled by a fire-tipped arrow.

But he knew neither was true, because he knew exactly what had happened.

He'd been shot.

xvii

I was confused about where I was, but that confusion lasted only a moment.

It was the gunshot that had awakened me—if “awakened” was the right word, since surely I hadn't been asleep. It had been more like I'd been swimming in a black abyss of nothingness, where I'd been alone—truly alone for the first time in so very long.