The Song of Eloh Saga (121 page)

My hands trembled. “And Trevin?”

“The babe will live. He’s in his crib waiting for me, his new mother, to raise him.”

A loud crack of magic burst from my side. I glanced away from my mother and saw Xaxier’s hands lifted, shaking with anger.

“You’ll never hurt anyone again, Kiran!”

My mother shrieked as his magic burst from his palms, a streak of black death sped toward her. She flew through the air, his magic pinning her against the wall. She struggled against his grasp, fighting to retaliate.

“Lianne!” She screeched my name, but I held steady. My heart screamed at me, telling me to save her, but I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that she would never reform.

I turned my back on her, giving Xaxier unspoken permission to do as he pleased. Her wretched screams subsided to a whimper before a final sigh of death swept over all of us.

Anger built up in my stomach, stoking the fires I’d worked so hard to control. I directed the magic now. It didn’t tell me what to do anymore. I breathed in deeply, knowing that if I could go through with severing, it would never bother me again.

I gazed at the girls milling around my room. None of them knew why they had come, only that they felt they needed to. A spark in my mind alerted me to a presence hovering in the corner. No one else seemed to see the shaky shadow either. I couldn’t ignore her. The peacock feathers shimmered in the air like dust motes in the sun. Eloh wasn’t fully there, just an apparition.

You must do it. You must do it now.
As before, I heard her voice in my head.

I don’t know what to do!

Pick up the dagger. Follow your heart. Do what must be done, Lianne.

The dagger lay on the floor next to me. My hand trembled. Slowly I reached for it, knowing that the moment I held it in my hand, I wouldn’t have the strength to pull away. Once I joined with it, my flesh to the gemstones, I wouldn’t be able to stop the devastating consequences.

I paused, my fingertips just inches from the dagger.

My wrist flicked out, my fingers wrapped around the hilt of the dagger, sealing all of our fates.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

My vision changed the second my skin came in contact with the gems. Eloh no longer hovered in the corner, a mirage among the reality. Now she took on full flesh while the rest of them faded into the air, shimmering like an object trapped under water.

“Are you ready for your destiny?” she asked me. Her lips moved as if she was flesh and blood like me.

“What do I have to do to sever magic from my world? Are you ready to give me solid answers?”

She nodded. “Follow your heart. Quickly! Before it’s too late!”

Other people materialized around her. Surrounded by golden auras, each of them stepped next to one of the girls in my room. Then they melded into their bodies, becoming one with them. “What’s going on? No! These girls did nothing to me. I’ll never hurt them!”

“Just do as I say.” Eloh backed away from me, stretching an arm out toward Wren.

“She’s just a little kid! Leave her alone!” I reached out, but in whatever plane we existed, I couldn’t touch her, couldn’t stop her. Eloh’s essence merged with Wren’s. Wren looked at me, a smile spreading across her face.

“Finally, I have a voice.” Her hand caressed her throat. “My whole life I’ve been trying to talk, but I couldn’t. Except with you. Thank you for bringing me a voice, Lianne.”

She reached out a small hand to me. I hesitated a moment, then took it in my free hand. Her hand felt warm, alive, while the power of death radiated through the dagger, into my other hand.

“It’s okay,” she whispered. “Do it.” She glanced at the dagger.

“No. I won’t kill you.”

“Kill me?” Instead of a look of abject horror, Wren’s smile only grew. “You’ll be giving me a new life.” Her arms spread out. “You’ll give all of us a new life. Follow your heart.”

I narrowed my eyelids and stared harder at her. Who was I talking to? Wren? Or Eloh, who’d somehow merged with her? Was it Wren’s true wish to see me follow through or Eloh’s, who’d been prodding me?

Another girl turned around. Sebrina. She smiled too. I couldn’t figure out why they all seemed more than happy to convince me to kill them.

“Sacrifice isn’t always what you think,” Sebrina said, walking closer and standing next to Wren. “Sometimes the sacrifice isn’t in the life lost, it’s in the life gained.”

Sebrina reached out, wrapping her hand around my fist – the fist that held the dagger. “Do it, Lianne. Use the dagger to complete the ritual.”

“I don’t even know what you’re asking me to do! I still don’t understand any of this. All I wanted was to sever magic from our world.”

“Great magic requires great sacrifice,” Wren said. She flickered in and out of reality for a moment. I saw the peacock feather, the frustration in Eloh’s face as she tried to convince me that Wren’s words were her own. But they weren’t.

Lies from the mouths of gods. Did they think I was so foolish? Then the true answer dawned on me. They were trying so hard to convince me to go through with severing, yet they’d entered the bodies of young women. Eloh had outright admitted to me that her power was waning. Were humans sucking the magic away from the gods?

Is this why they were using us? Pitting us against each other? Dread washed over my gut. It wasn’t just the Malborn I feared. Now I believed in Chase’s gods and I feared them more than any mortal with a slim grasp of magic fighting a childish battle.

“Do it, Lianne! Do it before your people die,” Wren gasped.

My hand trembled as I pulled it from Sebrina’s tight grasp.

Wren nodded, her eyes wide with anticipation. A small smile spread across her face as she gazed at my chest, as if she could see straight into my soul.

I turned the dagger on myself and plunged it into my heart.

Chapter Thirty

Screams ripped through the air. The universe shredded into a million pieces, wisps of the world undulating in the cosmic breeze as the gods were torn asunder.

Hope filled my essence, replacing something I’d struggled against since my sixteenth birthday. The magic, the so-called gift from the gods that made me special. The same gift that spread chaos and destruction.

I bled magic. Blue, purple, and red, fiery red, oozed from me, spread out, and then disappeared into the ether.

Wails echoed in my mind, blocking out all thought. I floated in a dream, a lonely cloud on the edge of the violent, stormy sky. A large bird caught me and I rested on the wings of darkness, narrowly avoiding the bolts of lightning snapping all around me.

No, not lightning. Something else. Something familiar.

My hand fluttered out, grasping at wisps of clouds, but unable to gain purchase. My fingertips danced in the breeze. My hair billowed around my shoulders, fluctuating between silver in the darkness and red when lightning lit up the ether. I floated, existed, here and there, nowhere.

“This wasn’t the way it was to happen!” A voice screeched through the air, assaulting my ears, sending painful jolts through my brain. I winced. “You were supposed to make her sacrifice the initiates. Without the Vessel we are destroyed. We are weak. We have died.”

I was confused. Was the voice berating me? Or someone else?

“Magic was killing them, forcing them to take sides. Lianne chose.” My name! This new voice knew me. I reached out again, thrusting with my aching muscles, still unsure if I could even control my body in this strange place.

“We do not condone choice in humans.” A deep bass resounded, adding fear to the conversation. “They are there to worship us. The magic was a gift.”

“It was a curse. You forced me into changing the world, and now someone better than me, someone who was able to navigate through your manipulations while remaining true to her heart, has changed it all. Without your Vessel, the magic is null.”

“We are dying.”

Calming myself, I reached deep inside for my fire. I struggled to harness it, as it continued to slip away from me.

I gathered all of my anger and focused on it. Then, bit by bit, I ripped it to shreds with the love I had for Chase, Sebrina, and even the misguided emotions for my mother. I pushed as hard as I could toward where I thought my mouth should be.

“You deserve to die. Not us.” Without moving my lips, I had found a way to respond to the disembodied voices.

Silence overtook the angry conversation, then laughter followed.

“She’s found a way to get past the barriers you set up.” I knew that voice. Eloh. The harder I pushed in my mind, the more I understood.

It was Eloh arguing with the other gods. I could hear them, which meant I was probably dead. Wishing I could see my body, I needed to know if I’d succeeded in killing myself. I couldn’t sacrifice those girls. My only hope had been that my death would be enough.

“She took away the magic, our gift to the world of humans. Without the Vessel, we cannot continue to feed their desperate need for magic. We will not survive!”

I imagined curling up my hands into fists. “I never consented to being a conduit for your magic. If my death steals it away from the world and from you, then so be it.”

A loud crack struck my mind, then blackness followed.

Chapter Thirty-One

My eyelids fluttered, but they didn’t fully open. Too exhausted to do much more, I laid still, waiting.

“Is she going to be okay?” The nervous voice caressed my ears, reminding me of someone I once knew. I couldn’t recall a name, or a face, but something about it tugged at my heart.

There was no response, at least not one I could hear. I was curious too. Was I going to be okay? I wasn’t sure. There was something wrong with me, I just couldn’t remember what it was. I could have opened my eyes, but it seemed beyond my physical abilities.

“Whatever she did, it worked.” Another voice. One I should have known, but couldn’t recognize. “I cannot reach my gift. I cannot heal her with more than my herbs.”

“It shouldn’t have happened. I was supposed to protect her.” The man’s voice sounded angry and confused.

“She made her own choices. You cannot protect her from herself, Chase.”

Chase. I knew that name. I commanded my eyelids to open, but they remained heavy as boulders.

Something took hold of my hand, rubbed my palm. Heat meandered up my arm, into my heart. I tried opening my eyes again, but did not succeed.

Then something touched my other hand, something small, but powerful. My eyelids snapped open and I bolted upright. I saw her. The young girl. The girl whose mind was empty no longer. All the memories flew back, like a thousand enemies and friends rushing me at once. But it was the girl in front of me who was different from the memories I had of her.

“Eloh?” I asked.

She nodded, a look of sadness spreading across her face.

The other people in the room lurched toward me, but I held up a hand toward the group of women and two men. I needed to talk to the little girl first.

“Wren’s mind was empty, never her own. They cast me into her body as punishment. They want me to live again, to experience the pain of humanity. My magic is nearly gone. I used most of it to bring you back to life. The rest is yours. I will do as you command, Lianne.”

I shook my head and was stunned to see my hair cascade around my shoulders in a fiery mess. The silver had faded, replaced by my former red hair.

“I heard them say magic was gone.”

Eloh nodded within the little girl’s head. “It is. You’ve done the impossible and killed the gods. The war has stopped and the enemy fled. Without the magic to back them up, the soldiers deserted the battle. But now everyone is left knowing what they’ve lost. Their connection to the gods’ gift of magic is gone, but not their memories.”

“I don’t understand,” I said.

“You were the Vessel. There is one every thousand years. The gods send the magic through that person, who unknowingly radiates it to the world. When you died, their magic was cut off. Unfortunately everyone knows what they’ve lost.”

The little girl’s hand reached up and touched my cheek. “They know you did something. They will blame you. All of them. Not just the enemy, but also those who were on your side. By taking away their magic, you have torn the world asunder. Many of them will waste their lives searching for a way to bring the magic back. They will sacrifice anything, and anyone, to find a way to bring it back. Lives will be lost. Your world may be an uglier place in the future. It will not be so different than the time I grew up in, when everyone sacrificed everything they loved in the hope it might bring magic back.”

“So I failed.” My memories rushed back at me. Friends, enemies, lovers found and lost. Every hurt, every joy, tumbled into my soul, filling me with anguish over my failure. I’d done the only thing I could. Sacrificed myself instead of the young girls who’d been compelled to come to me. None of them came willingly. Sacrifice shouldn’t count unless it was done with a pure heart. I thought I’d made the right choice.