The sound Micah’s body makes as it falls to the ground is enough to send me stumbling backward.
His face presses into the sand. He doesn’t blink or gasp for breath.
He stares at me, mouth agape and wordless.
The grief and fury rise inside me, burning away any chance of tears.
Micah is dead. My friend, my brother, my family.
No amount of healing is going to bring him back.
I will kill Seryth for this.
Forget waiting for the Red Moon and watching the battle from the outskirts. I will gut him from the inside out and sever his head from his limbs.
The death king steps over Micah’s body and raises the knife to me.
“Now it’s your turn.”
“No,” I tell him. “It’s yours.”
I charge and tackle him to the ground.
The sand spits up around us as we grapple with each other and my sword is flung from my hand. Seryth brings his head down hard against mine.
I roll away from him, not giving my vision a chance to blur.
I narrow my eyes back into focus, staring at the man my family has followed for generations.
I grab my sword from where it landed beside Micah’s body. A line of his blood has stained the tip.
I try not to think about it.
I lunge forward and swing my blade at Seryth.
He moves not just like a soldier, but like a warrior too. He has spent centuries perfecting the art of battle and it shows. Every movement he makes is calculated and decisive.
“Have you learned nothing?” he asks, amused. “You cannot kill me.”
“I’ll do worse than that.”
I reach into my belt loop and throw my dagger toward him.
He snatches it out of the air and throws it straight back into my leg.
The pain tears through me and nearly sends me toppling to the ground. I grit my teeth and pull the blade from my thigh.
I throw it to the sand and swallow down the agony.
I won’t let it get the better of me. Not now.
Seryth regards me curiously. “I’ve made you strong.”
“Strong enough to defeat you,” I say.
He straightens, the skies darkening with his smile. “Not quite.”
I spring up from the sand and slam my elbow into his nose.
Seryth’s shock is the opening I need.
I waste no time. I press my blade to his throat and growl, “This ends now.”
Seryth shakes his head when he looks at me, his hand caught around the blade’s handle, stopping it from sinking deep.
“It will never end,” he says. “There is no magic sword. No weapon hidden on this isle that will be my undoing.”
My hands clench tighter around my blade in fury.
“There is only me,” he says. “And eternity.”
“You’re wrong,” I snarl, and press the edge of the sword a fraction closer to his throat. Enough to nip the skin. He doesn’t blink as he bleeds. “Selestra has the power to destroy you. She’ll save the Six Isles.”
“Destroy me?” Seryth says in a laugh. “How do you expect her to do that when she can’t even save herself?”
His smile slithers across his face and I turn, like I know he wants me to.
I see Selestra being thrown to the ground, her mother’s magic whirling around her in a gust of gray wind, gathering the sand and leaves up from the beach.
Selestra gags, as though it’s choking her.
My rage is overcome in an instant with worry.
Theola is going to kill her.
“There is your savior,” the king says, but I am already rushing away from him and toward her.
“Nothing but a dead little girl!” he calls after me.
I run toward Selestra without glancing back.
I know it’s what he wants. I know I’m playing right into his hands, but I don’t care.
If Selestra dies, then all of this is for nothing.
My father. Micah. Their deaths are worthless without her magic to protect the Six Isles and help destroy the king.
I throw myself into Theola, breaking her hold on Selestra and sending us both hurtling into the sand.
I get up, quickly, and run to Selestra’s side as she wheezes out a breath.
“It’s okay,” I promise her. “I’m here.”
“Nox,” she says, breathless.
She eyes my wound with a wince and I know it’s bad. The blood is hot running down my leg, but I ignore it. I clench my teeth together and look firmly to her.
We have to finish this, I think.
Selestra nods, understanding that this injury means nothing in the face of all the Six Isles falling into Seryth’s hands.
I grab her hand and press her close to me, shielding her against her mother.
Theola hisses as she eyes us both.
“Traitor,” she says.
“That’s no way to speak to the only person left in your family to be blessed by a goddess,” I say, raising my eyebrows in a challenge.
“A goddess?” Theola glowers. “There is no such thing.”
“You’re wrong, Mother,” Selestra says. “I faced the trials of our family with Eldara at my side. When I finished, Asclepina came to me and allowed me to inherit her powers.”
“The trials,” Theola says in realization.
Selestra’s mother looks across at her, and her lips open in shock and awe.
“You’re—”
“She’s a queen,” I say. “What the hell are you?”
I almost think the witch flinches, but then her jaw sets firm.
Theola squeezes her fists together. The wind picks up speed and before I know it, it’s circling around us in some kind of cyclone, trying to pull us apart.
I grip on tight to Selestra’s hand, but the wind lifts our feet from the sand and I can’t stop Theola from tearing her daughter from me.
I’m thrown back and hit the ground.
Then suddenly I’m being yanked up by the collar. I see Seryth’s darkening face and then his boot cracks against my ribs.
“Sentimental fool,” he says.
I thrust my sword out toward him, but he grabs it from the air, his blood coating the blade as it cuts deep into his hand. He pulls the sword from me and pushes it back so the handle slams into my nose.
I tumble back to the ground, my vision blurring.
“You’ve sacrificed so much for her,” Seryth says. “Your honor. Your friends.”
Micah, I think.
His name tears me apart inside.
This wasn’t even his battle. Micah has a family back in Vasiliádes and a life, yet he chose to risk it all for me.
He didn’t have to die here.
He did it for me.
He died because of me.
I look up at the king with dark, dead eyes to rival his own.
“I’ll give you what you crave,” Seryth says, looming over me.
He holds my father’s sword up to the light.
“I’ll let you meet your father again.”
“No!” Selestra screams.
The next few seconds happen fast.
Selestra’s magic funnels out of her in threads of bright green light, reaching out to Seryth. The air grows warm and still as Selestra pulls it into a rope to lift Seryth up from the sand.
She holds the writhing king, letting her magic suffocate him.
I catch sight of her eyes and they are so bright, almost golden, like their own little fires. She looks aglow in miracles.
She is a wonder.
Not just a witch, but a goddess like the one from her stories.
I watch her and not Seryth, barely taking a breath as her body shakes with the force of her power.
I don’t notice Theola, reaching out a hand for me, until it’s too late.
Nor her magic, gathering into a ball of lightning. A storm in her hands.
It catches the light, blinding, as it shoots out toward me.