AIDAN
The air in Natasja’s castle felt wrong.
He couldn’t put his finger on it. Not really. But there was a sensation, like an oil slick, that stuck to his skin and coated his lungs. He wanted to leave the moment he arrived.
And not just from the feeling of wrongness, but from the power. The castle reeked of magic. Of Maya. More power than he had ever felt. More than he could ever hope to harness. And it emanated from the closed door in front of him.
It wavered, undulating slightly, as if his vision were off, as if he were high or drunk or sleepwalking. He felt like he was all of those things. He didn’t want to walk through that door. He didn’t want to see what was happening on the other side.
For a moment, he considered turning around.
He could still leave. He could teleport back to...where? To Kianna? She was with the other Hunters, and she—and they—would kill him the moment he showed his face. No, he couldn’t go back. She was lost to him.
Honestly, the thought kind of hurt.
He looked over his shoulder, to the door opposite the one holding the Violet Sage. Tenn was in there. What did the Dark Lady have planned for him? She’d gotten the runes to attune to Maya. She’d gotten the Violet Sage. She had everything she needed. What use could she have for two mortals like them?
You are no mortal, Fire seethed within him. And yet, when he looked to the wavering door, he had never felt more so.
But no. He couldn’t leave. Not yet. The Dark Lady knew him. Had marked him. She would soon take over the world, he knew without a doubt. Fuck being on the right side of history. He would be on the victorious side.
He burned up the little worry he had left and opened the Violet Sage’s door.
Aidan had never been one to believe in good and evil, right or wrong. Everything had a consequence, every action a reaction. Sometimes they worked out in your favor, sometimes they didn’t. What helped one harmed another. Saving someone damned someone else. To him, morality was just a construct to keep weaker people in line.
But when he stepped into the room, he felt all that resolve fade away. He had never believed in good and evil.
He did now.
The Violet Sage sagged against her chair, the runes on the floor around her glowing like lime beams up to the ceiling. She looked dead, or nearly so, her skin sallow and her eyes bruised, her flesh gaunt, as if the Dark Lady were drawing out more than magic from her. As if she drew out her very life force.
The Dark Lady hovered at the edge of the rune ring. Her dress billowed around her in deep purple waves, her hair a halo but far from angelic. Cracks formed in the concrete around her, small pillars of stone jutting up around her feet, a dais her toes barely touched. Above her, around her, both from the crown of her head and somehow not, the Sphere of Maya bloomed.
A purple lotus of a million petals, unfurling and uncurling infinitely around her. The sight of that Sphere alone dropped Aidan to his knees.
What she did with it nearly made him retch.
He had never seen someone drained of their Sphere before, but he knew that was what he witnessed.
The Dark Lady held a crystal in front of her, an obsidian shard the size of his forearm that glowed an unearthly purple. Runes seared and simmered across its surface, ones he understood at once: runes for containment, for locks and seals, runes of unquenchable thirst and unending hunger. She held a veritable black hole in her hands, and as she funneled the purple power of Maya into it, the stone drew that very same essence from the Violet Sage.
She was turning the Violet Sage into a Howl.
She was turning the greatest mage who ever lived into a Wight.
He didn’t know how long he knelt. Time seemed to pause here, as if the gods themselves refused to turn creation in the sight of this unholy act. He knew, then, there was no hope. The Dark Lady had no intention of bringing his mother back. She had used him. As he had hoped to use her.
He couldn’t even be angry. It’s exactly what he would have done, and if anything, he felt stupid for not catching on sooner.
The Dark Lady would never help him. She wanted a Wight. She wanted to rule the world. She would. Aidan had ensured it—he’d killed everyone with the slightest knowledge of Maya and brought her the greatest weapon the world would ever know.
She had no need for him any longer.
As soon as the Violet Sage was turned, the Dark Lady would use her against him. He knew it in the pit of his heart.
He would never get his mother back.
But soon, he would join her.
They all would.
Because of him.
If he was smart, he would just end it right then and there.
Not the Dark Lady—he had no hope of killing her like this. But himself.
He couldn’t even do that. He just knelt and watched and waited for his time at the guillotine.
The Violet Sage didn’t squirm or cry out. The Dark Lady didn’t cackle or gloat. They stared at each other in silence, the Dark Lady with scorn, the Violet Sage with pleading pity.
Then the Violet Sage flicked her eyes toward him. Just briefly. The barest twitch.
When her purple eyes connected with his, he felt it in his chest.
A spark. A light.
A hope.
You must save him, he heard her whisper. Before it is too late. Before you both are gone.
She paused. Silence echoed. He thought that would be the end.
And when the time comes, she said, even quieter, you must help him kill me.