Gathering Darkness

His heart a dead weight in his chest, he touched her cheek, trying to sear her image into his memory.

Lucia finally frowned. “Why do you look so sad?”

He shook his head. “I’m not sad.”

“This is your happy look, is it? I must say, it has me a little worried. You’re not having second thoughts, are you?”

Second, third, fourth . . . millionth. Every decision he’d made, every secret he’d kept. “Not about you.”

“Good. I know how different we are. And I know I haven’t known you very long at all . . .”

I’ve known you all your life, he thought. Watched over you. Protected you from the others. Almost seventeen years now I’ve waited.

“. . . but this is right,” she continued. “I’ve never been surer of anything in my life.”

Alexius took her hand, rubbing his thumb over the large amethyst in her ring. He remembered seeing the same ring on Eva’s finger. In the end, for all its power, it hadn’t helped the original sorceress against her greatest enemy.

In the first dreams they’d shared, Alexius told Lucia that Eva had perished because she’d fallen in love with the wrong boy. But that had been a lie. Love—at least the love that Eva herself had experienced—had had absolutely nothing to do with the sorceress’s demise.

It was such an ironic thought now.

Lucia looked up at the arched ceiling and at the few worshippers filling the hard wooden benches. Then she turned to gaze at the fire that burned to keep visitors warm from the constant chill outside. “Can we claim the crystal here? Now?” she asked.

“Not yet.”

She frowned. “What do you mean, ‘not yet’? Is it because there are witnesses?”

“No. It’s because one last step must be taken here. There’s been no blood magic, no elemental disaster. It won’t be done in the correct order, but it still must be done. This place”—he gazed around with trepidation—“is the anchor. This place is where it shall all end. And the end will trigger the beginning.”

She smiled at his enigmatic speech. “I don’t understand.”

“I wish I could have explained everything to you, but it’s impossible.” He rubbed his chest. “But here we are. Here is where destiny has been waiting for us for all these centuries.”

She watched him patiently, as if his ramblings amused her. “What do we have to do, then, to accept this destiny?”

She was so curious, insatiably so. He wondered what it would have been like to truly be her tutor—to help her with her magic for years to come. “It’s all about blood, princess. Blood is magic. It’s the key to everything—the key to life, the key to death, the key to freedom, the key to imprisonment.”

She laughed, surprising him, and leaned forward to kiss him. “You’re so serious tonight, aren’t you? Don’t worry, a little blood doesn’t scare me.”

He wished he felt the same. His chest hurt more with each moment he hesitated—the invisible markings binding him to Melenia’s will, controlling him, day and night. “She’s making me do this. Please know . . . this is not my choice.”

Her smile faded and her expression became cast in shadow. “It’s all right, whatever’s troubling you. I’m here.” Then she hugged him, wrapping her arms around his shoulders to pull him closer. “We’ll figure all of this out together and—”

She gasped the second he sank his dagger into her stomach.

“I’m sorry, Lucia,” Alexius whispered. “This isn’t me. This is something more powerful, controlling me.”

He pulled the weapon out. She staggered back and dropped to her knees, touching her wound and staring with shock at her bloody fingertips. Blood flowed from the gash, soaking into her gown and pooling before her on the floor of the temple.

At the other locations, it had taken a great deal of blood to trigger the necessary effect—a tornado, an earthquake, a wildfire. The blood of slaves spilled on the road they were forced to build. The blood of rebel battles in a temple and in the mountains. Blood spilled from scores of mortals, three separate times, to trigger three elemental disasters.

Fate. All of it.

But the blood of a sorceress was more powerful than that of one hundred regular mortals.

Melenia had waited a thousand years for this moment. With Lucia’s blood spilled—here, now—the veil between worlds would finally dissipate enough for someone as powerful as the elder to escape her prison and claim what she wanted most.

Through his fog of horror, Alexius heard the screams of those who’d witnessed his violent act. They ran from the temple, leaving him and Lucia alone.

There were no heroes here to step in and save her.

Only a once immortal villain clutching a dagger.

Under Melenia’s spell, every rebellious thought he had or word he spoke caused him pain—but all of that was nothing compared to the pain he felt seeing Lucia suffer like this, enduring pain that went deeper than physical.

“What . . .” Lucia gasped. “What are you . . . why did you do this? Alexius . . . why?”

Suddenly, an ice storm gathered, triggered by Lucia’s blood, unleashing itself above the Temple of Valoria and shattering every window. Icicles as sharp as swords and as fast as lightning hurtled through the open windows, some impaling the floor and others shattering into a thousand pieces on contact.

Alexius just stood there, silently shaking as he watched Lucia bleed. She stared up at him with pain and confusion etched onto her pale face.