Gathering Darkness

“Similar to how I killed Eva. I stole her magic, which also stole her immortality—although, you’re already mortal. This should be much easier a task, but no less satisfying. Now,” she said, the hateful smile still fixed on her lips, “let’s be done with this.”

Something caught Melenia’s eye and she glanced down at the ground to Lucia’s left.

“That’s your blood,” she said.

“It is,” Lucia agreed.

Melenia looked then to the snowy ground and saw the symbol Lucia had drawn with her own blood. A triangle—the symbol for fire.

Melenia’s smile faded and her eyes widened. “What have you done?”

“Alexius told me I could draw this symbol anywhere with my blood to summon him, now that he’s been awakened. It’s his decision if he wishes to obey.”

Melenia’s gaze searched the area frantically until she spotted a figure approaching the cliffs.

“It’s you,” she managed, her voice breaking. “It’s really you.”

The tall figure wore a cloak. Lucia couldn’t see his face, but she knew who he was. The smallest emotion managed to wedge its way into her heart, pushing past her numbing grief.

Fear.

The figure drew back his hood to show dark blond hair and amber eyes. He was as handsome as Alexius was—unnaturally so. All the Watchers were beautiful and eternally young, Alexius had told her.

But this young man wasn’t a Watcher.

Melenia seemed uncertain upon realizing he wasn’t going to rush to her and take her into his arms.

“Melenia,” he said, reaching them and sweeping a gaze over her. “You succeeded. Congratulations.”

Finally, her smile returned and she reached for him, but her hand dropped to her side before she touched him. “A thousand years I’ve waited, my love. I’ve done everything I could to make this night possible.”

“And I’m grateful. Very grateful.” He held his hand out to her. She closed the distance between them and pressed her lips to his. It didn’t take long before she drew back with a confused expression.

“You didn’t return my kiss.”

“No, I didn’t.”

She appeared to compose herself, putting her sheen of perfection back into place, as if the rejection of someone she’d waited a thousand years to kiss didn’t bother her in the slightest.

Lucia watched, fascinated. An ancient, powerful, beautiful woman—as close to a goddess as Lucia had ever seen—rejected by her lover was a rather awkward sight, to say the least.

Had Melenia really believed everything would turn out exactly as she wanted?

The young man turned his gaze to Lucia. She drew in a quick breath at the intensity of his amber-colored eyes. “I can also thank you for this.”

“Don’t thank me.”

“But I must. I’m free because of you. The power of a sorceress, but in the body of a mortal girl . . . how extraordinary.” He swept his gaze over her. “You and I, we have much in common.”

“No, we don’t.”

“But we do. We both want to embrace who we are, we both want to stop being used by others and discarded at their will. We both desperately want control over our destinies, and revenge over our enemies.”

She didn’t reply, so startled she was that she agreed with everything he’d said.

“Unfortunately,” he continued, “there are still obstacles in my path to absolute freedom and limits to my current power.”

“I’ve taken care of most of those obstacles,” Melenia said. “Of the elders, only Timotheus still lives.”

“And you, of course. That makes two elders with the power to imprison me again. That strikes me as two too many.”

Confusion crossed Melenia’s face, followed by a flash of pain, as if he’d deeply hurt her feelings by saying this.

This really wasn’t going according to Melenia’s plan at all. Were it another night and another life lost, Lucia might have taken pleasure in that.

“I love you,” Melenia said, crossly. As if such words mattered to someone like him. “I’ve killed for you. And I’ve done it all to free you so we could be together again.”

“And I thanked you,” the young man said. He appeared to be no more than twenty, but Lucia knew there was no number for his real age.

He was eternal.

“When she’s gone, we’ll talk. We’ll talk about all of this.” Melenia spun to face Lucia, an ugly expression crossing her face, and her fist burst into flames.

So she would use fire magic to kill Lucia.

That seemed appropriate.

Lucia looked at her own hand and held it out. She summoned Melenia’s fire into her palm.

Melenia gasped as Lucia stole her magic. “What?”

Alexius has stressed this lesson and, at the time, she’d wondered why. From nearly the moment he arrived, she never understood why he’d been so adamant about tutoring her until she was exhausted and frustrated.

Now she knew that it was all so she could do this.

Melenia held out her hand to form a spear of ice, but Lucia looked at it and melted it with a single thought.

“Stop that,” Melenia hissed.

Then Lucia stepped forward, clutched Melenia by her throat, and looked deep into her sapphire eyes.

“Listen to me very carefully,” Alexius had said in the moments before he vanished from her arms forever. “Melenia will come for you. She will try to kill you because you are the only one with enough magic to destroy her. She steals other Watchers’ magic to make herself more powerful. You can do the same. When her magic is drained, she’ll be temporarily mortal.”