Instead of crossing the plane, she delved into his mind. It was a place she had long wondered about. Though they had linked their magic and he had been the one to teach her how to slice into people’s minds, she had never been able to enter his own. His shields and mental barriers had always been too strong.
But here, now, as he died before her eyes, she was finally able to get in.
And what she saw was horrifying.
Ahlvie had been affected by Malysa’s darkness for months.
Kael had been under her influence since the moment his father gave him that book. Years. She’d had her claws in him for years.
Wading through his thoughts was like living in the dark. She had no idea how he had endured it. There wasn’t even a speck of light in here.
Fear shook her for the first time.
How could she get rid of this? Burn away this much darkness? With nothing to anchor her. Nothing to call her back home. All she felt was Malysa all around her. Crushing her completely. Just as Malysa had clearly done to Kael’s will.
But she had to try.
She had to.
She owed it to Elea and Alessia.
He’d sent them away for a reason.
Despite this utter blackness in his mind, coating everything around him, he had still rebelled. He’d found a way to save them. That was enough to make her want to try. To see if he could somehow still be in there.
Because she knew without a doubt that, under different circumstances, this could have easily been her. She and Kael were two sides of the same coin. Bound together by curse and destiny and blood magic. She would save him if she could.
So, she pulled up all the magic in her reserves and pushed the light of her magic into his darkness. She blazed through the night, fighting with all that she had. Every last drop a golden ray of sunlight.
But, unlike Ahlvie, when it burned away and the light filled it back up, the darkness seemed to eat the light. It devoured it whole. Took it as its meal and begged for more.
It refused to stay and light the way. To lead the way out of the darkness. And all she was doing was burning up her energy on a pointless task.
She fought against it anyway. Tried and tried.
But it was no use.
Maybe…maybe she couldn’t save him.
No. Maybe he didn’t want to be saved.
Blood magic ripped apart the human soul. It fragmented the soul into pieces until there was nothing left. If he had no soul, then there was no more light in him. The darkness had won. Malysa had won.
She couldn’t believe it.
After all this, Malysa had won. She had won Kael. Beaten him down so much until there was nothing of the boy Cyrene had known within him anymore. And only the darkness.
And yet, Elea had made it seem like that wasn’t the case.
That, when he was with her…he was still himself.
When he had spoken of her minutes ago, he had seemed centered. The very mention of her name had changed something in him.
“My sister loves you. She told me that she loves you. Even after everything you’ve done, she still thinks you are worthy of her love. She said that you were worth saving. That, if I could try, I should. That I should do it for her and for your beautiful baby girl, Alessia.”
A single tear fell down Cyrene’s cheek as she fought a futile mission against the darkness.
“Show me something, Kael. Please, show me anything. Let there be a flicker of light. A ray of hope that your soul is still there somewhere. Anything that shows that you are not all hers. That Malysa doesn’t own you.”
She waited, pressing her hands harder against the wound. Waiting for him to reach out to her. To see her guidance of light in that ocean of black.
But he didn’t.
And she pulled back.
Because there was nothing left within him to save.
60
The Curse
Cyrene evaded the darkness as she withdrew her light from Kael’s mind. It kept trying to stick to her. Tried to keep her within its clutches. And, even in the safety of her connection to Sarielle, she could feel the cold emptiness of Malysa attempting to reel her back in.
But Cyrene couldn’t let Malysa succeed.
This was only one battle.
There was still a war to win.
Just as she was pulling away from the last of Malysa’s sticky darkness, she remembered something. And she stilled. Not even caring that her efforts were wasted, she sank back into the black.
There was something that had connected Kael to this world. Something that had held his soul in place despite Malysa’s attempts to control him. And, oddly enough, it was something that Malysa herself had put in place.
Because it was Malysa who had given Serafina the information on how to bind herself to Viktor. How to use blood magic to tie their souls together. And that had lasted for two millennia. It existed now between Cyrene and Kael.
The thread. The bond. The curse.
Cyrene reached for it, even as she floundered in the darkness of her mind. Kael had dampened the bond, but it was still there. Still perfectly intact.
A signal in the night.
A spark that turned into a bonfire.
And then she latched on to it. Felt the bond like a welcome friend. She didn’t know what it could possibly do or how it could help in this moment. But it was all that she had left. Without it, Kael certainly would have been completely lost.
So, she followed the bond wherever it led her. Dove deep into it, as she had done that day with Avoca when she sat with Helly to heal her in the sacred waters in Alandria. She traveled farther and farther. Never stopping or thinking about the consequences. This was her last shot. Her only shot.
And then she landed in the Ring of Gardens.
But not the Ring of Gardens of today. Not the one where Kael presently bled out. This was older and had none of the pomp of the current garden. For one, it was smaller. As if the rest of the concentric circles had been added later to make it look more magnificent. The marble pavilion was replaced with a simple wooden construction. And still, it was beautiful. Perhaps even more serene than before. As if someone could actually come to this place for solace.
Cyrene turned in a slow circle, expecting to find Kael trapped in his own mind. Where she could draw him back out of this place and bring him to safety. Fight the darkness together, as he had always wanted.
But he wasn’t present. In fact, at first glance, she saw no one.
Then, a man stepped out from behind a pillar and smiled. He had on the royal green and gold of the Dremylon royal line. His broad shoulders were swathed in a ceremonial velvet cloak. His dark hair was long to his shoulders but brushed elegantly back. And those blue-gray eyes…she would recognize them anywhere.
“Hello, Cyrene. I have waited a long time for you.”
Cyrene stumbled backward a step in horror. Because standing on the other side of the tether was not Kael.
But Viktor Dremylon.
“What…what are you doing here?” she stammered. “How could you be here?”
“I am the other side of the bond. The dark part that bound it together with blood magic,” Viktor said smoothly. He stepped forward, down a step, and out of the pavilion. “You already know all this though.”
She nodded mutely.
He sighed and cast his gaze around the concentric circles. “I built this for her, you know?”
“For Serafina?”
“The love of my life.”