Page 27 of Cold Hearted
Jumping off the horse, I crouched down as I took in the sight of six soldiers flat on their stomachs up ahead.
One peered back at us and held his hand up in a fist.
I knew that sign from my mother’s royal guard. It meantstay. We waited until the men popped up onto their feet and waved us over. As we ran to meet them, I took stock of their pristine uniforms. This was what was left of the soldiers, the other half who hadn’t yet faced the voidspawn.
The rest were dead according to Captain Regis.
Captain Regis gestured for us to huddle around him. “We go in and take out the resistance fighters while Dawn fights the—”
A guttural scream cut jaggedly through the night air, and my heart leapt into my throat. I recognized that voice. That was Zander.
Without waiting for the captain to say anything more, I took off running toward that cry, pulling my magic through every cell in my body as I did and building it up. This was not a fight I would win with a blade, and if I ousted myself as a princess of Faerie by displaying too much power, then so be it.
I burst through a thicket of trees into a dark clearing. There were a few fires lit off to the side, but in the middle was Zander, surrounded by his dead fallen soldiers. He was tied to a tree, the debilitation rune on his chest glowing brightly as he roared in agony, thrashing his head left and right.
Standing in front of him was the most horrifying creature I’d ever seen. It stood over ten feet tall, made of shadows and darkness. It was so black I felt if I walked through it I would fall into an endless void. With no visible arms or legs, the cloaked figure floated like an apparition a foot off the ground. A thick black cord of its darkness trailed from the top of its cloak right into Zander’s head. My legs trembled at the sight of such a nightmarish monster, but I gritted my teeth and readied for battle.
“Intruders!” Someone sounded the alarm, and the monster turned to face me.
Reaching out, I blasted the creature with everything I had, holding nothing back. It was like a sunlight bomb went off right in his face. I closed my eyes, but even so I temporarily blinded myself as well, and when my vision adjusted I watched in relief as the black cord going into Zander’s head snapped and recoiled back into the monster made of darkness. With that amount of power, I expected the creature to be a puddle of shadows. Dead. But instead it swallowed my light like it was nothing.
Impossible.
But there was no time to panic. It was coming for me. The cord dangling from its body flew at my face and I shot another beam of light at it, watching as it recoiled.
Sunlight stream after sunlight stream, I shot them at the creature like arrows. Was it my imagination or did the monster look smaller? Like it was shrinking?
Ignoring the tumult of fighting around me, I reached for my power and blasted the dark fae with a huge light bomb again. This time when my sunlight power connected with the monster, I saw it was definitely smaller, shorter than me now, like my light was consuming its darkness.
I pulled for more magic, feeling the open well inside of me overflow with power. I was aiming for its chest when the dark tentacle collided with the side of my head and a suction of sorts took hold on my temple. I gasped as a cold, dark, foreboding fear overwhelmed me, and then I was sucked into a nightmare.
It was like a vision playing out before my eyes.
My mother sobbed in the throne room, and there were hundreds of dead bodies around her. Black rain pelted against the windows as she screamed at the mirror that stood at the end of the room. “Where are you, Dawn?”
No. This wasn’t real. It couldn’t be. The beast was trying to trick me, feeding off of these dark thoughts and growing bigger again.
Taking in a cleansing breath, I forced myself to focus, not letting my thoughts run wild like they normally would. I reached up and grasped the cord attached to my head and shot a beam of fire mixed with light from my palm, causing it to snap away from me like an injured animal.A high shriek filled the night, then the vision of my mother was gone.
It was time to end this. The creature before me was now only as tall as a goat, but I knew it would grow bigger if I didn’t fight with everything I had right here and now.
I pushed all the sunlight magic I had left inside of me at the creature. A dangerous amount, an amount Master Duncan told me never to do.
Never deplete your reserves. You could kill your magic forever.
Well, it was kill or be killed. This thing was feeding on my soul, I could feel it.
The light exploded out of me, and the beast hissed, but I continued to blast him with more and more of my magic.
“Dawn, be careful!” Zander shouted from where he was tied to the tree.
Did he know I could deplete my power? Of course he might suspect, as all seelie were at risk of burning out.
Pulling my sunstone dagger from its sheath with my free hand, I lunged at the shrinking creature, shoved it into the center of the black abyss that was its chest, and the darkness swallowed my weapon whole.
No!
Dizziness washed over me as fire appeared in the center of the black creature’s chest. The sunstone. It shone brightly from within the creature, who hissed and began to smoke and fall apart, disintegrating into shadows. The sunstone dagger thumped to the ground in the spot the creature had been, and sweet relief infused my body that it wasn’t destroyed.
