Queen of Stars and Shadows (Dark Fae Guardian #3)

Sarielle

Chapter Twenty-Three

Sarielle

“ T he rift could be anywhere,” I say, chewing on my lower lip. “It could take days to find it. Longer. We don’t know how vast this realm is.”

The rifts are created by nightmare magic. You can sense them. Track them.

When the voice flits through my head, I honestly don’t know if it’s my nightmare’s thought, or mine. Or if it’s simply that we’re starting to think the same way, because she is me.

Zyren is saying something, but I’m too lost in my own thoughts to listen. Instead, I fall within, reaching for my magic, calling out with my senses. I imagine Valaron, the Court of Nightmares, home . A place I still barely know, but that lives inside me, my place of belonging. I don’t know how I ever survived all those years without it, without the magic that is truly mine. It’s the reason Eldare always felt so strange to me, why I felt so very out of place. Because I was.

And then I feel it, a tug in my chest, deep in my core. A flux of energy to the northwest, or at least, what might be northwest if I knew where north was in this place. A feeling of familiar magic. A call from my home.

“Sarielle? Are you listening?”

I snap back into my body, focusing my eyes on Zyren. “No. I was trying to find the rift.”

His eyes widen in surprise. “Can you do that?”

“Apparently I can.” I point in the direction I’d felt the call. “It’s that way.”

“How far?”

I shake my head. “That I don’t know. I just know it doesn’t feel close. But how far exactly, I’m not sure.”

Zyren looks around the chasm. “I wish we had a way to take water with us.”

“Me, too. But I’m not going to wait here by the water when we could get out of here.”

He nods. “Agreed.”

I get up and climb out from under the overhang. Zyren follows. “How did you get us down here?” I ask, staring up at the steep banks.

“My wings,” he says.

A flux of power moves over us and shadows spin around him, forming into two dark wings. I shiver, remembering all too well the feeling of those wings wrapped around me in the forest. Zyren reaches for me, and I step into the curve of his arm so he can lift us out of this place.

He pauses and looks down at me. “Sarielle?”

“Yes?”

Emotion swims in his eyes, and he opens his mouth and closes it once before finally speaking. But all he says is, “hold on tightly.”

I nod, my throat feeling tight, and Zyren springs skyward, flying us out onto the dunes. He flies for several miles, heading in the direction I’d pointed, before landing amidst the great rolling waves of sand.

“I can’t use them for very long,” he says apologetically.

“I know,” I say. I try, unsuccessfully, to hide the sadness from my tone. What if Zyren never regains his memories? What if all these simple things we’ve shared before are lost forever? I shove my feelings down. The important thing is that Zyren lives. Even if he never remembers, I need him to stay by my side. We can create new memories.

“So now we walk,” he says, offering me an encouraging smile as if he can sense my melancholy.

“So now we walk,” I echo.

And we begin.

We walk for what must be the better part of a day. I check in on our direction periodically, falling within to connect with my nightmare, who is my inner compass leading me to the rift. She seems more willing to cooperate now, like we’re finding a balance of control. Zyren flies us every few hours when his magic recovers, but as the day goes on, and we grow thirsty and baked by the heat yet again, that option is lost to us.

We’re just cresting the top of a particularly massive dune when I feel it.

Pain lances through my stomach and I fall to my hands and knees in the sand. In my head, there’s a great rush of darkness, magic so black it’s like nothing I’ve felt before. It is darker even than nightmare magic, something ancient and evil and bloodthirsty. A craving for death and chaos and the end of all things. A song of suffering and hopelessness.

Zyren drops to his knees next to me, his tone laced with panic. “Sarielle! What’s wrong?”

I can’t speak for several long moments. The sensation finally passes, but the residue of that ancient magic lingers. I can feel it worming in my gut, I can taste it on my tongue.

“She’s free,” I say, my voice hollow and empty.

“The demon?”

I nod miserably. “I’ve failed, Zyren. I’ve damned Valaron to the most terrible fate imaginable.”

Zyren helps me into a sitting position and pulls me against him, pressing his cheek into my hair. “Listen to me, Sarielle. We’re going to get out of here. And we’re going to stop her. I promise you.”

“You can’t promise that,” I whisper. “Besides, you’re not the one who did this. I did.”

He lifts my chin, his eyes burning into mine. “I promise I will help you, or give my last breath trying. I’m your guardian, remember? It’s my job to protect you. I may not remember these last few years, but I have been a guardian for a very long time, and I have never failed.”

I nod.

“Do you believe me?”

I believe that it may very well take his life and mine to make this right, but I know what he needs me to say. And he’s not wrong. He’s never failed me. I’m the one who has failed. “I believe you, Zyren.”

He nods, a renewed determination in his eyes. “I think I can fly again. A short while at least,” he says.

Neither of us have rested for what must be the turning of a sun in a normal realm, but I don’t argue with him. He summons his shadow wings, and I check our direction again, just to be sure.

“We’re getting close,” I say. It’s a barely perceptible shift in the magic. But it feels stronger, and that’s something. We both need some small measure of hope that we’ll get out of this hellscape.

Zyren takes us skyward, skimming over the tops of the dunes. As we fly, the tug in my gut grows even more. Zyren flies until I can feel his magic stuttering, his reserves depleted.

“You’ve gone far enough,” I call over the wind in my ears. “We’re almost there.”

We land in the sand and continue on foot. We crest one dune, then another. At the top of the second one, I see a shimmer in the sky far in the distance. Maybe a couple miles. The tug in my gut confirms what my eyes are telling me.

I point. “That’s the rift! We’re almost there!”

Zyren smiles, an exhausted smile, but a smile nonetheless. We’re both covered in sweat and dirt and my throat is on fire, but we’re nearly out of this hell hole the demon had shoved me into. “Let’s get out of this goddess forsaken place.”

We move as quickly as we can, though nearly dead on our feet, toward the glittering slash in the sky. It looks like perhaps a glimpse of night sky, deepest purple with a glint of starlight. We lose sight of it in the valleys between the dunes, and some irrational part of me is terrified it will be gone before we crest the next ridge. Each time I catch sight of it again, I breathe a huge sigh of relief.

Finally, we reach the apex of the last dune between us and the rift. There, about halfway up the side of the next dune, it hovers in midair. It looks about ten feet long and three feet wide. We should be able to climb through. Zyren turns to me and pulls me into a quick kiss. He tastes of salt and of home. Home, which is just on the other side of this ridge.

I jog down the dune, a laugh escaping my lips, Zyren right on my heels. When we hit the bottom, I break into a sprint. I’m halfway to the next dune when I feel a violent shift in the magic coming from the rift. No, not the rift. A different magic. Something closer. Something…

“Zyren!” I scream, spinning and flinging myself into him.

The sand a dozen paces in front of us erupts like a volcano, and something black bursts upward. There’s another explosion to our left, and another to the right.

Three enormous nightmares, each four times the size of a bear.

They’re the same color as the sand, with glittering beetle-like armor over their bodies, giant pinchers and barbed tails like scorpions, and eyes that glow a pale, toxic green color. They each have at least a dozen legs, which are serrated and blade-edged.

They charge us all at once.

Zyren shoves me behind him and summons his shadows. A wave of black shoots up around him, and his shadow ravens spin and dive for our attackers. But he’s already depleted most of his magic flying, and I know he can’t mount a defense for long. And my magic is still too weak to be of any help at all against such an enemy.

When my nightmare surges forward, I don’t hesitate. I merge with her fully, feeling the strange tingle as my eyes go dark, feeling the swirl of shadows and the rush of darkness and power. Feeling the savage, animalistic desire to end my enemies, to bathe in their blood and stand over their lifeless bodies. The unwavering knowledge that I am hunter , not prey.

It scared me the first time I’d felt this in my dreams, before any of this happened, before I knew who or what I was.

But I’m not scared anymore.

I charge for the closest monster, the one on the left. I can feel daggers form in my hands, like when I’d summoned them before in my dreams. There’s a rush of surprise for a fraction of a second, since I am fully awake and not dreaming, but it’s lost in the thrill of battle and the surety of my kill.

The nightmare rears up as I approach, slashing at me with its pinchers and knife-like legs. I feel a sting and a rush of pain as one of the legs grazes my upper arm, but it doesn’t slow me down. I slide beneath its exposed underside and cut upward with both daggers, feeling a spray of warm blood as I pass. The thing stabs for me as I roll back out from underneath it, but its body is already wobbling, shuddering, the final throws of death. It rears up again and then falls to the side, a huge gaping hole in its underbelly.

I spin. Zyren has just vanquished his nightmare with a blast of shadows that dissolves it into a pile of bone and ash. He staggers as he turns to face the last nightmare, but his expression is so fierce and deadly it takes my breath away. I run to his side and pass him one of my daggers. We take the enemy from both sides, one of us distracting it while the other gets in a strike.

This nightmare is more clever, making sure not to reveal its underside. The armor on the exterior is impossibly hard, the only vulnerabilities at the joints of its shell. We weave in and out, but the thing never falters, despite the dozens of stab wounds it’s endured. Then one of its pinchers arcs out and knocks into Zyren, sending him sprawling in the sand a dozen feet away.

“Zyren!” I scream.

At the same moment, a ripple beneath my feet flings me backward. Twenty feet away, sand flies upward in half a dozen places. More of these creatures are coming.

The nightmare is on me with amazing speed, taking advantage of my distraction. The sky is blotted out as the thing hovers over me where I lay on my back. For a moment, all I see are serrated legs waving above me. I roll to the side as it stabs downward. But when it slashes again, one of the bladed legs stabs down into my thigh. A scream tears from my throat.

And then another scream mixes with mine, this one from the nightmare. It rears up and falls to the side. Zyren is straddling its neck, his dagger embedded deep in the back of its head, black blood cascading down the side of its body. He leaps clear as the thing crashes into the sand, and he runs for me.

“Come on!” he urges, pulling me to my feet.

“We have to fight!” I snarl, pointing to the six new nightmares that have burst upward from the sand. The beast inside me isn’t satiated yet, and she never runs from the enemy.

“No! I told you I would protect you, and I will keep my word.” Zyren’s tone is harsh, unyielding.

He drags me forward, even as I struggle against him, my nightmare thrashing in fury. The newly arrived nightmares rush across the sand toward us. Zyren throws me over his shoulder and carries me up the hill toward the rift. I scream and pound on his back. “Zyren, no!”

From my vantage point, I can see the nightmares closing in. They’re so close their dark magic washes into us, and the dunes rumble beneath Zyren’s feet. I can hear the snapping of their claws and the slash of their legs as they bear down on us, and still that fearless, furious part of me wants more blood…

Zyren reaches the rift and hurls me off his shoulders into it.

There’s a zing of magic as I pass through, and then I am plummeting through night sky.