Twisted Soul (Cursed Legacies #3)

40. Maven

40

MAVEN

Gods, I love combat.

Ice explodes to my left, freezing a section of shadow fiends solid. Crypt swings his enchanted sword, beheading a monstrous vampire before he drives it through the stomach of another lumbering ghoul. A bright flash of Silas’s unmistakable blood magic catches my eye in the distance. I hear Baelfire’s dragon roar just before the great beast leaps into the sky, its majestic wings sending powerful gusts of air down onto the battlefield.

Fighting alongside my quintet is glorious.

Baelfire laughs through the bond, the sound like cheer itself. You’re so fucking unhinged and cute, hellion. I love it.

Enough with the L- word. And I’m not cute , I correct, slicing through several more Undead.

Sexy as sin itself? Crypt suggests through the bond.

Temptation personified, Silas tacks on.

Everett’s internal voice is exasperated. You horny idiots are going to get yourselves killed. We’re all right as long as we agree that Maven is attractive to a ludicrously unholy degree. Now get your heads out of your asses and focus.

Lightning crackles through the sky high above as the storm that has been threatening finally breaks above the raging fight.

Amadeus can’t keep sending forces forever, I tell them through the bond as I use dark magic to incapacitate a wendigo before beheading it. If we drive them back into the Divide, I can get to the nearest temple and start refortifying the ? —

I cut off when a blast of spine-tingling magic sends me flying backward. I crash into a pile of dismembered Undead, smacking my head on something as my ears ring. Blinking and rolling to my side, I realize that attack came from one of the liches. He’s spotted me and is crossing through the battle, his glowing red eyes like miniature fires inside that fleshless skull.

Crypt and Everett are at my side immediately. Crypt helps me stand. He stares down the approaching lich while Everett checks my head for damage. This time, when the lich sends a blast of its magic toward us, I lift my hands to rip through it with my own magic.

I barely register the chilling hiss of a nearby basilisk before the shadowy serpent sinks its fangs into Crypt’s leg. He swears and turns to slice at it with his sword, but a rotting Undead barrels into him, knocking him to the ground. His scuffle distracts me for a fraction of a second?—

And when the lich hurls a cutting spell toward me with blinding speed, Everett leaps in front of me.

He cries out, collapsing. I swear, dropping to the ground to dodge another attack spell as I turn Everett toward me.

Shit. His face is covered in blood.

He was hit hard.

Cutting spells are simple. They function just like blades, and now my ice elemental looks like someone cut a long gash from one of his hips, diagonally through his chest, and up over half of his face, passing over his eye all the way up to his left temple. Blood drips freely from the long wound as he hisses in pain, squinting the eye that the slash crosses over.

Everett’s eye isn’t gone, thank the fucking universe—but the rest of the cut is deep. He’s losing blood quickly. When he tries to move, he chokes on the pain.

Seeing my beautiful match in agony floods me with rage. Looking up, I deflect another attack spell just in time, dipping into the life forces rushing inside my veins. I grit my teeth and fire off several brutal attack spells toward the lich to ward it away and buy time.

Everett sputters, struggling like he’s trying to get up and help before abruptly blacking out. Blood stains his white hair, matting it as his breathing turns labored.

“Everett?” I whisper, voice trembling.

Shaking with anger, I check the fray around us to see if any threats have noticed that we’re vulnerable. I need to use what magic I can and bandage him here before he bleeds out.

Then I’ll need to get him out of the battle so Silas can heal him later, far better than I can.

But I can barely think through the anger crowding my brain. I loathe that my elemental is bleeding in my arms, motionless.

Stupid fucking lich .

Blood blossom? Silas checks in fae inside my head.

Everett will need healing soon, I send back, rage making my voice shake even telepathically.

Crypt appears, making me realize he slipped into Limbo to handle his previous scuffle. His silver-flecked violet gaze drops to Everett and the long gash across his torso and face.

My incubus’s markings light up as he meets my eye. He must see the pure fury there because he glances up at the lich, who is back on his feet and heading toward us again as if killing me is his one and only mission.

It very well might be.

“Tell me what you need,” Crypt murmurs.

My hands shake as I try to wipe blood out of Everett’s eyes. His breathing is growing even weaker.

“Bring me his head,” I grit, looking back at my Nightmare Prince.

His lips curl up maniacally. "Done. I'll be back soon, darling.”

He vanishes. I glance around again to ensure we aren’t about to be killed before I focus on patching Everett before he bleeds out.

Revenant magic destroys, and necromancy can’t heal the living, so I’m left with my weak grasp of common magic abilities as I struggle to minimize the worst of his deep wound. I can’t get it to close, but I manage to slow the bleeding. It’s better than nothing.

Pulling out the roll of bandages, I pause to send another blast of dark magic out around us, bringing down an approaching ghoul and a shrieking banshee.

As I begin wrapping clean bandages around the worst of the damage to the side of Everett’s face, he grimaces again, rousing.

He opens his other eye, gazing up at me in pained, disoriented confusion. Then his unwrapped eye widens, and he lifts an arm to freeze a banshee I didn’t sense coming behind me.

Somewhere overhead, Baelfire roars again before thunder rocks the heavens, barely audible over the deafening battle around us. Ash rains slowly down, along with small flurries of snow. Screams surround us, the grunts and cries and wonderfully morbid sounds of a battle in full swing.

For a fraction of a second, I plead with the universe to keep my other matches unharmed—along with Kenzie and our other allies.

“Come on,” I say urgently, helping Everett get to his feet. “We need to get you out of this.”

“I can handle it,” he argues, lifting his hand to send a massive shard of ice through a Nether vampire when it moves toward us, splitting it in half. But he stumbles, clutching at his still-bleeding chest.

Silas? I check, looking for him in the raging battle surrounding us.

I’ll be right ? —

He cuts off with a swear, and although I can’t see where he is in the chaotic flurry of monsters, shadow fiends, Reformists, hellhounds, and bounty hunters, I know he has his hands full.

I just need to get Everett out of here before he gets killed. Then we can drive this shitstorm back, and I’ll take care of the Divide.

For several harrowing minutes, Everett leans on me, still using his powers as we fight to make headway through the bloodbath surrounding us. He’s weak and clearly in a lot of pain—and not the fun kind. He’s trying like hell not to show it.

Meanwhile, I’m trying to stop anything attacking us without killing it—because the last fucking thing I need is to lose control and kill my beautiful ice elemental myself.

Pain blooms inside my chest, so sharp and unexpected that I gasp. It’s severe enough that for a fraction of a second, I assume I’ve been hit by some spell or stabbed with an adamantine blade.

But then I recognize the cold sweeping over me. That empty, shadowy link.

Fuck. No.

Not right now. Not right now .

I fight it, trying to breathe through the pain as my vision blurs. Only this time, I don’t expire.

Instead, I hear him again, clear as day inside my head.

You were what I made you to be. A masterpiece. A scourge. Even in your betrayal, you honored me.

What the fuck is he talking about, and why is he talking about me in the past sense like this is a eulogy? I grit my teeth through the pain, distantly aware that Everett is freezing anything that comes near and repeating my name in alarm.

Here is your elucidation. The time has come.

For a moment, the battle before me cuts out as a vision sweeps through me. I find myself watching a scene unfold—a moment that Amadeus is sending through his link to me.

But it doesn’t feel like a vision of the future.

What I’m about to see is happening right now.

I recognize Engela Zuma as she runs through an empty street in some abandoned city on the East Coast. The elemental looks uncharacteristically frightened and is covered in blood. She sends a blast of power behind her before rounding the corner onto a new street—where Bertram waits.

But instead of a lover’s reunion, he darts forward with unparalleled speed and buries his teeth in Engela’s neck, ripping her throat out.

Horror floods me as I realize what’s happening. The twin demons’ words swim in my head.

A tricky legacy. A secret mission from the citadel.

Oh, my gods. When Amadeus learned about my gambit, he decided to outmaneuver me.

And he hired…fucking Bertram.

The vision wavers as Bertram removes the bracelet from Engela’s pocket, setting it on the asphalt. He pulls out a knife and poses it above the etherium.

Just as the knife falls, Amadeus’s voice echoes through my head one final time.

Your purpose is fulfilled, daughter. May the Beyond embrace you.

No.

This can’t fucking happen. I absolutely cannot let this?—

The etherium shatters, and the vision dissipates. A cold unlike anything I’ve ever experienced sweeps through my system. I’m so numb that I don’t even realize I’ve hit the ground until I roll over and stare at the billowing winter sky streaked with flashes of lightning.

What just happened? Where are you, sangfluir? Silas’s voice demands in my head.

Distantly, I can still hear the screams and mayhem of the fight. But I feel nothing. I’m…going. This is it. The end of my purpose, and therefore, the end of me.

Fuck.

“Maven!”

Everett’s shout seems so far away, but suddenly, I’m cradled in his arms with his beautiful, half-bandaged face above me. The ash and blood streaking his skin are in sharp contrast with his soft, blue, panicked eyes.

“No, no, no, no. Breathe. Damn it, why aren’t you fucking breathing? Don’t you dare?—”

My hearing cuts out. Everything is fading to nothingness, including me.

All along, I knew there would be no happy ending for me. I can’t even fully blame the gods because I chose this fate. But that doesn’t stop the useless tears that prick my eyes as I struggle to drag in just one more breath—because this is really not fucking fair to them . Their pain wasn’t in my godsdamned plan.

I just needed more time with them.

Vaguely, I’m aware of Crypt and Baelfire frantically trying to speak to me through our bond, but I shut all four of my quintet members off telepathically. I’m sure permanent death hurts like a bitch. They shouldn’t have to go through it with me, even distantly.

Everett is shaking now, shouting something at me. I missed when it happened, but he’s created a thick shield of ice around us as he tries to get a response out of me. His agonized expression finally drags me back just enough that I can whisper hoarsely.

“Find Lillian. Make sure she survives.”

“Stop. Don’t do this. The whole final wish thing—I can’t handle this. Just keep breathing and…and…” His voice breaks, and he shakes his head helplessly. “Don’t leave me. Dear gods on high, please don’t leave me.”

I want to hug him and promise that things will be okay, but I can’t lie: we’re fucked. Without Engela’s life force propping it up, the Divide has officially fallen and the rest of Amadeus’s forces will break through as he goes on to conquer the mortal realm. I have failed epically, but I won’t even be around to take it on the chin the way I deserve.

Moisture trickles over my temples as I fight like hell for another breath. “I need you to do something for me.”

Everett’s own tears drip, leaving clean streaks through the ash and dampening the bandages over one half of his face. He gently touches my face with trembling fingers, but his normally chill body temperature doesn’t even register to my nearly lifeless remains.

“Anything. Anything for you,” he whispers.

“Take care of the others for me.” I swallow and shut my eyes. “Please.”

“You’ll take care of them. You’ll stay. I’ll find a way to fix this—godsdamn it, there has to be a way to fucking fix this if you just keep breathing and?—”

“Everett.”

He buries his face in my neck, sobs wracking his shoulders. I can barely hear him when he speaks.

“Okay. Okay, I…I promise.”

Whatever else happens after I’m gone, I trust this beautiful snow angel. If I had a heart, it would belong to him—to all of them. I don’t even know how to express the newfound, overwhelming, unspeakable pain inside my hollow chest until the quiet words are already leaving my lips.

“I love you.”

Damn it. I was so right to be terrified of this consuming emotion. It’s destroying me. Still, what a shame it is that I won’t get to explore this beautiful destruction with them.

Something stutters and then evaporates inside my chest—and at once, I feel the bonds snap.

I thought I knew suffering before, but I had no idea agony like this existed.

Everett cries out. Far overhead, a roar of pure draconic anguish splits the air, so loud that even my malfunctioning ears ache. I can no longer sense the others trying to reach me telepathically. I can no longer sense anything , but I know they’re hurting.

It makes me despise the gods even more. How dare they give me this quintet just to take it away?

“Stupid fucking gods,” I choke as everything goes dark.

Yet even as my not-life fades away at last, I hear it. The smooth, quiet voice of a woman who sounds almost…amused.

“Quite the finale. Come along now, Maven.”

A strange whistle fills the air, and for the first time in countless deaths, my soul is reaped.