His expression turns enraged but I don’t care. As long as it’s directed at me. I keep my hand with the blade at my side and flatten my other palm against the air, lightly tugging at his powers again. Taking one step, two steps, three steps closer until I’m almost near enough to touch him. “You’ll spend eternity alone.”
He releases Rasha over the edge just as I lurch for her, but I’m too late. She slides from Draewulf’s grip and I scream. I swipe after her. The moment slows—and I am vividly aware that even as she’s falling, the airship is pitching as if to catch her.
Myles is simply standing behind Draewulf watching. Not moving an inch to save her. He’s got his sword raised at Draewulf’s back though.
Suddenly the large guard is there on the plank. He’s grabbed Rasha’s wrist just below where her fingers were able to clamp around the ship’s railing, thanks to the airship tilting for her. His men’s swords are flashing at the wraiths in my periphery.
I don’t stop to question their help—just exhale and flip around to thrust my blade out, but Draewulf’s hand is faster than mine. He twists my arm before I can connect with his rib cage, flicking my wrist and sending the blade scampering across the deck as he leans in to settle a disgusted gaze on me.
I blink straight up into those eyes even as the question emerges: Why is Myles just standing there? Why doesn’t he stab the beast?
Shaking, I put my hand against the monster’s chest. “You’ll live eternity without your wife. You’ll spend the entirety of it knowing she abandoned you because you became what she couldn’t stand.”
I thrust with all my strength, shoving the power against him, over him, feeling it draw strength from him. He convulses and the energy it brings is intoxicating on a level beyond anything I’m prepared for.
I press harder and allow the vortex to expand beyond my chest to my veins, my nerves, my entire being.
Abruptly Myles’s hand slips out and clamps down over my owner-circled arm. He grips tight and even without his abilities, I can feel the response from my Uathúil blood reacting to his as the roar and clash of the wraiths and Terrenes circle the air around us.
Draewulf shudders and his eyes go wide, flashing black and glassy before dimming. Then he’s trying to pull away, but it’s like the three of us are lashed together by the vortex’s hunger for his power.
His body is rippling violently, and suddenly I think he’s going to rip apart at Eogan’s seams just like Breck. I wince and wait for him to burst out of Eogan’s skin.
Instead black wisps emerge as if erupting from the very deck beneath his feet. Swirling up, dipping down to cover him. With another mutter, he shoves them toward me, toward the large Bron soldier who’s just pulled Rasha to safety, and toward Myles. The wisps blind me, but not enough that I can’t feel Draewulf shuddering harder now, as if using them is draining the life from him in the same way I am.
His chest and arms heave, then they’re convulsing, and the black mists swirl back to wind up around his feet, his legs, and slip across my arm. Until they’re snaking around my hand, whispering words I can’t quite make out.
They circle up and swirl overhead, blackening the sky above us, and the uncomfortable thought flashes—this is how my chest looks inside. A gaping hole of darkness. Then the vortex opens around my soul and spine, and it’s like there’s not enough air, not enough world around me to absorb. I surrender to it.
From somewhere in the distance I hear Rasha’s voice, but it’s muddied and too dim to make out.
“Finish it, Nym,” Myles hisses. “Take what is oursss.”
Draewulf slices a hand back at Myles, but the lord protectorate is no longer there. He’s ducked down beside me still holding on to my arm, looking at me with the same expression the Faelen people had last week—as if I am some kind of talisman.
Draewulf tilts his head back as if disoriented. He mutters something and Myles yelps and his grip flinches as the monster curses him. But I swear in that split second I can almost read the doubt, the question. The fear in Draewulf’s eyes.
A fear suggesting that when this thing in me takes over, it will be merciless in its absorption. A fear suggesting what I could become with his kind of power. I could use it to save this world. I could be powerful like him.
A heartpulse later he pulls back with a roar, but I keep taking as he recoils. I don’t even have to touch him now because the energy’s owning my head and thoughts and will. It’s consuming me to use me, and the numbing it brings to all the grief and weariness is the most beautiful feeling.
Draewulf drops to his knees just as the black spirits return and collect around him in the same way the roars of wraiths and soldiers collect in the air around us. His Draewulf body flickers in my vision, flashing between wolf and Eogan.
Only abruptly . . . there’s a third man.
A different man.