118

118

RAVEN

The silver is molten fire on my wrists, but I push past the pain and focus on Kael who is taking on Seraphina and her pack of shadow-blooded wolves. I can sense his furious desperation as we are mate-bonded, the fact that he’s going to save me even if it kills him.

But I also sort of smell that something else maybe is spewing into the air — a mmmmmmbavisping realization that we’re both now missing something salient to this matter.Authoritarianism of an Ignorant PrickThat salient item is one central to every aspect of our lives.

You talk about balance I shout, and the desolation of the distance closes in. "But you're a liar about the curse, aren't you?"

Seraphina’s silver eyes narrow. "Careful, Moon's Daughter. Your goddess-blood gives you vision, not wisdom.
“No, but it does allow me to feel deceit. I struggle against the silver constraints, my power brimming against the metal walls. “This old magic you call upon, it’s not insisting balance through your games. It is calling for balance, through unity.”
Raven," Kael cautions, but his gaze does not waver from Seraphina. "Don't give her any ideas."

“She already has her own ideas,” I respond, puzzle pieces clicking into place in my head. She’d picked this place for that reason, waited for tonight, the new moon. The silver’s not only to weaken me—it’s to make sure I don’t get the entire truth of the prophecy."

Matthias squirms next to me, his remorse and guilt wafting off him in waves. But beneath those emotions, I detect a different one — hope. As if he knows something that could change everything.

“Tell them,” I tell him, softly. “Let them know that truth about the real prophecy.

I won’t!” Gently, “I can’t,” he whispers, choked up. “If I do say something, she’s going to kill everyone else I’ve ever cared about.”

“She’s going to kill them regardless,” I remind her. "Unless we find another way."

Seraphina raises her hand and the shadow-blooded wolves start to fan out in a larger circle. "Enough talking. Now the ceremony starts whether you're willing or not.

Then I sense it — a familiar presence brushing against the other side of my thoughts. Not Kael, but someone entirely different.

‘Sister,’ calls a voice in my head, as old and as strong. ‘The fetters that bind you are weaker than you think.’
I gasp and know who it is at once. The Moon Goddess Herself, speaking to me as though the divine connection opened in my blood.

‘The silver might be weakening your body, but not your spirit. Don't forget that what you learned in the fortress: they can't bind you by the rules what they had laid on you.’

Floods of comprehension swept through me. The blocking crystals woven into my gown, the silver shackles on my wrists—they’re meant to dampen my powers, not eradicate them. And the reason why Seraphina has to get the ritual to work is that she can't just take my power through force.

“You’re scared,” I whisper, looking at Seraphina. You're frightened you'll burn to ashes from the inside-out if you attempt to steal my goddess-blood without the proper ritual.
Her confident façade wavers briefly – just long enough for me to verify my suspicion.

“Thief does not – the old magic does not – not recognize,” I persist, my voice starting to get steady. “It answers only to voluntary sacrifice or deserving balance. That’s why you need me to give myself up voluntarily.”

“Clever girl,” Seraphina admits, and her silver locks begin to writhe like quicksilver. "But it's of no significance, your cleverness. I have forty different ways of getting you to coPPP erate, starting with the slow dismemberation of your mate."

She waves her hand and around a few shadow-blooded wolves go towards Kael. But before they can, the night air is filled with the cries of howling — not howls of attack but of arrival.

“What—” Seraphina whirls, her eyes going huge as she realizes what’s coming out of the forest surrounding the mining facility.

Tens of wolves, spilling out from the night, their eyes glinting not in silver light or shadow magic but the god-touched gold and amber that means health and pack bonds. Leading them all is a huge black wolf with violet eyes—my father, Alpha Thalion of Nyxhowl pack.

“The assault on Nyxhowl,” I moan, realization settling in. "It was a diversion."

“A nice elaborate one,” Kael agrees grimly, turning to train his weapon on the newcomers who are rapidly surrounding Seraphina’s troops. “But how did they know to find this place?”

It's only then that I spot her—Eira, in wolf form, bolting toward us with something in her jaws. As she nears the end of the confrontation she shifts, wielding what seems to be a communicator.

“I’ve been following the radio frequencies they’re using,” she yells out after him. "When I heard them planning the ritual site, I sent word to every friendly pack within a hundred miles.
“You arrogant—brainless—” Kael begins, but his words are strangled out of his mouth by a roar of rage from Seraphina.

"Enough!" she yells, hands shooting up toward the sky. "If the goddess-blood won't rush into my arms willingly, then let me have whatever I may: what remains to be seen will scorch all of us!

Shadows swarm around her, gathering toward something huge and awful, this writhing bit of bleakness that looks like it could eat light. But as the shadow beast forms I feel that the presence of the Moon Goddess in my head becomes greater.

Now, sister. But she's too distracted by the fact that she'll soon be desperate.

I close my eyes and I reach way down into my goddess blood, beyond the sting of silver, beyond the blocking crystals, beyond everything I’ve had placed on me. The power hits me like a burst dam, racing through me so fast it's like the silver cuffs have never been there at all.

"No way," Seraphina breathes, her shadowy beast object flickering as she looks at me with bewilderment. "The silver should have—"

"The silver blocks godly power, passed through the flesh," I cut him off, rising wearily to my feet, the moonlight already starting to collect around me, despite the fact it's the new moon. “But I’m no longer channeling power through my flesh. I'm receiving it through my spirit, it's not based from anger or anything, but rather coming direct from the source."

The reality of it descends over me like a cloak. I’m not carrying goddess-blood—I’m turning into something more, something that crosses the line between mortal and pure divine.

“The true prophecy,” Matthias says, suddenly and wonder-filled and relieved. “It wasn’t about balance with conflict. It was about balance, through transcendence.”

"What are you talking about?" Kael whispers, stepping nearer to me as the moonlight surrounding my figure brightens.

“The Moon’s Daughter and the Storm’s Heir,” Matthias says, and his former despondency turns into desperate hope. “Not two that are opposed and need to balance each other out,” he writes, “but two that are together the one, and individually yield to the one when they are joined.”

I just know what he is saying is the truth in my bones. I can feel Kael’s realization dawning on me too, through our mate bond. We are neither to oppose the old magic nor to bow before it — we are mean to be its conduit of renewal.

“No,” Seraphina growls and her darkness beast lunges towards us. "I will not be cheated of my birthright!"

But just as the beast makes its grab, something strange happens. On the contrary, when it brushes across my fingers I do not pull back, but reach out to it and seize it with my own hands. The shadow magic doesn’t burn me or defile me — it changes me, into something neater, brighter.

“Your destiny was never to take from the divine,” I say to Seraphina my voice booms with something other than me. ‘To help hold back the shadow and the light so that neither divine nor infernal magic held supremacy over the other.

And at the transformed shadow magic's utterance, the lineage of Shadowmere's bloodline origin... I can now suddenly see it. They were not outcasts; they were protectors, having been given the role of preserving the balance between rivalling magical energies. But their purpose had become twisted by centuries of persecution and exile into something dark and self-serving.

“You can still do that,” I tell her, holding out my hand to her. Not by taking my power, but by assuming your duty as the guardian of balance.

Hope glimmers in the silver pools of Seraphina's eyes for a moment. But now her eyes tighten up with millennia of resentment and fury.

I have suffered too much to be grateful for scraps of redemption,” she spits. "If I don't get godhood, then no one will."

She claps her hands together once more, and this time the magic she summons forth is not shadow magic, but something much older and even more perilous. The air itself starts to crack and splinter as she rips through holes in reality.

“She’s opening void doors into the void realms,” Matthias screams in horror. “If those tears keep expanding, they’ll devour everything for miles around!”

Its then that Kael steps up, his own strength starting to show. Storm clouds roll in, filling the clear sky with storm clouds, lightning display between his fingertips.

“Together,” he says softly, and guides my hand. "Just like in the fortress."

Our powers combine and feed off each other—moonlight and storm, divine grace and elemental rage. But this time, when we bring that strength together, rather than destroying, we create.” Together, we cast a web of pure magic that starts sealing the rentes that Seraphina has torn open.

"It's not finished," she howls, as the Void energies are sealed off and negated. “There are others like myself, others who will never submit to your idea of balance!”

"Then we take them on as one," Kael answers determinedly. “All of us together as we should have been since the start.
As dawn rises across the Silver Ridge mining complex, I survey the gathered wolves—Obsidian Spire, Nyxhowl, a half-dozen other packs, side by side in spite of ancient enmities. The old magic still hums in the air, but it feels benign now, no longer hostile. Instead, it is potential — the hope of a future in which power works in the service of unity, and not division.

But as our win settles over me, I can't ignore the fact that Seraphina's last words sound more like a threat than anything else. And I'm sure out there somewhere, there are other maneuverings being set into motion in response to what happened tonight.

The hard part is yet to come.