Chapter 22 The Hunger of the Queen
The silver harpoons whistled through the air. My new eyes saw them in slow motion, six jagged bolts of cold metal aimed right at my chest. I didn't move. I didn't have to. The black glass wings on my back snapped shut like a shield, and the harpoons bounced off with a useless thud.
"Kill her!" the leader of the Moon-Hunters screamed. "Before the third eye opens fully!"
I felt a cold, oily ripple move through my brain. The third eye in the center of my forehead was twitching. It wanted to see. It wanted to eat.
"Eara, please!" Solis cried, reaching for my hand. "Don't let them do this! You're not a monster!"
"Get away from her, Your Majesty!" a hunter yelled, reloading his heavy crossbow. "She’s already gone! The Weaver is just a mask for the Void now!"
I looked at my hands. The skin was turning a pale, ghostly grey. My fingernails were sharp black points. I could feel Solis’s heart beating from across the room. It sounded like a drum, loud, warm, and delicious.
"Stop it," I told myself. That’s Solis. You loved him. You died for him.
But I am so hungry, another voice whispered. A voice that sounded like a thousand dead souls. The Sun King is the greatest meal of all. Drink him, and the pain will end.
"No!" I roared.
The sound wasn't human. It was a vibration that cracked the stone floor. A wave of black force exploded from my body, throwing the Moon-Hunters against the cathedral walls. Their silver armor shattered like cheap glass.
I turned to Solis. He was shaking, his small face pale with terror. He didn't run. He just stood there, looking at the monster I had become.
"Eara," he whispered. "I’m not leaving you."
"You have to," I growled. My jaw felt heavy and my teeth sharper. "If you stay, I will kill you. I can feel it... the hunger. It’s bigger than me, Solis. It’s bigger than the world."
"Then eat me," he said, stepping forward.
The Moon-Hunters gasped. Their leader, bleeding from his forehead, tried to crawl away. "The King is mad! He’s offering himself to the Void!"
Solis didn't look at them. He looked at me. "You saved me in every life, Eara. You broke the heart. You fought the dragon. If my life is the price to keep you from becoming a monster, take it."
The third eye on my forehead flared bright red. I lunged.
I didn't bite him. I grabbed him by his royal tunic and slammed him against the altar. My claws dug into his shoulders, but I didn't draw blood. I stared into his golden eyes, fighting the black fog in my mind.
"Run," I hissed, my face inches from his. "Run to the Spires. Find the hidden room. There is a silver box... my father’s real blood is inside. Use it to seal the gates. Use it to lock me in here."
"I won't leave you in the dark!"
"You're not leaving me in the dark," I said, a single silver tear running down my grey cheek. "I am the dark. If you don't lock the gates, Seraphine will come back. She will use me to finish what she started."
Suddenly, the roof of the cathedral vanished. It didn't break; it simply dissolved into black ash.
Seraphine descended from the sky. She wasn't a child or a warrior anymore. She was a ghost made of red light. She floated down, landing on the head of the dead shadow dragon.
"The girl is right, Solis," Seraphine mocked. "She is the perfect cage. And I have the key."
She held up a tiny, glowing shard. It wasn't from the dragon's heart. It was a shard of my own soul, the thread the First Weaver had tried to cut.
"I caught this when the loom broke," she smiled. "As long as I have this, Eara is my puppet. She will eat the city, and I will watch from the throne of ashes."
She pointed the shard at me.
My body stopped obeying me. My wings spread wide against my will. My black claws reached for Solis’s throat, and I couldn't stop them. My fingers closed around his neck.
"Kill him, my queen," Seraphine commanded.
"Eara... please..." Solis wheezed.
I fought. I pulled back with everything I had. I felt my soul tearing in two. The pain was so intense that the third eye on my forehead began to bleed black ichor.
"I... am... not... yours!" I screamed.
I didn't attack Seraphine. I turned my claws on myself. I drove my black fingers into my own chest, right where the silver star scar was glowing.
The explosion of black and silver light was so bright it blinded everyone in the room. I felt the shard in Seraphine’s hand shatter. I felt the tether snap.
But the light didn't stop. It began to pull everything into a vacuum. The cathedral, the hunters, the dead dragon, everything was being sucked into the hole in my chest.
"What have you done?" Seraphine shrieked, her ghost-form being pulled toward me. "You’re collapsing the world!"
"I'm ending the pattern," I whispered.
I grabbed Solis and threw him toward the door, the only place the vacuum wasn't reaching. "Live!" I shouted.
He disappeared through the portal just as the walls crumbled.
I was alone in the white void again. But I wasn't a child, and I wasn't a monster. I was just Eara.
I looked down at the hole in my chest. It wasn't empty. My father was sitting there, in the middle of the light. He looked healthy. He looked real.
"Is it over?" I asked.
"No, Eara," he said, standing up. He reached out and pointed behind me.
I turned around. The white void was gone. I was standing in a field of green grass. In the distance, I saw a city. It wasn't the Sun Palace. It was a city I didn't recognize, a city where the sun and the moon both hung in the sky at the same time.
And walking toward me was a man with golden hair. He was wearing a simple weaver’s shirt. He had a scar on his hand, right where I had taken it in the square.
He stopped ten feet away. He didn't say my name. He didn't smile.
He pulled a silver harpoon from his back and pointed it at my heart.
"Who are you?" he demanded. "And why do you have the Queen’s eyes?"