Dark Harmony by Laura Thalassa

Chapter 35

I watch, frozen, as Des’s shadows close in on him.

His back arches and his entire body tenses, his muscles straining against his skin.

This is what the Thief wanted me to see.

I clutch my heart. I can feel his pain like a battering ram, slamming into me over and over again. I nearly choke on his agony. If I’m feeling that through our connection, then what must he be experiencing?

And then the blackness swallows him up.

When it clears, he’s gone.

Immediately, the pain in my chest cuts off. At first, I feel a relief; Des is in no more pain.

But then, panic. Panic like I’ve never known.

I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe I can’t breathe I can’t breathe.

My eyes scour every corner of the room. Where did Des go?

My fingers, still cradling the skin over my heart, now dig in.

The Night King’s magic, though it still dances through my veins, now feels like a shadow of its former self. And with every exhalation, it dims and dims until I only hold a memory of it inside myself.

I grasp at the last tendrils of his power as they slide down our magical connection. Down and away from me. All the while, my gaze searches the room.

What just happened? Where did Des go?

And why can’t I feel him down our bond?

In the distance, someone calls out to me.

I still can’t get enough air.

Why?

Why why why?

My fingers begin to tingle like they’ve been kissed by ice. The sensation spreads, numbing me as it goes. Putting my hands to my head, I bow over myself.

So confused …

Suddenly I feel a presence at my back. Someone grabs a clump of my hair and jerks my head back, placing a blade to my throat. I hear Temper shout.

“Time to join your mate,” Galleghar hisses against my ear.

No sooner are the words out, than another burst of that sickening magic blows him back.

“I told you not to touch her,” a soldier says, their voice echoing off the walls.

A second wave of magic follows the first, this one from Temper. It blasts from her palm, hitting Galleghar in the head and knocking him out.

“Eat shit, motherfucker,” she says.

Everything happening around me barely registers. All I can focus on is the thump of my heart and the sick certainty that something is wrong—that I am wrong.

Where is my mate?

Temper’s footfalls echo through the room as she comes towards me, her eyes burning. “You’ve got about a minute to start explaining yourself,” she commands a sleeping soldier, “and then I begin to fuck shit up.”

“There’s only one human whose words I’ll listen to,” the soldier replies smoothly, “and they aren’t yours.”

This is a dream. Of course. A dream.

Dropping my hands, I straighten.

“Enough with the games.” I’m surprised my words come out as even as they do.

I search the room for the Thief. When I don’t see his dark features, I settle on a sleeping soldier. “Where is my mate?” Glamour coats the words like syrup.

Around me, the entire room is poised, the air thick with promised violence and the Thief’s dark magic.

The female soldier I stare at replies, “He’s in my kingdom now.”

Small death. The Thief rules over small death. That’s how this nightmare is all possible. I’m asleep, and the Thief is screwing with me.

“Wake me up,” I demand.

The look the Thief gives me … if I didn’t know him better, I’d almost say it’s pity. But he’s enjoying this.

“This is no dream, enchantress. If it were, I would stand before you as myself—just as I always have.”

I glance around, at all the frozen faces. Malaki and Janus are sprawled on the ground, their forms unnaturally still, Galleghar hasn’t moved from where Temper knocked him out, and the rest of the Thief’s minions seem content to stay where they are.

The only other person who seems truly alive is Temper. My gaze falls to her just as she closes in on me.

Dear Temper, my best friend. A tear slips from her burning eyes.

I’ve only ever seen her cry twice.

She shakes her head. “Babe, this isn’t a dream.”

This … isn’t a dream?

But of course it is. No one is as they seem and nothing feels as it should.

My heart spasms, and that cold numbness, it’s reached my bond to Des.

I stumble then fall to my knees.

Realization is always described as an instant of enlightenment, but that’s not how it happens this time. The truth comes in slow, icy increments.

I wasn’t dropped into some dream. I can remember the last minute and the minute before that. I can remember coming here, and I can remember every logical thing but that last, final one.

Des disappearing. Des leaving me.

Gasping out a breath, I clutch at my heart.

The darkness will betray you, the seer said.

I heave out a breath.

This is no dream.

It feels … it feels like I’ve fallen into an icy lake and the cold water is seizing up my lungs.

Another breath comes shuddering out.

If it isn’t a dream, that means that Des … Des …

My throat spasms as a cry works its way up.

I’m shaking my head.

No. No, no, no, no.

The cry is building at the back of my throat.

He can’t be—can’t be dead.

I scream, my siren rising within me. My wings flare wide and my scales ripple across my forearms, my skin burning bright, so terribly bright. My fingers throb where my claws have extended.

I don’t feel human, I don’t feel fae. I’m losing myself, my heart and head trying fruitlessly to slip down the bond I share with Des, chasing after the last echoes of his power.

But it’s gone. It’s gone and I don’t know if it’s ever coming back.

We will get it back—or else.

I’m screaming and screaming and screaming, and the whole world is falling. My pain is darkening, deepening like the night until I don’t know where the agony ends and the anger begins.

We’ll kill and kill and kill and kill and—

“Callypso.”

I turn at the echoing sound of Temper’s voice. Her eyes burn with her power. At her feet is Malaki, his body lying prone. Not too far away Janus lays, his form similarly stupefied. Victims of the Thief’s dark magic.

“We’re leaving,” Temper says.

The sorceress’s gaze, her fiery gaze, is focused on Galleghar’s still form.

Her vengeance matches ours …

The former Night King lies sprawled on the ground, unconscious from her last hit.

Temper raises her hand, her palm outstretched.

She means to kill him.

“No,” I say, my voice vibrating with my power. “His death is mine to claim.”

Temper’s eyes narrow on Galleghar, even as her lips curve up just the slightest. The smile is nothing but cruel. “Fine.”

She turns her attention to a sleeping soldier. “You fucked with the wrong humans,” she says, her voice resonating with her own magic.

From her feet, fire flares to life. It races out along the ground in a dozen different directions, heading for the sleeping soldiers. First one alights, then another and another. One by one, the Thief’s minions get swept up by flame.

They shriek as their bodies blacken and burn, and I feel nothing at all.

The fires rage for only a few minutes, and when it’s extinguished, all that remains of the soldiers are blackened bones and ash.

The only people left in the room are me, Temper, Malaki, and Janus—the last two of whom are still unmoving, the Thief’s magic clinging to their skin. And then there’s Galleghar Nyx.

The root of all my suffering.

I rise from the ground, my wings fanning wide behind me. Slowly, I pace to him.

I feel so cold. Even my rage burns like ice. The only things left inside me are pain and vengeance.

Des’s father is beginning to stir, moaning a little.

Temper steps up to him, laughing low in her throat. “You’re going to wish you were dead.” Her voice is inhuman, possessed by her wicked nature. For once, I wholly embrace it.

This is why no one crosses us. We are fearsomely wrought.

I close in on Galleghar, pulling out the iron shackles from my back pocket. I ignore the way the metal sizzles against my skin as I grab the former king’s wrists. Dragging them behind his back, I slap on one cuff, then the other, pinning his arms behind him.

Slit his throat. Rip his heart out and make him eat it. Disembowel him and dance on his innards.

I want it all.

Make him pay for what he did to our mate.

Galleghar’s moans get louder and his eyes begin to flutter.

Crouching next to him, I whisper a single promise—

“Your will is mine.”

All those years I’d been under the yoke of my conscience I’d been running from this single, sobering truth: I can do more than bend others to my will; I can utterly enslave them to it.

All this time I’d hidden from my true nature.

I’ll hide from it no more.