Sara and Pride escaped Verweald's dangerous streets, but their quest to kill the Sin of Envy has just begun. In search of a way to end the immortal creature's life, Pride and the dying woman find refuge in the manor of Crow's End, where the resident...
The Sin of Envy choked as my fingers cut through flesh, ignoring bone and muscle as the dagger-like points of the shade's gauntlet drove themselves into his heart. It ravaged the Sin's incomparable aura, pulling and spooling yard after yard of Envy's stolen energy until it flowed like curtains billowing in an afternoon breeze. It ate Balthier's power just as a normal Sin would.
A droplet of crimson welled in the corner of Balthier's mouth. It teetered, then fell, creating a lone streak of color on his pallid face.
For all his bravado and animosity, the Sin of Envy looked positively scared when confronted with his own mortality.
"You—," he grated as he released my hair and tried to pry my hand loose of his torso. I managed to stand on my own two feet and hold steady as Balthier's feeble fingers wrapped about my wrist and gave a weak, ineffective tug.
A final breath fell past his red lips and, against my fingertips, his heart stilled. The Sin of Envy looked into my eyes, befuddled and surprised, and whispered, "Prosper, I—."
He buckled, then fell to the ground.
The Sin of Envy said nothing else, and never would.
I staggered as Darius's shade continued to writhe even as it engorged itself on Envy's energy. My muddy knees once more hit the road as I curled in upon my middle and felt the heat of my lifeblood flee my grasp. It saturated my pant legs and the earth below. The entirety of me was beaten and bruised, scraped and sore. I had never felt so inhuman in all my life. I wanted nothing more than to rest—to shut my eyes, and to never open them again.
Not yet...close....
To the east, the sky was lightening. Strains of yellow, pink, and soft, robin's egg blue were appearing on the far horizon. The beauty of those colors seemed to glory in the utter bleakness of the night. The day came nearer. It did not pause to mourn what was lost. Time stopped for no one.
Gazing toward the sun I couldn't see and never would again, I cried the only name I knew who could fulfil my final wish.
"Veleph!"
My voice left me in a crack warble of sound. Small birds chirped in the silence of the morning. When nothing happened, I thought he wouldn't come. I thought he hadn't heard, and I cursed my weakness. I cursed the strength I'd never had and never would.
But then he came.
The shadows dropped by the scrawny trees and simpering bushes vibrated and moved in ways that violated the basic physics of our world. They bent and twined together until they created a veil of darkness that defied the approach of dawn. Those velvet drapes of obscured oblivion gave passage to the Baal.
He wore his humanoid visage, the one I had seen in Peroth's memory. The shadows warped and genuflected at his feet, worshipping the King Below's presence. The world appeared to bow and bend, too, from the thrust of his dusky wings arching above his lithic form. Those wings, dusted in a kiss of gold, were so black the night was brilliant in comparison.
He spoke to me with wry amusement. "You've called, little one. You have my...attention...."
The Baal's smoldering stare roved over me, then Balthazar and Amoroth groaning in the bushes. His gaze sharpened as it moved farther and studied the distance, where the manor lay hidden in the mist.
The night became perceptibly colder.
My left hand, still distorted by the shade's adaptation, landed on the Baal's book. He looked down as if startled. "Please," I begged as the world begun to lose saturation in my eyes. Every word was a battle, every breath a war. "Please."
Veleph hesitated, then knelt. The pants of his uniform were ruined by the thick mud, but he either didn't notice or didn't care as he levered me upright and propped my head against his knee. He lowered his ear toward my mouth.
The Baal smelled like smoke and brimstone—but also like waterfalls and sunlit forests. How odd.
The effort was harrowing, but I lifted my strange hand and held it aloft for his study.
"Take it," I uttered. "Take the shade from me."
In all my weeks at Crow's End, I had been searching for a weapon or a skill or a magic trick I could perform that would create a miracle. I'd flipped through book after book and had grown frustrated when the answer evaded me—but there wasn't a trick. No skill. No weapon.
As the Cassandra had said, I already had everything I needed to save Darius. I'd realized it slowly, when it became apparent I lacked skill and the library remained obstinately stubborn to my perusal. The manor had given me what I needed, and had refused to let me lose sight of my destination in the halls of its knowledge.
"'There is no such thing as revival—only rebirth,'" I quoted as the Baal took my hand between two fingers and turned it for his inspection. His black wings ensconced us in the warmth of murmuring shadow. I could see nothing aside from his bright eyes.
"The plant trimming, grown to its former glory. A rebirth, not a revival. Take the shade—take this bit of Darius's soul. Broken as it is, it can become something...new. It will give him...life...."
I hadn't asked Crow's End for a way to kill Balthier. I hadn't asked for a way to save my life. I'd asked for it to show me how Darius could survive Envy's onslaught—and this was it. It had given me the answer long ago.
Veleph was quiet. In the implacable dark, his eyes were a solid constant holding steady against the abyss I was succumbing to. "You are a strange creature, Sara Gaspard," he murmured at last. "You have my attention, and thus could ask for anything. You could ask me to save your life—but you ask me to save his. Why?"
His hand glided upon mine, the ashen fingers grazing my palm. The shade's abnormality was flaking away as light accumulated and coiled about Veleph's slender hand. His aspect had again devolved to his Fallen form, his lupine teeth gleaming in the wan light of Darius's soul.
I willed the shade to go to him, to abandon me. It went in reluctant increments.
"Because his story isn't finished yet," I breathed as I smiled. The shade's strength was leaving, and I was fading faster. "Because he is my ally, my friend...my determination, my will. Because when I fell, he caught me. He showed me how to stand on my own, and when I couldn't walk, he carried me. When I cried in fear, he was there. When I screamed for vengeance, he was there. Because Darius looks at me and doesn't look away. Because the Sin of Pride taught me to be who I am and to not apologize for it."
My hand dropped. It was again normal and perfectly formed. No shade lurked in the recesses of my mind.
"Because...I love him. Isn't that answer enough?"
Darius's soul was clasped in the Baal's hand. I'd expected it to be nebulous and dark as the shade had been—but it wasn't. It was ivory and filled with a soft, colorful radiance.
It was beautiful.
My eyelids drooped, and my chest ceased to rise.
"Rest now, Sara. Your work is done."
"Okay," I sighed. I was overcome by the most curious sensation, like I was floating or falling, and when Veleph spoke into my ear, it almost sounded like Darius. I wondered if we'd ever meet again. I wondered if I'd see Tara where I was going. I wondered what adventures awaited me on the other side.
"Rest...shadeborn. Take wing and fly to where your eternity anticipates your arrival."
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