My head was spinning, yet again, and I looked up at Erin through bleary eyes. The mirror at my back was warm, superheated by the power thrumming through it. The golden chalice in her hand, cupped with her delicately sculpted fingers seemed to catch the bright candlelight with a supernatural brightness and I cringed away from it. She had condensed Light into a drinkable poison, a concoction of herbal and Divine poison designed to weaken me so she could…What?

“Have you still not worked it out, Hrulinar? I have truly ruined your mind and it’s so upsetting. You used to be so witty, so charming, so incredibly hard to ignore. Now…” She let an overdone expression of sadness play across her smooth, perfect face. “Now, you’re just on the other side of human and it’s…Well, it’s boring.”

“We have about ten minutes until the mirror will be ready,” Mara called from the table, sweating dripping down her own pale face. Her white-blond hair was clinging to her limply. Her beauty had faded next to Erin’s exquisite perfection.

“Perfection…”I whispered and with horror and something akin to devastation, I realised what I had been missing.

“There you go,” Erin said and grinned broadly. “I knew you’d get there.”

My eyes roved across her face again and I felt time slow as I noted each feature. Her eyes were almond-shaped, dark-lashed, stunning. Her nose, softly pointed and perfectly proportionate to her face. Her lips were parted softly as she watched me examine her features, their fullness and colour unmatched by any human.

She had always been beautiful but now the touch of Divinity created something understandably miraculous in its beauty. I felt cold all over as I finally saw the truth.

“She’s…inside you.” The words slipped from me and with disgust I made my way to my knees and clutched at the bars again, my eyes boring into Erin, desperate to see the goddess that was animating her.

“Most of her consciousness isn’t,” Erin clarified. “Just as you’re stuck to Alira but here with your own consciousness, Shadesorrow is bound to me. I waited until she recreated my body and was implanting the part of my soul she had available and then I struck. She’s particularly susceptible to the Light. Just like you.”

I threw my eyes back to Mara who, despite her now wan face, glowed with pride.

“You’re not a real witch,” I said, confused. “You’re something else.”

“Mara is my first follower,” Erin said and I saw now that she was literally perfect. I saw the traces of Aethra in her eyes, the arch of her brow, the line of her jaw. Shadesorrow’s own grotesque appearance was dulled by feminine grace and was written all over Erin now.

“The Light is persuasive, easily dissuaded from its own purpose. The Father is, afterall, merely a mythological representation of the power of human divinity. He has no real sway, no real power.” Mara’s hands were now forming into claws as she let Light flow around her skin, illuminating her in a strangely familiar way. The Light was chased by purple flickers, the colours wrapping themselves around her flesh.

“Alira can do this,” I whispered, more to myself, shocked. “She has this ability.”

“And who made her what she is?” Erin barked, frowning. “Of course she can do this! But she won’t be able to for long. Once she comes to rescue you, I will end my enthrallment and this tangled mess will finally be cleared.”

“How did she enthrall you?” I gasped, still unable to take my eyes off Erin’s face.

“She didn’t,” scoffed the beauty. “I did that to myself. It was a byproduct of ensuring my soul was properly preserved. I couldn’t find a way around it so I just…” she half-shrugged. “I just kept her quiet while she grew up. We couldn’t have a young Alira accidentally commanding me, could we?”

Alira’s painful anger and unexplained silence suddenly flared in my mind. Her mother had enforced the silence to stop her from accidentally uttering a command and this removal of will echoed my own torture to the point of feeling like a memory of my own. That this silence had a nefarious origin enraged me beyond reasoning. A flicker of Alira’s own desperation to be understood bolted through me and I let a low growl escape me, inhuman.

“Down, boy,” Erin said but her face lit up with a delight that repulsed me. I pressed further into the bars, my skin tingling distractedly.

“Alira was never meant to be anything but a pawn, Hurlinar.” Erin said gently and she knelt before me, setting down the chalice and letting her hand rest on mine.

Indignant anger flared and faded, like a pulse of light flashing across me. I could feel something surfacing within me but I struggled to understand it.

“She’s in the way now,” whispered the witch. “And she’s keeping you from being free.”

Instead of softening me, her tone stiffened my resolve. I clenched my jaw and breathed in through my nose, my nearly-human heart racing with barely contained rage.

“You have orchestrated the destruction of so many lives,” I said. “For what? To trap a goddess? What then, Erin? What horrors do you have in store for me? I am back to being what I was…” I felt my face fall, blank, an image, a memory crowding into my mind.

I was alone, atop this plateau for the thousandth night. I had been keeping count and tonight was the thousandth moonrise I had seen, alone, my power leaking into the rock around me. My hands in my illusionary pockets, I faced the edge of the plateau and watched the moon come out from behind a cloud. The wind blew across me, a scent of something making me turn.

I felt her nearing me. I felt her coming closer. I felt the uncontrollable, wild urge to fling myself into her arms. I felt her…

And then she was suddenly there, wisps of moonlight clinging to her apparition. She was not real, merely an image cast by her from a distance.

“Hrulinar,” Erin said, her image’s black hair silver.

My desperation to hold her was insurmountable but I couldn’t move. She had commanded me to burn. She had commanded me to yearn but never touch. She had instructed my body to desire but never to reach out.

“Good to see you’re well,” she whispered and I fell to my knees at her unspoken command. My mouth would not speak.

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I was fully aware of her commands:

Burn. Desire. Beg.

Freeze. Speak not. Be still in all ways.

The painful feelings were warring within me, wringing from me the power that drenched the crystals below me. My entire being condensed into two warring feelings:

Passion.

Submission.

“For a thousand nights, you have waited for me to return,” Erin’s shade whispered and I broke, immobile but pulled forward endlessly. “Am I as you remembered? Speak.”

“No,” I cried into the wind. “You are a thousand times more beautiful. A thousand nights worth of passion distilled.”

“Burn, Hrulinar. Your pain is what I desire the most.”

And I did. I writhed. I ached. I was torn apart again and again.

“I do have a task for you, darling. We have a wayward witch,”

The burning fizzled out, ice replacing the fire across my skin.

“No,” I whispered and her shade looked at me blankly. “Not again.”

“Oh, Hrulinar…” her tone was a warning but I had not steeled myself enough and her command felt like a mountain falling atop me. “Find Tala and remind her why she should never have left. You’ll find her in the monastery in Lightholde. Leave her child unharmed. He’s male and we’ve met our male quota this season.”

“Erin,” I pleaded and felt the burning across me vanish altogether. Sensation stopped, I was falling, her love ripped away.

“Use her own knife, as is custom. If you’re caught, kill anyone who sees you.”

Her image disappeared and with her went the bindings holding me in place. Against my will, I shapeshifted into a bat and was gone to do her bidding, her unwillful assassin again.

“I see your memories are returning,” Erin said as she watched the memory fade from my eyes. “That’s…alarming.”

Her voice was distant because I was suddenly blind and deaf, my memories crashing upon me. I was a raft up on the waves and my memories assaulted me, drowning me. I had done those horrible, terrible things at her behest but my hands had wielded the blades that had ended those lives.

Without warning she threw the chalice into my face. I sputtered, the liquid burning my Divine flesh but the monkshood slipped between my lips as I gasped. I desperately tried to spit it out but the colloidal Light had stunned me.

“Three minutes,” Mara said from across the room. My hands loosed on the bars and I fell back against the warm mirror.

“In three minutes, Shadesorrow will come through that portal behind you,” Erin said, her manic glee bright on her face. She stood from her crouch and paced slowly around the cage. “I’ve explained how you are the single biggest threat to her. How her own power, derived from Aethra, resides within you. I’ve also let it slip that perhaps you are the reason Alira is still alive. Alira, who now also poses a threat…”

“Two minutes,” Mara intoned.

“In two minutes, Shadesorrow will join us, attempt to Unmake you and thus weaken herself detrimentally. Shadesorrow doesn’t have her own Divine lineage, Hrulinar. She is Aethra’s other half and as much as she is different, she is entirely the same. Unmaking you will be her last folly. As soon as she sinks her claws into you, when she is at her weakest, I will enthrall her and Mara will replace me as your Mistress.”

“One minute.”

“In one minute, I will become Shadesorrow’s Mistress.” Erin had made her way around the cage and was before me again. “The parts of my soul that are missing are inconsequential. Shadesorrow will fill in the missing pieces.”

“Your arrogance is astounding,” I spat at her. My body was the weakest I had ever felt, my stomach churning. I could feel my mortal heart stuttering painfully.

“I’ve suffered for far too long for this to fail,” Erin whispered and I rolled painfully to my back to face her better. Her face was almost inhumane in its depiction of desperate need. “I’ve suffered for too long…”

I felt my heart stop. Doom rolled across me, the terror of life fleeing before my eyes.

“Hrulinar?” Erin’s voice was panicked. “Mara!” She shrieked. “How much monkhood did you use?” She rounded, my wide open eyes seeing her panic turn to rage.

“All of it,” Mara said with alarm. “You told me to!”

“I underestimated how human he had become,” Erin said with anger. “The fool had really given her everything he had left.”

“Is he…”

“No, but his heart is having trouble starting.”

It beat once and stilled again.

“Should I open the cage?”

“Shadesorrow’s arrival is imminent.” Erin turned back to me and I felt the mirror flex and ripple, the glass becoming pliable. A bright light shone through the room and a taloned foot extended from the silver portal. With a shudder, Shadesorrow stepped through, her leathery wings barely contained in the gilded cage. I watched, detached as she shook out her mane of silver hair and her alien eyes met first Mara’s and then Erin’s. Finally, her head dropped and she eyed me hungrily.

“The bars, Erin, were unnecessary.”

“To contain him,” the witch said but the tremble in her voice was thick.

My heart beat once and stilled. The tether within me was thinning, stretching. I felt Alira’s alarm and suddenly, the ribbons of the bond were slipping through my fingers, the end attached to me fading.

Shadesorrow bent and lifted me into her arms, her long claws digging painfully into my skin.

“Prince of Beasts,” she hissed. “You couldn’t even meet your end as anything but the worst of all the Beasts.” She let go of my legs and they swung limply. Both her clawed hands cupped my shoulders, my head lolling to the side, my eyes still wide, unblinking.

My heart beat once and stilled.

She lifted me, brought my neck to her mouth and as her many teeth sank into my skin I accepted the end of my immortality. I prepared to die, wondering what the next part of my existence would look like. Where do gods go when they die?

My blood–real, mortal blood–dripped down my chest, staining my shirt.

As blackness took me, my body weightless, I heard a voice calling my name.

Hrulinar!

It was beautiful, the most lovely thing I had ever heard, bright and full of life. Was this Aethra welcoming me home?

My blood dripped down my body as Shadesorrow’s claws sank into my flesh, dripping from my fingertips.

“Now!” Erin screamed and the world was gone.

I was nothing, nowhere.

Hrulinar!

The voice called me again and with a soul-rending explosion, I was seeing through Alira’s eyes.

All around her, the syphon was breaking, the ground beneath her trembling.

I’m sorry I failed you.

Her head whipped around, looking for the source of my voice.

“Hrulinar!” she screamed. Her desperate panic was strange to see on her lovely face.

She was beautiful now.

She had always been beautiful, truthfully.

That’s what love does, though, isn’t it? Makes you see things as they are meant to be seen.

“He’s…dying!” She stared at her hands and blinked back tears. I noticed the fading green glow of her skin and wondered what that was all about.

“Then go to him,” Therin said and his hand rested on her shoulder, reassuringly. “We’ll follow right behind you.” She nodded once and drew her daggers and with a whisper of shadows, she was gone, flowing with the air down the passages and out the entrance to the catacombs. She reformed atop the boulder, gasping, clutching her daggers tightly.

“I can feel you,” she said. “I know you’re here. Don’t let go.”

Help…

“I’m coming.” She turned and faced south toward Lightholde, the moonlight dimmed by a cloud. “Don’t let go,” she pleaded.