“You were the monster,” Ilvani said. “No spirit prevented you from passing on from this world.”
“You’re right,” Yaraella said. “I stretched out my hands, and you took them. You anchored me to the world-you and Elina.” Her gaze rested on her child, and the shift in her emotions was stunning. Her face filled with love and tenderness that for an instant transformed her into a pure soul. But Ilvani wouldn’t be fooled again. She knew the threat Yaraella posed now.
“You used my hands for your vengeance,” Ilvani said. She discovered her voice was strangely calm, remote. “Your hate burst out of me and the child and corrupted all it touched. It was my fault,” she said, looking down at her hands. “I didn’t know how to see through you. What will you do now, snow rabbit? You have no one left to hate.”
“I will live on in my child and in you,” Yaraella said. She went down on her knees and reached out for Elina. “Our spirits are entwined.”
Ilvani stepped forward to grab the child before she could run to her mother. “It will drive her mad and destroy us just as you’ve destroyed yourself. You’ve been here too long, little dead rabbit. You don’t have a body to go back to, and this child’s is too pure for you.”
“Perhaps you’re right,” Yaraella said, her eyes alight with amusement that sickened Ilvani. “I need a vessel that’s already been tainted. What a mad, powerful witch we would make, Ilvani. Wychlaran and shadar-kai-the fey realm and the shadow. No world could hide from us.”
At that, Ilvani smiled. Her reaction gave Yaraella pause. “You want to feel a shadar-kai’s soul? Little rabbit, that knife wound in your belly was nothing to the kind of pain you’ll know at my touch. You should leave this place while you still know yourself.”
Yaraella lunged at her. Ilvani let her clawlike hands fasten onto her upper arms. Yaraella’s black gaze bored into her. Ilvani calmly leaned forward and pressed her lips against the witch’s.
The Veil between the worlds, she thought, is no more difficult to penetrate than the barrier between souls.
Ilvani ripped open the Veil between them.
“First you’ll feel pain,” Ilvani said against the witch’s mouth. She parted her lips and poured blackfire into Yaraella. “If you don’t fight it, the pain can be the lover’s touch. If you resist …”
Yaraella’s body trembled. She held on to Ilvani to keep from falling. The blackfire filled her and spilled out of her eyes and mouth. She coughed and gagged and tried to breathe. Her hands went to Ilvani’s throat.
“Pain … isn’t enough,” Yaraella said, her voice shredded by the fire. She dug her fingers into Ilvani’s throat.
Ilvani reached up and tore the witch’s hands away. She was stronger than the snow rabbit now. “You’re wrong. The pain is everything. You’ll see. My soul is inside you now. You’ll see.”
Yaraella cried out. Ilvani touched the witch’s chest and felt her heart beating a hard, erratic rhythm. Then her awareness narrowed. Her body faded, and she was somewhere else, in the dark.
For a breath, Ilvani faltered. She didn’t know her way. Her soul flew free from her body, absorbed in Yaraella, in the darkness with the touch of the Feywild upon her. She didn’t know this place. What if she lost herself here-trapped and joined to the twisted witch forever? Yaraella would get what she wanted.
Ilvani clenched her hand into a fist and felt an object scrape her palm. In the dark, she couldn’t see it, but she knew what it was-the piece of obsidian Ashok had given her. The difference between what was real and what wasn’t lay with her.
“I’m still Ilvani,” she said. She gripped the stone until it pierced her flesh. The blood flowed like cleansing water. Ilvani let herself go, screaming as she released the pain and the blackfire in a wild rush.
She heard Yaraella’s answering cry of anguish, but she didn’t relent. Her awareness was everywhere. Her soul overwhelmed Yaraella, tearing her apart as the wychlaran had tried to shatter Ilvani.
“This is a shadar-kai soul,” Ilvani said. “Only a shadar-kai can survive the pain.”
When it was over, Ilvani was a long time coming back to herself. She gathered up every piece of her soul, drawing them in protectively to the small light that was her essence.
She was Ilvani, with souls and boxes of memories. Her flesh was the box. All she had to do was keep the box safe, the lid closed.
All the while, she felt Elina’s presence, distant yet always beside her. But when she awoke, the little girl was gone. She was still on the raft, and she felt that the bonds of the ritual still held her.
Why? Ilvani thought. Why hasn’t the circle been broken?
Panic seized her. Had she truly banished Yaraella, or was she still here, holding Ilvani captive?
Then she saw him on the lakeshore-the reason she was still here.
Ilvani kneeled next to Ashok’s lifeless body. She clutched the obsidian stone-her lifeline. It had their blood on it, hers and Ashok’s.
His eyes were closed. His scarred face looked more at peace than she’d ever seen it. She reached out her free hand, her fingers hovering above the skin of his face, his neck, and chest. Shadows bled from his body and encircled her hand.
In a violent motion, she hurled the stone away and tried to grasp the dim vapor with her hands. There was no way to hold it. Her hands were useless again, always useless.
“It’s too easy,” Ilvani whispered. Tears ran down her face, but she barely felt them. Her body was frozen. She couldn’t breathe under the weight of the ice. Playfully, mockingly, the shadows lingered at her fingertips, but when she moved, they scattered. Even her breath drove them away.
She looked up and saw a figure striding toward her across the vast nowhere realm. He had to walk a long way, but when Ilvani saw his face at last, the ice tightened around her heart. Another moment and it would crush her.
“Brother,” she said in a voice dredged up from the deep, frozen sea.
“Well met, Ilvani,” Natan said. The cleric kneeled in front of her, with Ashok’s body between them. He touched Ashok’s chest, and more of the shadows drifted away. “You shouldn’t linger here, Sister. Living people aren’t welcome.”
“Why did He let it happen?” Ilvani asked, her voice trembling.
Natan said gently, “Why don’t you ask Him?”
“No.”
He sighed. “Still stubborn. But you’ve come far, Sister, and I’m proud of you. You’re becoming what you were meant to be.”
“What was he meant to be?” Ilvani said, looking down at Ashok’s dead face. “A shadow in the void?”
Natan’s expression was full of sorrow. “Part of him wanted this, Sister-he welcomed it. Now that Ashok has seen it, a part of him thinks the void is inevitable. Death is the only certainty, so he embraced it harder than ever so the fear of it would not destroy him.”
“Too easy,” she repeated in a hard voice. “Tempus must claim him.”
Mild surprise lit Natan’s face. “Are you asking on his behalf?”
“I shouldn’t have to!” Ilvani cried. “The gods don’t need my plea.”
“Tempus does,” Natan said. “He cannot claim Ashok because Ashok shuns the gods. No one can touch his soul-”
“Then I claim it,” Ilvani said. “By the Veil between this world and all others, I will keep his soul for him, until he decides where it belongs.”
“You don’t have the power to change his fate,” Natan said. “Don’t you remember your own words, Sister?”
“Then what’s the purpose!” Ilvani clenched her hands into fists and watched the shadows fly from her. “Why do I hear the whispers in the dark? Why do the spirits, the telthors, and the hateful ghosts pluck at me? What’s the purpose of making me see things that burn my eyes if I can’t change their fates?”
Natan closed his eyes. A light suffused his skin and flushed the gray color golden. He was so beautiful, his scent so warm and real that Ilvani wanted to bury herself in it and fade away. When he opened his eyes, he looked content, full of something that blossomed from deep within him. Ilvani knew that look well. In life, he’d worn it every time Tempus spoke to him in a vision. The rapture was all the more intense in death. Natan was with her and yet far beyond her reach-he was at one with his god. She felt joy for him and at the same time an intense hatred and envy of Tempus.