What do you mean? Veronyka asked, her shins throbbing with pain as they dug into the ground, though she couldn’t recall dropping to her knees.
Avalkyra lives, and she is hungry. Like the devourer before her, she can do naught but consume. The light will not have her, so she will turn to the darkness instead.
You alone can stand
against her.
- EPILOGUE - AVALKYRA
SIDRA FLEW THEM ALL the way to the ruins of Aura. Avalkyra couldn’t recall giving the order; all she could remember was pain.
But she did not cower from it. She relished it, let it feed her, like fuel to the fire.
Fire.
How it had burned, so white-hot that Avalkyra thought she might go mad with the agony of it. Her left eye was swollen shut, and her lashes and most of her eyebrow melted away into the flesh of her ruined face. But what had beauty ever done for her? And if her eye never opened again, what need had she of both when she was a shadowmage and could borrow the eyes of any person she saw fit? Avalkyra could see everywhere and everything.
So why had she not seen this? How had she not known that this would happen?
As soon as they arrived in that familiar, empty city, Avalkyra fell from the cursed phoenix saddle. It was nighttime, the world dark and cool everywhere except for her face, which burned constantly, a reminder of what she no longer was… what she would never be again.
“Leave me!” she screeched at Sidra, though using her mouth had been a mistake. Fresh, hot pain lanced through her jaw and the flesh of her face, blood pooling in her mouth.
“The wounds,” Sidra protested, even though her bind was still intact. Avalkyra thought of the way the phoenix had acted, the way Veronyka had tampered with their link…. This was Veronyka’s fault.
All her fault.
Leave me! Avalkyra shouted again, into Sidra’s mind. This time the woman did not argue.
Sidra left Avalkyra alone in the place her foremothers had built, the haunting, echoing reminder of all their triumphs and all their failures.
Just as Avalkyra’s body was nothing more than a vessel, so too were these ruins. They were the physical remains, the earthbound relics of former greatness, now dimmed and diminished.
The pain throbbed again, and stumbling around in half blindness, Avalkyra kicked and spat and scraped her fingernails across every visible surface. She hated them all. She hated everything.
Before her was the smoking chasm of the Everlasting Flame, though perhaps it should have been called the Temporary Flame, or better yet, the Forsaken Flame. Axura had gifted them with magic and fire only to take it all away again, leaving her people with no choice but to travel down the mountain, seeking their fortunes and getting tangled with those lesser men in their lesser kingdoms.
They never should have left.
Avalkyra never should have come back.
Why should she serve a goddess who did not serve her? Axura had abandoned them all.
Axura had abandoned her.
Stumbling forward, Avalkyra tripped, falling down the worn-out steps that led to the edge of the empty pit. The impact robbed her temporarily of consciousness, but when she came to, she found herself on the ground, staring into a dark fissure. It ran straight up and down, twice as tall as she was, but concealed in a niche behind some dusty old statue. Avalkyra squinted, unsure if her mind was playing tricks on her.
Deep within were a series of smooth stones, packed tightly and stacked ten, fifteen deep.
Phoenix eggs.
Avalkyra laughed. How could she not? She had spent this entire second life seeking a phoenix, trying to make herself whole again. But the world of fire and light had rejected her, and now, in her lowest moment, she’d found a cache of phoenix eggs, enough to create an army that would rival Lyra the Defender’s Red Horde.
And Avalkyra could not hatch them.
She laughed again, her barely scabbed-over flesh tearing, blood spilling down her throat, choking her. She crawled forward, prying them out, the raw skin of her hands and arms protesting with every movement.
Still she pulled and scraped, leaving bloody smears across their dull gray surfaces, until they loosened, cascading down from their hiding place. Lurching upright, coated with dirt and dust, Avalkyra hurled an egg against the statue—some warrior queen long gone—smiling savagely as the egg cracked against the golden figure. It might look like solid rock, inside and out, but it was not. It was an egg, and eggs—however durable—would eventually shatter.