His next attack throttled toward me, but I froze the fireball midair and directed it back at him. Cirrus’s eyes widened and he dove to the side as the giant ice snowball crashed into the tree, shattering behind him. It took him a moment to crawl back up.

I continued my assault, focusing on the tree next to him.

It grew rapidly, and branches wrapped around him, imprisoning him in vines. Cirrus grunted and the branches began to whither and burn. When they fell from him in ashes, he gave me an impressed nod.

I just smirked.

A realization struck me. To my knowledge, Cirrus hadn’t had this many Denai gifts. He must’ve been helping himself to a few of the injections. He was now stronger than a Master Denai. And he was fighting without showing any signs of tiring.

But then I saw them—the threads of power flowing through the camp to the battlefield. I could see them all tied to Cirrus. Which meant that if he was fighting me, there was a good chance that he wasn’t controlling Joss and the others. I had to save them.

Cirrus closed his eyes, and large ice crystals formed above him. Seconds later, they spun at me.

I flung up a wall of power and they crashed into it and shattered, littering the ground with flecks of snow. I started to feel myself weakening already. I was draining myself after I had gone through an intense life-altering change. Even though I hated myself for doing it, I reached out to the nearest people and started take their energy to resupply my own.

My breathing slowed and I stood straighter. I crossed my arms and flung them out with blasts of fiery darts, but I soon felt myself drained again. I reached farther, took more from more people. More Septori. I could actually feel them start to collapse to the ground as I took everything they had to offer.

You shouldn’t take from them. Wolf nudged my mind. I could see that he was still circling the edge of the clearing, keeping the attack dogs at bay.

They are not innocent!

They are all innocent in the eyes of the one who loves them.

They hurt me! I tried to justify myself. They hurt my family.

Ja, so did Sinnendor. You forgave them so easily. Why not show these people mercy?

Who are you to talk about forgiveness? You have not walked in my shoes. Only I can choose to forgive someone.

It’s not your forgiveness they need. It’s your mercy. Wolf spoke firmly. You mustn’t take from others, if you’re not willing to give yourself.

My determination wavered and I faltered in my next attack. I made the ground shake beneath my feet and made large cracks appear. I aimed them not at Cirrus but at Lilyana. Cirrus rushed forward and pushed her out of the way just as a giant hole appeared where she had just vacated.

He studied me. “Oh, I see what you’re doing, but it won’t help you for long.” He started to laugh and it sent a chill to my core. I could see his thread of power follow and search and connect with every single Septori I had been draining. A moment later, I heard simultaneous gasps of pain, and power rushed back at me in a painful whiplash. There was a supernatural disturbance as if a rushing wind had passed through and sucked out all the life.

Cirrus had just dealt a hand of death to all of them.

Lilyana watched as one after the Septori running around the camp fell over dead. “What are you doing?” she screamed at him.

“She was using our own army against us, draining them to fuel her powers. Now there’s none for her to drain her in camp. She’ll have to take a chance on them.” He pointed down the hill to the castle. “There’s no way she can distinguish between the armies. She could be hurting her own friends if she tried.”

He was right. I tried to go after and drain Cirrus and the queen but they were shielded against me.

Unless I could touch him. He wouldn’t be able to shield from me if I touched him.

I gathered everything that I could to me—every remaining dreg of strength within me—and marched toward Adept Cirrus. He sent bolt after bolt of fire, wind, earth. Attack after attack.

I threw everything I had into deflecting, but some of them got through and scorched me, bruised me, and injured me.

It was a losing battle, until I realized that I couldn’t lose. I couldn’t afford to lose.

I stopped fighting against my fear of pain and started focusing on the pain. I could deal with pain—I’d been a born Siren. Sirens relished pain. Instead of fighting it, I welcomed it. Used the pain and fear to bring forth my other gift. Ignoring the blackening vision, I marched forward and watched as Cirrus backed away from me in fear. Power raced up and down my arms. Visible waves of dark power rolled along me.

Cirrus was scared.

Every painful step closer to him I came, the wider my smile grew.

He tripped over a root sticking out of the ground.

“No, no, it can’t be. You should be dead by now.”

It hurt and I knew that I would blackout soon, but the raspy words fell from my lips and I knew he heard them because he paled. “I’m not afraid of death, not when I know the timing of my own death, for I control death.” My finger touched Cirrus through his shirt straight to his hateful black heart.

I commanded it to stop beating and watched sadly as he shouted, clutched his chest, and died.

Lilyana screamed in dismay and ran to him. She cradled his body, appearing pitiful. Her hair had come loose, tears streaked down her face, and her dress was ruined from the mud. It was obvious that without Cirrus, she was nothing more than a beautiful, broken doll.

I turned from her and walked through the camp to see it littered with the dead bodies of the Septori. Dead not by my own hand but by the will of Adept Cirrus.

I should have felt relieved, avenged. Instead I felt hollow. The more I walked, the number I felt, even when I passed the bodies of Talbot and Mona lying near each other in the grass. They both looked peaceful. I saw the small book that poked out of his vest, and I reached down and pulled out the Horden journal.

I tucked it inside my dress.

It was a death march. My footsteps silent as whispers, I made it to the edge and gazed across the field to the castle. More bodies lay strewn across the ground. Young and old, some of the queen’s own army and her Septori, the others Elite and Tieren’s army. I kept walking through the field, my body quivering and shaking with emotion and exhaustion. From where I stood in the middle of the field, I could still see the battle raging on within the castle walls. A few Denai that were close to me fell to the ground. I assumed that without Cirrus’s control they had little power left of their own. But I hoped with their freedom, they were only dazed. Not dead.

But the large Septori army still fought. Why shouldn’t they? They had already breached the castle walls. There was no way I could attack them all without harming everyone.

The ground shook and I heard the sound of hundreds of horses behind me. I turned in fear, thinking I was about to be run down by a second wave of Septori. Except they weren’t wearing red. The army that came charging down the hill was actually two separate armies, side by side.

I couldn’t help but smile and cry as the hill was covered with a hundred SwordBrothers riding into battle. Beside them, a much smaller army of Denai. The SwordBrothers rode right past me and dashed into the castle. Within minutes, I could hear the tide of battle change. People started yelling, not in pain, but in excitement.

They were cheering.

It didn’t take much to pick out the large dark form of Pax Baton and Lorna Windmere’s short-cropped hair leading the throng onto the remains of the battlefield. Behind them I saw Adept Kambel trotting admirably on a donkey. Breah followed close behind him and kept yelling at Kambel that he was going to fall off and kill himself before he even did any good.