Chapters (45)
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Dedication
- Acknowledgements
- ONE
- TWO
- THREE
- FOUR
- FIVE
- SIX
- SEVEN
- EIGHT
- NINE
- TEN
- ELEVEN
- TWELVE
- THIRTEEN
- FOURTEEN
- FIFTEEN
- SIXTEEN
- SEVENTEEN
- EIGHTEEN
- NINETEEN
- TWENTY
- TWENTY-ONE
- TWENTY-TWO
- TWENTY-THREE
- TWENTY-FOUR
- TWENTY-FIVE
- TWENTY-SIX
- TWENTY-SEVEN
- TWENTY-EIGHT
- TWENTY-NINE
- THIRTY
- THIRTY-ONE
- THIRTY-TWO
- THIRTY-THREE
- THIRTY-FOUR
- THIRTY-FIVE
- THIRTY-SIX
- THIRTY-SEVEN
- THIRTY-EIGHT
- THIRTY-NINE
- FORTY
- FORTY-ONE
The Blackbringer paused in shock. He’d reached for the faerie, tasting her power on the air, eager to unskin her spark and drink her light and surge with stolen strength as she ebbed into the emptiness.
Instead he was stung, stunned. It had been thousands and thousands of years since last he’d felt it, but instantly he knew the force that thwarted him. The Magruwen. Traitor. And this lass with Skuldraig in her grasp—she was the Djinn King’s champion. A new champion!
Yanking back his stunned tongue, the Blackbringer remembered the other, the huntress who had undone his armies and finally himself. His bane, Bellatrix. He had believed the world fallen and all such power with it, but he’d been wrong. He experienced a pang of fear as he looked at the small fierce lass.
And then she stunned him again. She dove into him.
Her power didn’t surge instantly into his own as with all the other, weaker faeries, but he knew it wouldn’t. She wielded the champion’s glyph, and as long as she could vision it, she would be whole. The Ithuriel’s champion, that Ifrit warrior with coffee-black skin who’d been his final victim in the Dawn Days, had held himself whole far longer than the Blackbringer would have thought possible. Into the bottle and into the ocean, Kipepeo had clung to that glyph inside the Blackbringer, adrift in the emptiness and not knowing he had already gone beyond all rescue. He had held on fiercely to life, some power beyond magic feeding him strength. But it was useless. He was a prisoner within a prisoner within a prison. When he had at last faltered and failed, the Blackbringer had tasted his power and raged inside his bottle, frenzied with strength and unable to spend it.
This new champion, too, would fail. It was only a matter of when.
Magpie struggled to hold the glyphs bright in her mind and peered around. Darkness without end. It was like falling outside of time, outside the world. As in her memory and in her dream, dim lights flickered in the black. She groped for the bundle the Magruwen had given her and with utmost care, unwrapped it. Heat pulsed within and bright traceries spun from its folds. She pulled away the tatter and unveiled it.
The pomegranate seed. A single star plucked from an ancient sky. Its brilliance pierced the darkness, and Magpie had to shut her eyes. But even behind closed eyelids she saw something was happening. Traceries exploded like fireworks! A feeling swelled in her, not of hollowness or warp or absence but life. And all around her the dying lights began to flicker and flare.