Guardians Book One - Magic Rising

Chapter Fifty

The shock and horror that overwhelmed Kath as her friend's limp body crashed to the ground made the moment the Darkness needed to throw Kath aside in her own mind and flex her arms, stretch up to her full height – even just her body, tall, tall, towering over the short Lady and even over Vicky – and throw back her – his – their head and laugh, horribly.

"This is humanity!" she heard her voice scream. "Weak! Weakening magic! Destroying the forces of nature and tainting it with mortality!" Her hand was flung out to gesture at Pestilence, crumpled in the grass, Lady on her knees at his side, screaming his name, pressing her hands to his thin chest, his cheeks, his heart, her sword flung aside. This can't be happening. Even as she shrieked and wept in her own mind they'd never hear; it might not be her heart but it was her hands that had struck the blow...

She felt herself striding forward to finish the job, her eyes fixed on Lady's back, bent over her love, but in an instant Vicky was between them.

"I think not," she growled in the voice of the Lord of Light, and Kath felt the Dark Lord inside her flinch and yearn at the sound of his brother's voice. Something trembled between them, something ugly and painful and familiar.

"You need to look after Ben, not dally about in these stupid daydreams," her mother scolded her in her memories, and she winced. Ben's eyes had been large and sad, as if he knew – funny, she couldn't remember his eyes, now, the eyes of the adult Ben, the brilliant scholar – but she could remember the eyes of her little brother from when they were just children, sickly and frightened. Dream knew that, she pulled it from my mind. I left him in the forest because I heard the voices of Guardians, and he trusted me...

"But they all betrayed you," said the Dark Lord blandly inside her skull. "Your mother lied. She said she couldn't hear the voices. We are one now, little niece. Why aren't you angry? Maybe he isn't one of us but she was."

"She...didn't mean it," Kath murmured, weakly, tired as her arms raised the sword against Lady's mother once more. Out of the corner of her stolen sight she could see Lady, her long hair a torn flag flying in the wind, her fingers white and taut as she clung to Pes' hands, his lolling head, the gaping wound. Around them the park was boiling with elemental magic, burning a wasteland in the heart of her homeland, and she was fighting a battle by proxy against her own side. But she knew it to be true, in that moment. "She was scared of what we were. I...forgive her."

"You forgive her?" The Lord's voice was astonished. "How? After all she did?"

She heard a scream as the Guardian of Day was struck by some bolt of power from the endless enemies; Kath's heart contracted again as her body swung the sword, aiming for Vicky's hands to disarm her and stab her, but Vicky blocked the blow, barely, her face drawn. They're going to lose. I can't...we can't.... She could see the ravaged pain on the face of the Guardian of Night as he moved towards his once-partner, and she knew not even he knew if he was going to kill her or save her. So much pain. She couldn't even hate the being who'd tried to kill her, not any more, not with the raging grief of the Lord of Darkness in her mind. Her mind was full of his views of the Night creature – how Day had betrayed him, left him for the Lord of Light, thrown him away. It wasn't like that...she was thinking outside of just the two of them, thinking of the larger picture. That's all. It never meant she didn't love him. She wanted him with her...

"She was wrong," she answered the Dark Lord, wearily. Something else he'd said niggled at her mind, but she couldn't concentrate on it. "She wanted what was...best...she might not have done it well but – I'm an adult now. I understand. I – have the choice. I can move on. And Ben...I love him. We should have talked. We could have understood each other...I didn't have to run away from him."