Siege of Shadows (Effigies #2)(79)

Its hold on you is getting weaker . . . If we work together . . . if we share this battle, we can overcome it completely. . . . For just today, for just a second . . . Maia, let me take you. . . .

There were too many voices in my head: one telling me to kill Rhys and the other telling me to kill myself.

I can’t do it alone. Let me out. . . . Let us . . . help each other. . . .

“Maia.” Rhys tried to struggle back to his feet, but his unwieldy legs collapsed beneath him and he fell back. He gripped the soil, dirt collecting in his fingernails as he let out a haggard sigh and looked up at me. “Please come back. Come back to me.”

Painfully, slowly, my lips pried apart. “Rhys . . .” But that was all I could manage.

“Fuck, forget it!” Jessie raised her gun.

And that was the trigger. I released the mental defenses I’d desperately been holding on to, and just like that, a new power filled me. Natalya. Two energies connecting within one form. The power overwhelmed everything else in me, shorting out the command, the white noise that had been dulling my mind. With the force of two Effigies, I stomped on Jessie’s hand, pinning it to the dirt. She gasped in pain, but she was strong too; she managed to slip her hand out from under the pressure. While she dragged herself away, my fingers curled around the steel band on my neck, and with a grunt, I tore it off.

“Shit,” I heard Jessie swear. One could never underestimate the power of adrenaline. Despite the pain from her gunshot wound, Jessie dragged herself to her feet and began running as fast as she could to the river alone. And I was about to go after her. That was the plan. But . . .

It was as if a tidal wave had drowned me. Two energies suddenly torn out of balance.

I should have known.

This was never going to be a partnership.

“No, stop!” I doubled over, grabbing my head with both hands. “Stop . . . stop!”

I was . . .

I . . . I . . .

. . . . . . I . . . . . .

Air filled my lungs. Sweet and dense. I was alive again. Back into this body.

I was alive.

“Maia? Maia, what’s going on?”

That voice.

Quietly, I turned my head.

And saw him.

Feeble. Burned.

Kneeling in front of me.

The hilt of my sword formed first from the elegant dance of flames, that cool, familiar grip. The tip was last, buried in the grass. The cold sensation that tingled through the skin. That horrid wildness I’d been taught to suppress my whole life now quivered through my bones.

“Aidan,” I whispered.

Aidan heard the girl’s voice but knew immediately that it wasn’t Maia who’d spoken. For one passing moment, his arms were limp at his sides. He sat still, helpless—that is, until the panic finally settled in. His skin paled. His body shook. The fear of death gripped him.

“Oh god,” he breathed. “Oh god.”

What must it have felt like for him to see the large, beautiful eyes he loved wet with bloodlust? I could hear her screaming, fighting inside her own mind. It wouldn’t take long for her to return.

But this wouldn’t take long either.

Aidan was already leaning back, his wide, terrified eyes locked on my sword as I raised it high above my head. Zhar-Ptitsa. He knew its name.

“It’s okay.” Tears streamed down his cheeks—and strangely, tears streamed down mine as I aimed to murder the man I’d once called a friend. “It’s okay. Do it. Do it, Natalya.”

My hands shook above me.

“But . . . I didn’t want to.” The words trembled out of him as the tears wetted his lips. “I didn’t—you have to know that. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”

I hesitated. Why was I hesitating? Why?

“Maia?”

“Agent Rhys! Ms. Finley!”

“Aidan!”

“Aidan! Oh god, Aidan!”

Figures were rushing toward us. Agents. I recognized some of them. Director Prince’s eldest son, Brendan Prince, was among them and—Naomi. She was barefoot, running toward us with her high-heeled shoes in her hand, but she stopped the moment she saw me, saw the sword I lifted.

“I did everything I was asked,” I called out over the noise. “I did everything, but you . . .” I lowered my arms, the tip of my sword touching softly against the ground before my hands started to shake. “You . . . Why didn’t you protect me?”

I fell to my knees as Zhar-Ptitsa faded into embers that brushed past my body and fluttered with the wind into the moonlit night. My time was up. She was coming.

Closing my eyes, I let the darkness take me.

? ? ?

The story was that an anti-Sect gunman had infiltrated the estate looking to murder Blackwell. Blackwell’s wounded body and the shattered windows were proof enough, though it didn’t stop questions from being asked. Dignitaries left the fund-raiser quickly while journalists scurried to put together their news reports.

I sat on the front steps of Blackwell’s estate, my dress torn in places, my body wet with sweat as I watched the ambulance take Rhys to the nearest hospital for his burns.

Rhys.

“Natalya,” I whispered as the bright sirens disappeared into the night. “You . . . weren’t lying to me after all.”

Each word plummeted to the floor like a stone. I had to fight to keep from following them. My limbs felt weak, my mind blank but for the memory of Rhys pleading for death at Natalya’s hand.