Black Blood (Series of Blood Book 4) Emma Hamm (popular novels txt) 📖

and tapped like a blade against her throat. She wasn’t surrounded by shadows at all. This wasn’t just darkness.

Thousands of Voids, all trapped inside Malachi’s mind, and all starving.

No wonder he had made his choices. Lydia stepped away from him, horror and anger at this fate making her stomach roll.

Villains were meant to be evil. They made the wrong choices because they wanted to hurt people. Not because thousands of souls pulled them in one direction while God-like creatures affirmed those choices were correct.

Her breathing turned ragged. “Malachi, you have to control them.”

“Do you think I haven’t tried?” He stood and threw his arms out. Shadows stuck to his skin like leeches.

Lydia recoiled and her power flared. The shield of light glowing around her had been an adequate protection thus far, but she did not know how long that would last.

“There must be a way,” she whispered.

“You cannot save everyone. You think you are so good, so generous and kind with your golden light and your pure heart. But you forgot me!”

A tear slid down her cheek. There was no answer to that, no way to answer for her own misguided prejudices.

“I am sorry.”

“You aren’t sorry! You chose your own precious prophetic children and painted me as a monster. I became a monster because that is what you wanted! You wanted a beast for your children to fight, a man to take down while the real villains get away with the destroying the world.” He jabbed a finger at her. “You and your kind are the real monsters here. I am just a tool in the grand scheme but I will be the one who is punished!”

His screaming echoed all around her, shoving the words back at her over and over again.

“I cannot save everyone.”

“But you choose who to save, and you didn’t choose me.”

“I will try.”

“You don’t care enough to try.” Shadows were already threatening to swallow him again. His skin contracted, ribs and pelvic bone jutting forward violently.

“None of this is real, Malachi. This is all created by your own mind. You’re in a dream.”

He shook his head, denying her words and shuddering in pain.

Lydia stretched her hands forwards. She willed the moths to settle upon him, to feed him until he was healthy enough to battle the shades of his ancestors.

Even if it was only in a dream.

They landed with wings outstretched and absorbed into his skin. He swelled with the power she gave him. It was a limited taste, hardly the barest flicker of her magic, but it would sustain him enough in this dream to ensure he survived.

She would try to save him. In her desire to see this ended, Lydia had forgotten how pity could strengthen a soul. How every person deserved life, be they evil or not.

White mist funneled from the ceiling and pooled at her feet. “We need to go.”

“You’re ready?”

“Yes.”

She glanced at Malachi one more time, her heart aching. “We have to do something for him. He’s in pain.”

“For all the things he has done, he deserves it.”

The shadows were already feasting again. What little magic she had shared was nearly gone. The ancestors tormenting him weren’t really there, but he considered them to be. His own guilt was destroying his mind and his Dream World. He poured his power and magic into the nothing of the Dreaming and was tainting it.

“No one deserves this,” she murmured.

Burke anchored himself to her hand, and she shot them out of the dream. The glass bubble around her neck vibrated as soon as they were out of Malachi’s reach. It expanded into a small orb, barely big enough to contain her hand.

“Thank you,” Lydia said. “You have survived many more adventures than you should have. Be free for a time.”

She scooped the orb into her hands and let it pull her inside. Water covered her head, and she floated in the silence for a time before opening her eyes.

Pitch held her hands in his, keeping her fingers warm as her body threatened to shut down. His eyes were on her face.

“Welcome home,” he said. “I waited for you.”

Burke shifted beside her, coughing when his lungs expanded with air. He stretched his fingers, stiff with misuse and locked muscles.

“Never again,” he said. “We are never going into the Dreaming again.”

“I thought that went quite well.”

“I don’t like the feeling of a thousand Voids brushing against my soul. Never again, Lydia.”

“Tell the others to prepare. I want to leave as soon as possible. He knows we’re coming.”

Burke stood and left the room, giving the two of them a few moments of privacy.

“We’ll go to the Dreaming again,” Lydia said.

“Not soon I hope?”

“No. Not for a while, but someday.”

Pitch’s fingers linked with hers, his thumb tracing her knuckles. “You found him?”

“Yes. He is not well.”

“Physically?”

“Mentally. I knew he wasn’t sane, but I hadn’t realized the cause was guilt. He doesn’t want to be doing what he’s doing. At least, not entirely. The Five have twisted his mind and convinced him that he is a monster. That we believe he is a monster.”

“We do.”

“It’s not right,” she whispered. “No one should be condemned like that.”

“He’s killed hundreds of people by his hand, and thousands by his order. Whether we made him that way or not, he needs to be put down.”

“I want to save him.” Lydia pulled her hands away, running them through the tangled strands of her hair and holding onto her antlers. “I just don’t know how.”

“Will this end tonight?” he asked. “Do you know yet?”

She reached into her power. The threads of time hummed with her speed as she raced toward her ending, and theirs. Though the fog was still there, only two threads remained. They gave her no sign of what they were, but it was enough.

Lydia shook her head. “There are only two endings now, neither clear to me.”

“Then we fight blind.”

“No. You and yours fight as you always have. Together. It is something Malachi does not have.”

Wolfgang walked into the room with