As the birds continued to sing, the Dark wisps of power that encroached on the grove swirled with renewed strength.

“Tell them to stop,” Nile hissed.

Valeria wrapped her fingers around her elbows. Her sorrow threatened to break through her chest in a tidal wave that would crush her all over again. The only thing that kept her from giving in was the knowledge that she wasn’t alone. One look at Nile’s panicked, Light-filled gaze told her that their connection was real. In the span of a few moments she’d learned so much about him and she knew he didn’t deserve to die.

That knowledge wasn’t enough to keep the Dark at bay. The walls around them groaned and cracked under the pressure as if empowered by the birds’ song.

She tried calling out to them and make them stop singing, but their trills only got louder.

Nile grabbed her wrists and a flash of Light bound them together. He groaned with pain as he drank in more of her endless sorrow. The shadows swirling in his eyes was unmistakable now. A clenching ache in the pit of her stomach began to ease.

“You don’t have to do this,” she told him.

Nile grit his teeth together as he set his jaw in a hard line of determination. “I’m not going to let you die.”

Valeria didn’t know why this boy fought so hard for her. She’d told him what she was. She was of angels and angels were of death. The winged creatures had tossed her from their place in the skies. They’d discarded her, and when they had changed their minds they’d come back only to kill her entire family. Now even Tree Mother was gone simply because an angel had sought to bring her back.

The painful memories dulled as Nile drank in her sorrow, allowing her to look at them with a critical eye.

“The angel wanted something from me,” Valeria said absently as she replayed the events in her mind. She’d been cast out. She’d always assumed that meant that she’d been unwanted. But what if she’d had that all wrong?

The angel’s words came back to her in an eerie echo of memory. According to plan.

“An angel did this to you? Why am I not surprised,” Nile said through gritted teeth as shadows swirled up his arms.

Valeria tried to pull away from him, but he bit his fingernails into her wrists as he continued to drink away her icy sorrow. “But I’m no one,” she said, almost as if to herself.

Nile unlatched his grip. Her wrists burned with soft red welds that rimmed her bones where Nile had held on tight. “It’s not just the angel,” Valeria whispered.

Nile wiped the sweat from his brow as the birds finally flitted into silence. “What?”

Valeria’s eyes went wide with realization. “The demon wanted something from me as well.” She spread her fingers and stared at the wisps of shadow crawling across her skin. The Dark wasn’t just beating from the outside of the Obsidian Sea trying to get in. The Dark came from within herself as well.

Nile’s hand rested on her shoulder. “I can help you understand what you are,” he promised. “But first, you have to trust me. Don’t let your sorrow out. Don’t feed the Dark any more than you already have. Just wait for—”

A crash sounded and the impact of a fresh blast sent Valeria falling hard to her knees. She cried out as Nile shielded her from a wave of Light.

His master was here.

She squeezed one eye open to peer through the brilliance that cascaded over Nile in waves. She’d expected his flesh to be melting off his body with the sudden heat that billowed around her ankles. Instead, a wild grin overtook his face as his golden gaze bathed in the familiar brilliance of his master’s power.

“Nile!” came a husky cry that bit through the tempest of gold.

Nile cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled, “We’re here, Master Ferdinand!”

Valeria knew that she should be shielding her eyes and cowering in the small reprieve of shadow offered by Nile’s back, but her eyes watered as she peered around him to stare at the spectacle of a Hallowed master drilling through a wall of bark and shadow.

The malice of the Obsidian Sea had enclosed around them when Tree Mother had died, but now it splintered off like broken glass as Nile’s master stepped through the shadow and ash with ease.

The brilliance ebbed to a soft glow that billowed around his feet as he approached. His golden gaze landed on her with agonizing brilliance. “Who is your friend?” he asked.

Nile hesitated before her answered, and Valeria realized that she might be in danger if this introduction didn’t go well. “This young woman just saved my life.” His golden gaze swirled with shadow as his mood turned somber. She couldn’t tell if it was pity, or her own debilitating sorrow that made him look at her that way. “The sacrifice to save me was great. I owe her more than just my life. I owe her my allegiance.”

Ferdinand frowned at the choice in words. “Allegiance?” he snapped. “What is she? A heathen of the outlands?”

Nile bent down and offered his palm. He ignored his master until Valeria took his hand. “Don’t mind him,” Nile said with a smile. “He never did make a good impression.”

The Hallowed master glowered as his gaze sent Light billowed over her. The hot liquid brilliance burrowed into the wound at her shoulder and she hissed at the pain.

“Malice has found you, child,” Master Ferdinand said.

Valeria couldn’t tell if the observation was sympathetic, or practical.“We make a good pair, your apprentice and I,” Valeria said. She winced as she tugged at the tattered remains of her sleeve to reveal the gash at her shoulder. Where Nile bled Light into the world, she festered in the Dark. The raw power had left its mark when the demon had sunk a Dark shard into her flesh. The malice thrived off sorrow and suffering. It could have devoured her completely if it hadn’t been for Nile. An angry red rim of Light surrounded the wound and kept it contained. The barrier and Nile’s own feeding of her Darkness kept the malice at bay.

“Get away from her,” Ferdinand ordered, his features hard and his tone a blade that sliced through the silence.

Her birds fluttered to life at the command, bursting into the sky and chiding him with sharp cries that were voices better suited for song.

Ferdinand frowned at the display. “Supernatural powers are battling within her. I don’t know how she’s survived this long, but she is not our responsibility.” The old Hallowed held out a hand untouched by age. “Come, Nile. There are other matters we must tend to.”

Nile snarled, for once standing up to his mentor. “Don’t you understand? This girl can save us all. She is…” He glanced at her before saying the word that she hated most in all the world. “She’s an angel.”

Ferdinand frowned, but appraised Valeria once again. She jolted when his magic invaded her, searching and prying away the walls and strings of protection Nile had wound around her soul. For the first time since she’d met Nile, fear gripped her and emotions came pouring back in through the cracks the old Hallowed so carelessly made.

“Stop!” Nile cried as Valeria gasped in pain. She couldn’t face her sorrow and her dread. She’d lost everyone, her reason for being, and if she had to face her broken heart, she would die.

But then Ferdinand did something unexpected. He transformed her sorrow and tugged it away from the fragile, worn center of her soul. He didn’t try to dampen it or lock it away as Nile had done, but sent it into tiny droplets that coalesced black against her skin. It covered her and she spread her fingers to watch the sweeping tingle of black jolts of lightning that was the impossible depth of her emotions and grief. But it didn’t attack her, and instead became a part of her. She felt it, but not as a stabbing, centered blade into her chest. Instead, her whole body ached, but it was an ache she could endure.

“There,” Ferdinand said with a scowl. “She’ll live.” His gaze landed on his apprentice. “You can bring her if you wish, but she won’t help us against the coming battle with the Coterie. Our time runs short.”

Nile wrapped his fingers around hers, his blazing power a contrast against her armor of ice, but it felt right, as if they completed one another, their bond still a lingering thread between them. It frightened her, but she couldn’t find the will to pull away.

“You’ll see,” Nile insisted. “She’ll be the one to save us all.”