CoS40

## Chapter 40

**Chapter 40** of **City of Spells** follows **Zekia**.

## **Full Version**

ZEKIA PULLED HERSELF to her feet, blood trickling down to her toes.

It felt as though Ashwood had pulled her apart from the inside. And maybe he had. Maybe he’d done it a long time ago and she was only now feeling the pain.

It had been a while since she’d been this weak, but also a while since she’d been this strong: this clear on who she was and what she needed to do.

The world was a scary place, but she had a family and all they wanted was to protect her from it.

From herself.

Zekia had forgotten that once, but not now.

Karam yelled something and plunged her knife into a demon’s side.

It barely faltered.

The second licked its lips, teeth bared, and Tavia gripped tightly to her charm pouches.

They would be no use.

Magic rarely was, because these demons were made from magic and the dark matter left behind by the most beastly spells. They crawled up from the space between magic and reality. If Crafters were creatures of the Many Gods, then shadow demons were born from the things that came before the Gods. From pure evil.

And evil was a hard thing to kill.

“Here, boys,” she said.

The demons turned their heads to her, Zekia’s voice like a familiar bell in their minds.

She let out a low whistle and they jumped up, retracting their claws, backing away from Zekia’s family.

“Stay!” Ashwood yelled.

The demons flinched at their master’s voice, but their focus stayed on Zekia. They recognized her—the girl who had been their kin—and in a way they craved her.

Craved her familiarity.

Craved her flesh.

The demons slithered toward Zekia, wary of what power she might still hold over them.

Not one to miss an opening, Tavia crouched back down to Wesley’s side and sprinkled some kind of trick dust over his injured leg.

Zekia breathed in a calming sigh and looked back to the shadow demons. They hissed at her wavering focus. They sensed the new weakness in her body and perhaps even her new loyalties.

They felt Ashwood’s influence.

Zekia could feel it too—his mind trying to invade theirs and his voice trying to yell over hers.

*Stay calm*, she told the creatures.

*Kill her*, Ashwood screamed.

Zekia wanted to be strong. Now more than ever she wanted to be strong, but Ashwood’s voice was louder and Zekia couldn’t hold them.

The demons growled.

And then they galloped toward her, arms like ragged nails and spines cracking with the impact of their speed.

Zekia closed her eyes and reached back into her mind.

It used to be as easy as breathing to control these creatures, but the new clarity she had, lifting the fog inside of herself, had cast a darkness on her connection with them.

How could she form a bond with death when she was so disgusted by it?

She heard their calls.

Their growling and the low rumble as half of them—the half made from shadow—caught in the air and broke the breeze.

*Stay*, she thought.

*Enough.*

And it was enough.

She’d had enough of all this darkness inside of her. It needed to stop.

It needed

to

just

*stop.*

Zekia opened her eyes and the demons crouched before her feet. She was in their minds again, though unlike before, she was not one with them.

She was not their kin, but their master.

“Sit. Down,” Zekia said.

They cowered reluctantly with the strength of her voice, pressing themselves into the floor.

She had once thought they couldn’t be killed, because magic could not be killed, but she had seen that there were many ways to destroy something—to butcher it beyond compare—and perhaps magic could not be conquered entirely, but she was starting to believe that evil could.

This evil, so tainted in misery, could be killed by a strength of good just as pure. Zekia could do one final act of good, not for forgiveness, because that was not hers to ask for. But because it was the right thing to do. The only thing that would save her family from the monsters she had helped to create.

“This is not what I made you for,” Ashwood said. “This is not what you are supposed to do.”

But he was wrong.

This *was* what Zekia was made for, what she was always destined to do.

Save her Kin.

Take Malik’s destiny to be a great Liege and do good with it.

Inside of Zekia, her powers rose like a heartbeat, pounding on the surface of her skin.

They wanted to help.

They wanted redemption.

They wanted to be free.

And so, finally, she let them go.

The magic exploded from her and swept over the shadow demons in a blast of glorious yellow light.

Zekia was a sun.

She was the daybreak.

And darkness had no place here.

The demons shook and roared, but it only took moments for them to fade, like the night faded from the sky.

The warmth of her powers stayed with her, just for a moment afterward, and she felt them tinkering with her bones and putting her insides back in place.

Healing her, as a gift for her sacrifice.

And then they disappeared.

Zekia fell to the ground, newly empty.

Newly healed.

Just *new*.

Her magic was gone and she felt like a weight had been lifted from her. She also felt dizzy and like she might just faint if she closed her eyes, but the lightness in her heart was welcome.

This was her true destiny.

This was what she needed: to be free of all the pain her magic had brought.

To use it for good and to finally free herself.

Zekia had spent too long being scared and letting that fear take over, until she became all the things she never wanted to be.

Zekia closed her eyes. She was good.

And she would not be scared again.