Chapter 41
Too many things happened all at once.
Durlain started talking. Ancelet started talking.
I began inching back, tugging Durlain with me, trying to figure out just how far we’d have to run to reach the stables …
and then the tall, purple-haired woman by Ancelet’s side shook from her paralysis, snapped, ‘Durlain Averre?’ and swung up her gold-ringed hand with obvious intent.
There was no time to think.
There was no time to take cover.
A wall of white-hot fire burst towards us from her palm, impossibly intense in this hot, humid place – and I reacted in a burst of newly woken reflexes. Isa. Algiz.
Ice. Shield.
The roar of the flames stilled. With a blinding flash, the attack slammed into my protective spell, then fizzled into a flurry of sparks that charred the portraits and the tapestries … but not me. Not Durlain. Not so much as a scorch mark on either of us – and at once no one was talking anymore.
Just staring.
At me.
It was only then, in that heartbeat of absolute silence, that I realised what I’d done.
Durlain recovered before I did, left arm dragging me behind him, right arm flinging up to aim at the other two fireborn. ‘No one—'
The Garnot lady started screaming.
‘Witch!’ Her voice was pitched so high it hurt my ears; next to her, Ancelet winced and lurched away. ‘Witch! There’s a witch in the—’
Fire shot like a whip from Durlain’s fingertips, slicing through the air and wrapping around her pale, ladylike throat.
The screaming cut off with a strangled gasp.
Her eyes bulged, hands clawing at the fiery cord for a last moment before she collapsed with a gurgle to the ground, the skin of her neck a blistering mess.
‘Durlain!’ Ancelet sputtered.
I wasn’t breathing.
Mere paces away, voices were shouting. Heavy footsteps slammed against smooth stone floors. Someone was calling for reinforcements.
‘Run,’ Durlain snapped, shoving me away from him – towards the other side of the endless corridor, towards the maze-like castle beyond. Men yelled about witches close-by. Fire was gathering in his palm again. ‘Run, hide, get the fuck out of here— Thraga!’
I stood frozen. ‘But you— I can’t leave you—’
‘Thraga, please.’ The look in his eye was frantic. I’d never seen his hands shake like that, had never heard his voice break like that – had never seen him so close to blind, mindless panic. ‘I’ll manage, I’ll find you – just fucking move, I’m begging you.’
I’ll manage.
In this wretched state?
‘But—’
‘Look, I don’t know who you are,’ Ancelet said, staring owlishly at me even as the noise rose to a clamour behind his back, ‘but if Durlain says you need to run, he’s generally right.’
I barely felt my legs.
I looked at Durlain, feeling as though I was watching the world through warped glass, as though a rune spell was distorting the edges of reality again – sharp, self-composed Durlain Averre, who always had a plan, looking inches away from collapsing into hysteric shrieks.
His eye was wide, pleading. His lips were moving, and although the sound didn’t pierce through the roar in my ears, I could read their shapes – Thraga, run, please, run, run, run—
‘No,’ I heard myself say even as I began staggering back. Wasn’t I better than this? Didn’t he want me to be better than this? ‘I can’t—’
Fire flared.
Not from his palm. I had to blink twice to realise it, that it wasn’t his magic setting the corridor alight around me – and that, finally, knocked the sense back into me, prey instinct catching up with me at long last. Fire ahead, cutting off the way behind Ancelet.
Fire behind me, barring the exit as well.
Armed shapes moved behind the curtain of flames as it crawled closer, closer, closer …
And parted.
As if to let someone through.
‘Your Majesty?’ Ancelet gulped, gawking at a crooked silhouette beyond the fire.
My heart stopped … and beside me, Durlain’s arm fell down.
It wasn’t fear, the ashen shadow drawing over his face. It was something worse. A look I knew from the men I’d ruined, one that always came upon them in the end – resignation. Recognition. Rage moving over for inevitable defeat.
No more plans.
Oh, hell – what had we done?
I numbly followed his gaze to the wall of fire.
To the tall, gaunt man appearing with limping steps from behind that shimmering curtain, flanked by soldiers in gleaming armour – no crown on his long grey hair, no cloak on his thin, sharp shoulders, but the arrogance carved into every line of his emaciated face was all the identification I could need.
King Lesceron Garnot.
His eyes – unnervingly pale purple – slid past me, past the burned corpse on the floor, to settle finally on Durlain’s unbreathing presence.
A serpentine smile crawled across his thin lips at the sight, and for a moment, even a swift death in the fireborn flames seemed preferable to staying in this man’s vicinity – that expression unpleasant in a way that made me remember the oily fog on my skin.
Throwing myself into the fire meant leaving Durlain to deal with whatever was happening, though, and the ghastly paleness of his face suggested what was happening was truly very bad. He didn’t speak. But his body spoke for him – breath shallow, fists clenched, jaw tight enough to shatter.
‘Nephew.’ Lesceron drew out the syllables. ‘I’ve been waiting to see you again.’
Durlain didn’t move.
Lesceron smiled wider and turned back to me, gaze trailing down my body as though I was a particularly pretty vase he was considering buying. I stood paralysed. Didn’t even try to sign. The heat was stifling, almost painful; he could fry me alive with the slightest flick of his wrist.
‘Very well,’ the king continued after that long moment of assessment, sending Durlain another slippery smile. In the flickering light of the fires, his skin seemed almost leathery. ‘You have chosen to honour our agreement, then. I knew I could count on you to see sense.’
The world skipped a beat around me.
Agreement?
There was an agreement?
‘I’m going to need an amendment.’ Durlain didn’t meet my gaze. His voice was a tight rasp, too fast, too urgent. ‘If we could discuss this in private—’
‘Dur?’ I squeaked.
He cut himself off with a sharp inhale.
Lesceron’s gaze shot back to me – lilac eyes narrowing in a brief moment of interest I felt like poison on my skin. An eternity ticked by before his smile spread again – looking genuine this time, in a malicious, gleeful way that squeezed the breath from my lungs.
‘Oh.’ A soft, dragging purr. ‘Oh, she doesn’t know, of course.’
Durlain’s fingers were clenching by his side – unclenching and clenching again, a twitch away from drawing fire. ‘Uncle, there’s no need for—’
‘What agreement?’ I said shrilly.
He stiffened mid-word.
Then he averted his gaze, skin pale as chalk, eye squeezed shut as if in pain. No answer – not a single mumble.
Lesceron’s laughter rippled down the hallway. ‘Oh, Durlain. What a delicious puzzle you bring to my doorstep once again. It’s all about his sister, of course, girl – did he tell you about his sister?’
‘He— Yes?’ My heart was stuttering an uneven cadence. Yes, and we came here to rescue her – but surely that was obvious, wasn’t it? How was that honouring any agreements, if Lesceron presumably didn’t want to see her rescued? ‘Yes, but—’
‘We made a little bargain, my nephew and I.’ His voice carried the lilting quality of a man savouring his best meal of the year. ‘I promised him he would get his sister back, unharmed and in good health. As soon as he found me a runewitch to take her place.’
I stared at him.
Stared. Didn’t breathe.
Around me, the world began tilting on its axis.
‘Wait,’ Ancelet was saying, his voice strangely distorted through the rush in my ears. ‘Wait, Muri is alive as well?’
No one responded. Lesceron smiled at me like a delighted vulture, and Durlain—
Durlain didn’t look at me at all.
Take her place.
No.
He wouldn’t. He wouldn’t. Not Durlain, who’d cradled me in his arms as he carried me through a field of lava – who’d pulled me from the icy waters of the Svala and made me bathe and eat when I didn’t have the strength.
Not Durlain, who’d asked me not to come here at all, who’d made me promise not to—
Not to draw runes.
Oh, no.
Oh, hell and Death have mercy on me.
‘The plan has changed,’ I heard that familiar voice snap, the sound muffled in my mind. Walls of fire were swaying on the edges of my sight. ‘She’s not staying here. You’re not—'
‘Oh, not these dramatics again, boy.’ Lesceron turned his back on me – a reckless, overconfident move, and I couldn’t have moved my hands if I’d wanted to. ‘Take your little minx of a sister and be glad she’s well. Or would you have me renegotiate that part of our bargain, too?’
Cimmura.
Don’t mistake me for a repentant sinner, he’d hissed at me.
I’d make the same choice again without a second thought.
A warning. It had always been a warning. Not my ally, not my friend. He’d killed Pol, and he’d do the same thing again; he’d told me he would, and I hadn’t listened. I’d thought I could trust him, thought I didn’t need to ask, thought—
Flames blazed, suddenly bright, and Ancelet shrieked like a frightened village maiden.
For two thundering heartbeats the low corridor was filled with nothing but fire – clashing currents slamming into each other inches away from my dazed eyes, like rivers meeting in a clash of spitting foam.
Voices shrieked nearby. The stench of charred textile slammed over me.
Heat stole the breath from my lungs, or not just heat but—
‘Don’t you dare,’ Lesceron snarled, suddenly no longer drawling, and in a sweltering rush, the flames dissolved.
Most of the flames.
Among the blackened tapestries and the cracked tiles, Durlain stood pressed back-first against the wall – teeth gritted savagely, lip curled up. Around his throat, a thin line of fire danced like a noose on the humid air – licking at skin but not quite burning.
Yet.
‘I believed you wiser,’ Lesceron snapped, striding towards him, hovering too close to his face.
‘Attempting to use my own fire against me – you insolent little fool. If not for the Estien whelps preying on your father’s throne, you’d be dead already.
Now take my mercy and go. Melleon, restrain the witch. I’ve had enough of this farce.’
One of the soldiers elbowed Ancelet aside to seize my arm.
I should have killed him. A single sign, a flick of my fingers.
I should have fought for all I was worth.
But Durlain’s eye finally met mine from the other side of the corridor – wide, wild, and desperate over the chokehold of the fire – and I couldn’t move.
I couldn’t think. I could barely remember how to draw a breath.
You miraculous creature.
He’d spoken those words to my very fucking face.
You stunning little fool. My perfect, precious thorn. He’d held me, he’d kissed me, he’d fucked me, and all the while – every haunted glance, every silent minute – he hadn’t warned me. He hadn’t told me of his changed plans. He hadn’t—
That’s the problem with you, witchling, a voice whispered in the back of my head. You keep trusting the wrong people.
Something snapped behind my ribs.
‘Liar,’ I choked, holding his gaze even as Melleon began to drag me away – because if I didn’t say it now, the bastard would never hear the words he deserved to hear for the rest of his life. ‘You vile fucking liar.’
The way his lips parted …
I had to squeeze my eyes shut.
They wouldn’t see my tears, the king of serpents and the prince of broken hearts – but even as rough hands took control of my arms, even as Lesceron’s laughter echoed behind me, all I saw on the inside of my eyelids was that stunning, knife-like, ghost-white face.