Chapter LVII. Ellery
LVII
ELLERY
WINTER
The instant Domenic’s heart stopped, Valmordion ignited.
Flames erupted across the wand’s shaft, and as its core flared, so too did the center of Domenic’s chest. Golden light radiated outward, brighter and brighter, until he was a molten silhouette.
Then they both shattered in a blaze of magic.
Ellery had no time to react. Shrapnel thorns and jagged ice stabbed into her skin, and her flesh burned from the explosion’s searing, roaring heat.
She careened back, her wails scarcely audible over the debris thudding atop the pulverized cobblestones and the ground rumbling beneath her.
Blisters swelled upon her cheeks. Her neck.
Her shoulders. Ellery frantically cast a healing spell, but although the burns stopped spreading, they didn’t mend.
Sunspots spun dizzily in her vision as she blinked at the scorch marks where his body had stood seconds ago. But Domenic and Valmordion were gone.
Gradually, the vortex surrounding the eye began to slow.
The darkness dissolved like smoke, and true pristine sunlight poured into the grove, beaming through the alban’s branches.
Above, the foreboding clouds thinned, then dissipated, revealing a cerulean sky.
The barrage of winds diminished into a gentle breeze.
And the temperature rose, brutal, frigid cold lifting into a crisp chill.
The scurge was gone.
She’d defeated the cataclysm.
Ellery stared at the leaves on the alban. They had turned to silver. To Winter. She felt the rustle of every root throughout Alderland, from coast to coast, and knew that she had not just transformed Gallamere into Winter’s territory—she’d transformed the entire country.
But she felt no pride at her victory, only a distant relief.
Then a tide of grief swept through her, overwhelming, unbearable. She doubled over, whimpering. Her burns throbbed in agony. But after the brutality of Domenic’s demise, it was an agony she deserved.
In the absence of the storm, sound infiltrated: the roars and shrieks of winterghasts, the wailing of sirens, and human screams, a horrifying cacophony.
Ellery jolted upright. The cataclysm was gone, but the battle for the city was far from over. Which meant she couldn’t break, not yet.
She ran through the ruins of the grove, then inside the Citadel and down familiar corridors, all deserted. Pain lanced through her with every breath, alongside the stench of scorched flesh and singed hair. Finally, she burst outside again and skidded to a halt atop the entranceway stairs.
Ellery scarcely recognized the Gallamere sprawled before her. Skyscrapers decapitated by the storm’s winds. Rooftops torn off and scattered. Smoke pouring from gouges in the buildings. Ice floes drifting in a dead man’s float across the river. City streets crusted in dirty snow.
She took in the nearby carnage in grisly detail.
Frostmaul-riddled bodies slumped across the steps where she and Domenic had given their first press conference.
Exhausted magicians dueled with winterghasts down the length of Main Street, the trees that had once lined it snapped in two, the great gates at the end wrenched violently open by claws.
Ellery picked out familiar magicians in the fray; Tej Kumar speared a ghast with a ray of sunlight conjured from his training wand, fighting back-to-back with Demelza, who blocked a monster’s blows with a luminescent shield.
“Ellery!” Glynn rushed to her, clutching Aetherium.
His glasses were cracked, one sleeve of his jacket torn and bloodied.
She struggled to process careful, measured Glynn wounded in battle.
“The scurge is gone! Does that mean you and Barrow—” He cut off, eyes widening as he took her in. “You need a healer. You look…”
“N-no,” Ellery rasped. It hurt to talk. “I already tried.”
“What could possibly.…” Glynn sucked in a horrified breath. “Did Valmordion do this? And you’ve survived, but Barrow’s not here. Oh, Ellery…” He surveyed the city, as though noticing for the first time that despite the lack of a scurge, it was still cold.
Then his expression hardened, and he leaned in, voice low. “We can’t let anyone see your burns. They can’t guess at how you got them. Do you understand?”
Tears blurred Ellery’s vision, and with a sick lurch, she realized her performance was not over.
“I understand,” she whispered wretchedly. She cast a hasty illusion over herself. A mask to hide her injuries, her terror, her all-consuming guilt. And not a moment too soon, because Sharpe limped up the stairs. Crimson wept down one of his legs, but he still held himself upright.
“There you are,” he said urgently. He clasped Ballathim with both hands. There was something terribly wrong with it. Strips of its blackthorn wood peeled away and crumbled into dust.
“Wh-what’s happening to it?” she stammered.
“It’s dying,” Sharpe snarled. “Just like all the others. You have to fix this. You have to fix this.”
Ellery took in the battle before her with a new, terrified focus. Gold magic sputtered out as the Living Wands disintegrated in their wielders’ hands. Ghasts advanced upon newly defenseless magicians. Cries of horror rang out across Main Street.
No. This doesn’t make sense.
But for however well Syarthis knew the past, it couldn’t predict the future. It had been wrong about Living Wands enduring unless the cataclysm came to pass. With Winter in control of Alderland, the Summer wands couldn’t survive.
The Order was destroyed. And it was all Ellery’s fault.
But the magicians didn’t know that. Gaze after gaze turned to her. Beseeching. Begging. Clinging to hope that she would save them even though she was the one who’d condemned them.
Ellery couldn’t bring back what was lost, but she alone could protect what remained.
And now that Winter ruled, its champion could finally end this war for good.
She staggered to the center of the steps. Then she pointed Iskarius down at Gallamere and listened for the winterghasts’ heartbeats. First she heard several, then a dozen, then too many to count, thumping within her rib cage in a massive, erratic rhythm.
Her shadow undulated like a train around her, then spilled across the city she loved, seeping in rivulets down every alleyway, every sidewalk, every bridge.
It engulfed Mercester Square and the Crystalline Pavilion.
It swept across Gallamere Gardens. And within its tenebrous embrace, one by one, the winterghasts began to glow.
Silver pinpricks shone across the streets, each creature gleaming as they succumbed to her power.
“Surrender,” she commanded.
In a great ripple of refracting light and shining ice, the winterghasts bowed.
Then they disappeared, evanescing into clouds of frost. The seeds of their hearts clattered to the ground in their wake.
Ellery heaved out breath after breath as her shadow shrank. Unbearable pain coursed through her burns as she lowered Iskarius.
Then she turned from her awestruck audience, and she crumpled.