Chapter 46 Lena
FORTY-SIX
LENA
Lena was lying on something made of stone.
Even with her eyes closed, she could tell it was some sort of stone table, narrow enough that her fingers brushed against its edges. She could still taste the herbal remnants of whatever she’d been drugged with, sharp and unpleasant on her tongue.
“Ah, I see you’re finally awake.”
Slowly, Lena opened her eyes, the dim light of over a dozen torches making her wince.
Roston was standing over her, crimson hood drawn up over his silver-streaked hair.
The space beneath his eyes and on his forehead had been inked with symbols similar to those on the stone Lena had seen on the way into the mountain, and as he stepped closer, she felt the faintest hum of their power.
Even with her mind muddied and her power diluted, Lena could feel Venysa at the edges of her consciousness, the threads of Roston and the cultists just out of reach.
“It won’t be long now,” Roston was saying, voice echoing.
With a groan, Lena tried to look to the side.
The blurred edges of the stone chamber tilted, twisting her stomach into painful knots.
Roston loomed over her, and a circle of crimson-robed Haesta were gathered around the stone Lena lay upon, their mouths working in a soundless chant.
The pillars in the room began to glow with their incantation, and as they did, the features of Roston’s face started to blur.
Something moved out of the corner of her eye.
The familiar, twisted silhouette of some kind of korupted.
And there, standing next to Roston, was Dimas.
When he caught her gaze, the emperor tucked a strand of hair behind his ear, the signal they’d agreed to use if their friends hadn’t arrived.
Don’t panic, she told herself, there’s still time.
But then Dimas’s gaze shifted to something to Lena’s left, and when she turned her head to follow it, when her eyes adjusted to the darkness and the two restrained figures she was looking at became clear, Lena’s blood ran cold.
Finaen. He was on his knees, his arms twisted awkwardly behind him, but it was the look of regret on his bloodied face that truly broke her.
He coughed, lips parting as if he was trying to speak, but Brother Dunstan got there first.
“The ritual will involve a battle of wills,” the High Priest said hurriedly. He was kneeling beside Finaen, his hands bound. “Lenora, Venysa will try to destroy your spirit; you must not—”
Brother Dunstan’s words abruptly stopped. He simply stared at Lena for a moment, eyes wide, before a wet, bloodied cough escaped his lips.
“No!”
Dimas’s scream echoed through the chamber at the same time the High Priest slumped forward, revealing the blade in his back. Blood roared in Lena’s ears, and the loose grip she still had on her power weakened even further as the cultists closest to Dimas restrained the young emperor.
“He doesn’t have to die!” Dimas yelled. “Uncle, please, let me—”
“Enough.” Roston lifted a hand, lip curling in disgust as he looked at Brother Dunstan’s crumpled body. “He chose his side. And unless you want me to believe you are making the same choice, I suggest you stay silent.”
Even without the bond between them, Dimas’s grief was so raw that Lena felt it in her chest. She wouldn’t have blamed him for breaking.
But he didn’t.
Instead, Dimas stopped struggling, his jaw clenching as he kept whatever he’d been going to say to himself. It was the strongest thing Lena had ever seen him do.
Lena tried to summon that same strength as Roston turned his attention back to her and said, “It’s time.”
The air in the chamber was hazy with magic.
The cult must have been using the symbols engraved in the walls and on their skin as a conduit for whatever power they were drawing from, just as she’d suspected.
Lena had never seen any of their ranks without at least one symbol inked onto their skin, and knowing their power, it wasn’t too much of an assumption to guess this was the source of their magic.
Now that she knew how to channel magic, Lena could potentially draw on that extra power to give her an edge. She just had to wait for this damned bangle to be taken off.
One by one, the cultists reached out their hands toward Lena, palms faced outward. They all had the same symbol inked into their palms, and as their lips continued the silent chant, Lena’s strength began to wane even further.
Roston reached for the bangle around Lena’s wrist. Found its seal.
And removed it.
Dimas’s eyes widened slightly in panic at the same time as Lena’s stomach dropped.
“Venysa needs to have access to the Fateweaver’s full power for the ritual to work,” the regent explained at her confused look.
He didn’t seem concerned that she might try to overpower him, no doubt confident that whatever his cultists were doing ensured she was too weak to use her power against him.
And she was. Lena’s consciousness was balancing on a knife’s edge.
The room became a hazy blur of silver threads, a constantly moving tapestry she could not quite reach. And beneath it all, beneath the power and the pain, Venysa surged.
Lena tried to grab hold of her power. To direct it toward the chamber’s exit in one last desperate attempt to search for Casimir and the others. But it was no use. Her magic was no longer just hers to control. And now that Roston had the bangle, Dimas had no chance of getting it on his wrist.
The emperor’s hand twitched toward the hidden blade in his cloak before going still, his entire body freezing as it had done back in the temple.
“Did you really think, nephew,” Roston said, “that you could fool me? You are a good actor, but I have known you since you were a boy. You would never join us, not after learning the truth about your mother.” One of the cultists began to strip Dimas of his weapons, and the last of Lena’s hope died as his poisoned blade was taken away.
“I told you both—” Roston sighed as the cultist dragged Dimas backward, away from the stone dais. Away from Lena. “This is Lenora’s destiny. It is futile to resist it.”
He’s right, Venysa’s voice said, as the last of Lena’s control over her emotions slipped. You have failed, Lenora.
Lena didn’t have the strength to argue. Not when she knew in her heart that Venysa spoke the truth. She’d been a fool to come here. Arrogant to have ever believed she could’ve wielded this power as her own. She had failed, like she had so many times before. And now it was over.
She was too weak to move. Too weak to do anything but lay there on the altar as Roston traced the lines of a symbol onto her forehead. And as the darkness took her, Lena had just enough awareness left to sense the faint presence of a set of familiar, bright threads.