Chapter Fifty
Ihear every thump of my heart vibrating in the silence of the room.
My mouth opens in horrified stasis as Rion smirks and then bends down, picking up the ark and testing the weight in his hand with the casualness of an apple at a fruit stand. I want to lurch for it, but I know it would be futile.
“Nadir,” Rion drawls. “Thank you so much for telling me where I’d find her.”
Those words ping in my brain as I take a moment to process them.
I look at Nadir, whose face has gone ashen.
I shake my head and take a step back, one hand stretched out in front of me. My magic hums in my veins, traces of lightning circling my arms and sparking from my fingertips. The door is open, and I finally have my full strength, but is it enough to go against the Aurora King?
Rion tosses the ark in his hand and catches it, a slow smile spreading over his mouth. He knows what it is and has been searching for it all along. Was this what he wanted from me?
That’s when I exchange another glance with Nadir.
“Lor. Run,” he says, and then we both spin and bolt for the door on the opposite end of the room.
I don’t have the presence of mind to fully sort through what Rion just said to Nadir as I fling out a blast of magic behind me, hoping to inflict damage. I must have misheard or misunderstood. He wouldn’t… He couldn’t…
My magic collides with the king’s, sinking into it like it’s clay, soft and malleable, expanding and contracting. It’s different from Nadir’s. While his magic feels like silk, this reminds me more of quicksand.
We run, crashing through the door on the far side, where we’re met with a spiraling staircase that winds down and down to a bottom that disappears into darkness. We both leap onto the railing, and Nadir pulls me against him, wrapping an arm around my waist before we plummet as my stomach claws up my throat.
Just before we hit the floor, he uses a translucent cloud of blue and green to slow our descent, floating us harmlessly to the ground. Another door deposits us into a quiet hallway somewhere in the lower levels of the palace. We’ve mapped out this route thanks to Willow’s drawings, but every plan we made has been shoved out of my head.
Thank you so much for telling me where I’d find her.
“This way,” Nadir says, and I follow him through the twisting maze of corridors.
“Which way?” I ask. “Are we lost?”
I try to imagine the drawing we studied before we left. I’m sure this isn’t the way we were supposed to go.
Thank you so much for telling me where I’d find her.
“No,” Nadir says with conviction.
In the next breath, a blast of colorful light shoots between us, hitting the end of the hall and sending shards of rock and marble arrowing towards us. I duck, covering my head, peering over my shoulder to find the Aurora King with the ark of Heart clutched in his hand.
“This way!” Nadir calls, grabbing my wrist and yanking me down another corridor. Rion chases us. More of his magic ricochets off walls and the ceiling, and falling debris and stone strike me on the back and shoulders. I’m not sure if his plan is to kill me or simply capture me, but whatever it is, I can’t take either chance.
We wind through the corridors, flinging magic at each other. I feel the sharp burn of a violet blast of light as it grazes my arm, singeing the fabric and drawing a trickle of blood. I cry out, firing more red lightning. I don’t have any control over it, but at least it doesn’t feel like I’m pulling out my veins to call it up.
So I fire blindly, hoping I can make up for my lack of precision with raw, brute force.
Rion’s light clashes with our magic, raining chaos over our heads.
We’re destroying Atlas’s palace, but I’m having a hard time feeling too much guilt about that.
We round another corner and then another before we come to a door. Nadir crashes into it, but it refuses to budge. I turn around, planning to face Rion, but the other end of the corridor is silent.
“Did we lose him?” I ask.
“I doubt it,” Nadir grunts as he flings himself at the door again. This time it gives way under his weight, revealing another staircase that spirals up. “Let’s go.”
I’m sure this isn’t the way we planned to come.
Nadir is dragging me by the hand as we take the stairs two at a time. A bang comes from below, but we don’t temper our pace. We lost the ark. I lost the ark. The Mirror gave it to me for a reason, and now it’s in Rion’s hands. Then I remember I dropped the Crown in the throne room too. I choke back a sob, spiraling with the knowledge of just how much I fucked this all up.
The air around us starts to darken like someone is layering gauze over a window. I’m shaking my head, trying to clear it, when a puff of black smoke surrounds me, slithering against my skin. It fills my mouth and crawls down my throat as I sputter and cough. But it’s not smoke. It feels denser, like fingers scraping the insides of my lungs.
“Nadir,” I try to choke out, and then we both fall through another door, collapsing on the marble, both of us hacking until the darkness finally clears. For a moment, I stare up at the ceiling, trying to catch my breath. We’re on one of the main levels again, surrounded by the gilded brightness of the Sun Palace.
“We have to keep moving,” Nadir says, standing up and hauling me to my feet. “Are you okay?”
“I think so.”
We’ve ended up in a large open space with wide arched doorways leading in multiple directions. Above us, a clear dome reveals the grey thundering sky. Again, Nadir takes my hand, and we make a run for it, heading towards the furthest opening, when a figure steps out in front of us.
The Aurora King is now bordered by guards, and we skid to a halt in the middle of the room, realizing they’ve closed in around us, and every single one of them holds a bow aiming for our hearts.
Rolling with panic, I spin around, seeing we’re completely outnumbered. There are at least a hundred crossbows trained on us, and I know that even with the full force of my magic, I’m not fast enough to take them all out.
Nadir and I stand back-to-back as Rion chuckles, sauntering closer.
He still holds the ark in his hand, and I turn to face him.
“What do you want?” I ask, and his face stretches into a slow, catlike smile.
“So many things,” he says, tipping his head. “And you’re going to help me get them, Heart Queen.”
The way he says the last two words forces bile into my throat. Rion holds up the ark, and I fire at him, but he blocks my magic with the sparkling black stone. The ark absorbs my lightning, making it glow with a red aura.
I take a step back in horror. This couldn’t have all gone more wrong.
“Seize them,” Rion says with a lazy flick of his hand as that dark smoke surrounds us again.
Nadir is yelling something I can’t make out as mist fills my eyes and nose and lungs, while rough hands grab me before someone cinches my wrists behind my back.
Then we’re dragged from the Sun Palace as every hope and every dream I’ve been carrying for the last twelve years filters out of my heart and circles down, down, down the drain.