Chapter 47
Chapter Forty-Seven
Thorne
I keep Briony close by my side. I won’t let her out of my sight, not even for a second.
“We have to stick to the plan,” I yell at her over the sounds of explosions and battle. “We have to get to the towers.”
“But the others,” she says, spinning around in distress. “Where did they go?”
I take hold of her arm. “It doesn’t matter, Briony. They’ll find their way there. Come on.”
I call to the other shadow weaver students in earshot, and then I’m pulling Briony back toward the academy and the towers, the others following us.
And it works. Shadow weavers from the Empress’s army chase after us.
I can hear their feet on the pathway, racing along the academy pathways.
I see Kratos’s father leading the charge.
Right behind him are several people I recognize from the Empress’s Council, those who were there that night at the banquet in the palace.
Shadow magic soars in the air above us. Fire-bolts explode. Bits of masonry and timber tumble to the ground. We dodge and weave through it all, and just as we’re reaching the towers, we find Professor Cornelius looking confused and dazed out on the pathway ahead of us.
Briony shakes off my hold and runs to greet him.
“Come on, Professor,” she says, taking his arm in the manner I’d just taken hers. “This way.”
As planned, we take the path in the direction of her old tower, the other students splintering off to climb different towers. The old man finds the pace hard work.
“Leave me,” he says. “I’m hindering you.”
“No, you’re not,” Briony says, tightening her grip on his arm.
“I am, Miss Storm. They’re closing on us and you can’t afford to be caught.”
“Thorne!” she screams at me.
I come and take the professor’s other arm. Between us, we pull him along as best we can. But the old man is tiring, becoming slower and slower, heavier to haul along, and the footsteps behind us grow ever louder.
“Stop. Please. Let me go.”
I look to Briony, who shakes her head, but the old professor has his shadow magic firing against our hold before we know what’s happening, and both of us can’t help but release our grip automatically.
Then he’s darting backward, away from us.
“Go,” he says. “I’ll hold them at bay. You get up that tower.”
“But, Professor,” Briony begs, the distress clear in her bewildered eyes.
“I know what I’m doing. I’ve known it from the beginning. Now let me have a little bit of fun.”
He turns to face the oncoming army, laughing as he sends his shadow magic streaming toward them. For a moment, we’re frozen, watching as it slams into Kratos’s father, who’s sent flying backward onto the ground.
But then I shake myself out of my trance, grab Briony, and we start running again.
“Shouldn’t we help him?” she says, still uneasy about this decision.
“That’s not what he wanted, Ni–,” I say.
But I don’t quite finish the words. Because an almighty explosion sounds behind us, like the earth being ripped in two. We both spin around despite ourselves.
It’s one of the old, solid towers – the thing toppling and then slamming to the ground in a roar so loud it shakes the path beneath our feet.
We watch in horror, too slow to act, as brick, timber, stone, and masonry bury the old professor and the score of shadow weavers who had been gaining ground on him.
All of them are gone in an instant, crushed in the brickwork.
Briony screams, her hands flying to her mouth. She moves as if to race that way, and I yank her back again.
“We have to help him,” she says. “We have to save him.”
“Briony.” I shake her. “He’s already dead.”
“He might not be. He might be under the stone. We need to move it and—”
More shadow magic comes flying our way. The ones who escaped the tower’s fall are climbing over the rubble, still intent on chasing us.
“Shit. There’s no time, Briony.”
And again, I take her arm and pull her onward.
Eventually, we reach the safety of Briony’s old room.
I haven’t been here for days, weeks, months.
It’s funny now to look at it. I think back to that moment, that time long ago, when I hadn’t yet confessed my feelings or given my heart to her, when I still couldn’t touch her, when we placed the stone in the fireplace and Blaze hatched from the egg.
I run to one of the long, slitted windows and peer down toward the rest of the academy.
The plan hasn’t worked. Not enough of the Empress’s army has followed us into the academy. Briony stands on her tiptoes and comes to look too, reaching the same conclusion as I have.
“It’s not worked.” She almost stamps her foot in frustration. “We need to get back down there and help them.”
“No,” I say. “You’re safe here, Briony. And we’re staying right here.”
“And leave the others to fend for themselves?” she says. “Our magic is stronger when it’s combined, Thorne. We can’t leave them like that.”
“They’d want you somewhere safe, Briony. Away from the fighting.”
“Safe?” she says. “While they fight to the death? No, Thorne. Because then what?”
I open my mouth to answer, but I have nothing – no words to give – because she’s right.
The only way to defeat the Empress and her army is to work together.
However, there’s no sign of the others, which means we have no choice, we have to go back down and we have to find them, wherever the hell they may be.
“Can you feel them?” I ask. “Can you feel where they are, Briony?”
She steps away from the window, closes her eyes, and lays her hands above her heart.
“They’re still out there, Thorne,” she whispers. “I can feel them.”
“Can you feel where they are?”
She frowns and shakes her head in frustration. “In different places.”
I turn back to the window. That thick morning mist still coats the ground, obscuring everything.
“Damn it,” I curse. “This mist is making everything harder. We can’t see who we’re fighting. We can’t see the others. It’s giving our enemies an advantage.”
“Maybe there’s a way…” she says, trailing off as she chews on her cheek.
“A way to what, Nini?” I ask her.
“Disperse this stupid fog.”
“Maybe a wind spell,” I mutter, scrunching up my forehead as I try to remember everything I’ve learned at the academy.
But I needn’t bother. Nini is leaning toward the window, forcing her hand through the tight gap and then sending her light searing down toward the thick cloud of fog.
The light pierces it like a pin through a balloon, and all that dank, dark moisture evaporates away into the air, vanishing in front of my eyes and exposing everything it was concealing.
Nini gasps.
It’s not pretty down there. The fog has lifted and revealed bodies everywhere. Lifeless forms of shadow weavers and other non-magical students too. There are many dead from their side, but there are more from ours.
It’s clear now that the fog has lifted: we’re losing this battle.
Briony takes an unsteady step away from the window. Her body is shaking, her hands trembling.
“What are we going to do, Thorne?” she says, suddenly sounding so unsure – the woman I know, the woman I love. “What are we going to do?”
I look at her, and I want to keep her safe at the top of this tower. I want to protect her with every cell of my body, with every drop of my blood.
But I can’t.
“We have to go back down there. We have to find the others. We have to think of a new plan. And we have to help.”
“It’s not going to work though, is it?” she says, shaking her head in desperation. “They’re all going to die. They’re all going to die because of me.”
“Briony,” I snap.
She’s muttering to herself now, lost in her thoughts, her breathing coming fast. I recognize the panic threatening to overwhelm her. I’ve felt it myself. Many times.
I take hold of both her shoulders and shake her hard.
“Briony. Snap out of it. Just breathe. Come on. Just breathe. You have to.”
She stares up at me with bewildered eyes, wide and green. Her chest heaves as she gasps for air.
I march her to the window. I scan the people down there, the tiny figures fighting to the death. And then I spot them.
First Beaufort, plowing forward with a sword in his hands, swinging it back and forth as he shoots his magic.
Then Dray’s wolf, tearing in from a different direction, slicing through soldiers as if they were nothing at all.
And then there’s Fox, standing strong in the chaos as his magic swims around him.
“Look, Nini,” I say. “They’re there, right there. We’ll go to them now. And together we will do this. We’ll end this.”
I glance back at her face. Her breath is steadying.
“Fight the Empress?”
“Yes, Nini, fight the Empress.”
“But she’s surrounded by her army.”
“Then we’ll fight them too.”
“We can’t fight her and the army together. We’re not that strong, Thorne.”
“I believe we are, Nini.” She stares at me unconvinced and I hold up my arm and draw back my sleeve, revealing the fated marks stamped on my wrist. “Fate wants this. It wants us to change things. And it wouldn’t bring us together if we weren’t strong enough.
” I shake my arm. “Don’t you see?” She glances down at the pattern – light and shadow combined, entwined together.
“It’s down to us to change things – to restore balance to the realm.
To let the light shine once more. That has to be us, Nini. We have to do it.”
“I didn’t think you believed in all that stuff. You said fate had cursed you.”
“Fate has given me you, Nini. I’m anything but cursed.”
“Even if following me out there now leads to your death?”
“I don’t believe that’s going to happen.”
She nods, although her body still trembles in my grasp. “You really think we can?” she whispers.
“I don’t think it, Nini. I know it,” I say.
“So what do you think we should do, Thorne?” she says.
“I think we go back down there and this time we dangle the bait.”
“Bait?” she says.
“Yes, Nini. You,” I say. “They’re here for you.”
We stare at each other. There’s no need for words. A lifetime of emotions passes in the air between us.
I squeeze her shoulders. She manages a little smile.
“Okay,” she says. “Let’s do this.”
We race back down the tower the way we came, back out onto the pathways. We pass a couple of skirmishes – soldiers fighting students. We race right by them, heading toward the mound of rubble from the collapsed tower.
Together, we climb up the broken stones and bricks, slipping several times, my feet sinking into the rubble. I pull them free and I keep climbing until I’m at the top of the mound, closer to the battle, our view perfectly clear.
“Are you ready?” I ask her, taking her hand in mine.
“I’m ready,” she says, then hesitates. “But they won’t hear me.”
“Don’t worry,” I tell her. “I have a way to deal with that.”
She nods. She swallows. She lifts her chin in that act of defiance I’ve seen so many times.
And then she shouts with all her lungs.
I use my shadow magic to propel her words over the distance, to amplify them so they boom over the noise of the chaos: the battle, the explosions, the people fighting, the people dying.
“I’m here!” she calls out. “Me, Briony Storm, the one you want. I’m here. So if you want me, come and get me!”
She’s barely said a word before Beaufort’s, Dray’s, and Fox’s heads all snap our way, finding us at the top of our tower of rubble. All three of them sprint towards us.
It takes more time for the others out there fighting to comprehend the words, to pause their fighting, to stop battling, to lower their hands and turn in the direction of her voice.
But it comes.
And soon the academy is eerily quiet.
Just the sound now of flames flickering. The murmurs of people dying. My own heartbeat, loud in my ears.
No one speaks. No one stirs. No one says a word.
They just stand and stare at the girl beside me.
The others reach the bottom of the rubble and turn to face the battlefield, their backs to us.
I scan the crowd and the chaos for the Empress. I scan it for the Madame as well. I see neither of them, and a flicker of hope rebounds through my body. Maybe they are already dead.
The clouds have all vanished, dispersed by Briony’s magic, and the sun is high in the sky, beaming down on us all. It reflects in a million shards of light from something gleaming in the crowd.
And then, I understand what it is.
The Empress’s coat of silver armor.
She strides forward to meet us.