44 || The Queen of Wyrith
The echoes of her sister's protests reverberated down the hall as she was carried away.
Each sound became quieter and quieter, yet each one would live in her mind forever.
Ilyana couldn't bring herself to move, to speak up and command the guards to step down — torn between the twin she always longed to be alive and the father who was dead in her lap.
When he had risen back to life, she thought her healing had worked. That she wasn't hopeless and her power had saved her family for once in her life, but it had only been the cruel magic of her sister, using his body as a puppet for her own means.
The princess placed two fingers against her father's neck to find nothing but cold stillness, void of the steady pulse beats that should have been there. Her lower lip wobbled as she wiped blood off of his face. "You weren't meant to die. You're meant to be here with me. You can't leave."
Her mother was gone, her presence a mere fading memory in her mind. The sister she knew was gone, replaced by a necromancer that she didn't know how to comprehend. Now, her father had left her life too. What family did she have left now?
Moving her fingers down, Ilyana found the wounds Viviana had made.
Four puncture wounds in his arms and legs respectively.
Even when she knew there weren't any threads of life left to use, she still tried to heal them.
Letting her magic trickle into the holes, she pulled out the bone shards with surprising ease, but the holes remained open.
"You can move bones too," Silas Axelas mused from beside her. "If you know what's best for you, find your sister and kill her," he rasped as he held the blade in his chest, watching her with glassy eyes. A dying man using every last breath to stir trouble.
A shadow loomed over both of them before a sword was brought down to knock him out with the hilt.
A guard stood above the princess, scratches and speckles of crimson streaked across her armour.
Her hair was no longer swept back across her head and hung down in afflicted disarray.
A large gash marred the side of her face and blood dripped down her cheek as she held her eye.
"Clove."
The captain kneeled next to her. "What happened here?" Her hand moved slightly to reveal that her eye appeared to have been gouged out. Shredded tissue with separated chunks tainted red lay where a beautiful, olive ring of colour should have been.
Ilyana looked at her father, his skin already losing warmth, and then back at Clove. "What happened to you?" Her magic flared and tugged at her necklace, pulling her towards the captain. It wanted to heal her — needed to heal. Just like it had before.
"Your sister." Bitterness fused with agony laced her voice. "She sent bone shards flying everywhere and struck the majority of her. Most are injured and a few are... dead. I was one of the lucky ones."
The princess reluctantly moved her hand from her father and reached up towards her face.
She had never healed an eye before. The life threads woven into it felt the same as any other wound, yet this was different.
Clove's sight was completely gone, it would be a much more complicated task to restore it.
Clove grabbed and held her fingers. "Not here. We need to leave so you can be somewhere safer."
Returning to her father's side, Ilyana felt her eyes sting.
"I couldn't save him," she whispered, words only the two of them could hear.
A hand hesitated, but snaked around her torso to comfort her.
"I couldn't get to him in time to stop Silas.
And then Vivi... she got revenge. In her own way.
" She shuddered at the memory of her using his body like it was a tool.
King Mortas had done despicable things that she hadn't known about until mere hours ago.
Killing her sister and tearing them apart would never be something she could forgive him for, but she still loved him more than anything.
He was the only one she could trust and rely on growing up — her only family. And now he was gone too.
"He would be proud of you, Illy. His Highness has left the kingdom in safe hands with you."
Ilyana's stomach dropped. The kingdom.
With not just her father gone, but the king, that left her to ascend the throne as the Queen of Wyrith.
She was now responsible for ruling the island, for the army, for the people, and so much more.
The princess had known all her life that she would one day become queen, but not like this.
Clove helped her up when she didn't respond, making her remove her clenched fists from her father's clothes. "There will be a funeral for him, Illy, where you can properly say goodbye."
She could only nod, words failing her. She didn't want to say goodbye. Not now, not ever. His body got further and further away as they walked, stepping over the remains of the guards that her sister killed — a battleground of metal and bones — until they left the office.
The captain guided them down the hall and into an empty lounge cast in darkness.
Shadows flicked in the room and outside the windows that reflected the night, as if death was lurking in the corners, prowling and taunting her.
Clove lit up the sconces along the walls so they could see, revealing a large space in the middle of the room.
Live entertainment would have been set up there for those relaxing in one of the many settees spread around.
Sitting in the closest seats, the redhead unstrapped her sword from her belt and placed it beside her, making it easier to reach if anyone entered. "We'll stay here until the guards have deemed the rest of the castle safe."
"You shouldn't be pushing yourself," Ilyana pointed out. The captain had grown paler during their walk and, if she had to place a bet, she would place all her money on the blood loss and pain being the cause.
Clove raised a brow and winced at the movement. "I think that's the nicest thing you've said to me in weeks."
"Let me heal you." The desperate cries for her power to be used weren't as strong as they used to be, but they were still there. An encore pleading to be used, longing to ease the suffering it saw. The princess couldn't refuse it.
"Is your magic okay? I don't know what happened with that Dragon egg, but..."
"It seems to be returning now that my sister is back. It's still not as powerful, but it's here," she confirmed. Moving her fingers, blue light flooded to the ends of them.
Ilyana had no clue what happened with her twin and why her death caused it to disappear, but she was grateful it had come back. She needed to delve deeper into it and try to find out why it happened so it would never fade away again, but there were too many other things she needed to do.
The princess reached up to Clove's face and began with the wound on her cheek — the cut that had forged a new home of a deep river of scarlet.
She grasped an abundance of glowing threads in her mind and wove them into the injury, pulling the torn skin back together.
Her fingers stroked her face in comfort until all that remained was a jagged formation of white.
"I can't make the scar go away." Ilyana frowned.
"Don't worry yourself over a scar. As long as it makes me look more formidable, I'll welcome it." A faltering smirk found its way onto her lips.
"It looks... okay," the princess could only sigh.
Clove snorted. "I'll take your word for it."
Ilyana turned her attention to her eye where her hand still kept pressure on the bleeding hole. "This one might not be as pretty as it was."
"You think my eyes are pretty?" The captain's tone was daring yet hopeful — a teasing invitation.
Her heart stopped for a moment, her face warming, before she scowled. "Do you want me to heal it or not?"
"Yes, please. If you aren't going to tire yourself out, that is. I can easily visit the infirmary later, too."
How long would it take for the castle to be deemed safe? The king had died, it wasn't just a situation that would blow over in a matter of hours. Clove would be in constant pain until then. "I'll do it now."
Slowly removing the pressure, the captain lifted her hand to uncover the wound that was much worse than the healer could have ever imagined.
It was more than a cut that had scraped across the surface.
No, it was as if a bone shard had embedded itself into her eye and fallen back out.
Half of the tissue was gone. How she wasn't screaming in agony was a mystery to her.
"What? How bad is it?" she questioned, only to be ignored.
Ilyana started healing, summoning the threads of life to begin and stopping when she couldn't find a place to start. This wasn't sewing something together like skin or bone — this was a reconstruction. She needed to weave the strings to build Clove a new eye, if that was even possible.
The princess tried forming a loop with her magic as a base to build off of, but it was too shaky to hold anything.
Swallowing her doubts, she tried again. She would not leave someone suffering because she couldn't figure out how to heal.
Forming a new loop with multiple threads, it finally stabilised the base.
As she wrapped more around it to form a half-sphere, she felt nausea rise in her throat.
Only when she felt tissue rush around her power to fill itself in did she let go, sitting back with the world spinning around her.
Clove's eye wasn't the same. Instead of the hues of umber and pine battling for dominance, only a wasteland of crimson was left, a milky white blooming in the centre.
"How is it?" she asked. "Is it still painful?"
"No, the pain is completely gone." She blinked and touched the area around it, testing it out.
A lump formed in Ilyana's throat. "Can you see out of it?"
"I can't, no."
"I'm sorry. I couldn't-"
"Don't you dare apologise. You healed me and I'm really grateful for it. Thank you," she cut the princess off. "I can still see out of my other eye, so I can get used to this."
Ilyana had failed as a healer time and time again. Her mother, her sister, her father, Clove. What good was she if she couldn't help people?
"But-"
"No protests. You did the best you could." The captain's word was final.
Leaning back in defeat, Ilyana closed her eyes. However, she soon opened them again when her twin haunted her vision. The twisted expression as she raised their father from the dead to do her bidding, the way she clawed at the ground as she was dragged away.
"Vivi. What did the guards do with my sister?" She sat up straight, turning to the captain. If she had anything to do with her capture, she feared for her twin's safety.
"They've taken her to the dungeons for now. They won't kill or hurt her as I've commanded them not to," Clove explained.
"She shouldn't be there." Ilyana stood, holding onto the back of the settee for balance, only for a hand to pull her back down.
"And she's in no state to see anyone right now. She just killed a lot of people and you're not going anywhere while the castle is in chaos. The guests at the ball are currently being evacuated and we're not making any moves until they're all gone. Even if she tries to escape, she won't be-"
A clamour of voices sounded outside the room, causing Clove to grab her sword. They weren't yells that barked orders, it was an argument that was brewing stronger and stronger. When the captain headed to the door, Ilyana followed close behind, needing to know what was going on.
Two heads of ivory hair appeared at the end of the hall as they peered out. Their voices grew louder as they approached, the temperature rising in waves of infernal dread.
"Forget wherever the fuck you've been for the past couple of weeks, I need you to tell me what you did to the Dragon egg," King Matthian demanded. Embers swirled around his legs, climbing higher and higher.
"What I did? You stole it from its home, Matt. I think you should be asking yourself that question," Prince Damian countered. "Though, perhaps you've become too insane."
"That egg was on my territory — in my kingdom. It's rightfully mine."
"It belongs to the Dragon that the cursed king killed centuries ago. You're inviting that same madness to live with you," he warned.
"Think of how powerful we could be with a Dragon at our heels. Every nation and empire around us would bend to our will and quiver with fear. The Kingdom of Vahan will be unstoppable."
"Or they would wage a war against you instead."
The two Fireborns passed by the door and Prince Damian stopped before it. His eyes widened when he saw Ilyana and Clove covered from head to toe in blood. "Where's Morana? What happened?" He glanced behind them, checking again and again to see if her sister was there but merely hidden.
"The guards took her to the dungeons after she killed some guards," the princess began. "King Mortas is dead and Silas could very well be too."
Damian's jaw twitched. "Where are the dungeons?"
"On the bottom level of the castle," Clove guided. "Once you get to the ground floor, head for the guard training rooms and there will be guards stationed outside the entrance right before you get there."
"Tell them you have permission from Princ- Queen Ilyana to be there." If she couldn't go to check if her twin was okay, she would have to let someone else go in her stead.
"Thank you," were the only words that left the Fireborn's mouth before he ran for his necromancer.