Chapter 64
“No!” I start toward Ravin, but Leigh is already moving to intercept me.
“I have you,” she snarls, her blade coming down in a vicious arc. It shines in the firelight, picking up the magic glow of cards being cast around us.
I barely get my sword up in time. The impact sends shock waves up my arms. Her eyes lock with mine, squinting.
She must be seeing through the Seven of Cups. No, it’s been more than seven minutes since Kaelis cast it. Did she see me cast the Wheel of Fortune? Does she know what that card was? If she did, then she knows that Clara Graysword has new eyes because no one else would have that card.
Fuck.
With a wild grin, she strengthens her sword’s position in the bind, sliding up nearly to the hilt. I barely manage to disengage before she twists, attempting to disarm me. I realize just how outmatched I am in a battle of swords with her. Leigh’s every movement is perfect, every strike calculated.
She presses her advantage, driving me back step-by-step.
Her blade is everywhere at once—high, low, left, right—a silver blur that forces me into an increasingly desperate defense.
I’m spending so much time trying to predict her next move that I can’t summon a card.
I can’t even think or I’m going to lose my head.
I stumble, and her blade whizzes past my chin. But then she falls to the ground due to an invisible force. Before she can get up, the stone floor moves around her, forming rocky shackles on her hands and feet, pinning her to the ground. The Three of Coins, if I had to guess.
Not losing the advantage, I cast my final Knight of Swords.
Flashes of light and shadow surround Leigh’s body. I imagine a thousand blades cutting her from the inside out. Her organs shredded. Skin reduced to ribbons. Thin lines erupt with blood, light, and shadow on her cheeks as she looks up at me with a gritted smile. Blood seeps from between her teeth.
“You…damn us all…”
Another flash of light, and shadow surrounds her.
Another Knight of Swords. This time from Kaelis.
I know it’s him from the feel of the magic alone.
He wields the card with malicious intent and loathing.
Her wounds widen, skin splitting to the point that it nearly peels from her muscle.
With a gasp, she slumps, rock still closed around her limbs.
And just like that, the mighty Leigh Strongborn is no more.
Struggling to my feet, I sweep my eyes across the room.
Kaelis has managed to fend off the Stellis, but Emilia is nowhere to be seen, so more reinforcements are probably coming.
Especially since beyond this room the sounds of fighting are dying down.
Gregor is struggling to stand; blood pours from him.
And Ravin, very carefully, pockets the vessel.
The crown prince’s expression is utterly unchanged as he beholds the remnants of his wife.
He regards Leigh’s corpse as though she’s little more than a pile of tattered rags.
There is no love there. Nor sorrow. Terrifyingly, there’s nothing at all.
Almost nonchalantly, he crosses and retrieves her blade.
“Stellis!” Ravin calls out, his voice carrying across the chamber. Emilia appears in the frame of the collapsed walls, panting heavily. “We have what we came for. Retreat!”
“No you don’t,” I snarl, charging for him.
Three cards rise from his deck at the same time. The King of Coins, the King of Swords, and the Chariot. I try to summon the Ten of Swords to destroy one, but I don’t have enough time. The two Kings burst at the same time with a shock wave of magic that sends me flying back.
The whole mountain rumbles. Winds howl as if a tornado has been trapped within the cavern. This place is being ripped apart from the inside.
The bastard is taking a note from me and what I did with Halazar, and I do not approve. Before I can say or do anything, he disappears with a flash of silver that takes the shape of a steed.
“Leave. Now!” Kaelis shouts.
A few surviving Worldkeepers are stumbling in. Maybe there are more, maybe not. There’s no time to look. My own Chariot rises from my deck. I force the magic to extend as far as it can, to encompass as many Worldkeepers as I’m able.
Reality bends, and I feel as though I am being pulled in a thousand different directions at once.
As though the whole world is both within me and around me.
The remnants of the Stone Citadel disintegrate into a blur of swirling fire, stone, blood, and magic.
A scream rips from my lips that turns into a whimper.
In a blink, we’re all in Kaelis’s room.
Two Worldkeepers lie prone. Vacelle sways, falls, and throws up. Xora rushes for Vaduin, who crumples to the ground. Gregor lies off to one side, Sorza on another. If Kaelis’s chambers weren’t so generously sized, it’d be cramped.
The prince himself surveys his own chambers with an air of confusion, blinking away the blinding light like the rest of us.
A low and ominous rumbling breaks the silence. None of us can see the mountainside from here. But we all know what that sound is.
The Stone Citadel, ancient home of the Worldkeepers, preserved for thousands of years and countless iterations of the World, has fallen.
“K-Kaelis…Queen of Cups.” I stagger to Gregor’s still form. The prince casts the card. The magic crashes against Gregor’s body but refuses to sink in. I stop, mid-step.
No.
I drop to my knees beside him. He doesn’t move. My hands hover over his chest, trembling, afraid to confirm what I already know to be true.
“Gregor?” My voice cracks like a child’s. “Gregor, come on. You don’t get to—” The words die in my throat.
His eyes are halfway open, heavy-lidded. And yet they’re still that shade of dark bronze that always seemed to shine in the low light whenever we were swapping stories by a fire or slinking through back alleys. But now they’re empty. Life has left them.
I press my palms against his chest anyway, pushing down hard, desperate, as if all he needs is a good jostle to remember to breathe again.
“No, no, no. You promised. You promised me you’d see this through. That you’d follow me into the new world.” My voice rises to a wail that I barely recognize as my own. “You’re my brother, and you swore you’d never abandon me! You can’t leave me, too.”
Blood seeps between my fingers—so much blood from wounds I didn’t even notice.
Behind me, everyone in the room slows what they’re doing. Halting. Quieting. I feel every set of eyes. But they’re so far away now.
I’ve been plunged back into the icy waters of the Farlum River. All I can focus on is the terrible stillness of the man who taught me how to fight, how to hope, how to keep going when the world felt like it was ending.
And now the world really is ending, and he’s gone. The Stone Citadel has fallen. Ravin has the vessel. The last of my crew and one of the few to come with me into the new world with his memories intact is gone.
I lean forward until my forehead touches his, and the sob that tears from my chest feels like it might split me in half.