Chapter 78
“About fucking time,” Ravin murmurs as he wipes blood from the corner of his mouth. He pulls himself to stand with the help of a nearby gravestone. “I was wondering when you’d finally show your true colors to the whole world.”
Kaelis doesn’t answer, his gaze lingering on my bruises and gashes. I think I see the miasma of shadow around him darken as he turns back to Ravin.
“You can’t protect her, brother. You can’t even protect yourself—you’re a dog on a leash for Father,” Ravin says, seething.
Kaelis is utterly unbothered. “You are not my brother, you fucking abomination.”
Ravin roars, and both men move at the same time. Kaelis is a blur. I can’t tell most of the cards he’s casting because the majority are reversed. Every one unleashes something horrible, though.
But Kaelis doesn’t move toward his brother; he comes for me, keeping Ravin at bay. His hand closes around mine, and the sensation of a warm bath overcomes me. I recognize the Queen of Cups as my wounds mend.
Locking eyes with mine, Kaelis issues a single command. “We’re taking the main bridge. Run.”
I do. My fingers locked with his, we run toward the academy gates. They open without a card or clear command from Kaelis. Ravin and the other Stellis are close behind.
“I don’t have any cards!” I shout to him over the howling winter winds off the sea that whip hair into our faces and pull tears from our eyes.
“Just keep running.” Kaelis is focused only ahead.
I trust him implicitly.
When we’re halfway across the bridge, Kaelis stops, swinging around. Momentum throws me a few feet ahead as his fingers release mine. I turn in time to see him kneel, palms pressing against the stone of the bridge.
Purple-black flames illuminate grooves hidden in the mortared edges that I didn’t notice once in nearly two years of looking at this bridge from the academy’s spires.
Violet light illuminates the design of the Ace of Wands just on the inside of the graveyard gate, and within a second, the back half of the legion of Stellis chasing us are immolated in a wall of flames.
The front half are nearly knocked off the bridge as it folds up like paper, the Ace of Coins design barely visible in front of us before it contorts.
Kaelis spins and begins running. I shake the shock of what just happened, close my slack jaw, and pick up speed at his side.
Wands…then Coins…Swords are next. The hidden form of the Ace of Swords carved between the stones of the bridge summons a gale that pushes the legion back, away from the academy.
The Ace of Cups is the final hidden card etched into the bridge.
Kaelis activates this one when we’re past the threshold of the massive doors, and a wall of ice begins to form in jagged growing spears.
The doors close in front of us with a solemn, ominous clang, and ice seals them shut along the seam.
“That won’t stop them for long,” Kaelis murmurs.
“What the…Could you always do that?” I blink. I’ve never seen magic like it.
“This is the seat of my ancestors—my castle by birthright.” He grins and tucks a strand of hair behind my ear.
The movement is gentle, affectionate even, and so jarring coming from the man who just wreaked terror upon countless individuals.
“There are secrets still that can protect us, but they won’t hold forever. ”
I know what he’s saying, and my stomach plummets.
“Retrieve the cards from my apartments. Ink the vessel. Get your sister to make her gold card.”
“Where are the gold cards?” I can’t ask more than that; my throat is in knots I can’t swallow. I’m not ready. She’s not ready. But we never will be. Sometimes, we must do what terrifies us most before we’re even sure we’re capable of surviving it.
“I’ve kept them safe with the second most precious thing to me in the world.” The adoration he looks at me with tells me I am the most precious thing.
“Your…crowns?” I guess.
He laughs and shakes his head. “Priss, of course. Check under her favorite spot.” Why is doting on his cat one of the most appealing things he could do? “Go, Clara. I’ll hold them off as long as I can and lock down the school.”
I grab his hand. “Kaelis, you can’t hold them off alone.”
“Let me show them why they all fear me so deeply.” He smiles sadly, and I merely stare.
I stare at the brilliant night he exudes, a darkness so pure that it could swallow me whole.
Yet…glittering. Sparking with a thousand tiny violet stars of magic so raw and primal that it’s as terrifying as it is breathtaking.
I pull his face to mine with both hands and plant a firm kiss upon his mouth.
His forehead presses against mine, and he draws a shuddering breath. We steal one last second. Even as the sounds of magic begin to roar beyond the doors. Even as the academy begins to wake to chaos and confusion.
Kaelis pulls away. “Go.” And he turns to the doors, pressing his palms against them.
I feel his spike of magic, but I don’t wait to see what he does. Instead, I race through the corridors, down into the bedrock of the academy and the foot of the mountain. I head to the apartments where the Worldkeepers have been staying.
They are all awake, talking rapidly, as I burst through the door.
“They know. They’re here,” I gasp. “They know my disguise. Ravin is leading the Stellis to the academy now—they’re at the doors.”
“What?” Vaduin takes a step forward. I’m glad he’s usually down here at night and not up in his room in the professors’ wing.
I tell them all that’s transpired. When I’m finished, I expect them to hate me—to have yet another reason to loathe me.
Instead, I am met with utter and unwavering determination.
Each one of their expressions is a portrait of one of the stone statues of the past Worldkeepers, as resolute as the rock of the Stone Citadel itself.
Vaduin takes a step, then another. He places his hand on my shoulder, and for some reason, I flinch.
There’s something that still puts me on edge in his expression.
“Do what must be done; we’ll help hold them off.
But do not forget us when your wish is made.
Make the world you promised: one for all. ”
I nod, knowing he’s sacrificing the one thing he truly wanted: to see the wish be made. “I swear it. This time, the power will be ours.”
“We’ll know if you don’t use your wish wisely.
We’ll remember, after all.” He grins slightly and passes me a blank card.
I know by the feel of the paper that it is the one I need to ink the vessel and I pocket it carefully.
Then he turns to the rest. “This is our last stand. Our chance to show Naethor that he will not destroy us quietly.”
“You’ll find extra decks in the reading classrooms—every student is outfitted with a full one to read. Arm yourselves,” I add for any who don’t know.
Vaduin places a deck in my palm with a nod.
“You’ll need it,” I object.
“As you aptly put it, I can easily get more. And you look like you need it more than I do.”
My fingers tighten around it, and I slide the cards into the holster at my thigh. “Thank you.”
They leave, and it’s just me and Arina who remain. She lingers in the doorframe. There’s no hesitation in her stance, nor trembling uncertainty.
Just pure resolve.
I swallow hard, guilt already threatening to drown me.
It’s still too soon. She’s still too frail.
But then I blink and she’s no longer the girl I struggled to raise on the streets.
No longer the broken young woman Ravin discarded.
She’s Arina, a force of nature. Beautifully defiant. Ready to burn the world.
“Are you ready?” I know the answer before asking.
“Yes.” Without missing a beat.
I exhale slowly. “You were always stronger than I gave you credit for.”
“I know.” She grins. “Glad you’re starting to admit it.” I laugh softly and shake my head. Right as I’m about to leave, she stops me with “Clara, there’s something I need to tell you.”
“Arina, there’s not a lot of time.”
Yet she hesitates. I know the look of my sister gathering her courage with a single breath. “I know you didn’t want me to read for you about using the World…”
“But you did anyway,” I finish for her, a streak of anger tearing through me that’s gone as quickly as it came. “What happened to your philosophy of not reading for people unless they explicitly ask?”
“This time, it seemed too important not to.” She lifts her chin, not backing down.
“I had a sense—an overwhelming, nausea-inducing fear of what was to come. So I read, not for you, but for myself. In that reading, I saw myself inking the Star and you by my side. I saw the font of the World and the specter of death. Then…nothing. I laid more cards, and I saw a castle, twisted, different. A grand hall dressed for a ceremony, drowning in blood. I saw a shadow fall across all Oricalis and an unending calamity that follows. Noble clans fallen. A violet flame that knows no end—that spreads across everything as we know it.”
My heart stops.
Kaelis.
I see him as she speaks. I see the man with the crown in the vision of what he sacrificed to the Chalice.
Kaelis the king. I hear Ravin’s utterances of his monstrosity.
I see the shadows that have loomed over him from the first moment we met and feel the terror that ripped through me at their first appearance, the wonder at their last.
“The visions were hazy at best, I admit,” she continues, “but if you cast the World as you intend, all we know will be destroyed.”
A tiny part of me still doubts. But Mother’s voice is so quiet and so far now, her warnings faded like whispers on a breeze.
When I speak, my voice is steady. “That is the goal. Sometimes, things are so broken that nothing can be salvaged; we must destroy them before we can rebuild. The world I want is something new that will flourish from the ashes of this one.”
Arina studies me. I can tell she has a thousand thoughts she’s not saying. Warnings she’s not giving. But I don’t flinch; I hold her stare.