Chapter 67
CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN
RONAN MERIK, HIGH STEWARD
Mount Telum. Aedrialis, Sultira.
The gates will remain closed, unlocked only upon the gathering of the eight.
—Unmarked Scroll. Private Library, Mount Telum.
Mount Telum was chaos. The walls of Aedrialis’s fortress shook, tremors reverberating throughout as soldiers and servants sprinted through rooms, bringing aid to those who had been injured during the event and cleaning up the mess it had made.
“Vaelquake!” people had shouted, as the deafening blast rocked from below the castle, shaking the walls of the enormous fortress and sending sculptures, priceless works of art, and chandeliers crashing to the ground.
Owyn.
The name pounded through my head. I’d been in the armory on the second level when Mount Telum shook with unimaginable force.
Word from Kayj had finally reached us, Aelius’s Orb pulsing brightly in the center of the table in the Grand Council room.
I’d placed my hand on it, expecting to see the golden-haired, elven queen of Lotrennia when Nerissa’s face peered out from the glass globe.
She was in a large, dark room. Heads of various animals lined the black walls behind her, and she looked like hell.
Dark circles smudged the space beneath those bright green eyes, but damn, was she beautiful.
Please. The word had lingered on my lips all those months ago when I’d finally told her about Galena.
I’d fucked up so bad. Led her to believe at first that she was nothing to me, just a spoiled and vain young queen whom I was assigned to guard.
And then when those rumors, those sick rumors began to circulate, Galena and I had decided it was better than them discovering the truth, so we let the repulsive gossip continue.
And I let Nis believe them too, not trusting her enough, not placing my faith in the woman I’d fought with, schemed with…
The woman I’d fallen in love with. For fear it would ruin it all, put my sister in danger, put the Rising at risk.
And it all went to shit anyways. I’d begged Nis’s forgiveness.
I’d pleaded. But Nerissa’s heart was a steel chamber, her trust a vault locked deep inside.
I knew that. I fucking knew that, even before I tracked down that soulbinding song…
Her lips, those sensuous, soft, perfect fucking lips, parted for a moment, as if surprised in seeing me, before they clamped together in a thin line, and she relayed everything that had happened on Kayj.
Daimos, dead.
Olienna, behind bars once again.
The ashen, saved, freed, and in desperate need of resources we really couldn’t spare.
But so many were Sultirans, were our people, were Owyn’s people.
And I’d be damned if we let them suffer a moment longer.
I’d sent forty ships along with enough food and medicine to aid over a thousand refugees for two months.
The revelations gave me a pounding headache days later.
Owyn.
I pulled my focus back. I had to get to my nephew.
My muscles warmed as I sprinted up the spiral staircase, skipping steps and dodging servants until finally I heard his cry. My heart thundered in response, adrenaline spinning through my veins as the sound registered, my body reacting the same way it did in battle.
I had known two truths when I broke down Galena’s door during the siege of Mount Telum: the first, upon seeing her lifeless, frail body draped in the satin black veil, was that I would kill Saros. There would be no future where he continued to draw breath in this world.
The moment my eyes caught on the little hand poking out and gripping the matching black bundled blanket was that I belonged to the little prince. I’d be his sword. His shield. His ear. His shoulder. Anything he needed. I would kill for him. I would die for him.
And while there would be a formal ceremony pledging my fealty to the Prince of Sultira, I knew in the depths of my soul that he was my purpose.
I knew I wouldn’t be able to fill all roles, all those important, critical roles in his life as he prepared to lead the people of Sultira, but I’d be Uncle Ro, whether he knew it or not.
I flew past the table strewn with cryptic scrolls found in Saros’s private library before swinging the door to his nursery open. I reached for him as his nursemaid hurried toward me, eyes wide as she looked around to the glass-riddled, marble floor.
“What’s happened to the castle, milord?” she asked in a breath, her hands shaking as she raised a knit, black horse in front of Owyn’s small face to calm him.
I paused, the new title barely registering as my eyes slid to the oval window at the opposite end of the room.
I made a soft, shushing sound as I bounced the fussing babe in my arms, my gaze fixed on the blinding, glowing red spire in the distance. I crossed the room to the window, my lips parting as my gaze landed on the nearest turret that rose opposite our tower.
“Are we safe here, milord? Should we leave?” The nursemaid’s voice shook as she followed, staring at the glowing red spire.
I whirled around, palming my dagger as the door behind us swung open. Drystan’s soft blue eyes were bright, and his face was wide in alarm. His black Death Scholar robes were covered in debris. Evony rushed in behind him, her face pale.
“Something’s happened.” Drystan’s hand movements were firm.
I opened my mouth to respond when Evony rushed past him.
“He did it,” she said in a rush. “He harnessed the Advetis Bone! He took us to the others!”
“Explain,” I signed with one hand, bouncing Owyn as his fussing worsened.
“I felt Lyvia. I don’t know how to explain it, other than it was the strongest pull,” he began when Evony cut in.
“We were bringing the agrippa mares to the castle stables, and Drystan just grabbed his chest,” she began, her blue eyes wide as she waved her hands in the air. “I touched his shoulder, and we vanished!”
“Something is wrong,” Drystan continued. “I took us to a cave. It had to have been Kayj. Everyone was there. Seconds after we arrived, something happened. A blast or—”
“It was like a storm,” Evony blurted, shaking her head wildly. “The cave got windy, and it smelled different, and then there was this woman screaming. It was the worst sound I’ve ever heard… It was like she was in my head—”
“She screamed into our minds, because I could hear her,” Drystan finished, his chest rising and falling rapidly as he looked out the window. “I don’t know how, but I somehow got us back here after that. I’m worried about the others.”
Drystan rubbed at his chest as his eyes focused on the glowing spire out the window.
“Is that—” Evony began.
“Drystan,” I cut in, noticing the glowing tip of skin peeking through his tunic beneath his robes. “Your chest.”
Drystan’s head bobbed as he looked down and split his tunic. There, on his chest, sat an eight-pointed Bellator star. His copper fingers drifted over the fresh marking.
“The bone is gone,” he finally signed.
“And when we returned,” Evony murmured, stepping toward the window, “this happened.”
“What is it?” the nursemaid asked, her voice shrill.
The four of us moved to the ornate window and gazed at the exterior of the castle we stood in. Everyone knew Mount Telum was hewn from precious white stone. King Saros IV began the construction of the castle at the start of the Second Epoch.
What the world didn’t know, and what the Rising and the crew of the Evecta knew, was that it had been the original Saros, all along, who’d struck the deal with Dark King Daimos over a thousand years ago to get access to this precious stone. We’d never really deduced why or bothered to care.
“It’s a rubelline,” Drystan answered. He held his hands out in front of him. His crystal blue eyes were wide in shock as he scanned his palms, attempting to access his magic and failing to do so.
The bright red glow filtered into the room, as if the walls of Mount Telum continued to grow in their strength. My eyes fell once more to the turret across the sky, to the smooth stone bricks stacked one on top of the other, the Larimer stone used to create rubellines.
I followed Drystan’s gaze as he traced them over the walls of the castle, of the massive rubelline activated in the center of Aedrialis, Sultira’s capital. A rubelline this large…
“How far do you think its power reaches?” Evony asked as she stepped forward, her eyes scanning the city below and the Juniper Sea in the distance.
What was the purpose of this? Why create a rubelline this large, construct a godsdamned castle with it? Saros had expended so much of his energy on his shields… A way to protect his kingdom. Was that what this was?
And now, in Aedrialis and perhaps farther, Mount Telum stood like a massive nullifier.
King Saros had essentially wiped all magic from the Kingdom of Sultira at the start of his reign, the lost art scrubbed from our history.
He’d secretly constructed his castle using a material that would nullify it, but why?
A war was coming. Weapons, Lord Astraeus had claimed. The cannon balls, the arrowheads, even the cuffs… Weapons that would be vital in a war where the magically gifted outnumbered the powerless, and Sultira was a kingdom without magic, once again.