59. Caspian
Caspian
Maybe it was worth the decades of torment, of love mixed so well with hate I forgot what to call it, just to see the dumbfounded look on the High Prince of Winter’s face.
“You really did it, Cas?” he asks softly.
“As if there’s anything I can’t do.” I give him a wry grin. “Besides, you got that fancy new armor. Couldn’t have you showing me up.”
Keldarion takes my hand and places it over the moonstone rose token on my chest.
Could it be? I straighten my arm, the way I saw the other princes do. Surely it won’t work for me. I’m not like them. I’m not one of them.
But with Kel’s eyes steady on mine, I decide to stop being afraid. I unfurl my palm.
Light shimmers along my body. Armor appears, sleek and formfitting. Glittering pale moonstone reflects the light of Farron’s flames and the green glow of the obelisks. A white cape flows behind my back.
Transfixed by my reflection in Kel’s sapphire armor, I spy a circlet of moonstone roses cresting my brow.
Keldarion smiles at me. So damned beautiful. “Alright, Prince of Roses. Let’s see what you can do.”
A sword of briars forms in my hands, the blade sharp. The hilt blooms with lilac roses. Interesting.
I summon a deep breath and leap across the room. My sword clashes against my father’s, intercepting a blow intended for my mate. Sparks of green flame clatter, and Malekai stumbles, a look of bewilderment across his face.
One that quickly turns to fury.
“Cas, you’re…” Rosalina breathes.
“Beautiful? Elegant? An awe-inspiring hero?” I flash her a grin. “All of the above?”
Her golden briars rise. “Who I always knew you were meant to be.”
Imagine all the heartache I could have prevented if only I’d figured that out when she did, I think.
“It’s not possible!” Sira screams, disbelief etched on her face. “You’re under my control! Caspian—”
Dayton strikes at her before she can utter a command.
Malekai’s blade swings toward me again. It’s colossal, shimmering with that sickly green fire. I meet it midair with my briar-forged sword. The impact rings through my bones like a song I was born to answer.
The surrounding shadows twist to life, dancing at my feet, climbing my arms. Green flames spark from my fingertips. Briars slither across the ground, growing sharper with each breath I take. I’ll need every part of who I am to face him.
My father steps back, his eyes narrowing. “You dare stand against me, son?”
I tilt my head. “All that blathering about legacy, power, destiny, and you’re mad I actually lived up to it?”
“I gave you everything. My blood. My power. My purpose.”
“You gave me chains,” I say, raising my free hand. Shadows whip forward like spears, slamming into his side. He stumbles but doesn’t fall.
He growls, swinging again. His sword is so massive it seems to cleave the air itself, but I duck low, roll, and come up in a surge of thorns and green flame. My blade lashes across his shoulder. A clean strike.
“I gave you my power!” he bellows, magic crackling. “Without me, you’d be nothing.”
I smirk. “Look at me now. Glowing. Gorgeous. Very much something.”
My briars lash again, snapping from the floor like vipers. He burns half of them away, but not fast enough. I leap into the air, twisting in shadow, and slam down with a blast of green fire wrapped in thorns.
He bats it away with his sword but grunts. That’s new.
“You’re drawing on my power,” he spits.
“No,” I say, eyes locked with his. “I’m using what was always mine. This isn’t some gift you can pull away. You, in your arrogance, passed your power down in my blood. Try to take it back. I dare you.”
He roars, lunging for me.
But then ice whistles through the air.
Keldarion.
He flies past me in a blur of sapphire, blades of frost drawn wide, intercepting a bolt of shadow that had been arcing toward Farron. “Keep fighting, Cas,” he shouts. “We’ve got Sira!”
I glance over. Dayton’s plume flashes gold and teal as he pins Sira with a trident strike. Farron comes in hard beside him, the flames wreathing his body like a meteor. Keldarion joins them in the fray, and she finally seems to shrink away.
Good.
Because I’ve got my own monster to slay.
Malekai swings again, and this time, I welcome it. My shadows catch his blade, just long enough for me to slip through. My sword carves a line down his side, and I twist, letting the momentum spin me into a backhanded strike that sends a spray of embers across his chest.
He snarls. “You are still mine!”
“No,” I cut him off. “I’m Rosalina’s. I’m Kel’s. I’m mine.”
Footsteps sound behind me, light and sure.
“We’re with you.” Rosalina appears beside me, gold briars at the ready.
Ezryn flanks her, hammer blazing in his hands. “Let’s finish this.”
I smile.
We press him hard.
Ezryn’s hammer crashes against Malekai, rippling out with blasts of spring light, forcing him back step by step.
Rosalina’s golden briars snap like whips, coiling around the Baron’s legs, binding, tearing, holding.
I charge through the chaos, blade of thorns blazing with green fire, and slash deep across his chest.
He staggers, movements slow.
His magic is still powerful, but it’s faltering.
“You’ve got nothing left,” I snarl, slamming my boot into his side and driving him back farther. “Your time’s over.”
He lifts his massive, gleaming sword with trembling hands, and I feel it break. Not just the weapon. Him.
This time, when I move, I don’t hesitate.
My blade plunges into his chest, briars twisting, flame pulsing down the edge, shadows lashing outward like a scream made visible. A roar of pure shock erupts out of his throat.
His form begins to unravel, flesh withering. Light bleeds out.
He looks at me. And I see him for what he is. Not a god or a monster.
Just a man. A man murdered by his own son.
“For what it’s worth,” I snarl, “you were right about one thing. I am powerful.”
Then he crumbles.
His body collapses into ash and green light, folding in on itself and vanishing into the air.
Ezryn exhales. “Is it over?”
Rosalina looks toward the crystals, her hands still glowing with magic. “Something isn’t right.”
I turn, scanning the chamber: Anya strung between the obelisks, George pounding against them. He’s not even making a dent.
Then Anya lets out a wailing scream, back bowing. Her whole body is a firefly, flickering. George screams, reaching for her. Then the water above her stirs and pulses with light.
A low hum begins.
“George, get back!” I shout.
Too late.
The water explodes.
Green light bursts downward like a geyser, and from within it, he emerges.
The baron. Reborn.
“You didn’t think it would be that easy to end me, did you, son?” He smiles. “I am tethered to this world as it is to me.”
My stomach drops. “No.”
Rosalina stumbles, wide-eyed. “Cas…”
Beside me, Ezryn’s grip tightens on his hammer. “It shouldn’t be possible.”
From the other side of the cavern, Sira laughs. A burst of shadows explodes around her, knocking Dayton and Farron away.
“Yes!” Sira cries, spinning like a child at a festival. “She’s almost dead. It’s time.”
My sword trembles in my grip. We had him. I beat him. And it still wasn’t enough.
Ezryn rushes forward, slamming his hammer against the Baron. Kel pulls away from Sira to assist.
“Cas.” Rosalina grips my arm, forcing me to look at her. “The obelisks are the tether. Sira has been stealing the joy from people to feed them for years.”
So many secrets, Mother. So much pain. For what? So you would feel less lonely? For one perfect creation? I stare down at my hands. All this power, and it’s still not enough to beat him.
“I chipped them before,” Rosalina snarls. “But with the Baron’s magic running through it, they’re unbreakable. I can’t control the Green Flame magic. It’s not of the Vale. We need to disrupt it somehow.”
The words are thick in my throat. “I’ll find a way.”
Her eyes flash. “You break the connection. I’ll break the obelisks.”
“Alright then. Together, Princess?”
“Together.”
With my father distracted, Rosalina and I rush over to the glowing green crystals. As soon as I place my hands on them, a surge of energy floods me, blowing back my hair, whipping my cape. Green light refracts across my moonstone armor.
It washes over me all at once, so many faces I know. Faces I’ve seen walking the streets of Cryptgarden, always joyless and empty. Each one of these moments is a sacrifice tying the Baron to this world.
And now Sira’s using the strongest of all her crystals to channel both Anya’s magic and Malekai’s, all in order to bring him here.
Anya screams again, and George lets out a heart’s cry to meet it.
“Hold on,” I gasp, fingers curling over the stone. I told Rosalina I’d find a way to break the connection, but how?
If happiness tethers him here, what could disrupt that, if only for a moment?
Of all the magic I’ve been born with and given, nothing can compare to these raw emotions…
But maybe it’s not magic I need.
It’s something else my father’s given me. Something my mother has too.
I grasp for a connection to the crystals, threading their energy with my own. But instead of giving it memories of joy…
I give it pain.
Every strike of Emberlash’s whip. Every rejected glance and twisted word from my mother. Vespera’s objects. Kneeling at my father’s feet as he speaks of a world of flame and ash.
The memories wash over me, sucking into the crystal, each one flooding through me as if they were as fresh as the day they happened.
Sweat beads on my brow, and I scream, the sound ripe with grief and torture. In the reflection behind me, I watch my father swing his sword, sending Keldarion flying across the room. Dayton has fallen to one knee, Farron barely able to hold back Sira on his own.
“Cas!” Rosalina shouts.
I scream louder. The cage of fire. Watching Sira torture my sister in front of me. Saving my mate and having to leave her all in one day. Take it all.
Threads of memories fray, snap, and—
The green light flickers. The crystals drain to black.
“Get the hell out of our realms,” Rosalina snarls.
Golden briars rise from the ground and pierce the now dark crystals. A spiderweb of cracks carves across the obelisks.
The baron turns from the fight and rushes toward us.
“No!” Sira shrieks, true terror in her voice.
A creak sounds as the cracks multiply, turning the crystals into a flickering kaleidoscope. Malekai reaches me. He drops his sword and instead grasps my face.
Those glowing green eyes crinkle, his hair falling across his brow in the same way mine does. “In all the hundreds of thousands of worlds, you are my only family.”
The crystals shatter, scattering like a star shower. And he breaks apart too, into thousands of fragments of light, without so much as a scream.
I heave out a deep breath. “And I just saved my family from you.”
He’s not dead. Not really. But he has no more ties to this world. The Enchanted Vale is free of the Green Flame.
And the next world he decides to haunt better have a hero stronger than me to defeat him. Preferably several.
Anya drops to the ground, and George rushes to catch her in his arms, sobbing. “She’s alive. She’s alright, my Annie. Keep breathing.”
Rosalina sprints over to her father, laying a hand on his shoulder and gazing at her mother breathing softly in her husband’s embrace.
“Sira’s gone,” Ezryn yells. “Fled as soon as the crystals cracked.”
“We can track her down. She’s scared and injured,” Keldarion says. “We have the rose. We have the power.”
But a small voice breaks through. “Rosalina…”
It’s Farron. He holds Dayton in his arms.
The High Prince of Summer’s armor has faded away, and so has he.