Chapter 33 The Burning Crown
ALAR LIFTED HIS head, his gaze shifting to the writhing void. “Is it done?”
“Not yet,” Mor replied, her voice tight. Eager.
Lara gritted her teeth. The Ord-ree seal had started to pulse harder now. It was like holding an ember against her skin. She could smell her flesh burning. Shades. She needed to rip it off. “How much longer?” she gasped, her voice catching.
“Just hold on,” Mor barked.
And then Lara jolted, for an arm clamped around her torso, pinning her arms to her sides. Another hand covered her mouth.
“Apologies.” Vyr’s voice rumbled in her ear. “Change of plan.”
Alar’s chin kicked up, his gaze settling upon Lara and Vyr—just as Mor leaped on his back.
Taken by surprise, he grunted a curse, lurching forward.
Steel flashed. Mor drove a blade into his shoulder, just above the harness where his two fighting daggers were still sheathed. She pushed him onto his stomach, one knee pinning his spine. Alar writhed and bucked under her, but she dug the knife in deeper.
And then, with her free hand, she yanked his iron daggers free.
She was careful to grab them by their bone hilts, avoiding iron.
Nevertheless, she flinched, and her face screwed up as she hurled them away.
“That’s better,” she panted. “Your blood will already be attracting the Fuath … and now you won’t give them any trouble. ”
Alar snarled another curse, his voice cutting off when she ground the dagger deeper still.
“Behave, Half-blood,” Mor warned. “Keep quiet, or Vyr will cut your beloved wife’s throat.”
A growl rumbled in his throat, yet he obeyed.
“Just to be clear … this isn’t sacrifice.” Mor’s voice held a mocking edge now. “It’s murder.” Her gaze flicked toward Lara. “We both know the only reason you’re here is for her. Love makes idiots of us all.”
Panicking now, Lara fought against Vyr, but it was like trying to escape a steel cage. The Shee were fearsomely strong.
“What are you doing?” she tried to shout, but Vyr’s hand muffled her words.
“Eliminating threats,” Vyr answered quietly, as if he’d heard her.
Lara stared at Mor, mind whirling, heart thumping.
The Shee had just double-crossed them.
“It had to be done.” Mor’s voice was calm, even as she continued to pin Alar down, twisting the dagger every time he tried to free himself.
She glanced at the swirling rift then. The shadows within boiled now.
“It’s time.” Her gaze cut back to where Vyr held on to Lara, even as she fought him.
“Don’t let her go. Wait until the Half-blood is taken and then hurl her in after him. ”
And with that, Mor gave the blade a final twist. She then leaped off Alar, leaving the dagger embedded, and backed up swiftly, just as four bog wights exploded from the rift: large broad-shouldered males. They rushed at Alar, their webbed hands tipped in curving claws fastening around his arms.
He fought them. But they clung on—dragging him toward the rift.
Lara screamed against Vyr’s hand, even as her ring flashed bright crimson. She needed to wield fire, but she didn’t have a flame to connect with.
Mor looked her way once more. “This is the final stage. Two rivals eliminated in one stroke.”
Lara jerked her gaze from where Alar struggled and twisted under the Fuath, to Mor. You bitch!
Meanwhile, Alar dug his heels into the ground.
Mor had stabbed him to weaken him, to make him an easier victim.
But, even injured, he was proving hard to wrestle into the gap.
His eyes started to glow red then. His lips pulled back from his teeth as he snarled.
Lara gasped. His wolf’s head tattoo. The earth magic was fighting back.
And yet, only a few yards remained.
Panic surged through Lara. They were going to take him, and she couldn’t stop them.
A tall lean figure clad in black burst into the circle, dark hair flying behind him.
Mor snarled something in the Shee tongue.
Wynn Sablebane ignored his queen. Instead, his blade sliced into one of the bog wights, severing its head. He then stabbed another through the eye. Brackish water gushed over the ground.
Sablebane whirled, drawing his arm back to take down another of the Fuath.
Mor drew a dagger and hurled it at him. It hit him in the guts with a dull thud, embedding to the hilt. He reeled backward—even as two more Fuath crawled from the rift and hurled themselves at Alar.
Sablebane lay on his side, curled up. He’d yanked out the blade. It lay next to him, gleaming with blood. Face twisting in agony, he rolled toward Lara. However, his gaze didn’t rest on her, but on the male holding her fast.
“You’re expendable, Vyr,” he gasped. “We all are.”
“Idiot,” Vyr growled. However, Lara felt his strong body tense against hers. “What have you done?”
“I’ve orders to kill you,” Sablebane grunted out the words. “Once Alar and Lara are gone and the rift is sealed, I will slide a knife between your ribs.” He grimaced as agony clutched at him. “She doesn’t suffer rivals.”
“Ignore him.” Mor now stalked around the knot of Fuath who still struggled with Alar. She was heading toward Sablebane, her longsword drawn. “He’s lost his mind.”
A heartbeat pulsed.
“Close the rift,” Vyr rasped in Lara’s ear.
And then, to her shock, he let her go. Just like that.
Drawing his sword, he intercepted Mor. Alar was just two yards from the rift now. Agony twisted his lean features. Yet he fought on.
A savage cry tore from Mor’s lips as she swung her sword at her cousin. He brought his blade up to block her. Clashing steel rang across the promontory, echoing off stone.
Another figure burst into the circle then—lithe and fast, her dark cloak billowing. Fern.
Alar’s half-sister didn’t hesitate. She rushed toward where her father lay bleeding, just as more Fuath began crawling from the rift, drawn by Sablebane’s fresh blood. Her blade flashed as she positioned herself over him, slashing at the bog wights.
The ring finger of Lara’s right hand was agony now. The char of burning flesh made her bile rise. The ring pulsed with power. Gold flames danced across its surface.
She tore it off. It was like handling a flaming coal. For an instant, it sat upon her palm, a ring of gold flames now. The burning crown. Ruari’s warning.
Victory or defeat. She stood on the edge of a crumbling ledge. Which would it be?
Four strides. That’s all it took.
The gap yawned before her—a tear in the world that pulled at her chest and made her vision swim. The Fuath swarmed over Alar, hissing and snarling, their webbed hands raking.
Lara’s arm snapped back. The Ord-ree seal left her palm, a streak of gold spinning through air thick with smoke and screams, straight into the rift.
She didn’t watch it fall.
Instead, her dagger scraped free of its sheath, and she lunged. The blade punched into slippery flesh at the base of a bog wight’s skull. She felt resistance and then give. Brackish water exploded across her face and chest.
The hum threading through the stone circle twisted into something sharp and high, a whine that drove needles into her eardrums.
White-hot pain lanced down her right arm. A Fuath had just clawed her from shoulder to elbow. Blood welled, hot and fast, but she ignored it, slashing her blade across a lean throat. More foul water erupted, drenching both her and Alar.
“Here!” She shoved her dagger into Alar’s hand and felt his fingers close around the hilt. Two bog wights were left, but he’d finish them.
He did. Iron flashed beside her before water sprayed.
And then, something pulled at Lara from behind.
She swiveled, looking over her shoulder into a swirling vortex.
The rift had changed.
A whirlwind spiraled out from the tear, seemingly tethered to it.
Instinctively, she understood she’d caused it by throwing the Ord-ree seal into the rift. The veil was healing and creating a twister as it did so. This was nothing like the wind that Mor had summoned. It was stronger. Hungrier. It could take them all.
Lara’s knees buckled. She dropped, palms hitting gravel, bracing herself against the column of air that tried to tear her away.
“No!” Mor’s voice cut through—raw, desperate. “Not yet!”
The vortex caught the final Fuath attacking Fern. The bog wight reeled past where Lara crouched, its mouth gaped wide, needle-teeth gleaming. Webbed hands clawed at nothing but air. Then it tumbled backward into the gap, swallowed whole.
Lara couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. She could only hold on.
A scream tore through the circle, furious and terrified at once.
Her head snapped up, and her breath seized.
Not all the wraiths surrounding The Shattered Crown tonight had ended up in the rift earlier.
One had resisted Mor’s binding. Until now.
The Slew. The massive solid one with seaweed hair and a melted face.
It had wrapped itself around Mor, arms locked, smoke curling between their bodies like a shroud.
Vyr staggered back, flattening himself against a standing stone as the twister lashed through the air. His face had gone taut, his eyes huge.
The cyclone roared louder.
Lara threw herself at Alar. Her shoulder hit his chest. They went down together, hard, his grunt of pain lost in the tempest shrieking around them. She pressed flat against him. His body was solid and real beneath hers while the world tried to tear them apart.
She lifted her head, just as Mor and the Slew, still locked together, spun past. Two figures embracing as they tumbled toward the gap. Lara caught a glimpse of the Raven Queen’s face. There was no fear there, just fury.
Then they were gone. Swallowed by the rift.
Lara’s forehead dropped against Alar’s chest. Her eyes squeezed shut. The whirlwind still yanked at her. It wanted to drag her in with the rest.
They clung together, even as their bodies slowly slid across the ground, drawn toward the swirling maw.
And then the twister collapsed—abruptly—as if someone had just slammed the door, as if the world had remembered how to exhale.
Heart hammering, Lara sucked in a deep breath, tasting blood and salt.
Silence followed, hollow and profound.
All she could hear was her ragged breathing, and Alar’s too, from beneath her.
She didn’t move. Her body had locked in place, every muscle rigid with the certainty that the storm would come back, that it wasn’t over.
But it was.