Chapter Twenty Withering #2
The vines rose up. Jubilee shot her bolts of fire down at the roots. Kell’s acid spell didn’t work on them the way it had on the trolls. Lorzok raised his staff again, but this time, the vines writhed themselves into tangling with one another.
“Oh, clever, my friend.” Kell kept hold of his fiery sword and slashed at anything that dared to come close. “Nine knots to hold the moonlight air, the rose’s scent, love’s first bright flare—”
Lorzok swiveled to stare at Kell. “You’re singing.”
He was, but this wasn’t the right time to discuss it. “A clever tongue, a favor owed, your every step is paved in gold.”
A tendril touched his ankle. He sliced it and stomped on the writhing fingered tip. The air pressed at his skin, sharp as a shriek, and then Saeldian shouted, “Begone!”
The vines went black and crumbled all at once.
The way was clear. Everything was ashen, as if it had burned to charcoal in an instant. Saeldian panted for breath.
“I was right,” they said. “I did this when I woke up the spell gem. I’m tied to the realm through the false Kiss.”
“What did you do to those vines?” Helfyra cried.
Saeldian turned to the elf and smiled. “I decided I didn’t want them anymore. Take my hand.”
Saeldian shook their head when Helfyra offered her good hand. “The other one.”
She laid her black-knotted, blighted limb in Saeldian’s hand and shuddered.
“Know your hand is healed. Know that it’s whole, and limber, and strong. You are as you should be. You are Helfyra of the summer’s journey into autumn, of the frog-sung night, when the moon gazes at her own face in the mirror-still waters of the lake. You are as you should be.”
Light shone from their clasped hands as bright as a star. Kell blinked violet spots out of his vision, but Helfyra was restored—and she wrenched her hand out of Saeldian’s.
“What have you done?”
“I cleansed you,” Saeldian said, “with the power of the realm.”
Saeldian turned to the silent, awestruck gathering huddled around the casket. Ilondrel emerged from the crowd, her bright snow-and-ice gown smeared with rotten black ochre and dried red blood.
“You have come back,” she said. “For my life?”
“No. I never meant for this to happen,” Saeldian said. “All of this…I didn’t want it.”
Kell nearly choked. Ilondrel had been majestic, as if starlight had decided to learn what it was like to be flesh. Now she was…mortal, and the only one untouched by the withering blight that crept across the bodies of her subjects.
Ilondrel stepped on a rotten questing tendril. “What did you want, then?”
“I thought it was just a job,” Saeldian said.
“I thought it was Kell getting revenge on me at first. But then—too late, I admit—I understood that we had been taken for fools. I did what I had to do to finish the job I was given, but I didn’t know that it would make all of this.
I thought I was replacing something stolen. I didn’t know—I swear! I didn’t know.”
“Know?” Jubilee asked. “What are you talking about?”
“I was told to be careful of the spells on the casket when I was replacing—I mean, planting the false Kiss, and when those spells went quiet, I used a spell on the gem we replaced.”
Ilondrel gave a grudging nod for Saeldian’s deduction. “That’s what did it, I’m sure.”
“So I’m linked to the false Kiss, and it started a spell that’s withering the domain,” Saeldian said.
“Then we left, and the witch came, and I was going to stay behind to save your lives in trade for my own, and I still had power after that. I didn’t know how, but it’s got to be the stone I planted. ”
“It stole Hearthaven’s Repose from me,” Ilondrel said. “You command this realm now. It belongs to you. Everything I built, everything this place was for—you stole it. All of it.”
“I didn’t want that,” Saeldian said. “How do I undo it?”
“Don’t be silly, my dear.”
Kell had his knife in his hand before Osalor finished the sentence.
And there he was, gliding along on a little pocket of force that had carried him over the water.
“Of course you didn’t know. I went to great lengths to make sure that it was a surprise. This is the culmination of everything I have worked for since the day we met.”
Saeldian looked pale and gray.
Osalor, dressed in the creamy white of plumeria petals, soft gold and shell pink showing in the folds of his silken robes, floated over the ash and rot of the ground.
“It’s you,” Saeldian said. “You were our employer.”
“Surprise,” Osalor said, and smiled with the rotten joy of seeing his evil done just the way he wanted. “But here we are, and you’ve done beautifully. I promised that when the time came, you would have the world in your hands.”
“This is what you wanted?” Saeldian asked. “You wanted Hearthaven destroyed?”
“To get my revenge? Of course I did.”
“That’s horrible,” Jubilee said. “Horrible—”
Osalor ignored her. “Ilondrel took everything from me. I had to pay her back in kind. And you, ever faithful, the best apprentice I could ask for, this realm is yours, all of it.”
“I don’t want Hearthaven,” Saeldian said.
“But it is yours,” Osalor said. “I promised you, didn’t I? All the power you would ever need, so you would be safe and no one could hurt you. Here it is. Isn’t it amazing how it wants to shape itself as you wish?”
He smiled while everyone realized what he had just said, then continued, “For as long as you’re alive, of course.”
Every fey blade in Hearthaven’s Repose pointed straight at Saeldian’s heart.
Saeldian had been loyal, all this time. Every time they had to choose, they chose Osalor. They trusted him. And all this time, he’d been using his pact-bound protégé to make this day come—and when they balked, he turned them into a target faster than the wind could change.
Kell couldn’t take his eyes off Saeldian, who had stood by Osalor through everything, had given everything to stand here and know how quickly he’d sacrifice them in the lanceboard game of his revenge.
Half shattered, Saeldian said, “You said you would never hurt me.”
“I wouldn’t be the one hurting you, my dear,” Osalor said. “And they won’t hurt you either, if you refuse to let them. You get to choose. The power is yours.”
Kell swallowed his horror as he saw what Osalor was making Saeldian choose.
Spears raised. Arrows nocked. Swords aimed straight where Saeldian’s heart was breaking. No one would touch them if Saeldian didn’t allow it. They raised their hand, and everyone froze.
Everyone except Osalor, whose smile looked relieved for half a heartbeat.
Saeldian had to understand. They needed to hear Osalor say it in front of everyone. They had to know the truth before they freed everyone from being unable to move or speak or do anything but listen.
“You’re Lord Azaelea,” Saeldian said. “You were supposed to seduce Ilondrel. But you fell in love with Jadiris—no. Not love.”
Osalor smirked, unbothered. “Do they still tell that story? I guess they do here. Everyone needs to know the whole sad story. Poor Ilondrel. How she suffered.”
“That day I met you in the wood was the day you killed Jadiris, wasn’t it? You escaped to Faer?n to confuse their trail.”
“Why do you insist on poring over the details?” Osalor frowned.
Saeldian couldn’t look at Jubilee or Kell. They would know what Saeldian was doing. They would figure out that Saeldian’s will held all those blades and bodies still, that nothing could happen to an archfey in the realm they commanded that they didn’t permit.
But Ilondrel, unbound—Saeldian had to trust her to see what was happening. For now, Saeldian had to bet on what they did best: Lie.
“Because this is so complex, and you’ve been planning this whole clever scheme for years,” Saeldian said. “I think I know how you did it, but I’m sure some of my guesses are wrong. But that was the day, wasn’t it?”
“You are correct, of course,” Osalor said. “It was sheer luck that I wound up where you found me. Or our destinies were meant to draw together.”
“It could have been either, my teacher,” Saeldian said. “Did it feel like destiny?”
“It felt fortunate,” Osalor said, “which makes sense. It felt perfectly natural to offer you power in exchange for your kindness to me.”
“It was the luckiest day of my life,” Saeldian said. “Nothing would have turned out this way without you.”
Osalor’s tiny smile was everything Saeldian had hoped for growing up.
It was so easy to guide him along. Praise, an invitation to describe how clever he’d been, and then wait.
“I never forgot. I promised I would give you everything you wished for. Beauty, and power, and safety. That the world would belong to you—and here we are.”
He swept his arm to indicate the sickly, disheveled grove. “It’ll need work, of course. But this is a world you can shape however you wish. Just as we agreed.”