Chapter 23
DARK SCHEMES
LEILANI
BLINK. BLINK AGAIN.
I don’t recognise the crimson drapes to my left, or the four-poster bed I’m lying on. The room swirls as I sit up; there’s a fierce pounding in my head. I fist the sheets, trying to anchor myself, and run my tongue over my teeth. My mouth tastes wrong. Bitter.
It comes back to me, then. I’m in Galtair. The Arx Magnum drugged me. Us.
Stars, where are the others?
I stumble to the door, jarring my bad ankle. Locked. I rattle its handle, search in vain for the key. Locked from the outside. Dread claws my chest as I batter the door with my fists. No one answers.
The thud in my head, the ache in my limbs, is making it hard to stay upright.
I stagger to the drapes, wrench them open, unleashing a thick cloud of dust into the air.
It’s approaching dusk, but I’ve no idea how long I’ve been unconscious.
My chamber is several flights up, towards the top of Viklari’s spindle-tower.
The window is unbarred, but the sheer drop is deterrent enough.
I sink back on the bed. There’s no way out of this star-forsaken place.
The air shimmers by the foot of the bed but Orthriel doesn’t materialise.
‘You’re awake. Thank the Stars! Astrophel is locked up down the hall, the others are being held downstairs, but guards are readying to move them. The Arx Magnum has armed sentinels at every exit. I can’t subdue them on my own. It’s a coup, Leilani. We’ve been tricked.’
‘I told you something didn’t feel right.’
‘I should have listened. Should have noticed something amiss. I’ve been so distracted with…’ They break off. ‘Can you summon starshine? Force the lock?’
The room’s still spinning, my head splintering with pain, as I try to will a spark from my palms. It’s not the first time I’ve called on my magic, but this feels strange.
Wrong. Like a betrayal. It’s useless, anyway.
My arms are ragged husks, the muscles stretched and spent.
I flop back and stare up at the cracks webbing the ceiling.
‘Return to Meissa. Inform my father. He’ll send troops.’
There’s a pause. ‘I can’t.’
I sit up, weathering the giddy rush of blood to my throbbing head.
‘My Aether is too low. I lied to you before, about where I went after delivering the Kingswrit to the Arx Magnum. I didn’t spend that time in the Hill Country – I tried to return to Nimbi, to replenish my heartcrystal.
’ Orthriel sighs. ‘I couldn’t get there, had to turn back.
The effort left me weaker than ever. I hoped you wouldn’t need to find out.
Felt sure my reserves would last till we crossed into the peaks and I could perform the necessary rites, absorb a measure of Aether from the starstone tincture.
Restore myself that way.’ Orthriel’s quiet for a long moment. ‘I’ve failed you.’
‘You haven’t.’ But even as I say the words, the last scrap of hope slips through my fingers.
My pack. Where is it? I scan the room, overturn the cushions on a pair of threadbare armchairs ranged before a hearth, yank open the carved doors of a wardrobe, crouch down to check beneath the bed.
The tincture. The mooncrystal. Both gone.
My hand flies to my throat and my breath hitches as I knead the dip between my collarbones, plumbing the hollow where the starstone ought to hang.
They’ve taken everything. I scrabble in the concealed pocket of my skirts and breathe a ragged sigh of relief as my fingers curl around the sharp corner of Noelani’s letter.
Almost everything.
I turn to the window. My gaze drifts to the city walls, a sourness twisting my gut as I remember those gibbet cages strung along the city walls like beads in a macabre necklace.
I grip the heavy velvet drapes to stop my fingers from shaking. ‘See if you can learn where they’re taking the others.’ My throat tightens as their faces swim before me – a silent procession that settles on the image of Blayze, on his golden eyes, his infuriating smirk.
‘I’ll do what I can,’ Orthriel says. There’s a grim finality to their words.
The air shimmers once more, and I’m alone.
I have to do something. Have to get out of here. Crossing back to the door, I beat against it, fingers splayed, scratching at the wood.
This time, the lock turns with a heavy clank.
The door creaks inwards, revealing the Arx Magnum flanked by two armed guards. That oily smile bleeds onto his face again.
‘Good evening,’ he says, as if simply there to escort me to dinner.
‘What do you mean by locking me up? Where are my companions? When my father learns about th—’
‘Fret not, Princess. I’ll tell the King myself. All in good time.’ His smile broadens. ‘After certain avenues have been explored to my satisfaction, I’ll be dispatching riders to Meissa. They’ll carry letters explaining his heir is my hostage.’
The Arx Magnum steps inside my chamber, runs a battle-scarred finger along the mantle above the hearth, grimacing at the dust.
‘Unless your father disbands this travesty of an alliance and executes the Outrealmers as the filthy traitors they are, there’ll be fresh mutiny. He won’t accede of course, won’t suffer the challenge to his authority, and that’s when the fun begins… The mountains won’t stand for it.’
The Arx Magnum isn’t smiling anymore. His face is cragged rock: hard and sharp and unyielding.
‘So, it was all a lie – everything you said about forgetting the past?’
He scoffs. ‘Rumours have reached us of the sumptuary laws, of the way your father treats the air-refugees – like scum beneath his boots, when we’re the ones on the frontline, burning our dead in their hundreds and thousands, starving and suffocating as our crops fail, and the air thins and chokes.
All while he swans around his fine palace, pretending none of it is happening.
He doesn’t care if the rest of the realm falls, so long as his own walls stand. ’
His words slice like shards of ice. The worst of it is, I know he speaks the truth.
The Arx Magnum bends close, his breath warm on my face.
‘Ever since the last uprising, I’ve been searching for a cause the Highlanders could unite behind, an excuse to sack the Crystal City and seize power. To do what should have been done long ago: invade the enemy realms. Make no mistake, war is coming and Estelia must be first to strike.’
He draws back, sits heavily in one of the shabby armchairs before the empty hearth. I consider running him through with the poker lying beside it, but the guards standing sentinel in the doorway stay my hand.
‘Do you know how many fever victims sylvanmare blood could save? How much energy emberwing fire-feathers could generate? With enough of them, we could heat our frozen cities…’ The Arx Magnum tents his fingers.
‘Yes, I’ve been searching for a cause for a long, long time, and you’ve given me the perfect one.
Thank you for that.’ The Arx Magnum’s voice is sugared again, the razor smile creeping back over his face.
Dread tears my chest again. ‘What have you done with my travelling companions?’
‘They’re alive – for now. I’m moving them somewhere a little less comfortable, that’s all. I have such plans for them.’
The cruelty of his smile makes my stomach lurch. Without meaning to, my outward sight dims and I read his aura. Darkness steeps the air around him, a halo of red so deep, it’s almost black. Anger so fierce it’s a pure, blind hatred – tempered with not a drop of pity.
Sister’s mercy. I’m going to throw up.
The room tilts again as I stagger to the bed, blinking till my vision clears.
The Arx Magnum signals to one of his guards. They stalk towards me, holding fetters.
‘A precaution,’ the Arx Magnum says as I back away, scrabbling towards the headboard. ‘I know what you are.’ He wrinkles his nose and his gaze travels to my wrist. ‘Try anything and you’ll regret it. I can promise you that.’ The guard’s hands are rough as he clamps my wrists into the restraints.
‘My mother told me you Highlanders respect the gods and the old laws. That you’re friends to my kind.’
The Arx Magnum stiffens, fingers clenching bloodless around the chair’s armrests.
‘Once perhaps. But the gods turned their backs on the mountains, so we turned our back on them. For centuries we hoped and prayed, believed the Dawn Sister would return to us, cross back from the Void, grace us once more with her favour. But then we were forced to abandon our cities and villages – our very air turned to poison. The Branded haven’t been welcome here for many sunrings.
We rejoiced as your kind were destroyed.
’ His lip curls. ‘I like rarities, Princess. I collect them. And you’re certainly that.
But make no mistake, I’d take great pleasure in making the Starborn Seers extinct.
I suggest you don’t give me cause.’ He stands, flashes me another sickly smile.
‘My ministry will dine here tonight. You and Lord Astrophel will both attend. That’s not a request.’
With a swirl of his jewelled cloak, the Arx Magnum is gone, the guards following him.
I collapse against the headboard as the key turns in the lock.
Pressure builds behind my eyes and I blink back tears.
They won’t help me. Again, I try to summon my magic, to draw Star-Aether down my arms, down towards the restraints, down into my palms. But there’s a blockage. My palms don’t so much as tingle.
A suspicion, crystallising in my mind since Thawtide, solidifies. The Celestial Chain, the starstone, it’s activated something inside me. And now the chain’s gone, perhaps lost forever, and I can’t summon starshine without it.
All my life I’ve rejected my magic, resisted its intrusions, tried to repress them, denied my true nature. And now, now when I need it, when I turn willingly towards it, when I urge it to use me as a vessel, it shrinks from me. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.
Astrophel.