Chapter 34
Thirty-Four
The walls of the Tower loom around me, pressing in, heavy with centuries of sacrifice, of death, of blood offered in devotion, of magick twisted into fate. The machine hums behind me, patient, waiting, its ancient gears groaning, its rusted lungs sighing.
“You said Sylvie saw them take me?” I ask Alderic, my voice a whisper beneath the melodic chant.
He nods once, a flicker of something fierce sparking in his eyes.
We don’t have to say the rest aloud. We both understand what it means.
I lift my chin. My pulse steadies. My breathing smooths. The fire rising inside me is no longer fear—it’s fury. It’s power. This fight isn’t over. It’s only just beginning.
Alder tilts his head, studying me as if sensing the shift, as if seeing my strength rekindle, the moment everything changes.
“Sweetheart,” he drawls, “are you about to do something reckless?”
I meet his gaze, smile, and the Tower answers.
A crack splits the air. A sound older than time itself. A sound like stone breaking, like history unraveling, like a god exhaling after centuries of holding its breath.
The Tower doors—doors that had vanished from maps, from the island, from the Kingdom of Cups itself—open.
This ancient chamber appears only for three people: me, Alderic, and Alder. But we’re already inside. And now, it’s appeared to and is opening for someone else, not with force but with invitation.
A breath of air rushes into the chamber, swirling around me, rustling the hem of my gown, curling through my bloodstained fingers.
The iron shackles rub my wrists raw and hold me in place, but I don’t feel trapped anymore.
Because I know, in the marrow of my bones, in the deepest part of my soul, the truth Alder and Delphara never saw coming.
The Tower, this machine, was never meant to serve them.
Alder turns. His smirk falters, and his fingers twitch at his sides, but there’s no escaping what’s coming.
Footsteps echo beyond the entrance. A whisper of sound slithers through the chamber—the soft shuffle of leather on stone, the shifting of bodies in the growing gloom.
Shadows stretch across the floor. The flicker of torchlight catches on steel.
Then, a flood of movement, and they’re here. A surge of bodies storming the Tower.
A sea of women spills through the entrance of the ancient chamber that should not exist, that they should not have been able to find. Their fury is a tempest, a hurricane. They are a force of nature, their battle cries filling the air.
The guards barely have time to react before the first strike lands and chaos erupts.
A blur of action—steel flashing, skirts whipping as women who have been overlooked, dismissed, silenced for too long fight back.
Bernice, her skirts hitched up, brandishes a kitchen knife like she’s been waiting her whole life for this moment.
Sylvie, her face grim, eyes blazing like embers in the dark, swings a stolen sword, cutting through the ranks of guards.
The noblewomen—the same women in the hidden cellar beneath the kitchens—fight alongside them, wielding daggers, broken chair legs, whatever they could find.
One swings a dented candelabra straight into the temple of a guard, another ducks low, slicing at the back of a knee with a piece of metal, sending her opponent sprawling.
Steel clashes. Boots scrape against stone. Women emit war cries. And the Tower trembles beneath the force of a battle decades in the making.
Alder’s smirk shatters, jagged and frantic. He reaches out, fingers grasping the air like he can regain control, twist this moment into something that still belongs to him.
Delphara’s lips peel back in a snarl, her regal composure cracking at the edges. She clutches her heavy skirts as she scrambles back, a cornered animal seeking an exit that no longer exists.
Alder doesn’t run—not at first. No, that would mean admitting defeat, admitting failure. And Alder doesn’t lose. Not him. Not ever.
A guard collapses at his feet, blood staining his blue robes, a dagger buried in his ribs. And suddenly, there is no denying it. If this ever was Alder’s kingdom, it’s not anymore.
His chest heaves as he turns on his heel, his white robes lashing the air as he searches for an escape. But there’s nowhere to go but through.
Bernice slashes at a guard, her knife flashing. Sylvie advances, blade slick with blood. Noblewomen and maids stand shoulder to shoulder at the entrance, driving back the last of the Masked guard.
Delphara’s breath comes too fast, her hands shaking as she grips her skirts and shoves past a wounded guard, her pinched face twisting with disdain, with desperation.
Through the fight, Bernice’s voice rings out. “Gemma!”
Sylvie stands beside her, panting, her sword slick with blood. Her red hair is half torn from its braid, wild around her face, and her gaze burns with something between fury and triumph.
A cry bursts from my lips—relief and disbelief in one breath. They came. They came for me. They came for themselves.
“They were counting on us not to fight,” Sylvie shouts, whirling as a guard lunges toward her.
She pivots, drives her sword deep into his gut.
He lets out a strangled gasp, his body crumpling to the floor.
She doesn’t flinch. She yanks the blade free and calls out, “The Tower appeared out of nowhere as if from—”
“Magick!” Bernice bellows, hacking at a soldier’s arm with the same kitchen knife she’s wielded like a warrior’s blade. The guard stumbles back, clutching the wound, but Bernice is already closing in.
I press my lips together, swallowing against the burn in my throat as hope ignites in my chest, bright and impossible to contain.
This is what Alder and Delphara never anticipated. The ones they ignored, the ones they crushed beneath their heels, the ones they never saw coming. The women of the Kingdom of Cups, rising together.
And winning.
Behind them, the chaos swells, a chorus of steel against steel, of battle cries and bodies hitting stone. The torchlight catches his face as he advances with the women, bloodied, pale, but unmistakable—King Victor Rothmore.
He’s slower than the others but no less determined, his face set with grim resolve. His ornate doublet is torn, the intricate silver embroidery stained with crimson splotches. One hand clutches a blade, the other pressed to his ribs like something inside him is already breaking.
“Delphara!” he roars and pushes through the clashing bodies.
The machine groans. Its gears shift, grinding against decades of rust and ruin, hungry for more. The sound vibrates through me, through the Tower itself.
With the guards distracted, Alderic moves.
A sound tears from his throat—half-roar, half-battle cry—as he wrenches against the chains binding his wrists.
For a heartbeat, nothing gives. Then, with a guttural snarl, he hooks the shackles around the edge of the machine and twists hard.
Metal scrapes against metal, and one shackle snaps open with a sharp clang.
The second follows a beat later, forced open with another burst of strength.
He surges forward, snatching a sword from the blood-slick grip of a fallen guard.
Before I can process the motion, he’s in front of me—fire in his eyes, fury in every breath. The sword flashes in the low light, and with one clean, brutal arc, he drives it down on the chain binding my cuffs to the hook suspending me off the ground.
The metal shatters with a shriek. The broken chain hits the stone floor with a clatter I barely register, lost beneath the roar of battle, and the relentless pounding in my skull.
Before I can fall, Alderic catches me. His arms slide beneath me, sure and steady, pulling me tight against him, as if letting go isn’t even an option.
My feet brush the floor, but they’re useless.
My knees give out instantly. Pain screams down my arm.
The place where the hook tore through my forearm is bleeding again, crimson streaking down my skin, dripping onto the stains of sacrifice and battle painting the stones.
I try to straighten, try to plant my feet, but my legs won’t cooperate.
Alderic’s golden hair is dark with sweat and blood. A bruise blooms beneath his eye, and cuts slice across his chest and arms, but none of it dims the brilliance of him, the fire in his blue eyes, the reckless devotion in his gaze as he looks at me.
His tunic is torn, fabric sticking to the hard planes of his chest, the muscles beneath tense and taut, ready for battle.
One hand holds the sword, still poised for violence.
The other steadies me with trembling fingers, slick with blood but achingly gentle, cradling me like I’m the only thing in this cursed kingdom worth saving.
He is fury and tenderness. Ruin and refuge. He is mine.
And in the center of the battle—the war we were fated to start, fated to win—he leans close and whispers, “Forgive me. I wanted my dream to be yours. I never stopped to see that you had your own.”
The words hit like a blade and a balm. Relief and rage. Gratitude and grief. Love so vast it hurts. My chest tightens, a storm surging inside me—everything we almost lost crashing into everything we still could be.
My throat tightens. My breath catches. My fingers splay against his chest, desperate for proof that he’s real. That I am. That we’re still here. His heartbeat thrums beneath my palm. A pulse of life, of hope, of survival.
A guard slams into us, the jolt tearing me away from Alderic.
My slippers skid across blood-slick stone. I stumble and catch myself on the machine. The world tilts. A snarl grazes my ear as the guard staggers upright and vanishes back into the chaos.
A jolt of electricity tears through my arm as I grip the corroded metal. The gears grind, shifting, sluggish but building speed. The air changes. Magick crackles, snapping against my skin.