Chapter 51
Baby and Valour pelted me with images, each rife with warnings, with panic that grew increasingly close to fear, but I knelt there and couldn’t move.
Aerona grew cold in my arms, her body unmoving where I held her to my chest, my whole world too still, too quiet.
Valour urged me to stand with a vivid image of Calanthe slicing her emerald dagger through Baby’s throat. But that wasn’t what she wanted me to see—she focused on the dagger, the shapes carved in the emerald, throwing the image at me over and over until I lifted my head to glare at her.
My chest was empty, every part of me hollow. I didn’t give a shit what the knife meant or—or why there were rats etched into the emerald. A cold trickle of warning went down my spine, the pendant around my throat pulsing, casting cold illumination on Aerona’s slack features.
I traced her cheek with my fingertips, hating how cold she was, how still, how lifeless. I felt the same, like someone had reached inside me and scooped out every bit of life within me. Entirely numb, a frozen lake stretched end to end across my soul.
Baby yowled, his frantic screams reaching my ears even as they rang, like they were stuffed with cotton.
It was a sound of warning and threat, but fear threaded through it too, leaking into me through our connection.
He backed up, casting more light across Aerona’s still body, his breaths coming fast, panting, snarling.
I forgot sometimes that he was a being made entirely from magic, because he was so real, and right now his panic was genuine enough to pierce a needle’s width through my numb, frozen lake.
I lifted my head, instinctually wanting to comfort him, but it was a calloused brown hand that neared me instead of Baby, reaching through him like he was a ghost, clutching the egg-sized sapphire that hung from my neck.
His panic shot higher, and I felt an answering call within me.
I snapped my hand up to stop Calanthe, dug my fingers into her wrist, felt her bones shift, but it didn’t stop her ripping the pendant from my throat, snapping the chain.
I knew why. Even numb and empty, I could put two and two together.
She’d miraculously regrown her arm, her knife was carved with rats, and now green power lit her eyes like poison.
“What did you do with Calanthe?” I rasped, digging my nails deeper, my other hand rising sluggishly, so heavy, to grab the sapphire Kier had made into a pendant for me. To keep me safe. To protect me from this monster in front of me. “Where did you bury her body, Cleodora?”
This wasn’t my friend. It hadn’t been since the moment I stepped into the alley.
It was the tyrant queen, fucking with my head, playing tricks with my eyes again.
My heart pulled tight at the thought of Calanthe discarded in a ditch, used for her connection to me, her knowledge of Lazankh, and then killed.
Or maybe she was still alive. Maybe my fragile heart could still dare to hope.
Maybe she was locked in the tower of the castle looming over us with Kier’s mother.
“Don’t tell me you still believe she’s real,” Calanthe replied with a nasty smile that didn’t belong on her face.
That noxious blend of sweet and smug was all Cleodora.
“Darling, she was a role I played. Very adeptly, I might add. I even fooled that observant husband of yours. I warned you I’d make him my plaything, and he fell into my lap like he couldn’t wait to get rid of you.
To taste true sweetness, without the sharp tongue and the bitterness that makes you so unlovable. ”
For a moment it worked. Horror collided with insecurity, with my desperate love for Kier, and I believed her.
She spoke with conviction and unwavering clarity, as if it was the truth.
As if she’d used her Calanthe persona to get close to Kier, to sleep with him, to steal my mate.
And fuck, it hurt. It drove a spike through the frozen lake of numbness until all I could do was feel.
For a moment, my mate had betrayed me. Cheated on me.
For a moment, Calanthe had never existed.
But I gritted my teeth, reached for Valour and Baby, and hissed, “Nice try.”
Valour sank her teeth into the monster’s shoulder and tore her away.
It pierced my chest to watch my friend fall against the wall, to see tears fill her eyes.
But none of this was real. She was the Greenheart queen in disguise.
The illusion split when she laughed, a low, rolling sound like thunder.
The viciousness in her eyes was a flash of lightning, capable of damage, capable of death.
I didn’t take my eyes off her as I lowered my face to Aerona’s still body and kissed her cold temple.
Guard her, I ordered Baby, my jaevar immediately leaping in front of her with a hiss, his fur standing on end, wrath in his eyes.
I wondered if my eyes were the same as I got to my feet, breathing fast.
“Kier wouldn’t touch you even if you threatened him with death.”
“Ah, but what about if I threatened you,” she countered, getting to her feet, the guise of Calanthe falling away until she stood before me in all her horrific queenly glory.
Hair the colour of fire pinned in an up-do that reminded me of Celandrine, her dress dripping in emeralds, peridots, jade, and aventurine.
Matching jewels adorned the crown settled elegantly on her head.
Like any physical beauty could conceal the ugliness that crouched inside her like a monster.
I spat a laugh from my tight throat and—my hand was empty. My hand was empty. My eyes widened, true panic splitting the numbness that had wrapped around me, and my breathing began to break apart. Cleodora had the stone of power from Gaia’s tomb. The only thing keeping me from her control.
A stone of true, total, ultimate power. She could do anything.
Valour leapt off the ground, jaws open, power gleaming from her vicious teeth, but Cleodora smiled and waved the sapphire in her hand and—and Valour exploded in a cloud of cobalt sparks and broken shards of magic.
“Valour!” I screamed, my fear clashing with rage, my whole body starting to shake.
I had no gemstone, no Valour, and Baby was guarding Aerona, but that didn’t stop me drawing the sword sheathed down my spine and swinging it at the queen who’d ruined my life.
I didn’t believe Kier had touched her for a second, but her Calanthe impression was immaculate.
How much had she seen? Had she been there, in the courtyard, in our rooms, slithering like a snake among that place of safety?
I reached for the place Valour lived and felt—nothing. My stomach crashed to my feet. Bile burned my tongue. “You’re dead,” I breathed, snarling in Cleodora’s face. “For Aerona, for Zaugustus, for Valour, for Danette, you are dead.”
I cut the sword left, then right, moving like wrath itself, so furious that I was only half in control of my movements. A higher power guided my hands, tightened my muscles, pressed against my back until my whole body flowed into the motion.
Metal clanged in a horrific noise. The impact of my sword meeting Cleodora’s—Gaia’s stolen sword—rocked my whole body. I gritted my teeth, ripped my blade free of the union of steel, and came at her again, and again.
I stared at a spot on her chest, unable to meet her callous eyes, struggling to breathe with every blow. What did she do to Valour? The frozen lake had completely shattered now, and only pain spilled from its depths. Was Valour gone forever?
I clenched my jaw, my eyes lined with tears. My muscles burned, arms strained as I threw messy, desperate blows, no logic to the way I drove the sword at her, no strategy or cleverness, just brute strength and rage.
Aerona was dead. Valour was gone. And the queen had Gaia’s sapphire.
It was over. I knew it was. But I couldn’t stop fighting.
I couldn’t convince the lake of agony inside me to dry up, couldn’t stop the wild fury coiling my muscles as I swung the sword, the tip meeting air where Cleodora stood only seconds ago.
I whipped around on instinct and crashed the length of the sword into hers, stopping the blow meant for my gut.
In the same place she stabbed Aerona. The same blow she used to kill my friend, my sister.
I went feral, a frenzied scream tearing from my throat like an untameable beast, filling the alley with my voice, my wrath, my declaration of murder.
But none of my strikes hit, and if they managed to nick her, all they did was open faint lines of blood.
No killing strike, no fatal wounds. She was playing with me.
The one time I dared to raise my stare and saw her smiling proved that.
I aimed my next swing at her other wrist, at the hand wrapped viciously around my sapphire, my sanity.
The back of my neck stung where the chain broke, hot and throbbing.
Her breathy laugh served as a split second warning, but I’d never learned to shield, hadn’t had the time to practise.
My mind was wide open for her corruption, her perverse control.
The moment she said, “Stop,” I stopped.
When she said, “Drop the sword,” my hand opened, the numbness rushing back like a wave against the shore as my weapon clattered to the ground.
Behind me, Baby hissed a warning, still guarding Aerona. Cleodora snorted, unbothered, unimpressed.
“Now then,” she murmured, sheathing the sword of a goddess at her hip and turning over the legendary sapphire in her hand, her expression almost contemplative.
Down the hill, I could still hear the crowd yelling, chanting, but the alley felt entirely separate, a desolate place of death, where no life, no civilisation, no saviour would ever find us.
I’d almost died so many times, but this was the worst. Alone, with Aerona dead behind me, the little sister I hadn’t been able to save like I wouldn’t be able to save myself.
The spire was hell itself, but at least I hadn’t been alone.
Would I just vanish without a trace, like Calanthe had vanished?
Cleodora’s soft laugh tainted the air. “Calanthe never existed, silly girl. You never listen.” She tutted, her command holding me in place even as my soul began to tremble when she approached.
Kier must have felt it, but the numbness had consumed my side of the bond so I couldn’t feel him at all.
Or maybe Cleodora had closed the bond like the day she ruined my life, when she first took command of me on the battlefield outside Lazankh.
I should have been glad Kier couldn’t sense me, glad he wouldn’t come running into danger, but the selfish part of me wanted to see my mate one last time before Cleodora sent me to the gods’ embrace.
“Are you even listening?” She tapped my forehead, making me flinch inside the shell of my body.
“She was a character, a game, a role I played, just like Celandrine. Are you so desperate for friendship, so desperate to be loved, that you’ll delude yourself into thinking she existed?
” She sighed. “I almost feel sorry for you, Zaba.”
I flinched. Not just internally, but my whole body jolted.
She didn’t get to call me that. I wanted to hear it one last time, but it was nothing but a toxin in her voice.
And I realised, as a match struck inside me, that the lake wasn’t full of water after all.
It was filled to the brim with fuel, a powder keg waiting to blow, willing to obliterate everything in known existence.
She had my gemstone, but I still had my rings, and there was magic in my soul. I was never powerless.
“In another world, you would have been a remarkable assistant.” She turned the sapphire over in her hand, glancing from it to me, a little smile curling her mouth.
She’d won and she knew it. I threw myself against the shell of my body, grabbed at my power, let it fill me, let it become me…
but all I did was bleed, warmth trickling over my lips.
“We could have ruled this world together, with your strength of will and my mastery over magic. But you were foretold to rule the goblin lands, Zabaletta, and this world will only ever have one queen.”
Let me guess. You. Those were the words I would have drawled if I were capable of speech. I fought to open my mouth, to rip my lips apart, to lift the heavy weight of my tongue, but they resisted every effort. Laced my mouth with blood I couldn’t move my throat muscles to swallow.
“Yes, me,” Cleodora agreed with a smile.
She was hooked into every part of my mind, I couldn’t keep a single word secret from her.
“You might have been prophesied to rule, but it’s my destiny.
I was the one who discovered the mausoleum when I was five years old.
I was the one who uncovered that ancient power.
I am the one destined to become a goddess, to replace Gaia in the memory of the goblin lands.
The one true goddess, the queen of all goblins. ”
Cool. I was the one who actually went down the steps and got it, though.
“Nasty little worm, that creature on the staircase.”
I laughed, the scorn coming from deep enough that my lips parted and a puff of air forced its way out.
Every single one of my friends faced their fears and their nightmares, and made it to the bottom of that staircase.
Every single one. You’re such a spineless coward that you needed someone else to retrieve the sword for you.
She lunged, true hatred flashing across her pretty face, lifting her upper lip from her teeth, twisting her doll-like features into the snarl of a demon. “I am a queen, I don’t do menial tasks.”
“You’re a coward.” The sounds that left me, that resolved into words, were as much a shock to me as Cleodora.
“That nasty little worm had a name. Lacuna. And I killed her.” I smiled, vicious and unhinged, rage pouring through me like power itself.
For a moment, I was limitless, powerful. For a moment I was winning.
And then I stumbled back, choking on copper as a geyser of it sprayed from my throat. I landed on my knees on the cobbles, in the cold pool of blood that spilled from Aerona.
“What a pity, that you killed something as ancient as that creature, but you don’t have the ability to kill me,” Cleodora mused, chilling my blood, my skin, my bones when she drew Gaia’s sword with a reverberating ring of metal.
Get up, I screamed at my legs, at my feet, at my entire body. If I’d been able to speak, to laugh, I could rise to my feet, I could fight her, I could—
The sword swung, its arc true and lethal.