Chapter 33
THIRTY-THREE
Nova
Severin gave a mocking little bow as he caught sight of me. “Your Majesty. How nice of you to join us.”
The knife in his hand looked like the same one he’d used to impale Orin, glowing with the same strange light that had been haunting my nightmares ever since our last encounter.
I composed myself and started toward them with measured steps, my hand on Grimnor, Phantom at my side.
Aleks followed farther behind us. He seemed determined to stay close to me, but the proximity of the soul shards—even though they were still locked inside the secure chamber—was making this more and more difficult for him.
More and more dangerous. I saw it out of the corner of my eye, the way the wrong-looking magic writhed more wildly than ever beneath his skin.
It made my stomach twist with a painful combination of fear and fury.
But it wasn’t as painful as the sight of the blade currently resting against my brother’s skin, or the chains binding him and Thalia, or the sheer number of enemies surrounding them.
They all stood just to the side of the heavy metal doors sealing the chamber shut.
We’d secured the shards within that chamber because very few could work the magic necessary to open it, aside from my brother and me, but now, I found myself wondering if it was safe enough—if anywhere could be safe enough to keep these Order bastards from finding their way in.
I forced myself to keep my eyes on Severin and ignore everything else.
He tilted his head, studying me as I approached. “It’s good to see you again, Nova.”
“You made a mistake, coming here,” I replied in a low, dangerous voice.
“On the contrary; I only wish we could have been here sooner.”
I took another step forward. “You don’t belong here. This is my territory, and you’re going to find out very soon that you are not welcome in it.”
“Is it really yours, though? If tonight’s activities are any indication, your subjects don’t seem particularly loyal to you.”
“No.” I lifted my hand, pulling forth a swarm of darkness, forming it into a blade that mirrored the legendary sword in my other hand. “But the shadows still are.”
Phantom growled in agreement, tendrils of dark energy rising around him and bolstering the ones swirling around me.
“Set them upon us, then.” Severin’s smile sharpened, his cool grey eyes glistening with a dangerous challenge. “And let’s see what happens.” He signaled with a barely perceptible nod.
One of his followers pressed a sword to the back of Thalia’s neck.
She closed her eyes, her mouth setting into a hard line. Angrily resigned to her fate.
But I wasn’t accepting any such fate.
My voice remained low, cold as the shadows twisted around me. “What do you want, Severin?”
“Ah, there’s the hospitality Rivenholt is known for, finally.”
I didn’t dignify this sarcastic comment with a reply.
“You’ve all been playing a very dangerous game, haven’t you?” He looked down at my brother, then back to me. “Did you honestly think we were going to let you keep trying to restore the full extent of Vaeloran power without us intervening?”
Bastian’s eyes fixed on me, steady and unwavering despite the blade at his throat. His head twitched the tiniest bit—barely a shake of his head—but his message was clear enough.
Don’t listen to him. Don’t let him control you.
“We managed to torture enough useful information out of several of your servants.” Severin’s gaze swept toward the sealed chamber doors.
“So we know the pieces are here. We know they’ve been locked away, and we were in the process of helping ourselves to them, as guests of your fine palace.
But then we were rudely interrupted.” He tapped the knife against my brother’s throat.
My pulse skipped several beats, but I kept my face impassive.
Don’t let him control you.
“It’s just as well, though, because it seems this door is sealed with an impressive amount of Vaeloran magic. Given enough time, we could probably figure out its secrets. But why do that, when you’re here to do it for us?”
“So you’ve come here to take them, have you?” I made my voice as calm as his, despite feeling like my heart might pound its way out of my chest at any moment.
“Yes,” he replied, simply. “And we appreciate you finding them for us, by the way, as we now finally have the means to destroy them—something we didn’t have when our dear Calista first made the powerful but questionable decision to spare Lorien’s life and create those shards.
It’s taken some time, but now we have a questionably powerful tool of our own, don’t we?
” His eyes were on Aleks as he spoke those last, chilling words.
Aleks, who remained several feet behind me. He was kneeling, his sword braced against the ground, his head bowed. I felt my composure crumpling a bit as I took in the sight.
I tried to take a deep breath.
Don’t let him control you.
I jerked my head back toward Severin. Too quickly. My mask slipping, only for an instant—but he noticed it.
He smiled like a gambler who’d just won a bet. “Surrender the pieces to us, and maybe we can work something out. And, if he does as we ask, maybe he survives this ordeal. Maybe you all do.” With a casually cruel shrug, he added, “Or maybe you don’t.”
I swallowed hard, my throat tight.
Every choice before me seemed impossible.
“Don’t listen to him,” came a voice from behind me—from Aleks, though I didn’t recognize it at first. It sounded strange.
Close to breaking, clearly strained from fighting whatever the shards’ proximity was doing to him.
I didn’t meet his gaze, but I could feel his eyes burning into the back of my head.
Pleading with me.
“Nova. Don’t do this.”
When I finally glanced back, I saw more Order members flooding in, blocking the only path that led out of this dead-end corridor.
He couldn’t escape this.
We couldn’t escape this.
“If you open that door, I don’t know what happens next.” His voice remained quiet, strained—yet it was the only thing I was aware of for a long moment. Louder than the frantic pounding of my heart. More painful than the shallow rasp of my breath. More powerful than the cold caress of my shadows.
“But if you don’t open it, you already know what will happen,” Severin chimed in, as though I needed the reminder.
Clenching tighter to Grimnor and my makeshift blade of shadows, I moved closer to the door.
Close enough that I could have reached out and touched it.
I could feel the soul shards on the other side waking up.
Their essence was somehow slipping through the thick metal, wave after wave washing toward me and seeping into my skin like poison, or like power.
..it was hard to decide what it felt like.
Grimnor hummed in eager response, the black blade practically vibrating in my grip.
“Go on, then,” said Severin.
I didn’t move.
My brother lunged forward, suddenly, struggling against his bindings and nearly managing to drag several of his captors with him before they regained their balance.
He was far too outnumbered, though; they wrestled him back into submission.
Severin’s knife slipped across Bastian’s face during the scuffle, leaving a deep cut that stretched from his chin up to the corner of his eye.
I stared at the blood dripping from the wound, thinking of the guards I’d found outside my room. Their scarlet-stained throats and dead, vacant stares.
I shook the hand holding my makeshift blade, causing the shadows to separate and rejoin the ones circling protectively around me.
Then I reached out and braced my hand against the cold metal door.
A memory flashed in my mind as I did. One that had plagued me for months.
A memory of how I’d opened this chamber back when it had been keeping Grimnor and its counterpart, Luminor, safe.
I’d let Lorien inside by mistake. He’d stolen so much from me that day—and it had only been the beginning of so many losses to come.
But this time, it would be my own decision.
Not a trick I’d fallen for.
There were only bad options before me now, but maybe there was power in deciding which one I would choose to face.
“I’m growing impatient.” Severin’s words coiled around me like a noose, making it hard to breathe.
Aleks shook his head. Bastian and Thalia were both silently urging me not to give in, their expressions identically desperate and defiant. Phantom’s eyes were trained on the chamber door, his teeth bared, as if he too could sense the poisoned power seeping through it.
Severin’s smile disappeared. He rolled up his sleeves and readjusted his grip on his knife, moving with the same calm grace he had before slaying Orin.
“Just remember, this was your choice, Nova.”
He sliced toward my brother’s throat.
“WAIT!”
At the last possible instant, his hand stopped.
The blade still hovered entirely too close to Bastian, burning with whatever corrupted magic gave it that unsettling glow.
I kept my glare leveled on Severin as my fingers moved over the door, finding the symbols etched into it.
The markings turned warm beneath my touch.
The ancient Vaeloran connection was soon waking within me, and it took only an instant of concentration to sink fully into that bond, to let the Vaeloran memories imprinted on this door guide my hand’s movements.
Slowly, Severin pulled the knife back to his side.
“Her too,” I ordered, nodding toward Thalia.
I waited until the Order member pulled his sword away from Thalia’s neck before I put my hand more firmly against the markings and continued tracing them.
Faint shadows lifted from my wrist, reaching out like extra fingers, tapping and pressing, then sinking into the symbols when they started to glow.
A groan of metal and stone echoed through the corridor as the doors began to move.