Chapter 34 #2
My relief was immediate, knowing they were both safe. It was short-lived, though, because no part of me was certain I could keep them safe.
“But I had to come back, I had to see if…” Eamon cleared his throat, as if trying to rid it of the uncharacteristic emotion building in it.
He was back to his usual controlled demeanor when he continued, “I had to witness for myself what was happening, and I wanted to help more people if I could. And then, on my way back to the palace, I saw…I saw something impossible.”
I knew what he was going to say before he found the words.
“Lorien Blackvale.” He lifted his gaze to me, searching for confirmation. “My eyes weren’t deceiving me, were they?”
I shook my head slowly. “No. They weren’t.”
Eamon propped a hand under his chin, his brow furrowing in thought. “He was fleeing toward the woods beyond the South Gate, it looked like.”
“He...fled?”
“He was outnumbered. I saw more Order symbols than I could count on the ones pursuing him.” He paused. “And those Order members…Aleks was among them.”
My heart plummeted.
Zayn spoke up, his voice tight. “So, Lorien escaped?”
“For now, it seems.”
“And what did Aleks do after that? Where did he go?”
Eamon shook his head, clearly frustrated by his inability to make sense of what he’d seen. “I followed him for a time, trying to figure out what he was still chasing after. I didn’t approach him, but I saw him asking questions, demanding information from anyone he encountered…”
I held my breath as he fixed his gaze on me.
“He was looking for you, Nova.”
The words settled like brands over my skin, igniting a burning need to move. I didn’t even know which direction I was going, but I sheathed Grimnor and started to walk. I couldn’t keep still.
“Nova, wait a moment,” came my brother’s stern voice.
I ignored him, walking faster.
I could feel everyone watching me, shifting uncertainly, but it was Eamon who actually caught up to me and jerked me to a stop.
“We need to be careful. He’s acting…strange.”
I tried to shrug out of his hold. “I know he is, but there’s an explanation, a chance we could—”
“He killed them, Nova.” The words left him in a breathless rush.
I stopped trying to fight my way out of his grip, my gaze flying to his, certain I’d misheard.
He dug his fingers into my arm. He seemed to be trying to keep his hand from shaking. “The ones who didn’t know where you were, or who refused to tell him anything, he was just…he was just slaughtering them left and right.”
The room spun. Bile rose in the back of my throat. I swallowed it down, bracing a hand against Phantom’s back as he brushed against my leg, whimpering softly.
“And he’s…he’s looking for me,” I whispered.
My brother stepped forward, shaking his head. “No, the Order is looking for you. Aleks is only doing what they’ve commanded him to do. And you can’t just keep throwing yourself so willingly at him.”
I leveled a glare in his direction, but there was little fire behind it.
Because I knew he was right.
He’d been right all along, I guessed. Aleks was dangerous, had always been dangerous, and I couldn’t go to him now without potentially triggering something even more cataclysmic than what we’d already witnessed tonight.
He was looking for me because of my magic.
Because of what I was, and what he was—what he’d been molded into.
A monster they created to destroy me.
But if I didn’t stop him…
“He’ll tear this palace apart to get to me.” I swallowed hard, trying to keep my voice from breaking. “What am I supposed to do? I can’t let everyone else suffer while I hide.”
Bastian opened his mouth to argue, but he seemed to be struggling to find the words. He only shook his head again, still refusing to agree with me.
Months ago, I might have deferred to his judgment.
But I had changed. Maybe it was the weight of the crown I now carried, or maybe it was simply that I’d lost too much to keep still.
I was surrounded by so much loss and chaos that the only option seemed to be pushing through—to keep moving so I didn’t drown.
I lifted my chin. “I’m going to face him.”
The declaration hung like a death sentence in the air.
Zayn moved first, breaking through the settling dread as he stepped to my side. “And I’m going with you.”
Thalia moved to my other side, catching my eye as she silently tapped her hand over her heart.
The conflict was clear on my brother’s face—the desire to protect me warring with the realization that I had already made my choice, and there was nothing he could do to change it.
Finally, he turned to Eamon and said, “Continue evacuating as many as you can, and make sure riders have been sent to the soldiers we have stationed throughout the outer establishments. We’re going to need reinforcements before this is done.”
Eamon nodded grimly and departed along with the guards who had been keeping watch for us.
Taking a deep breath, Bastian turned back to me. “Lead the way.”
I looked to Phantom and his nose for the second time that evening. “I know it will be difficult with the chaos and all the conflicting scents, but if anyone can find him quickly, it’s you.”
His tail gave a single thump—clearly pleased by the praise and unable to suppress it even in these awful conditions. He gave me his typical, critical huff, followed by a sneeze, but then he put his nose to the ground and started to work.
It took longer to find the trail we needed, this time, but eventually he managed it.
My eyes were no longer blurring with tears, but I still kept them fixed only on Phantom as he led the charge through the palace.
I didn’t want to look too closely at the things we were passing.
The proudly-hanging banners of Rivenholt.
The paintings of Noctaris’s wider history, and opulent artifacts tied to the Vaeloran who had protected them in ages past…
all these things that had felt normal for a fraction of a moment last night, when I’d walked past them as a new queen with the sounds of celebration still ringing in my ears.
Maybe it had always been an impossible dream, to think that I could walk so easily into the next part of this story. That taking up a crown and pledging myself and my magic to this realm would be enough to fix such a broken world.
I’d dreamed it like a fool, just the same.
And I wasn’t ready to wake up, to give up on that dream, just yet—but the nightmare that greeted me when we came to the edge of the training grounds opened my eyes wider than ever.
This was where the worst of the battles and chaos seemed to have converged. And this was where we finally found Captain Voss: He was still alive, but holding his clearly-wounded side as he shouted orders at his exhausted soldiers, who were just barely standing their ground.
My brother ran to help him.
I strode forward as well, scanning the grounds, searching for Aleks. Desperately, I tried to settle the emotions erupting inside me. To not give in to the grief, the rage, the helplessness. Things that would pull me under if I let them latch on too tightly.
I knew the Order was creating carnage for the sole purpose of trying to drag me down, to give me no choice but to react with emotion. They had been baiting me from the moment they’d left those bodies outside my room. Making it impossible for me to walk away from their trap.
Because no one who called themselves Queen could have walked away from this.
There were so many dead bodies.
My servants. My soldiers. My supporters. Enemy soldiers, too, but even they caused a painful twist in my gut, because their deaths felt like the death of something much bigger—snapping my plans of unity like a neck snapping at a gallows. The execution of hope.
The worst trail of brokenness and blood led right through the center of the dusty training yard.
Aleks waited at the head of this trail, his back to me, his hands surrounded by flickering violet light.
How many of these bodies was he personally responsible for?
How could he have done this?
He turned as I approached. His gaze didn’t meet mine at first, staring instead at the tendrils of shadow that had started to lift like smoke from my skin. When he finally did meet my eyes, there was only the barest hint of recognition from him. Then came cold assessment, nothing more.
“Tell me you didn’t do any of this,” I said, my voice strangled as I swept a shaky hand toward the fallen bodies around us. “Please tell me you didn’t do any of this.”
He didn’t deny anything. He only said, “You shouldn’t have run from me.”
My breath caught. My shadows swarmed more violently, sensing my fear, my growing desperation.
Aleks followed their motions. The light around his hands intensified.
He wasn’t even moving—he was barely breathing—but I could feel the pull against my magic already, the void he was creating.
The emptiness. Impossibly cold and fathomless, like it could swallow both me and my magic up with no more than a nod from him.
Phantom and Thalia intervened before he could attack, both drawing from those shadows surrounding me, pulling them into something larger, more formidable.
Phantom’s body shifted and grew, while Thalia wielded the darkness like whips, lashing at Aleks’s legs.
They came at him from opposite sides, drawing him away from me, at least for a moment—at least until he aimed that violet-tinged magic at their shadows, ripping the darker magic apart and sending them both tumbling across the dirt.
Zayn rushed forward then, his sword gleaming in the early morning light. Aleks met him with a quick draw of his own blade. They circled each other, steel clashing again and again, while Phantom and Thalia continued to try and distract Aleks, to level the odds.
My brother was still rallying the soldiers alongside Captain Voss behind me. All around them, the battle was growing louder, deadlier.