Chapter 20
ASTRA
I’m drowning in regret, wishing I had confronted Otavio earlier as I watch the blood around me.
“Astra.” Nelsin crouches beside me and points at my chest. “It’s an illusion.”
The red puddle disappears, and so does the wound in my chest. I would breathe a sigh of relief if I wasn’t so stunned, so shocked.
He points at the ice around me. “His water magic was real, and so was the ice spike, but I melted it in time. I know you’re going to be angry at me, tell me I should have tried to stop him, but I had to save you.”
“Nothing would have stopped him. Look where my dagger hit him.”
Nelsin nods, and I get up and approach the heart. It’s bleeding too much.
“Can you hear me?” I ask it.
A female voice comes from nowhere. “Yes, but… dying.”
I need to do something, fast, and I recall Zorwal’s healing magic.
Otavio might have some too, if he was a beautician, if a dagger on his throat artery didn’t kill him.
I grab the dagger from the ground, still bloody from where it hit Otavio, and lick it, then take some of the heart’s dark blood and drink it as well.
Magic assaults me, and my first instinct is to vomit, but I fear if I do it, I’ll lose the power I gained.
“Astra?” Nelsin looks worried.
“I’m fine,” I mutter
I can sense the air around me, the humidity in it, but the awareness is fading instead of getting stronger.
I realize then that if the heart dies, its magic will die too.
At least Otavio won’t be able to use it.
But no, I can’t let the heart die. I feel then, very subtly, a magic similar to Zorwal’s healing.
I can sense Nelsin’s organs, his blood pumping through his veins, sense that his body is whole.
I touch the heart. Dying. That’s obvious. The question is how to fix it. I recall when I first came here, when I cut the bonds, recall the beautiful woman I saw in this place, and try to imagine that the heart is back to what it was.
“Don’t,” the feminine voice says. “If I live, he’ll have my magic. Let me die. I can still grant you one kind of magic, cut one type of bond, if you want.”
“Can’t you go dormant? The magic will still not work, and it will give you time to heal.”
I touch the heart and I focus on that, and imagine the heart sleeping, recovering.
The voice says, “He’ll have the magic he stole.”
“I’d rather heal you.”
I focus on seeing the heart whole again, but the problem is that it makes no sense.
It’s not really an organ, but not a body either, and yet I think I can keep it alive.
Just barely, but perhaps enough for it to heal on its own.
I think about my light, and shower it with it, and see light emanating from it.
There’s life in the heart, and it’s fighting to survive again.
I chuckle with relief.
“I will rest,” the voice says. “Is there any magic you want?”
“Can you kill the Witch King?”
“I cannot, nor do I know how to do it. But I can still cut bonds.”
Bonds. I think about Azur. “Can you cut all ties to the Witch King?”
“Not all, no, but some.”
“Azur’s ties. Can you free him?”
“Yes. Cut that vine.”
The voice can’t point, but I know which one needs to be cut. It’s a tiny thing, but it screeches when I cut it. “Does it hurt?” I ask.
“Pain to remove something nefarious is not a bad thing. He was lying, you know?”
“Otavio? I’m sure of it.”
“He didn’t find you in an orphanage. He brought you from the Nowhere Lands, after he killed your parents.”
“You know who they were?”
“No. I can’t see that far. You might want to travel to the Nowhere Lands one day.
You might find people who knew them. Or you might want to focus on your life here.
What I can tell you is that he killed your parents, then brought you.
I saw his heart. Only a Tiurian royal could unearth me, and it needed to be someone from the royal line who was recognized as a ruler.
Once you became the queen of the Crystal Court, you were able to find me.
Otavio wanted you to unearth me, and then he planned to steal my power, but he can’t really steal it, except for a short time.
Still, he’s more dangerous than you think.
He is the Witch King’s half-brother. They had the same Tiurian father, but different mothers. ”
“So Otavio’s going to help him?”
“I don’t feel that. I think he might want to defeat him. The issue is that he doesn’t want to kill him.”
“Why?”
“He needs…”
The heart stops talking, and I catch my breath. Is it dead? I touch it, and sense its inner heart beating ever so slowly, as if it had fallen into a deep slumber.
Nelsin’s standing, looking at me.
“Did you hear it?” I ask.
“Yes. She spoke to me too, told me to hide.”
I smile at him. “You saved my life. But we need to go.”
He smirks. “I’ll get you home or Marlak will scalp me.”
“You know he won’t.”
I head to the door and try to open it, but it doesn’t budge. It’s locked. Nelsin uses water magic on it, and it bursts open.
Outside, there’s only darkness. I create a ball of light, but it doesn’t illuminate ahead. When I’m about to step out, Nelsin places a hand in front of me.
“Don’t.” He points downward, below the glass floor. Everything is dark as well.
“What does it mean?” I ask.
His forehead wrinkles as he looks thoughtful. “Some strange magic. Nothingness. Perhaps… he used his Tiurian magic to imprison us.”
“In this room? The transcending circle is still in this castle, just in another room.”
Nelsin shakes his head. “There’s no way to get there, and if we try, we might die.”
“Is there a way for us to escape?”
His eyes are wide, and his top ears are folded down. “Not that I know of.”
“The heart. It might have the answer.”
“When it awakes, yes.”
“We wait, then.”
“Sure.” Something about his voice doesn’t sound right.
“What’s wrong? You don’t think the magic of the heart can set us free?”
“I… think it could.” He’s almost stuttering, and he’s making me anxious.
“Then what’s the problem?”
“Magical objects, or organs, or… something, they have a different conception of time. I don’t think it’s going to nap for ten minutes, Astra.”
“We can wait. Hang on.” At once, I understand the problem. “It could be days. Months. Years.”
He nods slowly, and I swallow. No. I will not give up.
“There must be a way out,” I say, making my best effort to sound cheerful.
“We’ll have a lot of time to figure it out.”
“I suppose.”
I close my eyes. We’ll starve to death if we stay here for days.
“You know,” he says. “When I got back to the island house, I told you I had found my dignity, but I was wrong. Now I see it.”
Somehow, I’m glad for the change in subject, for the chance to think about something other than my impending starvation. “What do you think you found?”
“Pride. Inflated, pointless pride. Why did I push Ferer away? To punish him for having pushed me away? And yet I was hurting myself. I could have apologized, you know? Now, if we survive—”
“We will. Don’t even doubt it.”
He looks down and shakes his head. “I’m fae, Astra. I can’t say that we will survive. I can only hope. And I hope I see Ferer again. I won’t be an idiot this time.”
“So let me speak for us both. You will see him. I won’t let pessimism take over our thoughts. We’ll find a way.”
Nelsin smiles, his eyes distant, perhaps imagining seeing Ferer again.
My thoughts turn to the Almighty Mother and her light. I feel her within me, can even feel her protection, and yet I get no answer on how to escape this place.
I reach to my husband, reach through that bond that has kept us together, that bond that joined our dreams. I reach and reach.
And get nothing.
It’s as if the bond had been cut.
TARLIA
I’m looking at Renel, trying to understand if what Ziven told me is true, if Renel really said he’d rather have his eye poked out than leave me with Zorwal. We were left alone in this library and it feels smaller than before, the walls closing in on us as my heart beats wildly.
Renel’s eyebrows crease and he runs a finger over his bracelets. “It was fair, wasn’t it? You made a deal with Zorwal to save my life. I owed you your freedom.”
So it was just duty. His words are slightly disappointing, and I hope he doesn’t notice my reaction.
“Makes sense.” My body is still, a chill creeping up my spine as I battle with the urge to ask him more questions and the will to stay quiet.
Slowly, his chest moves up and down as he lifts his eyes to me. “But it hurt to know you could be suffering. It did hurt.”
He eyes me like that, and I want to run, hide. I wish I had bracelets to fiddle with, to find some escape from the suffocating feeling. This feeling… So many questions. All I do is smile. “I just wanted to save your life. It was… the right thing to do. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“No. Of course not. I just…” He steps away from the door, shortening the distance between us. “I need to ask you a question, Tar.”
I don’t know if he’s being sarcastic using the nickname, but even then, the memory of when he said it lovingly is like a splinter pricking my heart. “What?”
“Are you and Ziven…”
Oh, no. Not him thinking that as well. I frown. “No! He’s my friend!”
He pushes away the curls falling over his forehead. “You didn’t even let me finish the question.”
“Fair. What was the question?”
“Do you love him?”
I exhale, partly annoyed, partly scared of what he might ask me next. “What difference does it make?”
He steps closer. Too close. “You think it makes no difference to me?”
I step back. “Yes. No difference.”
“How can you say that?”
All the words that had been stuck in my throat and been weighing on my chest decide to come out all at once.
“First, I’m stinky. Second, you wouldn’t mind seeing me falling.
Third, you saw me and didn’t even…” I stop myself.
What was I going to say? Kiss me? Say loving words?
I don’t know what I expected. “You were cold. Distant.”