Chapter 32
RAANA
Raana could not get the image of the dead man out of her head.
Eli. His name had been Eli, and she only knew it because he’d tried getting through to Nerissa’s soldier when the general caught them trying to flee through the storm.
Before the soldier had clawed him to bits.
After finding her way back from the stained-glass window to the throne room to collect the ash mixed with Kai and Isla’s blood, Raana had been so exhausted that she could only manage to get them both out of the hall through the shadows before they had to navigate the rest of the territory on foot.
Then, the storm had raged, and it had become their saving grace.
For some reason, with it, Raana had felt a new surge of power and was able to pull magic from somewhere deeper inside herself.
But before they could flee, a man had been searching for Isla through the torrential downpour, and either her name or the man’s voice had stalled the soldier.
That’s when Raana learned his name was Callan and that he knew Eli. Well enough that Eli had nearly fallen to his knees in disbelief upon seeing him. Well enough that he’d wrapped Callan in a hug.
Enough that Raana saw Callan’s mask falter until Nerissa’s spell, a spell she’d reinforced herself, lashed pain through him, and he shoved his claws into his friend’s gut.
Amidst the howling winds, Eli had been too stunned to defend himself.
Callan’s blows had the ferocity and skill of an apex predator striving for death, rendering him too weak to fight back, though a single shot of adrenaline had given him enough strength to send him and Callan tumbling down the riverbank.
But it wasn’t enough.
Unable to contain her sobs, Raana had tried desperately to save him, heal him, as his blurring eyes blinked at Callan standing behind her.
A man turned beast, whom she thought might deliver one final death blow, a clean slice along his neck, but he remained frozen, breathing hard and twitching as if still battling pain. Still battling Nerissa’s magic.
It was when the storm had ceased that Raana had come to terms with Eli being dead, that she noticed Callan had taken her knife—Nerissa’s knife—and was clutching it tightly in his shaking fingers. For a few thunderous heartbeats, she wasn’t sure if he intended to use it on her or himself.
But like the drop of a lock on a cage, a familiar haze plummeted over his face again, and he let the knife fall into the mud. She didn’t have a chance to save it from sinking to the bottom of the river.
And then, there had been Adrien.
There was a feeling first, a sense of blissful relief and a warmth she wanted to wrap herself in. Before the cold, brutal reality settled like the sediment beneath her feet.
And more so than the dead body that she saw every time she closed her eyes, she couldn’t forget the look on Adrien’s face. Hurt, disgust, confusion—and maybe a touch of something sweeter she’d been too shocked to grasp fully.
Upon their return to the Wilds, she and Callan were greeted by a motley army of Nerissa’s other soldiers and bak.
Despite her protests and screaming, the vial of ash and blood had been wrenched from her hand, and the two of them were violently separated.
After all they’d endured on their journey, Raana had been too drained to fight back.
For a couple of days now, she’d tried to trace Callan through the halls, trying to recall how his aura may have felt, but with all the iron and magic here, it was hopeless.
Though she’d carried on until blood gushed from her nose, her ears only knew ringing, and her head pounded so badly it brought her to her knees.
And for days, she hadn’t been able to find Nerissa.
Until now.
“Where are you keeping him?” Raana asked by way of greeting when she entered what she could only assume had been a greenhouse before the dark magic took hold. Its arching glass was spotted with spidery vines of rot and decay, any chance of seeing beyond ruined by its cloudiness.
Her shadows were a whirlwind behind her as she approached, where Nerissa plucked decomposing plants from their perches, collecting leaves and bushels in a small wicker basket.
“You need to be more specific, child,” she trilled, examining a fragment of the crumbling foliage.
Her nonchalance stoked an ire inside her. “Callan,” Raana snapped. “His name is Callan. Where do you keep him?”
“The one who murdered his friend?”
Raana jerked back, the shadows catching at her sides as if they’d thought she’d truly fall. “How do you know that? I haven’t seen you for days.” She hadn’t had the chance to tell her anything.
“He told me.”
The lilt in her voice.
Raana’s features twitched, and the shadows were a delightful bite at her fingertips. With her manacle already abandoned, she contemplated removing her lesser glamor to give Nerissa the full force of what she truly was. “Where. Is. He?”
Nerissa took stock of what was in her basket before stepping aside.
Her inky hair had been braided back, her emerald robe vivid against the murky landscape—but her face did not have the same brightness, Raana realized.
Her features seemed paler, worn, and the scar Isla had given her seemed more brutal.
She seemed… weaker, like she was slipping.
“And why do you need to know?” she asked. “Are you going to have a chat? Use him to fill the void your prince left behind?”
“That’s disgusting,” Raana spat, her skin crawling at the implication.
Nerissa had moved to the middle of the glass, humming some tune Raana didn’t know. It was so easy for her—all this death and suffering.
Raana shook her head, pointing. “You talk about wanting revenge on the Imperial Alpha, but how is this,” she gestured around, shadows clearing the foliage as she stalked towards her, “any better than what he’s doing to our sisters, whom you’re supposedly avenging?
All this effort. All this power, and you’re using it to play games.
Using everyone else to do your dirty work. You’re a coward.”
“Says the girl too afraid to embrace her own power.” The elder witch’s voice had darkened. “And do not patronize me, calling them our sisters. I doubt they were your sisters when you opened your legs for the prince. Now, while you still lust after—”
Nerissa’s basket clattered to the floor, gasping as its cursed contents spilled, as Raana’s shadows whipped out and pinned her to the wall. The entire decrepit greenhouse rattled, and Raana could’ve sworn the ghosts of this place, something greater and far more wicked, had peered in to behold her.
Like serpents, her darkness slithered along Nerissa’s body, enveloping her in their violent iciness before coiling around her neck.
Raana’s bones, her breath, and blood had become nothing but ice, and she laughed, a horrible sound wrenching from some dark and hollow unknown part of her as she sensed Nerissa’s conduits burning, her chants in the First Language, though whispered, loud in her fae ears.
Hopeless.
What had Nerissa done to weaken herself this much?
The smell of magic filled the room as Nerissa’s nose started bleeding, her soft words of attempted control fading when she realized—
“Your magic doesn’t work on me,” Raana snarled, feeling the phantom of Eli dying beneath her hands.
Nerissa’s features shifted from panic to some twisted pride as she smiled maniacally. “Then do it.”
Raana’s nostrils flared, and she called on her shadows to squeeze tighter and tighter.
Nerissa’s eyes widened as she sputtered a cough, her feet lifting off the ground, kicking against the glass.
Raana’s lesser glamor had fallen away; she could feel it.
Her fingertips burned with a power that rivaled the stars, her blood singing as it had as she stood before Deimos’s stained-glass window.
It had only been a slight fissure, but Raana could’ve sworn that darkness leaked from the space—a shadow greeting her.
“When you were there,” Nerissa choked, blood from her still-bleeding nose dribbling over her lips, tracing her scar, “what did you see? What did you hear? Another—” A weak cough. “Another realm, perhaps?”
The shock was enough for Raana to lessen her hold.
Nerissa smiled, crimson staining her teeth. “Did you feel the world cleaving open during the storm?”
Answers. Nerissa had answers, so many answers, and Raana could only get them if she were alive.
Slowly, she lowered Nerissa to the leaf-littered floor but held firm. “How?”
“During the Equinox, the veil is thinnest, and you are a child born of two worlds. Your blood, your essence, defies the barrier between them, between all. That is what makes you so powerful. That is why all will fear you, why the High Witch will hunt you to the ends of this world and the next to ensure your demise.” Nerissa scoffed.
“Such an inflation of her own importance. She is a worm compared to you and what you could be.”
Unfortunately, the useless attempts at flattery and bravado did nothing to stir her. Raana only wanted to understand. “I’ve been alive for plenty of Equinoxes. I’ve never felt or seen anything like that before.”
“That begs the question, doesn’t it? What’s different now?”
A little looser. Raana’s mind reeled through the options. “Does it have anything to do with the moon?”
“I can’t be certain.”
Raana bore her eyes into Nerissa’s, seeking the line between truth and lie, lie and truth. “What do you need Kai and Isla’s blood for?” A flicker of hesitation passed over her gaze. She retightened the shadow’s hold slightly. “I got it for you. I proved my loyalty. Now, tell me what it’s for.”
“There are pieces of themselves that they do not yet know.” She spat blood on the leaves beside them. “That they are yet to understand. Their blood will allow me to show them.”
Raana narrowed her eyes. “Why can’t you just tell them?”
“Because even if I did, they would not listen to me, and even I do not know the entire truth. Their past holds the answers, and blood is the key.”