Chapter 56 #2
With Desmond behind Orla, Maeve and I spread out to form a triangle around her.
Orla’s spectral eyes flash, and her blood-filled mouth stretches into an eerie smile.
She whirls, one hand extended back toward Desmond at an unnatural angle, the other stretching toward Maeve and me.
Neiro collapses with a faint gasp, barely moving.
Orla unleashes her siphoned power.
It whips my body, throwing me back until I hit the banister. I clench the railing. It shakes as Maeve hits it, but she grabs on, squaring her shoulders in determination. Her vines writhe, crawling toward Orla’s feet.
Orla’s magic is overpowering, so different and yet so similar to the curse within Olin’s tomb. Neiro’s life force—that’s what she’s throwing at us. If a siphon can truly control the curse, the continent would stand no chance against their power.
One minute.
I crouch, then lunge at Maeve’s vines. I hold onto them, biting my lip as the thorns dig into my palms. Bit by bit, I pull myself toward Maeve, closer to the stairs. “Auri!” I scream. “Auri, the arrow!”
Halfway across the ballroom, Auri looks up from her fight. Lightning blasts from her hands, fomorians smoking and fleeing around her. She nods at me, a warrior’s determination tightening her form.
Then she runs. Each graceful step dodges the slash of a weapon or leaps over rubble. The skirts of her torn gown flow like torrents of bloodied water.
Fifty seconds.
A sheet of ice crackles across the base of the stairs. Auri falls flat on her stomach, and a fomorian pulls her into range of his axe.
“Auri!” I yell again.
The maelstrom halts, and in its place, power pulls toward Orla like a spinning cyclone. My breath is sucked from my lungs, and I tremble under the strain of my lifeforce leaving my body, my magic unraveling with it.
Vital seconds tick by. Thirty.
Auri strikes the axe with a crack of lightning that blasts it from the fomorian’s hand. She jumps to her feet, skids across the ice, and climbs the bottom step—
The fomorian chases her, seizes the skirts of her gown, and yanks her back. She won’t make it. She won’t get to us before Orla devours our souls.
Desmond and Maeve have fallen to their knees. Maeve gasps, her skin paling to a ghastly gray. Desmond braces himself on the floor with his hands, one still clenching his sword. He drags himself forward, determined to stop the queen.
Orla blasts him back. She cackles as his body hits her throne. He falls still.
No! I grasp for our bond on impulse, but the vow is broken. Then I try to feel him with my magic, but I don’t have enough power left to reach him. Please be alive, please be alive.
My insides are withering as I pull myself up Maeve’s vines, my muscles straining harder every second. They’re weakening too fast, and I’m too far from Orla.
Midnight strikes, the gongs of the clock tower above Drottheim Keep ringing with a foreboding echo. Our glamoured clothes shrivel like fallen leaves into their true forms, Auri’s bow and quiver appearing on her back as she wrestles against the fomorian.
“Cynthia!” she yells. She lands a punch, slides her quiver off her shoulder, and throws it.
It’s a short throw. The quiver lands two-thirds up the stairs, then starts to roll.
No! I reach out with the last vestiges of my magic, the shreds that Orla hasn’t yet claimed. The quiver levitates, and tears sting my eyes as I bring it to me.
Olin’s arrow. Where is it?
There.
But I realize, dread dropping into my stomach, that I don’t have a bow.
My Gift is more than a third hand. My power is anything I want it to be. Desmond always believed that I’d realize it for myself.
I pull Olin’s arrow out and pinch it between my fingers. My waning Gift caresses it, feeling its weight, the slant of its fletching. One shot. That’s all I have.
Orla’s rageful, glowing eyes notice it, sensing its power. She shrieks and strengthens her siphoning pull. My eyelids droop, too heavy as my energy drains. The arrow trembles in my weakening hand, and my body sags against the floor. I’m no longer sure if I have enough magic to ensure it hits.
One shot. One chance.
I can do this. I have to do this.
I raise the arrow before me at eye level, calculating the angle and distance all in the span of one breath. Pretend it’s a dart. It’s just like throwing a dart.
I push my mind beyond its limit, my skin heating to a scalding burn as my magic thrums along the arrow’s shaft.
And I let it soar.
Orla bellows in rage. She blasts the arrow off its path with a surge of released magic, but I correct it, like a bird fighting the wind. The fletching flutters as magic batters it, but I thrust it again.
My pulse drums in my ears. Each blink is longer, darkness singeing the edges of my vision even when my eyes are open. I lose sight of the arrow as the darkness overwhelms me.
Evie’s bell-like, joyous laugh echoes within me. Then I hear Desmond’s, soft and low. They smile, and a warm, bright light glows behind them, casting their features in shadow. The light beckons. It calls my name, and somewhere beyond it, Osian’s crow caws.
Death has come for me.
The vision snaps as if someone’s cut a tether. I gasp, air flooding my body as I shakily push myself up.
Queen Orla staggers, the glow in her eyes dimming. She gurgles, her ringed fingers clutching the arrow that protrudes from her throat.
When she falls, tears sting my eyes in relief.
It’s done.
Orla is dead once again.