Chapter 28 #3
Aurelia slams against the locked door. The emotionless silence was never only protection...
It was preparation. She sealed my emotions because they interfered with her control.
The realization cuts through me. The sovereign heart didn't save me from grief like everyone thought.
Aurelia used my grief to lock me away. Rage flickers, small but warm and mine. Aurelia feels it.
The Hall erupts.
White-gold flame blasts outward from my body.
Valerius holds on as spirits are thrown backward.
Luc raises a Veil shield around the dark river.
My father reaches for Seren as both of them flicker violently.
The Remnants outside the walls begin screaming.
They have reached the Hall. Black claws break through the white pillars.
The Ancient Masters aren't trying to silence the dead.
They're trying to prevent this confrontation from weakening Aurelia's hold.
Seren rises from the floor. "Valentina!" Her voice reaches the locked place. "You have to listen to me!"
A Remnant tears through the wall behind her.
Its pale mouth opens. Seren doesn't move.
She can't fight as a spirit. I see the creature.
I know I could erase it. For one cold moment, I consider allowing it to take her.
Betrayal requires consequence. Then the old Valentina moves beneath the silence.
No. Starfire strikes through my hand. The Remnant burns.
Seren stares at the ash falling through her ghostly body.
Hope and devastation cross her face at once. "You saved me."
"It was inefficient to lose a witness." The words are cold but Valerius feels the crack behind them.
His thumb brushes my cheek. "Keep lying."
Aurelia snarls inside me. A sensation of white fire and royal fury.
She hates him. The one force capable of anchoring me strongly enough to resist her.
The queen's warning returns with a different meaning.
The first thing they will do is try to make you sacrifice the boy, not because his death would weaken my power, because his death would remove the only barrier between Aurelia and my body.
The Ancient Masters didn't want Valerius as leverage against me. They wanted him gone so she could take me. My eyes fly open.
Valerius sees the realization through the bond. "They weren't trying to break me," I say. My voice is mine.
His face hardens. "They were trying to release her."
My father nods. "Yes."
"Why?" Luc demands. "The Masters burned her."
"No," Seren whispers. The Remnants break through another pillar. Black hands claw over white stone. She looks toward the river. "The Ancient Masters were hers."
The Hall stills, even Aurelia goes quiet inside me. Valerius turns toward Seren. "What?"
Seren's spirit trembles. "Voss told me their true names before she sent me into the archive. She thought I would never understand." Her eyes move over the kneeling dead. "The Ancient Masters did not overthrow Aurelia." My father's face goes grey. Seren continues. "They were her first disciples."
The silver-masked figures return in my mind. Their reverence. Their obsession with old law. Their desire to restore the sovereign heart. Their refusal to kill me.
The truth rearranges everything. "They served her," I say.
Seren nods. "They helped her stage the purge." The twist strikes harder than any spell. Valerius's grip tightens around me.
Luc whispers, "Why would she destroy her own people?"
The answer comes from my mouth. Aurelia speaks before I can stop her. "Because they refused to kneel."
The dead begin screaming. Memories explode across the Hall, not mine, theirs.
The spirits project what they witnessed across centuries.
A battlefield beneath a white sky. Starfire bearers standing against Aurelia, not beside her.
Aurelia wearing a crown of flame, her sovereign heart blazing.
Shadowbound warriors chained at her feet.
The three silver-masked disciples behind her, the Ancient Masters.
Remnants made from the bodies of Starfire rebels.
The purge wasn't the Ancient Masters erasing Starfire.
It was Aurelia erasing every Starfire bearer who opposed her.
She wasn't the last queen they burned. She was the queen her own people tried to burn.
The teaching-basin echo lied. No. It told the truth shaped carefully enough to deceive. The last queen they burned because they were trying to stop her.
My father looks at me with horror. "The Starborne were never hunted by the Ancient Masters."
"Some were," Seren says. "The ones who resisted."
Valerius's voice drops. "The Masters have spent centuries restoring their queen."
"And every sovereign heir," Luc realizes, "was a possible vessel."
My father nods. "Most died before their magic fully woke."
"Because they couldn't contain her," I say.
"Or because the Shadowbound killed them before she took control," Seren whispers.
Valerius goes still. The archive mirrors. Starborne and Shadowbound fighting, falling, dying, choosing. History didn't show lovers dying together. It showed Shadowbound warriors being forced to kill the people they were sworn to protect.
My bond with Valerius turns cold. He feels it too. The sovereign mark on his chest burns. Aurelia's voice enters both our minds.
At the peak of awakening, the Shadowbound must choose.
Valerius's face drains of colour. "Choose what?"
The answer comes through the dead. A thousand whispers. "Kill the vessel.Or serve the queen."
The Hall shakes. More Remnants tear through the walls. Luc's barrier fractures.
Seren turns toward the Crossing River. "We are out of time."
My father steps closer to me. "Valentina, listen." I look at him. His spirit is already fading at the edges. Holding the dead here is costing them.
"Why did you stay?" I ask.
"To tell you the one thing the record said could stop her." My father says.
Valerius turns sharply. "What?"
My father's eyes move to our joined marks. "The vessel cannot remove the sovereign heart." My cold mark pulses. "But the Shadowbound can."
Silence falls between us. Valerius's hand loosens around mine. "How?"
My father looks at him with unbearable regret. "By taking it into himself." My entire body goes still. Aurelia laughs inside me. Valerius says nothing. His bond becomes a blank wall. My father continues, "Shadowflame can contain Starfire. The old records called it sovereign transference."
"What happens to him?" I ask. My father can't look at me. "Father." His spirit flickers. "Tell me."
"The Shadowbound absorbs the sovereign heart. Aurelia leaves the vessel." He answers.
"And?" I ask. Valerius's voice is quiet.
My father looks at him. "The Shadowbound burns from within until nothing remains."
The locked door inside me cracks open. Pain enters. "No." The word is mine. Valerius's eyes snap to me. Aurelia's control surges, trying to close the crack. I fight it. "No." My hands grip Valerius's shirt.
He catches my wrists. "Valentina."
"You are not doing that." I yell at him in panic.
His expression becomes unbearably gentle. "I haven't decided anything." A lie. The bond says otherwise. He has already decided. The moment my father explained it, Valerius chose.
The boy who let a Remnant capture him because he believed my love would return. The boy who stands beside me while bleeding. The boy who would rather burn from the inside than leave me trapped inside my own body.
"No." Emotion floods through the crack, terror, love, rage, grief. Everything the sovereign heart locked away returns at once, violent enough to bring me to my knees.
Valerius catches me. "I missed you," he whispers but there is no relief in his voice because he knows what brought me back. The possibility of losing him.
Aurelia screams inside me. The Hall ignites.
White-gold fire races across every pillar.
Shadowflame erupts from Valerius, wrapping around us as the Remnants finally tear through the Hall's walls in waves.
Luc shouts for the spirits to cross. They don't move, the dead remain kneeling, waiting for my command.
Aurelia feels them, her satisfaction enters my blood.
An army, that was why she wanted the dead gathered, the coronation didn't only restore her heart.
It restored her authority over every soul marked by Arcana.
I look at the kneeling spirits. My father. Seren. Students. Guards. Centuries of dead.
Aurelia reaches through me. "Rise," my mouth commands. The dead begin standing. No. I fight for control. "Cross," I scream. The command collides with hers.