Chapter 47
forty-seven
My heart thundered in my chest, but I failed to recall why.
Everything felt so heavy, as if the blistering cold was choking me.
But the more I stared at the tall, terrifying man, the further I shrank back.
The flags of Deldren’s coronation were hung, but torn to shreds, their violet remains knocking in the wind.
“Look at the beast, Maelindiir,” the other man screamed, his sickeningly sapphire eyes flicking to the horned man. “Do you know what this monster has done to you?”
“Lorelana, please remember me,” Maelindiir begged, blinking away tears. “Find the pain—”
But he stepped toward me and I cringed back, making the other one laugh. It grated on my ears.
“Look at the horrible Ifrei monster. The one your father warned you of. Who lurks in the forest with his accursed people and his dragons that will swallow you whole.” His grin grew until it was more tooth than lip. “Do you know what he’s done to you?”
“Stop!” Maelindiir lashed out with a brutal wave of magic that froze me in place, but the other man deflected it with a half-hearted wave. “I wouldn’t hurt you!”
“But he already has. Look down. See what he made you do.”
So I did. I gazed upon the sight that laid before me, the gruesome horror at my feet.
My father’s head gazed up at me with glazed, lifeless eyes.
The blue was gone, revealing a glassy green I'd never seen.
It was carnage, and I raised my blood-covered hands and the dripping dagger that stole his life.
I’d killed my father.
I screamed, the sound deafening me like a roaring river. I screamed until my throat ached and my voice cracked. I screamed until I couldn’t anymore and grabbed at the flesh of my face begging for the horror to cease.
The terrifying figure’s smile grew until I thought he might clasp his toothy jaw over me, and I stumbled back.
“Who are you? Why would you make me murder my own father?” I screamed to Maelindiir. “You monster!”
He screamed in agony, like someone had shoved a knife through his heart. It was primal and tore at my soul, though I wasn’t certain why. He fell to his knees, making this horrible sound that raised every hair across my body as if someone ripped his head off.
But the silver scaled dragon behind him roared, shaking the ground. His sights fell on me as he brandished his countless, jagged teeth. Steam poured from him, singing my skin.
He lunged.
“Numen, no!”
I screamed, falling back with my palms out. My life flashed before my eyes. And I saw my dead father. I saw his eyes burned into my skull.
“Stop!” I screamed so loud my throat shredded. A wave of Blue magic burst from my hands, painfully, and spread across the realm like a sapphire wind. With it, the dragon slowed to a stop right before me.
And the rest of the world rolled to a pause. Everything was held in stasis, unmoving, unchanging, the dragon’s teeth mere inches from me.
I broke into a cry and fled. I swept across the square from the reality of what I’d done to my father. His dead, empty orbs flashed into my mind again.
I fell to pieces as I bolted toward the castle. I needed familiarness. I needed Deldren.
But nothing was the same.
The stone was similar. But the streets were unfamiliar, soaked in blood, and covered in a stationary fight between dragons and gilded-clad knights fighting against them. My father’s men, the same armor.
And the streets were nothing but bodies. Rotted, half-frozen corpses. I screamed again, the agony shredding me at the seams.
It was a well of newness, and it cloaked me like a horrid and unwanted stain. But that’s when the ice began to creep, darting across the cracked stone.
Where did this carnage come from? Had I killed them all? Slaughtered my people?
The cry I made was akin to a wounded animal being shredded by a pack of dogs as I fled into the square.
I retched as I ran. But nothing came up. All I knew was fear. Loneliness. I could remember nothing.
How did I get here?
At the center of the square where I’d massacred my father, ice formed across the ground. It crawled and froze like a deadly ivy, choking out any life unfortunate enough to find itself below. It increased in speed, darting across the stone pavers for me.
I fell and bloodied my knees as I scrambled into the castle. The knights were frozen in pursuit and I passed as if I were nothing but a phantom. Into the entrance hall, and up the stairs I went, traveling from room to room in search of solace.
Where was Deldren?
The rooms were ripped apart, with parchment spilling across the floor from upended desks and overturned bookshelves. Someone had shredded mine. But it didn’t matter.
Before the coronation, I never kept secrets, and all this room held was my history and past—along with the spilled and aged cards that now dotted the ground. Some of the aces and winning cards were torn to pieces.
I’d killed my father.
Had I killed my people, too? Had the Ifrei goaded me into murdering them?
The thought sent me into another fit, and I fell to my knees. This used to be my sanctuary. Now it was nothing but my prison.
The ice began to seep through the window and climb up the stonework. Time is running out.
I pulled myself from the floor and went to the broom closet where Deldren and I used to hide. I could still see him so vividly in my mind, holding a hand over his smile to hide his giggle. Or his wide, teary eyes when I’d tell him of the story of the ghouls outside the wall.
How our father was the only thing keeping us safe. And I’d killed him.
I stifled another cry and dared glance out the window as the creeping ice stretched across most of the square. It consumed the bricks and the infinite, torn corpses, eating away the carnage and encasing it in ice.
I rushed into the lower hall and invaded the throne wing to find more guards in stasis, and further chaos. The throne itself was tipped to the side, now nothing more than a gilt chair.
I ran from room, to room, to room. But no matter how much I screamed, cried and searched, I couldn’t find my brother.
I tore from the castle. Where was Deldren?
The castle quarter was a frozen wasteland, with ice eating Ilyatria. It covered every surface, freezing the knights over in their stationary battle. Freezing over everything.
Ice.
Pain.
Blood.
The world was ending. My world was gone.
There was a chasm, a deep and unyielding gorge of infinite pain. It brought me nothing but knowing and anguish. I needed to see the sacrificial spike, the last remainder of him.
When I found my way to the dais where my father used to give his life away, and dared to stand before the metallic prongs.
Where he lost himself, and I watched him go mad. The impetus he used to keep Ilyatria alive took him and his mind. I watched him die over my twenty-eight years. But it was my bloody hands that dealt the death knell.
The cold continued to spread as the movements of the sluggish battle began to speed up. Whatever magic I used had run out. The world started moving again.
There was nothing left.
I crumbled to my knees and let the ice take me.