Chapter 17 #3
When the moon hung directly overhead, I finally understood what I needed to do next.
I had been winging it so far, knowing I needed to perform some sort of spell, but not knowing which one I’d need to call upon.
But now I had my answer. It was, as I’d thought earlier, a portal.
But it wasn’t just any portal—it was a portal created from the island’s own ley lines.
Only the very magic of this island would be strong enough for what needed to be done tonight.
The spirits gravitated toward the moon’s reflection in the water, a silvery disk stretched taut upon the surface. The river wasn’t a portal, but the glowing reflection of the moon was. Or, at least, it would be once I unlocked it.
I descended the stairs of the castle, feeling all eyes on me as I waded directly into the shallow pool. The spirits flocked toward me like fish, flitting near, getting close but never touching.
My white dress billowed, sodden to my knees, but I cared only for the power thrumming beneath my palms. When I reached the center of the shallow pool, the time had come to create the portal.
I sent out my tendrils of magic, wove them in a circle around the moon’s reflection, infusing them with magic from the glowing ley lines.
We’d need more than my power and that of my ancestors to complete this spell: we needed the power of The Isle.
As I completed the circle, the reflection of the moon itself began to hum with vibrations.
The portal was up and working. The spirits flocked around it, looking like ghosts moving through the current, staring at the portal with fear and hope.
When I nodded, the first of the spirits crossed into the portal.
The face stared up at me, eyes wide in terror, until slowly, the spirit began to blink out of existence. Before the face of the man disappeared, he smiled, and though I couldn’t hear him, I was sure the words on his lips were of thanks.
Gratitude shone in every ethereal face as more spirits began to flow through the portal. Some joyful, some tearful, some pressing ghostly kisses to their fingers before slipping away to their rightful realm where they could finally rest.
This went on for some time—hours, maybe—until three spirits entered the portal together. I did a double take when they held up their forearms to display the Triskelion Sigil etched in black there.
“You’re the fishermen,” I said. “Are you able to tell us who killed you?”
The man in the center nodded.
“Was it me?” I asked.
He shook his head.
I extended an arm. “Was it anyone here?”
He shook his head again.
“Thank you,” I whispered, “and I’m sorry.”
I pressed my hand to the water’s glassy surface; the man in the center touched mine back. It felt cool and liquid, the opposite of molten lava. When I withdrew my hand, I glanced down at a sharp twinge on my forearm.
The Triskelion Sigil. The symbol gleamed white on my own forearm—a bright tattoo.
Permanent. Mine. As the fishermen blinked out of our world into their next, there was peace in their eyes, as if they knew that their suffering had not been completely in vain.
And indeed, hadn’t it guided the way for me to prove my identity as the next Triune Queen?
More hours passed as the rest of the souls streamed home. Near the end, as the crowd of spirits was but a handful, I noticed a flicker of movement along the shoreline. Liza appeared shortly after, crouched behind a swath of cattails.
“It’s my mom.” Liza’s voice sounded shaky, uncertain.
Her thin dress clung damply as she stepped into the water beside me. When I looked down, I saw a beautiful woman had drifted into the portal.
“She’s lovely,” I told Liza. “You look just like her.”
“May I?”
I nodded, and Liza stretched out her hand. Her mother’s smiling lips formed words we could not hear but could clearly make out.
“I’ll always be with you.”
Tears streaked Liza’s cheeks as her mother’s face blinked out of existence. I had no clue if this would change Liza’s ability to communicate with her mother, but regardless, it couldn’t be easy to know her mother was passing on to a new realm without her.
I gathered the tiny girl against my chest. Squeezed her tight.
I needed it as much as she did. And as I pulled her close to me, I hummed the lullaby that had been given to me years ago.
We stood there, clinging to one another, the heartbreaking tune forever ours to share.
It was no longer mine alone. Because I was no longer alone.
“She’ll always be with you,” I promised, as we eventually parted. “And so will I.”
Liza nodded into my shoulder, she sniffed, and when we pulled apart, I noted the ley lines had started to dim. The moon’s reflection slid toward the river’s edge as dawn warmed the opposite sky. The procession was complete. The restless spirits had been released.
Exhausted, I helped Liza ashore and collapsed into Silas’s arms. We all climbed back up to the castle and sat on the balcony in chairs, as Millie rushed toward us with towels and cups of tea.
“You did it,” Silas said—and I had.
The magic of my ancestors coursed within me. A new tier of power lay bare, unlocked. My arm burned with the Triskelion Sigil, announcing me for all to see as the next Triune Queen.
Sunrise bled across the horizon as Ranger X crossed the castle and faced Fenlon. “We tested Alessia’s dagger,” he could be heard saying. “It’s not a match. Are we done here? For good?”
Fenlon, already abandoned by his friends, stumbled away without looking back. He might not be done with me forever, but it was something of a truce for now. There had been enough evidence that I had Fae powers that we could lay that issue to rest.
But as I watched Fenlon go, unease prickled my skin. There was something else. Another danger lay in wait. But as I scanned the river—
There.
As I watched the waters coursing around the stones in the river, its natural current, I felt the moment it was disrupted.
The silver spirits were long gone, but instead of emptiness, they’d been replaced by new shadows hovering in the water: faces that were warped and twisted, stallions with jaws that could tear flesh, angels and demons that didn’t exist in our world.
More spirits, but these were not innocently trapped here. These had been purposefully released into our realm with the worst of intentions. The Darkest Lord’s army. Dread coiled inside me.
“Silas,” I said in sudden understanding, “in freeing the spirits, I’ve weakened the veil between worlds. The Darkest Lord wanted me to open the portal tonight. He’s taking advantage of the fissure to send in his army.”
Silas spun around, noting the frightening creatures as they surged from the water.
The floating ghosts turned into smoky, gray forms the instant they burst from the surface.
They thundered toward shore, toward the Rangers who could only duck in terror—toward Fenlon who could be heard shrieking as he sprinted away.
The saving grace was that the spirit forms were not solid enough to do damage. They raced right through the people on the banks, fading into a thick, foggy mist and disappearing completely seconds later, as if the very lands of our island were protecting the people who lived on it.
As the parade of ghostly spirits finished their rush from the water, I turned back to face the river and found one final opponent hovering before me.
A man—a spirit?—sat in a chariot pulled by four ghastly horses, but unlike the others who had emerged as part of the Darkest Lord’s army, this man didn’t have a figure that shimmered around the edges.
He didn’t move with that unearthly wispiness. He seemed more solid, more human.
A hood covered the figure’s face, obscuring him so that he was completely unrecognizable and yet, somehow, I understood I’d met this man before.
“You,” I said. “You’re the harbinger. You’re the one who altered the kraken and the lycanthropes. You visited me at my court. You murdered those fishermen.”
“I’m only doing the Darkest Lord’s bidding, you’ll see soon enough,” the harbinger promised in that slithery voice I’d initially thought had been a disguise. “Your time is up, my queen.”
I tilted my head higher, studied the man from a distance. “You’re wrong.”
He gave a dark, cackling laugh. “The doors to the underworld have opened, and the Darkest Lord’s army will be upon your shores before you can stop him. Next time, they won’t be held back by their spirit form. It will be complete and utter annihilation for anyone who does not surrender to his will.”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” I said again, meeting his gaze as head-on as possible through the shadows. “My time as queen has only just begun.”
Then I raised my hands, and I called upon my newfound powers: the fury of the water, the harsh whip of air, the shudder of the earth as the entire island trembled beneath my feet. All three elements churned together in a display of power only a true Triune Queen could manage.
I enveloped the harbinger and his chariot completely in a column of elemental magic that flowed from my ancestors straight through me. It was a storm unlike anything the island had ever seen before, and though it lasted mere moments, its power was palpable for miles.
When I dropped my hands, the harbinger was gone, vanished into the blackness of the river beneath him. Not destroyed; merely pushed back to the underworld for now.
I looked down at the now-silent shores as the onlookers stared at me awestruck.
“The Darkest Lord may be at our doorstep,” I said. “But he has not accounted for me. I am the Queen of Isles. If the Darkest Lord wants my throne, he will have to burn the entire island to the ground to take it, and I promise you, I will not let that happen.”
THE END