The Black Flame
It wasn’t until we crossed out of the castle’s wards that everyone regained speech. Apparently, Malvina’s mind control worked at a pretty long distance.
Aerie was the first to speak. “Naci…”
Bramick set her on her feet, where she held one crooked foot above the ground, holding Bramick’s arm for balance. The broken ankle made my stomach queasy.
I looked at her tear-streaked face, then to the bundle of black and gold feathers cradled in one arm.
Noxie.
My heart was going to give out. He couldn’t be…
“I think he’s alive, but barely. I’m so sorry, I didn’t see what happened.”
“It was the mage,” Bernitha said, sniffling. “I saw her attack him, and he fell to the floor.”
I couldn’t lose him. I’d be lost entirely without him. He’d been the only constant in my life since we first met in the forest.
“Noxie!” I screamed through our bond. I refused to let him go.
With a jolt, he perked up, feathers ruffled and bent in all directions.
“Jeez, did you have to scream at me? Nearly gave me a heart attack.”
Everyone, including me, smiled as Aerie tried to smooth down some of his feathers.
“I’m fine, I’m fine. What did I miss?” he asked timidly, tentatively, fear of what I would say apparent. His voice was weak, but gods, it was so good to hear.
I looked around at our bedraggled remaining team.
“Caedryn is dead, but we lost. Malvina, she…she’s the real monster, and she rules Ashenholt now. She killed him. And…I can’t talk about the rest yet. There’s just too much. But for now, we’re going home.”
It was a mark of our friendship that he didn’t push the issue or press me to tell him more.
Drayce pulled me into a hug, his arms holding the broken pieces of me together. Bramick joined to wrap his arms around us both, followed by a one-legged, hopping Aerie and a limping Bernitha.
Kellan just stood facing the castle, shaking with fury.
Noxie came to rest unsteadily on Aerie’s shoulder to avoid being smothered by the group embrace. We all stood there, clinging to each other, crying, absorbing, mourning together for what could have been hours. I’d lost all notion of time.
Even Drayce’s golden glow was dim and nearly completely red.
I still didn’t know what it meant, but I knew it couldn’t be indicative of anything good going on in his mind.
“Let’s go home.” Drayce’s voice was so defeated that it hurt my soul.
We let go of each other, Bramick picking up Aerie once more and Noxie flying haphazardly to my shoulder.
I looked back one last time at Ashthorn Castle to find the long green and gold banners with the flame and thorn crown emblem changing before my eyes.
“Look.”
The rest of the group turned and followed my line of sight, a couple gasping—the green was turning a deep blood-red, and the Ashthorn crest was slowly being replaced with a black heart, broken down the middle in a jagged line. The silver crown of thorns rested around the middle of the broken heart.
“Gods, what does it mean?” asked Bramick.
I couldn’t answer, though I knew what it meant—Malvina was the Ashenholt ruler now, and things were about to change, absolutely for the worse.
It was Drayce who responded, his voice beginning to strengthen with resolve.
“It means we have a new enemy now, an even more powerful one. Today might have gone horribly wrong, but our mission is complete. Caedryn is dead—new mission, new goals now. We regroup and recruit—more than recruit, we gain allies. A war is coming, and it will take more than a band of rebel soldiers to stop it.”
* * *
After a somber, near-silent walk back through the woods, where Kellan’s three soldiers had waited (no Ashthorn servants in tow), we reached our ship, boarded, and collapsed on the deck.
The crew and the aerial unit that had stayed behind came running to us, asking many questions I couldn’t answer.
Not yet. It was all too overwhelming, and the questions were making my head swim.
Without a word, I finally stood and walked into Drayce’s cabin and curled up in his bed.
I didn’t move for days.
* * *
When I finally left the cabin, we were far out at sea, the salty, humid air refreshing after the stagnant cold and suffocation of Ashthorn. I still wasn’t ready to talk about any of it, but I needed food—I’d only had bites here and there that various people brought to me.
Right on time, Drayce brought me coffee and toast, simply saying there was more breakfast inside, then fell silent. He didn’t make me talk, and I appreciated that so much.
I didn’t want to pull away from him. I needed him more than I wanted to admit, but I felt I had no capacity for emotions.
One of the aerial unit females was a healer in training, and she’d set Aerie’s broken arm and leg. They weren’t fully healed, but she could at least hold a fork and walk with a slight limp.
She’d fixed Bernitha up, good as new, and did her best to help Noxie’s wing. Some of his difficulties flying would persist until he grew new feathers, only able to go short distances until then.
She’d tended to Drayce’s burns, preventing the worst of the scarring. But the night after I’d finally emerged from my isolation, when he undressed, I could still see the continuous line across his biceps, chest, and back—a perfect and gruesome ring.
The healer couldn’t fix what was broken inside us all, though. Over the next week on the ship back to Elyndor, we’d eaten often in silence, haunted looks about everyone on board.
When we arrived in Fallorian, there was a stillness and an uneasiness in the air as all eyes followed us off the ship and onto the dock.
My heart raced, fearing that Malvina had an army, and that they were here to capture us and bring us right back.
But I recognized the dock owner who approached us, and my heart settled.
I wasn’t sure if I would now always be looking over my shoulder for Malvina, her influence, or for Sevrin.
The approaching male looked at each of us before addressing Drayce. “We got word that Caedryn is dead. Is it true?”
Drayce took a deep, steadying breath. “Yes. Killed by Malvina, who has seized the throne. She’s a mind-controlling Umbrathren. There are dark days ahead…”
The male just looked at each of us once more, as if hoping we would refute what Drayce had just said.
When we didn’t, he just swallowed. “Thank the gods you all made it out.”
Drayce nodded at the male as we walked by. We were stopped several more times as we made our way slowly through the port city, all with the same questions. Drayce repeated that same answer so many times walking through Fallorian that the words no longer shocked me by the time we reached the horses.
The aerial unit had flown ahead when we had been about two days out to alert a stable hand back at the base of our imminent arrival and to help ready the horses to meet us.
We mounted and began the ride back to base, me still seated in front of Drayce. No one seemed in any rush to get back, knowing we would bring confirmation of the devastating news to our rebels and face the same haunted looks and stares of disbelief.
How was it that only a few months ago we were on this same route, bringing me to base for the first time? It felt like more than a lifetime ago, as if I were an entirely different person now.
Drayce slipped an arm around my waist from behind me in the saddle and rested his forehead on my shoulder.
“I’m here, Naci. I always will be, through fire and shadow and whatever else comes.”
I entwined my fingers with his and squeezed, but still said nothing. Had I even spoken since we left the castle?
* * *
In the weeks after we returned to base, I receded into my mind and shadows, finding comfort in the absence of emotion there.
I often stayed at the Arcanum house, seeking solitude in the library’s underground darkness.
At first being there made me angry, made me think of Sevrin and his betrayal.
But after a while, that seemed the least devastating of the revelations from that day in the throne room.
Here, sometimes I read, sometimes I stared for hours in silence at the glowing glythyrs on the wall.
I left my dampener ring on all the time now. I feared that if I slipped into my vey form that the rage and hate I felt for Malvina just might be the world-ending catastrophe that had been a possibility in the prophecy.
In my solitude, I thought often of all the lives she had ruined—mine, Keryth’s, Nella’s, Varyn’s, Caedryn’s.
Cassius’s... For nineteen years, since I was just a year old, Cassius had been controlled by Malvina’s wicked magic.
Maybe one day I would go back to Briarstead and see if amends were possible now that I knew the truth.
I wondered briefly how he and Aemilia were faring back home—probably just fine now that it was just the two of them, if he was still under Malvina’s mind-control.
I wondered if he would even care that one of his daughters was dead, and the other was, well…
me. Would he feel enough emotion to break through her magic?
See clearly for the first time in nearly two decades?
Drayce was worried about me, I knew, but I wasn’t ready to face reality yet. One day, I’d have to reconcile my feelings about Cassius. It was hard to grow up being abused and mistreated, only to find out he had no control over it. But I wasn’t ready for that yet either.
I also obsessed over the prophecy that Sevrin had recited, playing it over and over in my head. The parts about the blood moon and saving or dooming Caelia made sense, but it was the second half that I pondered and sought desperately to understand.
Duality and circumstance. Connections and broken bonds.