Chapter 26
Alora
The dream began with a child weeping.
Alora’s sobs echoed through the marble halls, her small hands pressing to her mother’s hollow cheek.
All color had drained from Salvia’s face, her skin a muted gray.
The air smelled of lilies and candle wax and death.
Her little voice trembled as she begged her to wake, begged until her throat was raw.
When the chapel grew dark, her footsteps wandered through the quiet castle. She searched for her father, desperate for the comfort that had always soothed her.
The door to his study opened quietly beneath her small palm. She heard her father’s voice, low and broken. Then another offered tender words.
Alora stepped closer, her bare feet soundless on the stone. They stood by the windows, framed in sunlight, Delphi’s hand on Laurent’s arm, her lips pressed to his.
Alora’s chest twisted and she cried out, “You’ve forgotten Mother already!”
They turned, expressions struck with guilt and shame.
Delphi reached for her, voice gentle. “Alora, calm down, dearest. It’s all right—”
No.
It wasn’t.
Nothing would ever be all right again.
She screamed insults as Delphi hugged her, trying to soothe her.
Alora hated her. She hated everything. She wanted it all gone.
White light burst from her palms. Shrieking, Alora flailed, striking Delphi’s face. The woman’s agonized cry split the air. The scent of scorched flesh filled the hall. Laurent’s fingers dug into Alora’s shoulder, tearing her away.
She hit the floor hard, gasping. Her glowing hands trembled, light blazing wild and uncontrolled, burning like a newborn sun. Delphi continued to scream and writhe, her face blistering as her skin melted in the perfect outline of Alora’s hand.
Her father stared at her in horror, and she saw it in his eyes.
I’m a monster.
His shout followed her as she ran away. Through the hall, through the dark, until grief and light devoured everything in her path.
Alora’s eyes opened with a soft gasp.
Fog clung to the edges of her mind as she blinked into the soft candlelight, the ceiling above her glittering faintly with pink quartz.
She sat up sharply as the dream shocked her fully awake, the memory crashing into her like cold water. The scent of smoke and scorched skin still lingered. Her heart slammed against her ribs when she looked down at her hands and saw white light pulsing faintly beneath her skin.
It curled over her arms in winding trails like vines, magic humming in the air around her.
So, it was real…
Tears blurred her vision. She had forgotten about that day …or had been made to forget. Lady Zinnia, Alora realized. The yearly examinations. All the rules. Her magic had been restricted since she was a child, but the hold had begun to fray.
And Rune had known.
That’s why he had provoked her, pushed her until she broke. The magic that surged… its light had burned through her beams like sunlight through glass, so immense she thought it would tear her apart.
It had thrown him clear across the arena, melting his flesh the way Delphi’s had… but he didn’t run or look at her like she was a monster.
Alora’s hand drifted to her lips, the phantom warmth of his kiss lingering there. Warmth flushed her cheeks. His touch had been a cloak that calmed her light, making her fall still. And somehow, during that kiss, she had seen something else.
A fragment of her … kissing him before. A memory so blurry, perhaps it was a dream.
None of it made sense.
Yet before she could find her bearings, Rune had put her to sleep.
How long, she didn’t know. It was nighttime outside her window.
A soft meow came from the pillow beside her. Alora smiled weakly at Nexus. The black kitten pressed against her knee, purring, his tiny wings fluttering.
“You knew too, didn’t you?” Alora murmured, scratching behind his ear. The creature blinked up at her, eyes gleaming gold, galaxies shifting faintly in their depths, steady and ancient, as if it reflected the same magic now threading through her veins.
A Primordial familiar that chose her.
Her fingers stilled on his fur as she whispered, “Why me?”
The kitten purred louder, the sound oddly comforting.
She exhaled slowly, trying to calm the tremor in her hands. When she finally looked up, her stomach dropped.
The door to her chamber was gone. Smooth, dark stone filled the space where it had been.
They’d sealed her in again.
The demons must fear her… as her father had.
He sent her to the Midlands not merely to live among her kind, but to subdue her. Lady Zinnia was deft at containment wards, naturally she must have done the same to her. And she had checked every year to make sure they held.
Why had it awoken now?
Her aching mind recalled the lark pin and Lady Zinnia’s gentle warning: Wear it always, so you may keep a piece of the Midlands with you.
How could she have been so blind?
The lark hairpin had kept her docile, binding the power in her blood. And now it was gone.
Alora drew her knees to her chest, tears tracking down her cheeks as she whispered into the dark, “My whole life was a lie.”
Her jaw trembled, sparks flashing at her fingertips. Nexus pressed his tiny paws against her leg and meowed softly. She inhaled a shaky breath, then another, until her magic settled.
“I’m all right,” she murmured, more for him than herself.
But she needed answers, and she wouldn’t find them here.
Alora flung the blankets aside and stalked to the solid wall, but it didn’t part as it usually did when sensing her will. She pressed a palm against the stone. “Mountain,” she said, frowning. “Please open the door.”
Nothing happened.
Her heartbeat quickened. “Let me out, please.”
No answer.
The scent of cold stone filled her lungs.
Her shallow breaths sounded too loud in the stillness.
Rune had trapped her again, buried deep within the mountain with no way out.
Her chest heaved; anger caught like a lump in her throat.
Light thrummed along her arms, rising up her neck in a menacing rhythm.
“Karag D?r,” she hissed, “open the door this instant or I’ll blow a hole right through you!”
An empty threat, really. Alora didn’t know what she was capable of, but the mountain must have believed her because the stone shuddered beneath her feet, and the wall split open, unveiling a door.
“Thank you,” Alora huffed, stepping into the hall.
Strangely, no one was guarding her door.
“Do you know the way to Calla’s chambers?” she asked Nexus. The female Harbinger was the one person she trusted to be honest with her.
And because she wasn’t ready to face Rune yet. His words in the combat area were still too loud in her head.
Nexus gave a short meow and padded ahead, tail flicking.
Alora followed him through the silent corridors, and the air thickened the farther they descended, growing warmer with each step.
She knew they had left her hidden wing when the black-marbled walls elevated high above her like the ribs of a great beast, etched with runes that pulsed faintly red, as if the mountain itself still bled fire.
Black spires jutted from the arches, catching the candlelight of the chandeliers above.
The deeper they went, the more the air grew warm.
A hot gust wafted through the fissures, the distant murmur of molten rivers moving beneath the walls.
Shadows clung to every corner, restless and alive, as though the fortress itself was watching her pass.
She picked up her pace, feeling exposed in the quiet castle.
Alora turned a corner and slammed into a wall of cold, wet flesh. Her stomach dropped.
The thing before her was no wall. A towering, skeletal demon loomed there, its flesh clinging like tattered silk to an elongated frame, sinewy and torn as though its body had been stitched together by shadows.
Black tendrils writhed from its chest and arms, serpentine and alive, slithering around it like a nest of sentient smoke.
Its face was a horror carved from nightmare, featureless, save for a gaping, jagged mouth stretched too wide, packed with rows of teeth like broken glass. A long, eel-like tongue slithered free, tasting the air.
The sound it made wasn’t a growl but a low, wet gurgle, like rot bubbling in a throat that had never known breath.
A ripple of unnatural cold rolled through the corridor as the demon stepped forward, torches dimming as the darkness bent around it.
“Ah, Shadow Queen.” Its voice rasped like claws dragged over bone, layered and hollow. “Even with that bangle on your wrist, I can taste a hint of your essence in the air. Your dreams must be truly… delicious.”
A cold shiver crawled down Alora’s spine. But Nexus sat at her heels, tail flicking idly as he studied the creature. If her familiar wasn’t alarmed, then she forced herself not to be.
Alora folded her glowing hands at her waist, forcing her voice to stay steady. “You heard the command of your god. You cannot touch me.”
The demon’s lipless black mouth stretched with a cackle, a horrid, skin-crawling sound that made her ears ring. “I know no command of any god—only he who pretends to be.”
Her breath caught.
It slithered closer, the air trembling with its stench. “Oh, you truly are so enticing. So powerful without knowing what power lives in your veins. Not even he could stand against you.”
Fear kept Alora frozen in place, her heart thundering and mind reeling at the implication.
Then a flash of midnight smoke cleaved through the creature’s chest. The demon convulsed, a strangled sound escaping its maw before it burst into ash. Standing behind it was Deimos, a black heart pulsing in his Nightstone claws, dripping trails of ichor down his wrist.
“You escaped,” the spy stated, his tone unnervingly pleased. “To my great fortune.”
Deimos’s scarlet eyes gleamed with rare delight as he studied the heart before slipping it into an empty glass jar from his satchel. The organ fell in with a wet plop. Alora’s stomach churned as he tucked it away.