Chapter 54
Alora
Alora’s raspy voice echoed faintly in the garden, but it hurt too much to sing. Her throat had not yet recovered after the night she spent crying. She brushed trembling fingers over her puffy eyes.
Don’t sing for me anymore.
How could her voice surface after such a request?
Rune had closed himself off from the bond completely. She couldn’t feel him or even sense him in the shadows. It made her chest feel hollow in a way she didn’t understand.
His phantom touch still lingered where bruises had bloomed on her skin. He had healed the bite on her thigh, but the spot was still tender.
Alora pushed the feeling aside. She leaned against a tree stump behind her cottage, letting the night’s breeze cool her puffy eyes. The pond’s surface shimmered beneath the moonlight.
From the bushes came a soft meow as Nexus stepped out. He trotted over and climbed into her lap, purring.
Alora smiled tiredly. “Sweet kitty,” she whispered, stroking his ears and little horns. “You always know where to find me, don’t you?”
Nexus came and went as he pleased.
“Has Rihan been well?”
The heightened purrs in response must mean he liked her brother. Rihan was most fond of him as well, judging by the new leather collar he wore, gilded with extravagant filigree.
There was a note tucked beneath it, but the letter was sealed with Theia’s crest. Alora’s chest tightened as she read the scrawled words. Argyle was fraying. Delphi schemed, loyalties were slipping like sand through her fingers. Her brother was to be crowned.
What else could she expect, after leaving Argyle unattended?
An overwhelming weight pressed on her chest. Alora wrapped her arms around her legs, hiding her face against her knees. What was she doing? Nothing felt right anymore.
A flicker of light danced through the night air, and the scent of autumn and old magic drifted through the trees.
Alora looked up.
Three glimmers soared forward. Tiny, lithe bodies shimmered with pixie dust, wings like stained glass. They were barely three inches tall. Adorable, harmless… but no less deadly.
The Harbingers fluttered around her, their Bloodstones glittering in the evening.
She cracked a smile. “Oh my.”
“I will not hear a word of it,” Deimos grumbled, blue dust flickering around his translucent wings twitching like an irritated dragonfly.
Alora covered her mouth. “Why do you look like…?”
“Fairies?” Calla flew down to her eye level. Her purple wings shimmered like lilac petals in the light. “I thought it might cheer you up.”
Alora’s small smile wavered. Of course, Calla must have sensed Rune’s earlier arrival and departure. They weren’t exactly quiet. Then she must have heard her weeping, too.
Alora looked away, blinking against the sting in her eyes. “Why did he send the rest of you here?”
“One final lesson remains to complete your training,” Hadeon answered, fully armored despite his pixie size. His wings reminded her of autumn leaves, burnt red and gold. He crossed his brawny arms. “The court will only acknowledge their Shadow Queen when she is ready to become one.”
She shook her head. How could she be a queen of a court where even the king no longer acknowledged her?
“It’s time you reclaim your magic.” Deimos flitted forward, carrying the knapsack that contained the glowing jar. “According to the archives, you need only to summon it back.”
But the mention of it only made her anger curdle.
“Cast it into the Abyss,” she muttered. “I don’t want it.”
“You cannot dispose of half your power,” Calla said, brow furrowed. “You need it.”
“I don’t want it!”
Her dark magic flared. Thorns and spider lilies burst from the earth beneath her hands.
The Harbingers stilled, exchanging a look.
Alora recoiled, drawing the thorns back into the soil. She stood and moved away for the pond, wrapping her arms around herself. For a long moment, she said nothing. Shadows shifted restlessly at her fingertips, reflecting her unease.
“It didn’t fight for me,” she murmured. “When Eldrik siphoned it, the light magic... let him. It slipped away like it was never mine to begin with. But the darkness—” Her voice faltered, breath hitching. “The darkness clung to me and fought. It stayed.”
She laughed, but it was a hollow, broken sound.
“Why should I reclaim what abandoned me so easily?”
Her vision blurred as she thought of Rune walking away.
“Light magic is supposed to be strength and purity. The one power stronger than the dark. But at that moment, it was nothing.” Her tears fell. “I was nothing. And maybe… that’s all I will ever be.”
The Harbingers fell silent, but their presence wrapped around her in quiet understanding of her pain. There had been so much of it that night. More than magic had been stolen from her.
“And maybe...” Alora’s fingers curled into the grass. “Maybe I’m afraid of what I will remember if I reclaim the magic again. Afraid of what parts of me are buried inside it.”
The crisp wind fluttered through the manor’s courtyard, leaves drifting gently around the glowing jar. It cast a soft light over their faces.
“When I look at that jar,” Alora muttered.
“I see the gifts my godmothers gave me. Grace. Song. Beauty.” She grimaced with disdain.
“They feel like charms from someone else’s story.
Those gifts didn’t save me from Eldrik. They didn’t protect me from abandonment or loss—” She broke off, chest rising with a bitter breath. “They kept me weak.”
A dust of purple magic swept out as Calla rose to full form.
“Then it’s time we rewrite what those gifts mean.
” Calla delicately rested a clawed fingered on her neck.
“Your voice is not a lullaby—it’s a weapon.
” She leaned in, her lips curving like a secret.
“Song is seduction, subversion, and lure wrapped in silk. It can topple empires if you let it.”
Alora shivered as a tickle of dark magic rushed down her throat. And she realized, it was a blessing.
“Grace isn’t how well you curtsy in silk.” Deimos rose in a swirl of blue shimmer, Shades hovering at his shoulders. “Grace is precision. It’s knowing how to move before your enemy does.” He took her hand, inspecting it like a master appraising the tool. “And knowing exactly where to cut.”
His thumb swiped over her palm and the current of a dark blessing fell over her like a veil.
It fit her like a second skin.
Hadeon stepped forward last, his massive frame casting a shadow across hers.
“Beauty,” he declared in that deep yet reassuring tone.
“Is more than splendor and vanity.” He circled her slowly, appraising not her form, the way she stood, the cut of her jaw, the glint surfacing in her eyes.
“In truth, it is a distraction. It draws the gaze, so no one sees the moment you strike.”
He lunged, then halted when Alora instantly had her Nightstone dagger at his throat.
“So, make use of it.” Hadeon smirked, lightly tapping her nose. “Then that beauty becomes terrifying.”
His blessing settled into her bones, steady as iron. Behind Hadeon, Calla watched with a faint smile, and Alora knew where he learned the danger of beauty.
“You were never meant to be a fairytale,” Calla said softly. “You were meant to be a myth.”
Alora looked down at Theia’s letter in her hand.
“A queen must be more than a symbol. She must be the sword that defends her people. The shield that does not yield. You are not here to mingle in the woods. But to learn what it means to reign.”
But who were her people now?
The lords of Argyle, who plotted in secret to use her brother like a pawn? The Dominions, who bowed because Rune forced them?
Perhaps both.
Magic swept over the atmosphere as the Harbingers summoned their weapons, and Alora did the same.
Calla attacked like the sudden gust of a tempest. She was a flash of lilac hair in the moonlight and steel as her chakram sliced for Alora’s throat.
Alora stepped inside the arc.
Her hand snapped up, snatching Calla’s wrist mid-spin. With a twist of her torso, she redirected the momentum and sent the Harbinger skidding across the stone in a sharp burst of breath and silk.
Then Alora spun, glaive deflecting the swing of Hadeon’s hammer with a ringing crack that split the air. The ground trembled beneath his feet. He attempted to wrench it from her grasp. She sped away in a burst of smoke.
Power surged through her arms, white markings blazing along her skin. She drove the butt of her weapon into his ribs and followed with a sweep of her leg, striking his chest.
The giant hit the ground hard enough to fracture stone.
Smoke drifted behind her.
Claws slashed from shadow, precise and silent.
Alora turned before Deimos emerged fully, catching his forearm mid-strike. Shadows coiled around her fingers, answering her will, and sent him crashing into the training posts. Spinning around to halt her blade against Calla’s throat.
The Harbinger held out her arms in surrender, casting her chakram away.
Alora lowered her glaive slowly, breath steady, posture straight.
Then all three circled her, eyes glowing like embers in the dark. And she at last understood the lesson. The old gifts had been meant to seal her fate.
The new ones were here to break it open.
But only she could decide the course.
“Ver Nocthra,” Hadeon murmured.
“Vi’ignis,” Calla followed.
“Va’karr,” Deimos finished.
Alora spoke the maxim of the demons in turn, her voice rising to meet her will. “Ver nocthra vi’ignis va’karr.”
By shadow and fire, we claim.
She wore a crown now through blood and by marriage.
Two kingdoms.
Both hers to rule.
And a queen did not wait for permission.