Chapter 67
I. Am. So. Done. With. Her.
I stare up at Emilia; she’s flanked by twenty Stellis on either side and who knows how many more fanned out beyond the crater. She already has a card hovering over her shoulder and one in her hand.
“I’ll give you credit, you did a good job changing your face. Too bad you decided to accent your hair with such a noticeable color.”
My hand flies up to my hair, touching the streaks of pink I was so excited to have.
A Stellis’s sword clipped my hood in the Stone Citadel and I never mended it during the fight.
I think of all the checkpoints I went through without a care on my way here, not bothering to conceal my appearance because I had utter faith in it.
I look between Kaelis and her. He looks as shocked as I am. He said my name, and not quietly, either. There is no denying who I am.
What’s the way out?
What do we do?
My mind races around those questions as magic begins to flare in me. There might be only one solution to this problem, and it doesn’t involve all—or even most—of us walking away from this alive. Turns out my plan from a few days ago to kill everyone to prevent witnesses was the right one after all.
“Take her,” Emilia commands to the Stellis.
Just as the men and women in plate begin to move, Kaelis says, “Stop,” with all the authority of a prince.
The Stellis halt, looking uncertainly between him and Emilia.
“Need I remind you that I operate under the sanction of King Naethor Oricalis himself?” she says loudly, her eyes affixed to Kaelis and me.
Then, to drive the point home, Emilia reaches for a scroll attached to her hip by a wide belt.
She reads from it, “Fortunately, the king predicted that an unfortunate situation such as this might arise. Any who are found aiding the traitor in any capacity are to be considered traitors themselves, regardless of birth or name. Commoner, or crown prince, or anyone between.”
She rolls up the scroll with a triumphant flourish and returns it to her hip. The Stellis take one last look at one another and, deciding it’s good enough for them, continue.
“You will not touch her.” Kaelis steps around me. He regards them all in the same dispassionate way a storm regards the coast. “Consider this your last warning. Heed me, not Emilia, and I will grant you your lives. Take one more step, and you all will perish.”
One last pause. One more moment of hesitation, like the calm before the storm. A breath.
“How could you expect us to trust you after what you did in the Stone Citadel?” Emilia wears a wicked, knowing smile. “Get him, too. He’s a traitor to the crown.”
A Stellis reaches for his sword, and chaos is unleashed.
Kaelis and I move in near unison. He issued the threat, but I am fully prepared to back it up. My usual slew of cards fly from my deck, readying me. No sooner have I called upon the Seven of Wands than one of the flaming tongues explodes harmlessly, blocking a dagger thrown by one of the knights.
I head in an opposite direction from Kaelis, leaping and scrambling across a boulder to a broken stair that hangs dangerously in midair.
Stone crumbles under my boot as I jump, dodging an attack.
I throw my weight as I grab a Stellis by the collar of his plate and twist. We both lose our balance, but I’ve swung around onto safer ground, and the Stellis?
He trips midair, falling with a scream and a resounding, sickening, decisive thump far below.
I keep moving, up and up. Emilia is casting cards now, as are two other Stellis. I weave around the attacks as I emerge onto the surface.
Shit.
She came as prepared now as she did in the Stone Citadel. There are easily twenty more Stellis, half mounted, all armed.
Emilia must see the surprise and panic on my face because she lets out a low laugh. “You’re not going to be able to take us all on, as talented as you might be, Clara. Throw down your deck.”
“I’ll die before I let you take me.” I’m already thinking of the next several cards I’ll use. “And I know you’re ordered to take me in alive. So there’s no way I can lose.”
Her face twists, and she lets out a roar, pointing her sword in my direction. The Stellis take this as their command to charge.
The Ace of Coins disrupts the mounted units’ charge. The Five of Swords summons my own trusty blade. I move with the speed of the Eight of Wands. But she’s right, there are so many. Too many.
Emilia doesn’t even bother to join the fray. She watches with a delighted glint in her eyes.
“Are you letting them wear me down for you?” I shout, twisting my blade and narrowly dodging another.
My lunge falls short, and I backtrack, reposting as I call upon the Four of Coins—small control of the weather for a short period of time.
A gust takes two Stellis and their mounts off the ledge of the crater.
Another is thrown off-balance. But I’m forced to dart away before I can finish the job as another closes in.
Where’s Kaelis? My breaths are ragged. He took on the brunt of the force, drawing them to him, but then I lost track.
Fire and smoke blots the air. All I see are plated men and women, cards cast my way, magic blades that scream through the air for my blood.
I can’t keep up with this for much longer.
Sweat trickles down my neck. I rip off my cloak as one of them grabs it. Another nearly slices my deck from my hip. But he gets close enough that I can lay my hand on his deck and use three of his cards to render him unconscious, saving my own.
Without warning, five of the remaining ten go rigid. They claw at their throats for one brief, wheezing breath. Then their eyes roll up into their heads and they fall, dead, before they can say or do anything more. That leaves five, plus Emilia.
“What…what was that?” Emilia whispers, horrified.
I didn’t do that.
“Powers that you cannot see and live to tell the tale.” Kaelis has emerged from the crater. I want to quip about how long it took, but who knows what he was dealing with down there.
“The…the prince…reversed card.” A prone woman at Kaelis’s feet twitches. Her armor has been fractured with veinlike cracks of purple-black. It looks as though some kind of living thing has covered it completely. A monstrosity that poisoned the metal itself.
No, more than the metal. I stare in horror as the woman lifts her face. Her cheeks are pockmarked with voids—as though she’s being eaten from the inside.
What sort of monstrosity…
“The prince is void-born!” she screeches with her dying breath.
Kaelis closes his fist, and the moment he does, the woman explodes. She cracks as though made of glass and shatters, the pieces turning to smoke. The ground left behind is singed and bare, much like the stone of the crater.
“Enough of this.” Kaelis turns to another Stellis, purple flames dancing around him in an aura of accursed power.
Cards rise from his deck. Each one slowly twitches, then twists, turning from right side up to upside down.
The top of the card is now the bottom. The figures on the card are distorted and changed, as if the ink has come alive.
They take on a sinister look before swirling like a chaotic mess—as though an invisible artist cannot decide, time and again, what the symbols and frames of the card should look like.
Emilia begins to run.
“No you don’t!” I charge after her as Kaelis’s magic bursts.
Tongues of cold purple-black fire race toward the other Stellis. The wind howls, and the clouds move across the sky so fast it’s as though time has sped up. The ground ripples under my feet. Even the bedrock shudders in terror before this unnatural abomination.
But my focus is only on Emilia. She trips, falling, twisting. My blade halts as she raises a hand.
“Don’t!” Her palm trembles. There are more screams behind us—cut short to make space for a silence so eerie a chill races up my spine. “Would you really defend…that? That thing?”
The point of my sword is under her chin. I narrow my eyes. “That thing? That man is my future husband.”
As my blade plunges into her chest, I lean forward. A dark shadow overtakes me. Motes of purple flame lick around us like rain falling. I know he’s there without him saying anything, but my focus is only on Emilia as the light begins to leave her eyes.
“This…is for my mother. I never meant to kill you. I never meant for you to bear the sins of your family, made well before you were aware. But you forced my hand.”
“S…sister…” Emilia chokes out and goes limp.
I inhale sharply, the metallic scent of blood filling my nostrils. Even with her dying breath, she focuses on Alor. I’d do the same, and my insides twist so painfully I almost wince even though she’s the one with the sword plunged through her.
“Alor doesn’t need to be a part of this,” I whisper, even though she’s far from being able to hear. “So long as she stays out of my way…our cards will not cross.”
Leaning away, I dismiss my blade. The weapon disappears, but the blood on my hands remains. It persists even as magic flares behind me with a flash of obsidian and violet. Flames dance across Emilia’s body, engulfing it, swallowing it whole. Like she was never really there.
One by one, across the field, the other Stellis are consumed by this raging, deadly, accursed magic. All around me is an inferno of glittering twilight and shadow. As if I am being caged in. As though I’m next.
Exhausted and spent, I push on the ground, and then my knees, somehow finding the will to stand. Tilting my head toward the sky, I take a steadying breath and turn, not knowing what I’ll find.
Kaelis is a few steps behind me. The air around him is alive with the power he flings from twisted cards. His hair is vibrant and shimmering, purple flames tangling with it, both highlighting and darkening it. The heavy velvet of his cloak flutters from currents of magic in the still air.
Like radiant midnight, he is a monstrosity not of this world. Glorious and horrifying.
“Clara.” His eyes finally turn to mine. There is a spark I’ve never seen in them before—glowing lilac rings the edges of his usually indiscernible pupils.
“Will you kill me now, too?” I whisper. “Now that I have seen too much—now that I know your secret?”
Kaelis leans away, standing straighter, as if narrowly avoiding a blow. “I was protecting you. I have always been protecting you.”
“I don’t even know what you are,” I whisper. But somewhere, deep within me, I knew. I knew it all, and I ignored it. The warnings of my mother; the feeling in my marrow whenever he was near. Perhaps it was something in me, some element of being a Major, reacting to him and whatever this was.
“If I’d told you the truth, I would put you in danger.”
“Enough!” My scream echoes into the crater.
I don’t care who hears, who sees—let them all come.
Let all of Oricalis come. Let him burn the damn thing to the ground and me with it.
I return to my earlier sentiment. It’s time to finish what we started.
“If you love me at all, if you want me at all, tell me the truth.”
“What was I to say? That all the rumors about me are true? That I am as cursed as they say and yet desperately, desperately desire you? That I am the antithesis—an affront to the fate you embody? That despite all this, you have been my reason for living since before I even knew you?” Panic tempers his power like a damper on flames.
The aura he bears oscillates wildly, writhing.
“I watched you leave me once, Clara. I was forced to carve you from my life. I would never risk it again.”
My cheeks burn with the tears of frustration I’m refusing to let fall.
“It wasn’t your choice to make, Kaelis. You can’t force me to be at your side by pretending to be something you’re not just because you think it’s what I want or need.
You have manipulated me and maneuvered me.
You took me to your bed without telling me things about you I should have known—I had a right to know if I was to ever be yours. ”
“It’s true what they say, I am void-born.
” An eerie calmness overtakes him, as if to say it he must detach his mind from his body.
“I can wield reverse tarot. In fact”—a haunted and hollow laugh—“I can wield it easier than normal cards. Every card seems much more…natural…when I twist it.” He moves a palm through the air, and a card dances on his fingertips, rotating as he speaks.
With a flick of his fingers, he dismisses it to his deck.
Finally, Kaelis returns his attention to me, and I’m rooted to the spot with the look. It is raw, desperate, and real. Everything I’ve longed to see for months finally comes to the fore. This man and his magic, forbidden and fearsome…I can finally see it all.
“I do not wish to languish, cast to the side as a spare. Nor do I wish to exist only as my father’s tool.
I wish to thrive…to be the king deserving of the throne at your side.
Deserving of your wisdom and rule.” The words nearly choke him.
Kaelis seems to manage to get them out only with sheer force of will and spite.
“What am I to you?” I’m pulled toward him, even when my better sense tells me to run. I am drawn to him, wanting us to collapse into one being that I can never escape from.
“Everything.” Kaelis drops to his knees as I come to a stop before him, taking my hand in both of his. As though he is swearing fealty to me. “You are my love in every age. The keeper of every incarnation of my heart. My reason. My aspiration. My fate. You…you are my World.”