Chapter Forty-Six
We clash with Adria’s guards first, the underground corridor descending into chaos as magic flies and steel meets steel in the confined space.
The fight is quick and bloody, our disarming strategy forcing the guards to keep their distance from us and to barrage us with thrown weapons, which is effective given our lack of armor or shields, except that Ronan and I also have the power to heal.
Seth, Taran, and Octavia form a line in the front, taking the worst of the damage but pressing ahead as they collect throwing knives and daggers with Ronan and I relieving those of them brave enough to challenge us of their swords.
The guards keep coming, but Adria herself doesn’t step forward. She watches us in astonishment, finally seeing the true extent of our power. But she’s too proud to run. She’ll stand and fight us no matter how outmatched she may be.
Then there’s a scream from up the stairs where she’s just come from, a scream that sounds just like my own.
“Mother!” shouts Adria, taking off up the stairs after her.
“Did she say ‘Mother’?” asks Ronan. “Has she gone mad?”
“Unfortunately, she hasn’t. Our mother is alive.
And she’s—it’s—” I can’t form the words.
I can’t begin to describe what it was like to get my mother back only to immediately lose her again through her terrible actions.
To wake up each morning and remember that she’s with us once more, but that because of her, Larus isn’t.
But thankfully, I don’t have to explain. Ronan can feel it.
“Oh, my darling,” he says, holding my hand and rubbing the spot where her ring used to be. “I’m sorry.”
We make it through the guards and to the staircase before we hear the screech.
“Quinn!” yells Octavia, taking off ahead of us.
“Quinn? Is she here?” asks Cyrus. He’s managed to stay alive so far by staying at the back out of the way, but this staircase leads into a courtyard. The courtyard where Quinn has landed Bitey, by the sounds of the fighting above.
Ronan stops and holds him by the shoulder. “You need to stay back, Cyrus. Get into a servants’ passage. We’ll help her.”
“But, sir. She’s my daughter. My only girl.”
“She’ll kill us if we let something happen to you,” I say.
And Cyrus knows that’s true. “Help her. Please. Then do what you were born to do.”
“We will,” I say, the power surging through my veins in agreement. “I swear it.”
Cyrus nods gratefully, a great gesture of affection from him, and continues up the stairs as we enter the courtyard.
Though I still haven’t learned every corridor and courtyard in the palace yet, this one I know well: it’s where I met Quinn when we signed up for the tournament.
And it’s where I see her now, swooping down with Bitey, who grabs one of Adria’s guards with his lion paws and shreds him, tossing him to the ground like it’s nothing.
“Where are those archers?” yells Mother from somewhere nearby, but I don’t see her.
This courtyard is a terrible place to fight. There are dozens of columns and arches of tan and pink stone, tons of benches and low-lying bushes to hide behind. I can sense a large number of people out here with the power, but none of them are familiar enough to me to identify.
Not even my own mother.
We duck behind the nearest benches ourselves as I try to find her and Adria.
Bitey takes a dagger to the wing and chomps at it with his yellow eagle beak, tossing it aside and stalking towards his next victim.
“Quinn, take off,” yells Ronan. “We can’t risk Bitey.”
“Godsdammit, I knew you came after her. Is Octavia there too?”
Octavia starts to speak, but Ronan stops her. “Yes, now go.”
Quinn nudges Bitey with her leg, and he crouches down to jump into the air. But just before he does, a dagger comes sailing from behind a rock, striking Quinn in the neck.
“Quinn!” At least four people yell it, several of us running out into the courtyard to help her as Bitey panics, taking off with her slumping over the side.
I grab onto her with my shadows, and Ronan reaches out with light tendrils, healing her wound as I pull out the knife. She takes off into the sky, Bitey screeching as they go.
I sense movement out of the corner of my eye. “Ronan,” I say as I pull him down with me between a bench and a bush.
Then the torches go out.
“Sylvie? Taran?” says Seth. The darkness in the courtyard isn’t just the dark of a torchless night. It’s magical darkness, shadow-born darkness.
I can still see clearly, and so can Ronan, but the others are blind.
“Stay together. Back-to-back. There are shadow-born here.”
My mother’s shadow-born. This is her tactic, the tactic Taran thought was being used when I accidentally put out the torches myself. She’s here with her people, lurking somewhere in the darkness, ready to strike.
“Find her,” I breathe into Ronan’s ear, and he stalks off into the cloisters, knowing exactly who I mean.
Everyone goes quiet. Even the smallest movement could give them away…
“Mother?” calls Adria.
I smirk, crawling in her direction. So much for stealth. “She abandoned you. She left you out here with us, knowing you’d be blind.” Adria throws a dagger my way and backs away from the pillar where she was hiding, her arms stumbling for something else to duck behind.
I catch movement to my right. A woman in black robes crouching near a fountain throws a blade at me, which I catch with my shadows and send back to her, cutting her neck.
Her gagging sounds fill the yard.
“Is this what you wanted?” I call out to Adria. “You’re the God-Queen, but is there anything that you control? Or is it all her?”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.” Adria steps back into a shadow-born, nearly gutting them with her sword as she turns, but they dodge out of the way.
From a distance, I swipe the shadow-born’s weapon from his hands and stab it into his heart. He hits the ground with a thud, and several people move at once.
One of them is Seth, his feelings some of the only ones I recognize. He’s coming to help me. “Adria, you can stop this.”
A pair of shadow-born move at the same time. One of them comes for me, keeping low as they streak across the yard, while the other goes for Seth. I go for them both, but I’m too late to stop the dagger from going into Seth’s back. He yells as he falls, and Taran runs to his voice.
The shadow-born turns towards Taran, but I beat him to it, taking her weapon and ending her life.
“Seth, hold on, I’m coming,” I say, but there’s another one behind me. I reach out to pull him from me with my shadows, but he lunges with his sword and slashes me deep in my side.
I cry out involuntarily, trying to focus on my power through the pain, trying to pull myself out of the way before he can strike again. And all the while, trying to get to Seth, to save him…
Ronan’s light tendrils wrap around me. They settle into my wound like a caress, knitting my skin painlessly back together.
Thanks, darling.
But the light has given away my position. At least three people move towards me, one of them Ronan, using his shadows to keep them from me as I press on towards Seth.
“Sylvie, it isn’t good,” says Taran.
From the ground, I hear Seth coughing. “She’s going to kill our brother, Adria.
Is this what you wanted? She doesn’t even care.
She cares about nothing but her revenge.
” Ronan comes up behind me, helping me take care of a pair of shadow-born closing in on Taran and Seth.
Then I point Ronan away from us. One of us has to reveal themselves again with light magic to save Seth, and it’s not going to be him.
He nods and heads back in the direction of some of the only people remaining. One of them must be our mother.
I reach out with the healing light and pull the dagger from Seth’s back, closing the wound. “He’s lost a lot of blood, Adria.”
There’s a moment of silence and then a thud as Ronan dispatches one of the shadow-born closing in on us from a distance.
And then comes Adria’s voice. Quiet, stuttering. “Is he going to be alright?”
“I don’t know. He needs an elixir. Do you think Mother is going to let me get him one? Or do you think she’s going to kill him? What do you think she’s going to do to you once you outlive your usefulness?”
“He betrayed me. You betrayed me. Mother is the only one who has been on my side.”
Taran grips my arm. “Hurry, Sylvie. He’s weak.”
I see movement again to the left, but I relax when I see it’s Octavia creeping in a shadow of her own. “I’ll go get an elixir. I can stay hidden.”
I nod to her. “Thank you.”
Seth groans on the ground. “Just finish it. She’s never going to listen. I know you think you can save her, but she’s made her choice.”
“I’m not trying to save her.”
“That’s a lie,” Seth whispers.
Godsdammit. He really always can tell.
“Sylvara.” My mother’s voice echoes through the courtyard. “I have had enough of this. Come out and face me, and I’ll spare him.”
My magic races through my body and out into the courtyard, reaching out for Ronan.
She’s got him. She’s standing next to him near the fountain, her knife at his throat.
He still has his magic, yet he’s standing there at her mercy, which means he has let her do this to him. He’s giving her a chance because he knows that I don’t want her dead. He can feel it.
But I don’t know what will happen to him if she cuts his throat. If he dies before I can use the power to save him, will it abandon me?
I don’t want to kill her. I never thought I’d see her again, and I want to believe there’s a way to save her, just like I still believe deep down there’s a way to save Adria, but it’s too much of a risk.
Ronan is not a price I’m willing to pay. Not for my mother.
Not for anyone.
I step out of the cloister, facing her. I draw the light tendrils around me. They swirl and sparkle, starlight circling me as I walk towards her.
This is for you, Larus.
“My name is Sylvie.”
I throw out the light tendrils as my mother slices Ronan’s throat, her blade cutting so deep I feel it through our bond.
The wound sprays violently, but I’m already there, feeling the warmth of his blood through the light tendrils as I wrap them around him.
My own neck twitches and tingles as I heal him, an echo of the magic he performed twenty-three years ago when he saved my life before I was born.
When he’s whole again, magic pulses through the air between us, stretching and spreading through the space like the stars coming into alignment, the final piece of the puzzle snapping into place. The ground trembles, and lightning streaks across the sky, filling the courtyard with a bluish light.
Mother lunges for me, attacking with no subtlety or art, her body pouncing like a wild animal, her shadows lifting as she puts everything she has into her attack.
I tear the knife from her hands with my shadows, but now that she isn’t hurting Ronan, my will drains, my stomach dropping as I sickly realize my mother, the woman who brought me into this world, is truly trying to kill me.
Ronan runs after her, raising his dagger as her hands reach my throat.
I can’t look. I know she has to die for what she has done and what she’s planning to do. I know it, but I can’t see it. I can’t watch Ronan kill my mother. It’s bad enough that I’ll have to feel it, that I’ll have to remember how it felt for him for the rest of our lives.
But just before he can strike, a hand grips his arm.
Adria.
I reach out with my shadows. I have no choice. I have to stop them.
My mother’s hands tighten around my throat. I have to do it now, or she’s going to kill me before I get a chance.
“Give me the dagger,” says Adria, her voice raw. “You are not that man, Ronan.”
He hesitates, reaching his shadow tendrils under my mother’s hands to give me room to take a gasping breath. He looks at me, and then at Adria, and I can feel his decision before he makes it.
He hands the dagger to Adria.
“But I am that woman,” she says, and she stabs our mother in the back.