Chapter 58 A Miracle
A Miracle
Caramyn
She leapt from each branch to the next one, nearly defying gravity, carried along by the Shadows and hidden in their mist. The queen rode below, only two remaining Shadow soldiers following behind her as they collapsed every few minutes, the magic sustaining them clearly exhausted, which meant the ones that had scattered with Wyran would be down soon, too.
“I know you’re here, girl. Might as well show yourself,” Sinevia called out with a sinister lilt.
Caramyn ignored her but climbed with purpose so that the branches would rustle with her movement. She wanted the queen to follow. Wasting her time was exactly the goal. She just needed to give Asterious enough time to find the Blade.
As she moved, flashes invaded her mind from a source she didn’t recognize. Visions of the woman below chasing her. Images of her power, limitless and dark, held back by nothing to keep the balance. It distracted her, and her focus faded as she maneuvered through the woods.
“Perhaps the Shadows will not harm you, but that doesn’t mean they won’t betray your fears. Not when they have no choice.”
She didn’t understand it, but Sinevia had somehow become linked to her mind’s eye.
She sent visions of fire, visions of Asterious crying out in agony, deep scars bleeding from his back, and visions of her mother screaming as their home crumbled to ashes.
She sent visions of Narahbi and Zera running from attackers in a frozen, empty tundra, and then visions of a black-eyed man gurgling on blood as he drove a sword through himself before the Veil.
The visions spun out of control in her head, coming one after another before she could determine memory from illusion and truth from lies, so horridly distracting and distorted that she couldn’t move.
Sinevia waved a hand, uttering some incantation of old to draw all the Shadow wraiths to her. Caramyn felt their resistance from somewhere deep within her, but they succumbed to Sinevia’s command. They had no choice but to obey.
The darkness surrounding Caramyn swirled like smoke before funneling toward the queen, abandoning Caramyn to the open treetops.
“Stop this!” Caramyn pleaded, the visions clawing at her sanity like ripping open barely healed wounds. “If you’re powerful enough to do all this, what more do you want?”
“I want power that outweighs the fear of losing what I love. The power over life and death.”
“But will it leave anything left for you to love?” Caramyn snapped, gritting her teeth as she fought to shake away the tormenting images in her head.
“I don’t know,” Sinevia cooed. “You tell me, Witch of the Shadow Woods. You’re powerful, and yet you still seem to have lost your heart—and your sense—to love.”
Powerful? She couldn’t even master simple Spellbound magic and yet this Shadow queen spoke as though deep down she had a reason to revere her…maybe even fear her. What had her Seer abilities revealed that Caramyn could not see?
Caramyn laughed despite the pain in her mind.
She would delay Sinevia as long as she could manage, no matter how deeply she cut.
And as Sinevia filled her head with more horrific visions, she reached for her bow and took aim, desperate to end whatever game she was playing with her mind.
Her Soldiers were all dead now. There was nothing to stop her.
The target was her upper arm, covered by no protection but the black sleeves of her elegant dress—nonlethal—and it would have been a perfect shot.
But it flew right through her, as though she was no more than a ghost. Sinevia glanced up at her through an opening in the thick, dark branches.
“Did you think I would really enter these Woods in flesh, unarmored, and unguarded?”
“How…how are you here then?”
“I’m very much here, girl. My mind. My power. But not my body. A Seer’s greatest capabilities lie in illusion and transcendence—when one is willing to breach the limits.”
“When one is willing to embrace forbidden magic, you mean,” Caramyn shot back beneath her breath.
It made sense now, why the Shadows couldn’t drive her out. She wasn’t really there. No matter how real she looked, spoke and moved, it wasn’t truly her. And that meant the real Sinevia…was somewhere else.
Perhaps still back in Felhold, safe on her throne. Perhaps standing right outside at the edge of the Woods. Or perhaps already at The Veil.
Suddenly she saw it flash before her mind.
Another vision, brutal and unyielding. Asterious.
Weak on his knees, trembling and covered in blood—Wyran’s blood.
He’d fought him, nearly to the death, with the Shadowblood’s Blade, and now he was kneeling with it aimed toward himself, the tip of the sword hovering over his chest.
“No! Asterious!” She screamed his name into the nothingness of the forest around her, as if maybe by some miracle—if it wasn’t just another illusion—he might hear her.
A wave of otherworldly force rippled through the air, and with it, a sharp pain reverberated in her chest. Had she felt it?
Was that the moment Asterious had driven the Blade through his own heart?
Was she too late to save him? Was any of it even real?
She crouched over in pain, clinging to the branch from where she perched as Sinevia’s laugh filled the space between them.
“So worried about my beastly little brother, aren’t you?” Sinevia purred.
“It was just one of your visions—your lies…” Caramyn cried, tears welling as she pressed her hands to the sides of her face, trying to block out everything. It couldn’t be real…it couldn’t be…
But what if it was? What if she couldn’t reach him in time. What if…what if…
“The thing about illusions, dear girl, is that they cannot manipulate the past. Only the future—because the future is not set. There are many paths it can take. I just have the power to show you the possibilities.” Sinevia’s stare could’ve pierced armor as she spoke, her voice like midnight.
“What you saw may very well be Asterious’ future if you do not stop him.
Or, it may already be his past, because you failed to do it fast enough. ”
“You expect me to believe anything you’re saying?” Caramyn cried, terrified that she was already too late. “You just want to trick me into leading you to him and to the Veil.”
“I don’t expect you to believe me. I don’t care if you do. But if you don’t, I will still find the Veil one way or another, eventually. But if you do,” Sinevia continue softly, “you might still stand a chance at saving your prince.”
“How?” Caramyn groaned through clenched teeth.
“Because if you simply show me where the Veil is—show me in your mind—I can take us there. Right now. In less than a heartbeat.” Sinevia’s smile sharpened. “And if Asterious really is there waiting with a sword aimed at his own heart, you may yet save him.”
And if he’s not…
Then it wouldn’t matter. If Asterious was already gone, nothing would matter at all. He was supposed to be the rightful king. He was supposed to restore the balance of Light and Shadow and save its people. He wasn’t supposed to die.
Just like he wasn’t supposed to break her heart.
“Fine,” Caramyn said, the word torn from her through the tears burning down her face. She dropped from the tree, boots crunching into the snow, and turned to face Sinevia, who watched her calmly from atop her black mare.
The queen slid down from her horse and extended her hand. “Lead me to the Veil.”
The weight of the choice stung like ice in Caramyn’s lungs. But the image would not leave her—of Asterious plunging that blade through his chest and bleeding out on the snow—and the choice became crystal clear.
She closed her eyes and reached for Sinevia’s hand, picturing the path she’d taken so long ago out of sheer curiosity to the depths of the Woods where the Veil loomed. And in an instant, when her fingers touched Sinevia’s open palm, the world unstitched.
Cold vanished. Sound collapsed. It felt as though her thoughts were being wrenched open, peeled back layer by layer, as Sinevia’s will slid through her memories with ruthless precision.
The path through the Woods blazed behind her eyes.
The twisted roots, the narrowing dark, the heavy, suffocating pull in the air as the Veil drew near.
Space folded inward, crushed, and remade around that single remembered place.
And for a breathless, agonizing instant, she was nowhere at all. Somewhere even the Shadows couldn’t reach, caught between heartbeat and thought—all in the span of a blink.
And then she was there—feet slammed into solid ground again, winter air brushed her skin, and the overbearing weight of the Veil hung before her, presiding over a broken, blood-spattered Asterious—who stood staring down at the sword in his hands.
But he wasn’t aiming it at himself. Instead, he held the length of it across both hands, the flat edge resting in one hand as his eyes stared down at the hilt in the other, as if deep in contemplation.
“Asterious, stop!” Caramyn ran to him, all other thoughts falling away into the bloodied snow beneath her feet. She didn’t know if she’d left Sinevia standing behind her. She didn’t care.
Asterious dropped the sword, the metal hitting the ground with a cold clang, and she ran straight into his empty arms, begging, pleading as her voice nearly caved in.
“Don’t you dare! Don’t you dare!” She screamed, pounding her fists against his chest with each word.
“You thought you could make me hate you, didn’t you?
That’s why you pushed me away…so that I wouldn’t try to stop you…
but you’re a damn idiot if you think I was going to let you do this. ”
“I—I wasn’t.” Asterious stuttered, “I mean, I did consider it…but how…how did you just—” He glanced at the space from where she’d just appeared, and Caramyn glanced back as well, expecting that Sinevia would be standing there. But she was nowhere to be found.