Chapter 9 #2
The rebels threw small clay spheres across the hall.
They shattered on stone.
Gray smoke burst outward.
Not firebane.
Something hotter.
The floor shook as the smoke sank into cracks between the stones. Far below, the vault answered with a roar that seemed too large for the keep to hold.
Renaud shouted, “Seal the lower doors!”
“Too late,” Baldric said.
The center of the hall split.
Not wide. Not yet.
A thin red line opened across the black floor, running from the dais toward Isolde’s feet.
Heat rose.
A child servant cried out near the rear column as sparks caught the hem of her apron. Isolde moved before thought could catch her. She ran across the hall, dropped to her knees, and smothered the sparks with Ma?lle’s shawl.
The girl sobbed. “Miss—”
“Go.”
“I can’t.”
Isolde touched the child’s burned sleeve.
Ash-white light moved from her palm.
The fabric cooled. The girl’s reddened skin eased.
Lucian saw.
So did the council.
So did Morgaine.
The elder whispered, “Ash-Blessed.”
The words were not accusation now.
They were fear.
The floor split wider.
Flame spilled through.
A dragon noble shifted halfway in panic, scales breaking across his arms, fire rising uncontrolled in his throat. Isolde felt it—his fear feeding the vault, the vault pulling at his fire.
She stood.
“Stop fighting near the cracks!” she shouted.
No one listened.
Baldric’s rebels surged forward. Guards met them. Steel rang. Fire leapt. Smoke rolled.
Lucian turned into the chaos, his own fire held tight, refusing the vault’s pull. Thierry fought beside him, precise and grim. Perrin dragged the young servant toward the rear, then ducked as a thrown dagger struck the wall above his head.
Morgaine moved along the side of the hall toward the council dais.
Not away from danger.
Toward power.
Isolde saw the folded black pages in her hand.
The stolen book.
“Morgaine!”
Morgaine looked back.
For one second, her perfect face twisted with something raw.
“If I cannot stand beside him,” she said, “I will stand above all of you.”
She threw the pages into the crack.
The vault fire swallowed them.
The hall screamed.
A column of red-gold flame shot up from the floor, and within it, Isolde saw shapes: women with ash-marked hands, dragons bound in circles of iron, Yvaine behind glass, Ma?lle reaching through smoke.
Baldric seized Isolde from behind.
His arm locked across her shoulders.
Lucian turned.
“Let her go.”
Baldric dragged Isolde backward toward the widening crack. “She is the only one it will obey.”
Isolde drove her elbow into him. He grunted but did not release her.
The floor beneath them opened.
The crack was not a crack anymore.
It was a mouth.
Heat poured up from the vault passage below, carrying sparks, ash, and a pull so strong Isolde’s knees nearly buckled. Baldric held her hard against him, his breath rough near her ear.
“Open it fully,” he said. “Take their fire. End this.”
“You still think revenge is freedom.”
“I think freedom costs blood.”
“Always someone else’s?”
He spun her to face him.
For a moment, the fight blurred behind them. His face was close enough for her to see the grief beneath the fury. It did not soften him. It made him more terrible.
“My sister died begging dragon guards for grain,” he said. “They laughed.”
“I am sorry.”
His mouth twisted. “Do not give me pity from inside a lord’s shadow.”
Lucian fought toward them, but rebels and council guards closed between him and the crack. His fire flashed once, then pulled inward as the vault tugged at it. He staggered but stayed on his feet.
Isolde felt the pain through the bond.
Not like a wound.
Like a hand closing around her own heart.
She turned toward him. “Lucian!”
He looked up.
Their eyes met across the burning hall.
Morgaine reached the dais and grabbed the council elder’s chain of office, yanking him back as flame crawled along the floor. “Name me regent,” she hissed. “Name me before he loses control.”
The elder shoved her away.
Séverine caught her daughter’s arm. “Enough.”
Morgaine struck her mother across the face.
The room saw it.
The mask was gone.
Thierry reached the dais a heartbeat later and drove Morgaine back with the flat of his blade. “That was educational.”
Perrin appeared behind Baldric with a broken spear.
He raised it.
Isolde saw him and shook her head.
Too late.
Baldric turned and struck him down with one hard blow of his forearm. Perrin hit the floor and rolled, groaning but alive.
Something in Isolde broke open.
The mark on her back blazed through her dress.
Ash-white light spread from her feet across the floor. It struck the flames and bent them away from the servants trapped near the columns. It wrapped around the young maid, Mrs. Corvin, Perrin, Thierry, even Renaud.
The vault fire paused.
Listening.
Baldric stared. “Yes,” he whispered. “That. Use that.”
“No.”
“You can end them.”
“I can save them.”
He snarled and dragged her toward the broken floor.
Lucian broke through at last.
Baldric pulled a small blade and pressed it against his own palm, slicing just enough to wake the ash mark burned into his skin. Then he slammed his bleeding hand against the glowing edge of the crack.
The floor opened beneath them.
Lucian lunged.
His fingers caught Isolde’s wrist.
For one breath, he held her.
Baldric’s arm locked around her waist.
The vault pulled harder.
Isolde looked at Lucian’s hand around hers, at the gold mark burning over his heart, at the terror he no longer tried to hide.
“Do not let them turn me into a weapon,” she said.
His grip tightened. “Never.”
The stone split.
Lucian lost hold.
Isolde and Baldric fell through the burning opening.
The vault door below rose like a black wall.
Lucian hit the edge of the broken floor, reaching down into heat and ash.
“Isolde!”
She struck a hard stone below, rolled, and gasped for air. Baldric landed beside her and dragged himself up, one hand already reaching for the basin.
Above them, the vault door slammed shut.
Lucian’s voice vanished.
The fire around the basin rose.
And in its center, wearing Yvaine Fenwick’s face, something opened its eyes.