Chapter Fifty-One #3
But she urges on, clamoring to get past me. We round a corner, the crackling hum growing more insistent.
But in front of heavy oak doors banded with iron, is Teddy, his face pressed against the wood, straining to listen. Of course he got here first.
“Why aren’t you out there?” Elyssara snaps, poking an accusatory finger into his chest, and pointing to the balcony that extends from the castle behind the oak door.
But he doesn’t react.
He simply raises a hand, gesturing her to stop. “The old bat is teaching Seren how to open a Gateway,” he growls. “Listen.”
Teddy’s hand rests on the latch, his bronze eyes hard.
“Watch,” he breathes, and draws it open just enough for us to see.
The balcony blazes to life; a circle marked on the floor in blood and salt, candles guttering around its edges.
At the center, Mavyrn moves with the surety of a woman who bends the world to her will.
Beside her, Seren mirrors the motions, sweat beading at her brow, hands trembling, blood dripping from her fingertips.
Before them, the air itself quivers. A rift. A half-formed Gateway. It flickers between nothingness and a world beyond, golden light cleaving through the night sky.
“Breathe slower,” Mavyrn instructs, voice soft but edged. “The world hums with threads, Seren. Witches listen.”
“I can’t— I can’t hear anything,” Seren panics, her forehead slick with sweat, and her face twisted into desperate fear.
“Draw more threads to your being. Draw it from anywhere—magic is not reserved for the chosen. It’s given to them.
But us? We take it. From the oceans, the mountains, the trees, the plants, the Stars themselves.
It’s all alive. All magic. Use it. Channel it towards the Gateway.
That is what you are, Seren. It’s who you are—a conduit.
A binder. A bridge—between worlds, people, places, things. ”
“I don’t know how!” she cries, blood-stained hands going slack at her sides, disheartened.
Teddy looks as if he’s about to burst through the doors and plunge an axe through the old woman, but I grip his arm. “Wait,” I order gently, and reluctantly, he nods.
Because if Seren can open Gateways, it changes everything.
Mavyrn’s eyes bore into Seren, possessed and unmistakable. “You do, child. It’s who you are. The magic calls to you—that’s why you hear it. That’s why it allows you to touch it. It knows you, and you, it.”
She’s known about Seren this entire fucking time.
My jaw clenches, a furious rage taking form inside my chest. Fucking Mavyrn and her games—forever pulling strings of her own choosing. A puppet master of meddling. My father trusted her. He pulled her close inside his innermost circle of confidantes, but why? I have no fucking idea.
Seren squeezes her eyes together, as if her desperation can force the threads to form a Gateway.
From across the Nymerian panorama, flecks of light—of magic—float delicately across the night sky, summoned by Seren’s call.
From the trees that stretch across the mountainside, the flowers that bloom through the gardens, the river that weaves through the Elarion city, the light dances and whirls, towards the half-formed Gateway. Towards Seren.
“That’s it, child. Call on your allies. They don’t always take the shape of people, but the elements,” Mavyrn croons, spurring Seren on with her encouragement.
But Seren doesn’t acknowledge her. Her eyes relax slightly, as if entranced by the spell she’s binding with her will.
Teddy nudges me softly. “She’s searching for magic,” he whispers. “She’ll feel us in a heartbeat. What do you want us to do?”
If I knew what Mavyrn’s motives were, I’d have a clearer fucking answer. “Wait. See what happens,” I order, though I’m not exactly sure what we’re waiting for.
Then, Seren’s Gateway presses outward, the threads forging a ring.
“I’m doing it!” she exclaims, her eyes snapping open at the Gateway of Threads before her.
“Where is the Gateway leading to, witchling?” Mavyrn bites, encouragement gone and replaced by the hard-edged instruction of a mentor.
“I— I don’t know,” Seren admits, face falling in defeat.
“More threads! Pull on more!” Mavyrn commands.
Seren’s eyes press together with force, and that’s when it happens—
The Gateway collapses into nothingness, the spell interrupted, broken by—
“Teddy!” Seren gasps, and he kicks the door open with the toe of his boot.
“You stupid fool!” Mavyrn admonishes with the brusque tone of a perturbed grandmother. “She was getting it!”
But Teddy is in no mood. He stalks across the balcony, eyeing Mavyrn with an expression that borders on murderous.
The Arcanist retreats a step, but her enraged face doesn’t falter.
Teddy’s broad frame blots out the light, casting her in shadow.
He leans over her, his burnished-gold eyes fixing on her, “I don’t fucking trust you, and you do not have the authority to take Seren anywhere without my permission. ” His voice is a low growl.
Right now he’s both the General of War and Seren’s protector, but I see something the others don’t. I see the broken man who lost everything, and refuses to do so again—not after Taali.
Mavyrn moves to speak, but Seren’s bloodied hands wrap around his forearms. “I asked her to help me,” she pleads and soothes desperately. “I asked her to teach me, Teddy. I need to know who I am—what I can do!” Her voice breaks on the last word, her brow still slick with sweat.
Mavyrn is helping Seren—and it doesn’t make any fucking sense.
But Teddy’s eyes are already narrowed to slits, his hands flexing with the ache to brandish his axe.
He always does it. I’d know the hunger for blood anywhere.
“You’re already enough, Seri. You don’t need this crazy old bat filling your head with shit that furthers her own fucking agendas,” he snarls, though there’s a hesitant softness to his tone I only ever hear him use with her. And Taali.
“She hasn’t said or done anything other than what I asked her to show me,” Seren soothes, her hands gliding up his arms, her chin tilted all the way back to hold his gaze.
“That’s what she wants you to think, Seri,” he breathes, his tone shifting from feral rage to exasperation.
But she ignores it. Her face lights up with a buoyant smile that spreads across her face. “Did you see it, though? I made a Gateway!” she squeals gleefully, her unbound golden curls hanging in an unruly mass across her face.
He pinches the bridge of his nose, but a small smirk breaks the hard line of his mouth. “Yes, Seri. I saw. Very impressive, witchling,” he teases playfully, flicking her nose with his finger and pressing a chaste kiss to her forehead.
But my eyes fall on Mavyrn. As she moves for the door. I reach for her arm, firmly gripping her elbow before she slips away. Leaning in close, I drop my voice low and cold—my words reserved only for her. “Stop playing fucking games—you won’t like how it ends,” I growl.
But before she can reply—
“Please excuse the hour, Your Majesties,” a Shade in gray robes peeks through the heavy oak door.
“The Archivist bids you attend him at first light before the dawn meal. He has retrieved a Memory Orb from the Vault that he’s waited for many years to share with you, Your Highness,” he bows low in Elyssara’s direction.
“And the Codex, of course, requires your attention, too.”
He says the words with a tightness that unsettles me, his darting eyes confirming my suspicions.
“And one more piece of information Queen Ilyra wanted delivered immediately,” the Shade adds, his voice tight.
“Out with it,” I urge.
The Shade purses his lips together, nodding curtly. “Our messenger network confirms Caeloria are but two days away from breaching the Zerynthian shores, Your Highness. Queen Maireth has sent many units from her army,” the Shade declares solemnly, his words a death sentence for Zerynthia.
Stars fucking save us.
“And the Dravari Starborn army is two days from Kryntar. There’s been no sign of your rebellion,” he admits, hanging his head. “They plan to take The Wastes and Zerynthia at the same time, Your Highness. A massacre.”
Teddy’s face is a canvas of devastated fury, of fractured hope.
The air steals from my lungs.
My thoughts swim inside my mind.
Desperate, clawing.
Like I’m drowning.
But Elyssara’s hand slips into mine, resolute, unwavering.
“They will try,” she seethes, baring her teeth in vicious proclamation.
“But they will not succeed! They fight for dominion, for oppression. We fight for our people. We fight for hope. For love. For the future of the children of our kingdoms!” her breaths come in ragged pants, her chest rising and falling in frantic gasps.
“I am done feeling broken. I will not let the past write me smaller than I am.”
She lifts her chin, eyes lit like steel under a full moon. “At dawn we take Elandor’s truth and make it a weapon. Let Maireth come. Let Thalmyr march. I am not their wound anymore—” her fingers lace tighter with mine, the tether thrumming, “—I am the blade that will unmake them all.”
Her eyes don’t move from mine, like she’s etching her vow into my skin like holy scripture.
And down the tether, where her promise writes itself into my soul, I breathe my own promise. You are my fucking Queen, and you command the Sky.
She holds my gaze, for one heartbeat, two. Then—
“I need the fifth relic.”