Chapter Fifty Three
Secret Of The Black Throne
???
The Black Castle, Dracyg Dominion.
Gedeon.
The High Wielders did not stop Kyra this time as she bolted for Rosary, catching her before she could hit the hard ground.
As if it would make a difference. The blade had pierced through to the other side. Her body had become a broken dam. Blood was all Gedeon could smell now as it seeped fast and unstoppable, camouflaged against the black marbled floor.
He watched as it coated Kyra’s bound hands. Watched those hands fumble against the fatal wound like she might scoop the blood back into Rosary’s body, the woman’s name repeating and repeating on her lips. As if she might somehow speak her spirit back into existence.
But the blade had gone precisely where it had been willed. No heart could continue to beat once it had been sliced through the middle.
Rosary’s had stopped just seconds after Kyra caught her. Gedeon heard its last beat as a mouth choking on red released its last breath, and vacant, amber eyes stared up at nothing. Forever unseeing.
‘Take away the body,’ was his mother’s harsh words as she swiped a cloth over the length of the bloodied sword. She commanded Hossean, ‘Continue the search for the boy. I want him found. He will be our next ultimatum.’
They came for Kyra first, attempting to pull her away from the sister she had lost.
She flung herself over Rosary and screamed.
Full of the deepest sorrow, that scream launched both Wielders from her as soon as it left her mouth. One of them hit a pillar, body broken. The other smashed against the wall behind the throne, her head splitting on impact before she crumpled to the ground.
Kyra cried out as the bolts in her shackles shot into her wrists. Streaks of blood dribbled down her arms.
Gedeon surged for her, but High Wielders yanked him back, their magic seeping through his skin, immobilising him.
‘Hold her!’ Empress Azar screeched.
Kyra was on her knees, body hunched over, cradling her broken, bloody wrists. A circle of High Wielders and sentries formed around her, weapons raised as though she were a wild animal. Gedeon watched her body contract as the same disarming magic that held him tried to take hold of her too.
She writhed, fighting it.
Then she became utterly still. Her spiralling hair hung heavy from her bowed head.
‘It did not have to be this way, Kyraena,’ the Empress said softly, descending the steps toward her.
‘Dear Rosary did not have to die. I want you to remember that the next time I present you with a similar choice.’ Without taking her eyes from Kyra, she commanded Hossean over her shoulder, ‘Fortify their chains and lock them away in the same cell the girl was kept in. Let the woman’s lingering scent be a reminder of-’
Her voice trailed away as Kyra lifted her head. A stark, bone white gleamed where her pupils and iris’ should have been.
Sharply, the Empress said to the High Wielders, ‘Why are you not holding her?’
‘We’re… we’re trying,’ one of them bleated.
Kyra’s pearly gaze remained fixed on the Empress. She stood, and blood dripped to the floor from her open wrists. There was nothing of the female Gedeon had come to know in that blank face.
In a voice void of emotion, Kyra said, ‘Die.’
The Throne Room jolted.
Dust rained down from newly formed cracks in the ceiling. Another tremor, and Xusyn’s leering face was sliced through the centre.
The shackles at Kyra’s wrists began to glow. From red, to orange, to bright white, until they were deduced to scalding liquid at her feet. The sheer heat of it, even at a distance, licked over Gedeon’s skin.
Kyra inhaled deeply, then sighed the breath out.
‘Hold her! Hold her!’ The Empress screamed.
A band of High Wielders attempted to detain Kyra again, but as they drew close, a ring of refined sunlight sang from her heart, obliterating them where they stood. More came, whipping iron chains around her body. The moment they made contact with her shining skin, they melted.
‘Empress! We must get you to safety!’ Hossean cried. It was a shock to Gedeon that the arrogant fool had the good sense to flee.
Gedeon beheld his mother’s face, torn between horror and awe at the earthling whose power had become her.
Another tremor threw the High Wielders who held him off balance, and the magic holding him broke.
Splinters streaked up the pillars upholding the Old Gods. The thousand year old marble flooring began to split beneath their feet. Soon, the moat of lava surrounding the castle would surge through the cracks. Kyra was minutes away from destroying the entire castle. Along with everyone in it.
As the High Wielders still fumbled to regain their balance, Gedeon took his chance.
He ran to her, throwing his arms up to his face as she let another lethal band of sunlight attempt to destroy him. His darkness soared to meet it, and before his own shackles could penetrate his wrists as hers had, her light hit them. They melted to the ground.
At that moment, Kyra did not know him. Gedeon doubted if she even knew herself.
Screams pierced the air as the trembling ground rose and fell, as fissures of earth claimed mortals to the depths of its fiery belly. None could fight it. None could best the destruction that Kyra rained down upon them.
Everyone was fleeing her wrath. Desperately dodging the stony deluge that had already claimed the lives of helpless sentries.
The Empress had been absconded away. Swiftly carried somewhere Kyra’s storm could not harm her.
Salty tears leaked from his mate’s snowy, unblinking eyes. Even in this state, her grief remained, staining dirty rivers down her face.
He had to pacify her, and quickly, before she tore herself asunder.
???
No one.
No name belonged to the mortalised fury she had become. Nothing reigned but an insatiable need for death. Nothing rained but stone. Nothing shone brighter than the desire for destruction.
She watched through eyes that did not care as pillars cracked and fell, crushing frantic, scrappling figures that bore no faces. Showers of debris dented ancient marble. Red hot lava spat and scorned those within its reach.
All by her hand. Yet she felt no remorse.
She did not wobble as those around her did, for she was the ground’s quaking centre. Its source.
The molten core of the earth.
Something was calling to her. A faraway voice from a different time. Desperate for her to see. Yearning for someone to bask in its knowledge, in the truth of a memory shielded from present eyes.
The Black Throne grasped her attention.
???
Gedeon.
A figure bathed in silver silk caught Gedeon’s eye.
Duchess Ysabell had somehow shaken the sentries that had tried to remove her from the hall. Either that or they had perished.
She stood alone. A dark, slender hand lay against an unfallen pillar steadying her in the chaos.
The other cradled her stomach, smoothing the flowing material around it to reveal an unmistakable swell.
She lifted that hand and pointed to her eyes, then her ears, then pressed a finger to her mouth.
And then she was gone, silk trailing behind her.
There was no time for Gedeon to discern her meaning, for Kyra was ascending the steps to the Black Throne. Somehow, though everything else was disintegrating around them, it remained unscathed. Mesmerising the power-blind female closer.
None but Zarynth’s chosen ruler could sit upon its blackened wood, such was the will of the magic that had been placed upon it aeons ago. Would the flames that sprung at the Empress’ touch flay his mate if she dared to try?
Gedeon would not wait to find out.
He sprung over the fractured ground, bending the lava that threatened at his feet to submit to him, until he stood at the bottom step. ‘Kyra,’ he called, steadily moving toward her, one step at a time. ‘This power is not you. Wake from its hold. Come back to me.’
The words had no effect. She did not turn to sit, but rather reached a hand out. The pad of her fingertips pressed against the archaic wood before he could stop them.
???
Kyra.
Through a thick haze, a name was being called. Over and over again.
That deep, familiar voice almost broke her away. But another, more urgent, pulled her away from its safety. Tired and old and sodden with pain, that other voice said, See, earth child. See what others never will. See the truth.
That name bore no resemblance, but she asked, What truth?
See, and you will know. Take this burden of truth from me once and for all.
Letting it steal her away, she floated into a memory of unfamiliar faces. All unfamiliar but one with hair touched by gold and eyes of venomous blue. She watched the violent scene unfurl, caught in a forgotten history.
‘Tis a memory designed to be buried, the old voice told her. The throne was an entity. Loyal to its very core, but not to who sat upon it.
But to which it was made.
Earth.
You have seen, Kyraena Daeiros. And now I am free.
She hurtled away from the past and her eyes flew open in time to see the Black Throne crumble to ash.
Its final will forever imprinted in her mind.
Someone called that name again, and even with the ringing in her ears, she knew the voice was closer. Much closer.
Turning away from the dusty carcass of the throne that once was, she faced another. Black haired and rippling with shadows that soothed her soul. He said that name again. She watched it tentatively form on his lips like a question.
Kyra? Kyra.
That was her name.
Wasn’t it?
Kyra. Yes. That was her name.
Behind him, chaos had taken hold. A room destroyed. A castle on the verge of collapsing. On the ceiling, a watchful golden eye bore down at her. Its face had been serrated down the middle.
Bodies littered the lava spilt ground every which way she looked. In the sea of them, there was one that stole the breath from her lungs. Long, matted brown hair congealed with blood painted the marble floor red. A body she knew. A body that made all the others fade. That made her eyes burn.
A somebody who would never wake.
Her knees gave way. The arms of darkness caught her. She was so tired. And so empty. So incredibly empty.