Chapter Twelve #3
Fernila startled badly, and the color drained from her face. “It’s Var’s magic. It can’t… It can’t be Torex’s. Something’s wrong.”
There was something about her tone of voice that set Ada on edge. She met Fernila’s gaze squarely.
“Why can’t it be Tor’s magic?” she asked flatly.
Fernila’s lips quivered. “I think you should talk to Var.”
Ada would like very much to talk to her brother right now, but he’d just manifested shields around them from somewhere else in the castle, and no one did that lightly.
(Most people wouldn’t even know where to start.
Ada had tried it a handful of times when she was younger and given up when it had proved more difficult than she imagined.)
“Fernila.” Ada spoke very calmly, but her tone left no room for argument. “What’s going on?”
Sucking in a noisy breath, Fernila finally blurted out, “Torex came back the day before the attack on the castle. And everything—everything!—went wrong.”
Ada had always thought that Tor and Fernila could get along fine if they’d just make the effort, but they never seemed willing to try.
She assumed at first that this would be the usual insults—but she listened in growing amazement and horror as Fernila explained about everything that had gone wrong in Tond, the borrowed magic, the letter from King Forex, and the accusation of treason. What had Var been thinking?
Only then that thought was knocked right out of her brain as Fernila went on to explain through her tears about the attack.
“Mercenaries broke into the castle. They set a huge fire, so Var went to control it. We didn’t know that there were other mercenaries going after the baby.”
She clutched Cala to her instinctively, as though there were people here right now who were going to try to wrestle the baby away from her, and Cala let out a squawk of protest.
Fernila gulped and then visibly loosened her hold and managed to continue. “They attacked the nursery, and it was just Pama inside with the baby while the guards tried to fight them off. Only then Prince Torex came in through the window.”
Ada couldn’t help but laugh, because of course he had.
Fernila sniffed again. “He sent Pama and the baby back out the window after he shielded the baby so that she would be safe.”
Ada frowned. “But I thought he only had his base magic?”
The other woman nodded, an unsteady wobble of motion.
“And it was already going dark pink before he lowered them out of the room. He insisted on staying behind and guarding the cradle so that the mercenaries wouldn’t realize that they were in the wrong place.”
A shiver ran through Ada.
“What happened?” she whispered.
“The ceiling collapsed,” Fernila admitted bleakly. “Pama said the shield went blood red and then it disappeared.”
Ada sucked in a gasping breath, reeling. She’d known whatever had happened wouldn’t be good, but she hadn’t expected, couldn’t imagine—
How could Tor be dead?
Fernila licked her lips. Ada couldn’t seem to find any words at all.
“Before Pama arrived, Yomil was telling us how he’d seen the Prince in the hallway with the mercenaries, going after the baby.”
Ada blinked, needing a minute to process this, and then outrage scorched through her veins. “Yomil was setting Tor up?”
Fernila nodded. “Var didn’t know what to do. So we came here, just the three of us, where we knew we’d be safe, and where we didn’t have to question if we could trust anyone.”
Only someone had tried to kill Ada, and Var was shielding them from afar. Someone had killed Tor… and tried to kill Cala… and tried to kill Ada… and Var had put a shield up around the remaining members of his family.
“Goddess have mercy,” Ada breathed.
She stared in horror at the other woman, not sure how to voice the conclusion that she’d just drawn.
“What is it?” Fernila demanded. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
Maybe Ada was wrong. Maybe the plan was simply to wipe all of them out. Maybe someone wanted to start over and didn’t think there should be a High Sovereign at all.
But… they were in Fila.
Ada blew out a breath and then admitted, “I can only think of one reason why someone would want to kill Cala and Tor and me.”
Either Fernila was the best actor in the world, or she had nothing to do with this, because she stared at Ada for a long, uncomprehending moment before she went a bright, blotchy red.
“I would never harm any of you! How could you think that?”
The problem was, Ada didn’t really think that, and that must have shown on her face, because the color slowly washed out of Fernila’s.
“But… but that would mean….”
She couldn’t complete the sentence, but she didn’t have to.
“That would mean that the last to die will be you, dearest.”
Ada hadn’t visited Fila often, but she’d still seen King Nostex on a number of social occasions. She certainly wouldn’t say she knew him well, but it was still eerie how different he was now.
Gone was the joviality and good humor that Ada had always associated with him. His expression now was hard and utterly devoid of warmth.
Instead, his eyes glittered with satisfaction, which made it even worse.
Ada swallowed thickly.
“Very good, Princess,” Nostex said. His green eyes were like chips of ice. How had he masked it so completely before? Had they all just been too foolish to see the truth? “I think you’re the first one to have worked it out.”
“Father!” Fernila gasped out. She sounded bewildered and horrified. “I… I don’t understand. How could you?”
The hate-filled glare Nostex shot at his daughter made her rear back, clutching at Cala, even within Var’s shield.
“If it weren’t for you, I would have won the war!”
Fernila looked stunned—and as confused as Ada was.
“I don’t understand.” Fernila’s voice trembled. “I wasn’t even born.”
Face a rictus of anger, Nostex corrected, “Your mother chose you over me! I only needed a little more magic! And she chose you!”
“I… I don’t understand.” Fernila’s voice was high and reedy. “Mother died giving birth to me.”
“Your mother killed herself!” Nostex roared.
Fernila jerked back. “What? No.”
Nostex’s face was a snarl. “I only needed a little more magic! I could have defeated Ralexa!”
Ada watched as Fernila went white as snow until even her lips were pale and bloodless. Almost voicelessly, she said, “You were pulling too much from the Fealty. That’s how my brother died, isn’t it?”
“I just needed a little more magic!” Nostex repeated, as if that explained everything.
Almost tonelessly, Fernila said, “Mother stopped you.”
Ada stared in horrified fascination. Nostex’s wife had deliberately broken their bond to stop Nostex from pulling any more magic?
To ensure that her baby survived? Ada could barely believe such drastic tactics had been necessary, except that faced with this man, it was all too clear.
She swallowed against the lump in her throat, touched by the woman’s courage and sacrifice.
Nostex still looked enraged, but there was cold, hard triumph there now, too.
“No one can stop me now.”
Ada swallowed thickly. Because he’d been planning this for years, hadn’t he? He really did intend to kill his own granddaughter and daughter, all in the right order, in the hopes that the Fealty would fall to him.
Twenty-five years of peace, and apparently, nothing had changed.
“Where’s my brother?” she demanded.
“Torex is dead.” His supreme satisfaction made her want to hit him—or run him through with a sword. For Tor, for Nostex’s wife, for Fernila. For all of them.
He actually laughed when she manifested her avatar. Before her magic could attack him, his own avatar appeared, its sword catching that of Ada’s avatar and pushing it back.
Ada gritted her teeth as they began to fight, trying to ignore the flare of pain that danced through her body.
It was immediately apparent that she was outclassed.
She was rusty. The last time she’d manifested her avatar to fight rather than amuse Hena and Par was years ago.
And she was Extraordinary, not a ruler who possessed the Fealty of an entire realm the way Nostex did.
He didn’t even have the grace to look hard-pressed, his avatar smashing into hers as he said, sounding mildly annoyed, “Yomil proved not to be as useful as I’d hoped, but he at least managed to get that right.”
Tor had saved Cala, Ada supposed, and they knew the truth that he wasn’t involved—as if anyone would have thought he’d killed his own niece!
Glaring at Nostex, she demanded, “Where’s Var?”
“He’s been… detained.” Nostex still sounded smug, and Ada wanted to knock the expression off his face. “Once his shields give out, he’ll drown.” He smiled, a brutal, frightening thing. “So I have a few things to take care of first.”
And then he proved that he’d just been playing with her before, the blows from his avatar coming swift and brutal, reverberating in her core.
As she pushed more magic into the avatar, the pain from her bond flared brighter.
Eventually, she simply couldn’t maintain the magic, and her avatar dissipated into nothing, a little magic returning to her, too much of it destroyed.
It wasn’t until Nostex started in on the shield protecting her that Ada fully recognized the terrible situation they were in.
He was using them to further drain Var. She couldn’t feel the impact of the blows, not the way she would if the shield were hers, but she’d just experienced the force that he was capable of.
Her brother should have the most magic out of anyone, since he had the Fealty of the entirety of the United Realms, but Ada didn’t know exactly how that was quantified.
And she knew deep in her bones that while Var loved them all and desperately wanted to protect them, he wouldn’t want to drain other people to do it, not like Nostex.
Besides, Fernila’s father was right here, and maintaining magic from a distance was much harder, something that most Extraordinary didn’t even attempt.
Whose magic would last longer?