9. Chapter 9
Chapter 9
I sabel flew up the mountain path, her legs burning, her breath coming in heaving gasps. She had to get back to the citadel, back to Karim, before it was too late.
Another flare of white lit up the sky, casting strange shadows beneath the trees. Almost without thinking, she called them to her so that they pooled around her ankles and twined up her legs, scattering the brightness in her wake.
She had once been so sure of the old wards, sure that they would hold, but after what she had seen in the Mediran dungeon and by that riverbed, she wasn’t so sure anymore.
A strange laugh escaped her lips. She had been so afraid of herself, of her magic, for so long. But it had never been something she’d needed to fear. It was a part of her that came as easily as breathing. A part of her she could no longer ignore.
A deafening crack rent the air, like ice breaking apart in the winter, and all at once, the mountain flickered, the cragged peaks melting away to reveal the white stone tower of the citadel. Isabel’s stomach turned, fear washing over her in a single, striking wave. The wards had protected the Rendran citadel for hundreds of years had been broken.
She ground to a halt at the base of the cliff. The perfect balance that had been struck by the old mages all those years ago had been tipped, and the staircase that had been so well hidden spiraled up the stone in full view. Veins of red scattered up the face of the citadel, spreading like molten metal through cracks in porcelain.
Fear whirled through her. She should have seen this coming. She’d known Gustav would stop at nothing to get what he wanted. And he wanted power. Karim’s power. She shouldn’t have been so eager to leave, to flee, to get as far away from Karim and the flurry of emotions he’d stirred in her.
She shouldn’t have been so afraid. And now, she might never be able to show him that she wasn’t a coward.
With a cry of rage, she threw herself up the staircase, taking the worn steps two at a time, praying she wasn’t too late .
She burst out into the courtyard, her chest heaving as she scanned the citadel for any sign of life. A cry tore from her chest when she saw a body lying twisted on the ground. Carlos Luca. She rushed forward and crouched down by the old man. She didn’t bother to check for a pulse. His neck was twisted at an odd angle, and his eyes were wide open, his mouth locked in a silent scream. Isabel’s stomach heaved, and she scrambled back away from him.
Where was Karim? Panic flooded through her, and she tried not to imagine him twisted on the ground like Luca. Tried not to visualize his black eyes staring lifelessly up at her.
A strange boom echoed off the mountain, and the red cracks in the wards pulsed again. The door Luca had shown them through when they’d first arrived was hanging at a strange angle from its hinges, as if it had been kicked or blown off.
Isabel sprinted through the colonnade, then made her way down the curved hallway beneath the watching eyes of the old kings and queens. Shadows rushed up around her, and she shivered at the smooth, cool feel of them against her skin. She hadn’t realized how many she’d drawn as she’d run. They followed her like the train of a fantastical gown of darkness, and she didn’t have time to think about what that might mean .
There was another flash of light, another wave of the acrid scent, followed by the muffled shouts of men’s voices. She flew past the door to Karim’s room and clattered up a curved staircase. She yanked Karim’s knife from her belt, the wards twining up her hands. The shadows around her legs jumped at the influx of power.
She burst into the lavish reception hall Luca had shown them through before. A wide balcony overlooked the courtyard below, where she knew Luca’s body still lay. Her heart gave a sudden thump when she saw Karim standing in front of the stone railing, his hands raised, power crackling along his arms and through the dagger in his right hand. His hair was wild, standing on end from the buildup of power that twisted through the citadel.
A dozen men were scattered around the hall, some with short swords drawn, others with hands raised in the same manner as Karim. Isabel recognized Paarsav’s broad form at the head of the group. Ankar, with his angular face, was beside him.
“This is really your choice, Saad?” Paarsav was saying, his sword raised in front of him.
“My choice ?” Karim shook his head in disbelief. “You’re not giving me any choice, Paarsav.”
Paarsav’s shoulders tightened, but he didn’t back down .
“You all know that man is a monster!” Karim’s voice carried urgently across the space. “He’s using you, using your power to get what he wants.”
“Shut your mouth!” Ankar snarled.
Karim glared at him. “We are better than this. We are Inetians, born of the land of the sun. We come from clans with power, lineages that stretch back generations. We don’t need him to prove ourselves.”
“And what do you propose we do if we defy him, Saad?” Paarsav said, his voice tight. “Last I checked, we were wanted in just about every corner of the world.”
“We make a new place for ourselves!” Karim said vehemently. “Without him. Without his power. We are all better men than this!”
Paarsav hesitated for a moment, an awful mix of desperation and hope and fear flickering in his gaze. Like Karim, he had just wanted a better life—and he’d been trapped by Gustav’s lies.
“I know you didn’t want any of this,” Karim pressed. “I need your help, just as you need mine. Don’t go through with this.”
Paarsav stood like a man frozen, his dagger clenched tightly in his fist. Isabel could sense the tension in him. The indecision. The longing for something more than the lot he’d been thrown in life .
The angular man spat on the floor. “Listen to yourself, Saad. Talking as if you’re better than us. As if you wouldn’t decide to save yourself when it came down to it.”
“I am not better than you,” Karim said. “We all made choices to ally ourselves with him. We all decided the risk was worth it on our own. And I’ve paid for my stupidity many times over. We all have. What I’m saying is that we don’t have to keep making that same decision repeatedly. We have an opportunity to stop this madness, to forge a new path for ourselves.”
“Coward,” Ankar hissed. And with a sudden howl, he threw himself at Karim.
Isabel was running before she had time to realize what she was doing, but the space was vast, and Ankar collided with Karim, knocking him to the ground. She gave a cry of rage and yanked the shadows that huddled in the farthest corners of the hall to herself.
“Don’t move!” Paarsav barked to the other Inetians.
A few of them hesitated, exchanging glances as Karim slashed at Ankar with his dagger. Ankar spun away, then swept Karim’s feet out from under him. Karim went down with a startled yelp, the knife skittering from his hand and over the edge of the balcony.
Fury and terror flared in Isabel’s chest, and she flooded the hall with darkness, shadow billowing in waves. Yells of confusion echoed through the hall, and Isabel was moving, flying under the cover of darkness to the place she knew he was. She didn’t have any plan, anything beyond the knowledge that she had to get to him, that she had to get him out.
Then she was beside him. “Karim,” she breathed. She gripped his forearm, so she knew where he was in the darkness. She could just make out the angular lines of his face only a few inches from hers.
“Isabel?” he said incredulously. “You came back.”
“Why do I always have to save you?” she said roughly, gripping his hand and hauling him to his feet.
His mouth quirked in a way that made her pulse quicken. “Maybe it’s because I’m your damsel in distress.”
Isabel snorted. “Well, I’m going to get you out of here, princess. Even if it means I have to tear this entire place to pieces.”
“That’s the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me.”
She grinned back at him, then let her hand slide down into his, ready to lead him back through the darkness and out toward freedom, away from the citadel with its broken wards, from the Inetians and Ankar, who wanted nothing but death and ruin. For a moment, hope flooded her veins, and she thought they just might have a chance of escape .
A sudden chill swept through the hall, and Isabel’s shadows dropped, skittering back into the corners she’d drawn them from. She whirled, trying to call them back to her, but they were already scattering. Fear stabbed through her gut. What was happening?
A white-haired man with snow-pale skin stood at the top of the staircase at the end of the hall. He was dressed in a heavy gray robe, and a leather belt with a nasty-looking curved sword hung from his waist. His straight hair was pulled sharply into a tail at the nape of his neck. Ice-blue eyes peered out of a face that was all sharp angles, and Isabel suddenly realized that he was probably younger than the whiteness of his hair implied—maybe only fifteen years older than her. A haze of strangeness seemed to drip off him, as if he’d been stretched thin, and there was something now missing that should have been there.
Isabel didn’t even have to question who this was—Gustav.
The Inetians had picked themselves up after the dissipation of Isabel’s shadow. Ankar grinned in elation. Paarsav stood not far from where Isabel had last seen him, tension radiating from every sinew of his body.
“I don’t understand.” Gustav looked slowly around the room. His voice was gravelly, as if something had torn through it long ago. “I expended all that energy to take the wards down, and I find that Saad hasn’t even been apprehended yet.”
The Inetians jumped. Even Paarsav straightened, his eyes trained on the chanter.
Isabel’s blood boiled. What a pompous, narcissistic ass.
“I’m glad to finally see you again, Karim,” Gustav said, his smile cold.
Karim tensed. “It’s always a pleasure, Gustav.”
Isabel reached for her shadows a second time—she could feel them now, still distant, but less out of reach. Her brows knitted together. What kind of magic did this man possess that he was able to keep her shadows from answering her call?
Gustav’s eyes flicked to Isabel, as if he could sense what she was trying to do. A chill moved down her spine. “Who is this?”
“She showed up with Saad a few days ago in the forest, sir,” Ankar said, taking an eager step forward. “Seems to have some sort of magic affinity.”
Gustav’s eyes pierced through her. “Where did you find this one, Karim?”
“I thought it was me you wanted,” Karim hissed, taking a slight step in front of Isabel.
“Oh, I do.” Gustav’s mouth twisted. “You don’t have to worry about that. ”
“Then leave her out of this!” Karim’s fists clenched. “Leave them all out of this.”
“No.” Isabel stepped forward, laying a hand on Karim’s arm. He looked at her in surprise. “I’m not letting you get all noble on me. I told you I would get you out of here, and that’s exactly what I came back to do.”
She turned to Gustav, fury burning through her. “You think you have the right to control the lives of these men, but you do not. They are free to make their own decisions. They don’t need you to do it for them.”
Gustav’s brows rose. “Are they?” He turned then to Paarsav. “Get them already, will you?”
Paarsav hesitated for the second time that day. Gustav’s eyes snapped to him, coldness building in his gaze. “Paarsav. I asked you to get them for me.”
There was a new wildness in Paarsav’s gaze. “No,” he said, and drew his sword.
Isabel lunged for Karim just as Gustav’s face twisted in rage. Her fingers wrapped around Karim’s, his hand warm and solid in her own, and she could already feel the crackle of power rolling through him, jumping from his fingers into her own. Immediately, her shadows rose. Elation rolled through her like a wave, and she sent a wall of darkness toward Gustav, the power raging through her like a storm .
Gustav was knocked back, and Paarsav rolled away, unharmed.
All chaos broke loose as the Inetians drew their weapons. A few scrambled to help Paarsav to his feet, and power crackled through the room again as some of the Inetians began to chant.
Isabel gasped as power built in her again, crackling between her and Karim at an alarming level. The old fear cut through the elation again, the fear that she would lose control and destroy everything around them. The fear that she was a monster after all.
As if he could read her mind, Karim’s fingers tightened on hers. “You are not a monster, Isabel,” he said, his voice low and urgent in her ear. His warmth beside her was strong and sure, and his eyes were alight with fury and rage and purpose. “But you are incredibly powerful. And that’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
That’s nothing to be ashamed of.
“Let’s get this bastard,” she said, her eyes blazing into his. She would not be afraid anymore. His mouth curved.
Power flared through her again in a sudden, streaming cascade, and for the first time, she truly allowed it to build. Her nostrils flared, and a strange, electric laugh bubbled up in her chest. She had never felt so free .
The air shimmered with darkness and crackled with streaks of power as the energy raged through them, thundering across the stone and wind and space, filling the air with a rushing, whirling darkness.
Gustav gave a guttural cry, throwing his hands in the air, words spewing from his mouth like ashes from a sputtering fire. Isabel planted her feet as the wave of power rolled over them in a suffocating storm.
She could hear other voices now too, joining in the fray, feel a bolster of power as the Inetians rallied around them, lending power and strength to their own. Her heart gave a wild beat of elation, and for the first time she allowed herself to hope.
She sent another wall of shadow barreling toward Gustav, who stood with his arms raised, his mouth moving, his shoulders tensing from the strain.
The Inetians were shouting now, their voices muffled, but she thought she heard Paarsav roar to help them, to do whatever they could to stop Gustav. Karim grunted beside her, but he was grinning when she glanced over at him, his eyes wide and blazing and full of life.
Gustav was powerful, but he couldn’t stand against them all.
He seemed to realize that at the same time as Isabel, and he shifted his stance. His words changed suddenly, and the power shifted to something darker and older and far more terrible.
Isabel drew more power, pulling it from Karim, pulling the shadows in the citadel and the earth and the forest around them.
The shimmering white line of a door opened in front of Gustav. He cast a measured look back at the space Isabel occupied, her hands raised, an army of shadows gathered around her, ready to crash over him like a thunderous wave, ready to destroy him.
He stared at her for a moment, a moment in which Isabel hesitated.
You are not a monster, Isabel. It’s your choices that make you monstrous.
Gustav smirked, and his eyes flashed in a way that said, “I knew you were too weak.” And then, he stepped through the door, taking the crackling power with him.
“Take me with you!” Ankar screamed, throwing himself at the space where Gustav had been, where the door still shimmered strangely against the whiteness of the stone.
Isabel opened her mouth to shout, to tell him to stop, to turn back. But before she could, the door collapsed, snapping the edges of the world together in a clash of light and power and sound .
Ankar’s severed body dropped, blood pooling in a garish stain of red, stark against the white of the stone.
The Inetians around the hall stilled, and someone swore.
Power surged again through Isabel, raging and roaring and desperately searching for release. Her limbs vibrated with it, searing with energy until she thought she would burn up. Fear stabbed through her.
“Isabel?” Karim’s voice sounded far away, as if he were shouting at her from a distance.
His arms wrapped around her, and she could hear his voice saying something, words that had no meaning, not here, not now, amid this power and shadow and darkness. She was a thing of flame and night, burning up from within. She had to release this power somehow without burning through whatever and whoever was around her. It was the kind of power that would annihilate all it touched—power that had been meant for Gustav. She had to find an outlet, and it couldn’t be the citadel or any of the Inetians or Karim. Especially not Karim.
An idea built in the back of her mind, something so insane, so impossible, she could hardly let herself hope. She would not become what people had always told her she was. She was more than their words, more than her fear. The shadow did not control her .
You are powerful. And that’s nothing to be ashamed of.
She slipped her arms around Karim’s waist, allowing herself to bury her face in his chest, to lean into the comforting feel of him. She didn’t want to forget this, forget any of it.
His arms tightened around her. “Isabel,” he rasped. “You don’t have to carry this alone.”
“I have to do this, Karim,” she said. Her voice sounded far away, as if she were underwater.
“You don’t!” His voice broke as his arms tightened around her.
“If I don’t let go, the power will flow out through you. I don’t know what it will do.”
“I can take it. We can take it together!”
“I can’t risk killing you, Karim! I can’t!”
Shadows curled up and around her fingers as the vortex churned and spun. She clenched her teeth against the intensity of it.
All at once, she gave a cry and pulled away from Karim. The shadows roared, flaring up into the sky, and with a manic laugh, she stepped into them, so she was moving, floating through the hall and out so that she hung above the courtyard, above the citadel, with the vast splendor of the mountains spread around her .
Now here amid her shadows, she could see it, the place where Gustav’s door had been. The space still shimmered, the earth still groaning as it tried to repair itself. There were still cracks, slivers in the fabric, where shadow might slip through.
It would work. She could send the shadow after him, through the door, where it might find him and engulf him or else dissipate into nothing, but it would be out, away, and no one she loved would get hurt.
With another shout, she thrust her hands downward. The shadow roared, and then the whole vortex was moving, bearing down on the space where the door had been. Isabel gave a sudden, crazed laugh as the shadow slid through. It was working!
The vortex raged as the power burned, and she thought she wouldn’t be able to hold it, that it would flare out and destroy everything around her.
Suddenly, voices sounded from below, power curling into the air, crackling around her in a veil of safety, surety, and strength, and a memory of Karim’s words whispered through her mind: You don’t have to carry this alone.
She gave a sudden, giddy laugh. She wasn’t alone .
And then the vortex of shadow was roaring away, the last of it dwindling out of her, slipping through the cracks in the fabric of the world, until she no longer felt like she would tear apart at the seams. As the shadow drifted away, she dropped closer to the tile until her feet touched the ground. Then, like a light snuffed out, it was gone.
She slumped to the floor, alone in the center of the hall.
She was still here. The power hadn’t burned her up. She was alive.
Hysterical laughter burbled up from her belly, and she lay on her back on the cool stone of the citadel, basking in the sheer insanity of it all.
“Isabel!” A voice sounded from somewhere, but she couldn’t move, couldn’t think, as the exhaustion rolled over her.
“Isabel!” The voice came again, this time closer, and then Karim was there, his hands were sliding along her arms, his fingers touching her cheek, her hair, his dark eyes so close, so real, so raw and worried.
“Karim,” she whispered.
There, in the warm embrace of the hall, Isabel leaned into his arms, at once whole and good and right.
“You’re alive,” he whispered against her hair. “You did it. You didn’t let the shadows consume you. And you’re alive.”
“I am,” she said hazily. Gustav was gone—whether dead or weakened or just gone, she didn’t know. But for now, they were safe .
And then her vision was swimming, and she clung to Karim, to his warmth and solidity, and then everything went dark.