Chapter 54 - Ring of Gold
Riyan was lying on his stomach in the middle of the fortress courtyard, but his blood pulsed as he fought my enchantment to keep him asleep. I closed my eyes and focused as I tried to keep him under.
I was trying to give him mercy. He could not stop my bargain, so I was not going to force him to watch as I became the Hytons’ eternal slave.
Mint and fresh smoke filled my nose. A warm hand laced with mine. “Come on, Sera. I am right beside you.”
Charcoal and tea leaves followed. “As am I.”
I cried as Erik and Endre led me up the steps. The keep’s doors creaked open. The warmth of Bloodstone Fortress filled my nose, likely for the final time.
Daigen’s voice filled my ears. “Let us take it from here, Reavers.”
Us?
Erik and Endre released my arms. Two slender yet sharp hands took mine.
“Everything will be all right,” Fraleigh whispered.
Daigen had taken her from the battlefield. I should have known he would not need sorcery to perform his tricks.
Her magic gently knocked against the door into my mind and I slowly let her in, ready to accept her power before I completed the terms of my bargain.
Warmth flooded my body. Gentle green and gold fire crawled up from my palms and into my heart. Ganora’s blue flame of icy rage danced with Fraleigh’s golden flame of loving heat. All of the flames swirled together around my heart until a rainbow of light burst through my chest.
I took in a breath, feeling every sparkle of magic in the air enter my lungs.
Daigen’s muscled arm looped around my right arm and Fraleigh’s thin arm linked with my left. They led me forward, but each step I took felt heavier and heavier. I squeezed my eyes shut tighter as Riyan fought harder against my magical veil that kept him asleep.
“It doesn’t hurt,” Fraleigh said in my left ear as we walked. “I promise, it doesn’t hurt.”
I counted my pounding heartbeats as I blindly followed Daigen and Fraleigh’s lead. The sound of splintering wood and slamming iron echoed through a door.
“He’s not taking captivity well,” a soldier said.
“Let the immortal go first, then,” Daigen said, “lest the mad Duke crack one of our skulls open.”
I swallowed through my shaking throat. Daigen tucked a strand of hair behind my ear and whispered, “This is when the trust part comes in—this is what all my planning led to. I saw what you had hidden away the first time I entered your mind. All you have to do now is tell Midnight your truth.”
He patted me on the shoulder as keys jingled. What was I supposed to tell Midnight the truth about?
The door creaked open and Daigen gently pushed me forward. My heart pounded in my ears as I stepped into the room.
I instantly hit a wall of saturated rage in the air. My skin shivered.
It was too late for Riyan to act, so I let out a slow breath and lifted my enchantment over him. I opened my eyes, but I could barely see the dark figure with a chest of shining steel and a halo of gold around his brow.
“Come to wound me again?” he said, the bitter sting of heartbreak staining his words.
I gripped my hands and shook my head. “I…I have a gift, Your Excellency.”
The thick silence was deafening. I swallowed and leaned into the strength of my power. “I slayed Ganora and her giants are gone. Her power is mine. Fraleigh’s power is mine.”
Alastar growled with hunger in the back of my mind. I set my jaw and kept my chin up. “Release her from her servitude and take me. You will control the most powerful sorceress the world has ever seen. You can keep your crown. You can finally quiet the Barons…”
Derrick pushed off the wall and I took another breath.
“…and you can have all of me,” I said. “I am eternally yours, Derrick.”
He moved closer. The tiny song of the unbreakable bargain in my blood overcame every instinct of self-preservation that screamed in my muscles.
The memory of Daigen’s voice pulled on my mind. “ Tell Midnight your truth. ”
I held my breath. Beneath the rainbow of flames around my heart, the little ember pulsed four times again. Four times for four words.
And I had the truth at last.
I had slammed brick after brick over that ember over the years, trying to snuff it out so its power could not affect me, yet it never grew cold. With a brush of lips under a waxing moon, the ember grew, destroying my stone defenses, letting me laugh, and cry, and love like I never would have let myself before.
Because of that little ember, I had life again.
I closed my eyes, letting that ember sing with the truth I had denied myself over and over. The truth was too big, too frightening, to say aloud, so I pretended to turn my tongue into a quill and my words into ink.
Just a message to Midnight, like I had done hundreds of times.
With my last breath of freedom, I finally let the truth of those four words out. “I love you, Derrick.”
A heartbeat of suffocating silence passed. I opened my eyes and the darkened figure of Alastar Derrick Pervale Hyton did not move.
Not that I expected him to. Nothing could change my bargain. Loving him could not stop the collar, but it still freed me in a way.
I loved Riyan with every fiber of my soul, but love did not just come in one color. It did not abide by the laws of time, or sense, or reality.
Riyan was my eternity of red, but Derrick was my blue. He was the yarn of a winter shawl, the sparkle of starlit tears, and the ever-changing sky.
I had loved him and yet I had earned his hatred. He never asked to be bound in the strife of the mortal and the deathless. Though his hands were not bloodless, he still did not deserve the cruelty of our circumstances.
If I could not change anything…I at least wanted him to be happy.
“This is how our stars align, Midnight,” I said. “This is how we shine forever. It was always supposed to be us, right?”
My chest was warm and my breath was calm. If Daigen just wanted me to free the truth to finally have peace in my last moments of freedom, then I was grateful I had trusted him one last time.
Derrick trembled though his face stayed hard. He was fighting something, whether it was the pain in his body or the urge to exact revenge against me. His eyes were hollow and dark. Blood lined his lips.
Derrick’s eyes swept to look behind me and his low voice cut through the air like a knife. “Come forward, Fraleigh.”
The hem of Fraleigh’s robes whispered along the floor. Her cerulean aura was gone and her features had softened. She looked exactly like the teenager I had seen in her memories.
The air shifted as she approached, getting heavier and heavier around my shoulders. The bargain in my blood sang.
He had accepted.
I swallowed, the muscles in my neck pulsing without the weight of the collar. The bargain dissipated out of my skin, satisfied.
A life for a life given in love.
Derrick’s hands disappeared under the curtain of Fraleigh’s black hair.
“ Ipse Dixit, ” he murmured. Fraleigh gasped as the collar released. “It means, ‘it is what I say it is…’”
He stood in front of me, the ring of gold open toward me like gilded jaws ready to clamp down on my neck.
“…and I say it is over.”
Snap.
My heart froze. I could not breathe. Derrick held the two broken pieces of the golden collar in his hands for just a moment before throwing them to the floor with a clatter.
Twelve generations of power was now in pieces at my feet.
Derrick’s entire body shook. I was frozen in place as my eyes darted from the broken collar to Fraleigh. Her hands rubbed her bare neck as her eyes watered.
Derrick’s hand shakily unclasped his steel breastplate as I stood speechless. My bargain was satisfied, but how? The collar did not go on. I was supposed to sacrifice my life for Riyan’s—that was the deal.
Derrick’s armor clattered to the floor along with his cape. He lifted his face and his beautiful blue eyes stole the breath from my lungs. A ghost of a smile traced his lips. The door between his eyes opened and three notes from a harp sang softly in my mind.
Midnight was always there for me, he had said. He kept me safe from Alastar.
My Derrick was back.
Fire sparked in my feet as I raced for him. I crashed into his chest, throwing my arms around his shaking body.
White light passed from my skin into his. My magic warmed his muscles until it banished the bruises forming under his skin. My thread of infinity wrapped around each of his fractured ribs and pulled them back together.
His body was healed, but I still soared across the magical tether into his mind and found Midnight himself standing amongst the smoldering ruins of a paper castle. He was covered in blood and his shining eyes flicked down Alastar’s corpse—torn in half down the middle.
His love was pure enough to finally slay Alastar.
“It is over,” Midnight said with a shaking laugh. “It is over.”
“It is over,” I heard against my hair.
I pulled out of Derrick’s mind and looked up at his colorless face. Slowly, Derrick dropped to his knees.
His eyes glistened as he looked up at me. “They need power. I have none anymore. None.” His trembling hands rose to his head. “And since there is no one alive more powerful than you, Serafina Helia…”
He lifted the crown of Lycaster from his brow and presented it to me.
My hands floated forward and took the crown from his hands. The crown of Lycaster was mine. After all this time…it was mine.
I could not believe it. I had the power of my magic, Riyan at my side, and the entire Dukedom at my disposal.
I had everything I ever wanted.
But the crown was cold against my fingertips. No power emanated from it. No promises of glory came from its spiked peaks.
It was just a ring of gold in my hands.
Though in someone else’s hands, the crown could be a stepping stone to greatness. The laurels of a righteous champion. The promise of a breaking dawn.
I cast out my magic until I heard the flutter of flipping pages hiding in the hallway—listening in.
“Brietta,” I called.
The guards moved away from the door. Brietta cautiously stepped past them, wringing her hands in front of her. Her eyes dropped from my bare neck to the crown in my hands.
Her face blanched. “Sera, how are you—?”
“Ready to finish what Freya started?” I lifted the crown a little higher.
Her eyes watered and her hand pressed against her lips. Her head shook once…
…but then she gracefully lowered to her knees.
A smile pulled at my lips as I placed the crown on Brietta’s auburn brow.
Footsteps clicked in the doorway and we both looked up. Annalisa’s hands pressed against the doorframe. Her mouth dropped the moment she saw the crown on Brietta’s head.
Derrick’s voice was low. “Am I still an ass?”
Brietta and I turned around to face him. He still knelt on the floor beside the broken collar and Alastar the Conqueror’s discarded armor. His eyes were heavy as he looked at Brietta.
For the first time, Brietta was speechless. “I-I, you…” She took a deep breath and straightened her spine. “I suppose not.”
Derrick hummed. “I assume you have no regnal name in mind? Unless you did plan to depose me all along?”
Brietta’s cheeks turned pink as she shook her head. I could not help but smile.
Derrick rose and took a step toward Brietta. I took a step back, giving him enough space to hold out his hand. Brietta looked up, held her breath for only a moment, but accepted his help.
He smiled softly as he lifted her off the floor. “Brietta the first, then?”
She nodded and Annalisa and I exchanged glances. Derrick was building the bridge between them all on his own.
He straightened the crown on Brietta’s head. “All hail Brietta.”
“All hail Brietta,” I repeated.
“Only if I have to,” Annalisa said with a smirk.
Brietta’s eyes glittered as she looked over her shoulder at Annalisa.
“Now we just have to figure out what to do about Uncle Ragnar.” Derrick spat out the name like it stung his throat. He picked up the pieces of the steel breastplate off the ground.
I swallowed. “He is dying. Slowly. My mother poisoned him.”
Derrick flashed a wicked smile. “Good. One less thing to worry about.”
A weight pulled in my chest. General Ragnar Hyton would not go down quietly. If he had spent two decades crafting his plan, he had to have an escape route—one final trick to play.
Derrick walked back to Brietta and attached the two halves of armor around her chest.
Brietta’s cheeks went as red as her hair as Derrick snapped the latches on the sides of her ribs. “You may hold the crown of Lycaster in your own right, but many outside these walls will not like it.” He secured the latches on Brietta’s other side.
“But you are the ruling Duchess,” Annalisa said as she leaned against the door frame. “You are a Hyton. Make them accept it.”
He snapped the final latch. Brietta’s breath heaved, her breasts squished so they filled the chest of the armor.
Her eyes flicked up to Derrick’s face and they both held their breath. Annalisa and I shot each other a quick glance, neither of us knowing what was to come from the stalemate between them.
Derrick dropped his gaze and cleared his throat. “You do not have to believe me now, but I will tell you every day for seventy years if I have to…” He finally looked up at her. “I never would have just let you die.”
Brietta smiled. Through the power I inherited from Fraleigh, I sensed the golden ribbon twisting around Brietta’s chest. The blood bond she shared with Derrick did not burn or ache, but instead shined—only a little, but enough to see that she had grabbed on to her end of the bond again.
Soft sobs trickled into the room from the hallway. I stepped around Brietta and looked past Annalisa through the door. Daigen clutched Fraleigh, his cheek mashed against hers, as she softly cried with a wide smile.
Daigen’s thumb stroked her neck over and over. “I did it. I finally killed him.”
After nearly five centuries, the Conqueror was gone.
I turned my head toward the sound of heavy panting. Endre sprinted down the hall and his eyes flared as soon as he saw Daigen. Fraleigh screamed as Endre grabbed Daigen by the shirt and slammed him into the wall.
“The hell did you do to my baby sister?” Endre growled. “You said you were helping her! How the fuck did you deceive me—?”
“Endre, no!” I pushed against his arms until he looked over at me. I lifted my chin to show him my bare neck. “Derrick snapped the collar and gave up his crown. I am fine!”
“I never deceived you, asshole,” Daigen choked. “You know I couldn’t.”
A mixture of relief and panic flashed across Endre’s face all at once. He released Daigen from the wall and raked his hand through his messy hair as he tried to find his breath. “He does not know…”
Ice spiked through my veins, knowing exactly who he was referring to. “What is happening with Riyan?”
Endre’s eyes were wide. “He claimed the crown. He says he is the Duke of Lycaster.”
My heart raced. I had told him I would be the slave to the Duke. The magic of the collar was bound to the Duke, not Derrick.
“He cannot do that!” Annalisa scoffed. “Just because he has Hyton blood does not mean he can—”
“He challenged his father over his claim, a trial by combat,” Endre said with a knitted brow. “He opened the challenge to anyone in the Dukedom—whoever makes him fall has the crown.”
Annalisa’s eyebrows raised. “Uncle Ragnar still stands?”
Endre’s face blanched as he looked at me. “He told me it was the only way he could free you.”
My throat seized. I lifted on my toes and sprinted past Endre before he could stop me. Annalisa screamed at Derrick to follow her. Brietta shouted down the hall. I drowned them all out as blood pulsed through my body.
I never sacrificed my life to let Death balance the scale, so Riyan was not deathless like I had assured him he would be.
Still, he issued his own Alastar trial, a fight to the death to win the crown…
…and he did not know he was mortal.
I paused at the open door of the keep, wrapping my fingers around the frame as I froze.
The Bloodstone Fortress gate was wide open. Riyan stood alone in front of the gate, an axe in his hand.
General Hyton stood in front of him with a smile on his face.
Ready to make his final move.