Chapter Forty-Four #2
What the witches really want. Riches. Leverage. Survival. Morality is not even a consideration.
Vren grunts his distaste. “And they call us free-loaders,” he mutters under his breath.
“Quiet!” Elyssara snaps, her boots still thudding through the cavern like a war drum.
“It is my understanding, High Witch, that the witches have not been welcome across the continents in decades. You would really defend your right to remain isolated and cast out?” she presses, trying to force a crack in Lara’s mask.
Lara’s face is unreadable, and her amethyst eyes do not falter. “No. I would defend my right to stay out of a war that offers The Dreaded nothing in return. Would you send your own people into a war that wasn’t yours?” she counters.
Logically, Lara is right. It’s not her war.
But who’s war is it really? Who will be brave enough to take it on? If not them, then who?
Elyssara snaps, diplomacy be damned.
“I was born into a war that wasn’t mine,” she hisses, baring her teeth.
“None of us chose the worlds we were born into,” Elyssara growls.
“We inherited their hatred. Their violence. Their fear. And every generation before us called it inevitable instead of asking why. Every generation before us looked at it, and decided it wasn’t theirs.
I was chosen against my will to enact a prophecy that has seen too many good people die.
Forced into dungeons for who I am. Faced legions of Caeloria’s best for the threat I pose.
This is not my war. This is everyone’s war. ”
Lara’s mouth twists into a feral smirk. “And yet you’re the only one who gains a kingdom and a crown from this war.”
Her tone makes it sound like a theft.
The sting of Lara’s venom floods her veins. Hot and thick and undeniable.
“Yes,” Elyssara agrees, her words a cruel snarl. “I’ve only lost my parents, my friends, my Starbound, my body, and my mind for it. And still you think I’m the one who stands to gain?”
She doesn’t mean to sound so despondent, but that’s how the words come out anyway. She hates that it shows. Hates that they can hear what this war has taken from her. Elyssara takes her seat between Seren and Ronyn, their eyes gentle with understanding.
Teddy’s voice cuts through the space. “What do you mean you’ve lost your Starbound?” His voice is clipped and forceful. A general assessing facts.
Fuck.
She knew she’d have to tell them. Knew she’d be forced to admit what afflicts Kael. Everyone noticed it.
Elyssara’s eyes fall on Teddy, his gaze severe and narrowed.
The air thickens with tension, like the walls have stopped breathing.
“When we brought down the Decay,” she begins, her voice heavy and thick with emotion, “the magic used to form it transformed back into the Riverian Jungle. Every cursed shadow bloomed into new life.”
No one speaks. No one even mutters under their breath.
They were either there, or they heard about it. She knew that. The tale of the Battle of Kryntar spread far and wide.
“But there was a fragment,” Elyssara says, emotion snagging in her throat.
Teddy’s eyes close in recognition. Like he already knows what she’s about to say.
“And that fragment had nowhere to go.”
A pause. Heavy. Thick.
Elyssara sucks in a sharp breath.
“So it made a home in Kael.” The words taste like poison as she says them.
Saying it aloud makes it real.
Murmurs fill the room. Teddy’s head falls into his hands. Heartbreak tears through Elyssara anew. Agony taking root in her chest, like the tether itself is being ripped from her.
“We can remove it,” Seren pleads desperately.
“An elixir,” Rubi offers, hands rifling through the bags she’s brought with her.
Elyssara shakes her head wordlessly.
“Heal him,” Jax snaps, stabbing a finger in Elyssara’s direction.
“We’ve tried. We’ve tried it all. The books in Elarion’s library all say the same thing: madness, violence, death. This thing…” Elyssara trails off, memories of Kael overtaken by the Decay flooding her. “This thing commands him. It possesses him somehow.”
“If it fully takes him,” Teddy says quietly, “there may not be a kingdom left to save.”
The words curl through the air like smoke.
But Jax ignores it. “You fucking fix him, Elyssara,” she chokes out.
Teddy doesn’t speak, just keeps his head buried in his hands.
Then slowly, his gaze lifts, settling on Elyssara. “Has anything been able to alter the grip it has on him?” he asks, calculating every angle, assessing every option.
Elyssara nods slowly. “Me,” she breathes. “My presence. My voice.”
She sucks in a steadying breath. “It doesn’t work completely. Not every time. But… it recedes enough to reach him, so he can pull himself back. He’s there. He’s still in there.”
Teddy takes it in, thoughts churning through his mind, desperately trying to strategize a plan. But a voice cuts through the emotion like a godsdamned guillotine.
“He needs to be eradicated. It’s that simple.” The words land like a blade dropped between them. Marin.
Her voice slams through Elyssara’s skull like a battering ram. Elyssara’s gaze lifts from her lap, and stares at Caeloria’s Princess with a look that could end worlds.
Breaths hiss through Elyssara’s teeth, and light flares at her chest in warning. “You touch my Starbound, Marin, and Caeloria will exist only in the history books. I will burn it from existence without a second thought.”
And every person in the room believes her.
Her gaze snaps to Saana, and no one misses what this is: a promise.
Marin shrugs, unfazed by the threat. “He’ll kill us all, then.”
Teddy’s rich timber commands the room. “Your lives are bound,” he says, pointing out the truth.
Eyes drift to her now. Waiting for her response.
“Yes,” Elyssara admits.
And the implications fill the space. If he dies, she dies.
“It’s logical,” Calira says, voice stripped of emotion. “Call it collateral.”
Collateral.
The word lands so cold and hard Elyssara can barely breathe.
Ronyn huffs a humorless laugh. “You and you’re fucking collateral.” He shakes his head, clicking his tongue. “The whole world could turn to dust and you’d be liable to call it collateral.”
Revryn leans forward, reaching for his daughter. “See reason,” he begs, but she pulls away from him.
Revryn’s face falls, and his hand retracts, settling across his chest like he can stop his heart from breaking.
“I can reach him. I know I can,” Elyssara tries desperately to convince the room.
“You can reach him, but can you really stop him? He’s a Shadowweave with Death magic and a fucking curse of violence and madness in his veins. Can you honestly say you can control that?” Marin argues confidently.
Fuck her.
Seren clears her throat. “Bind it out of him. Bind it to something else.”
Saana shakes her head. “Energy cannot be destroyed, only changed. It would need a living vessel, somewhere else to go. Put it back in nature, and you could create another wall of Decay like before. And we all know we don’t want it inside another person.
Who could be trusted with that darkness? ” she explains.
Elyssara moves to open her mouth. To tell Marin’s wife to shut the fuck up. But Rubi speaks up.
“She’s right,” she agrees. “I ran experiments on the Decay when we were back in Thornewood, and all it did was infect whatever it touched.”
Fuck.
Saana nods in agreement. “Exactly. Killing him will end him, but it won’t end the Decay.”
Everything expands—the problem, the silence, the weight of it all.
Marin folds her arms. “Then what would we rather have? A future Decay problem, or an imminent threat capable of wiping out thousands?”
Silence settles over the conclave once more, and everyone can see this for what it is: two impossible catastrophes.
“My mother will use him, you know,” Marin states coolly, no emotion. “As soon as she realizes he’s infected—and she will—she’ll use it against you. Ending him is the only way this can’t be used against us.”
No.
No. No. No.
“So what do you propose then? Kill us both like Commander Calira suggested? Deal with a living Decay once more?” Elyssara snaps, panic trying desperately to climb her throat. She shoves it down.
Marin does not need to think. The words come out plain and simple. “Yes.”
The space erupts. Arguments detonate. Threats rent the air. But Elyssara is not done.
“What use are you to me if you cannot change outcomes, Marin? What the fuck are you doing here?” Elyssara snaps, emotion clogging her throat.
Saana grips Marin’s thigh. Soothing. Pleading her to stay calm.
Marin’s almond eyes bore into Elyssara, but she sucks in a long, slow inhale.
“I’m here because if we don’t stop my mother, everyone in Caeloria stays trapped inside a system that will never let them prosper.
I’m here because I am your only hope at facing my kingdom and having a chance at escaping this war without a massacre. ”
Okay, quite compelling.
Elyssara composes herself. “Then tell us what we’re dealing with.”
Marin nods, accepting the temporary truce. “You’re dealing with an army of thousands, and weapons of mass destruction—canons, blades, machines that blast fragments of metal far and wide, killing anything in its vicinity, shields of Aether that can repel even magic itself.”
Elyssara had seen it. Had seen the way the shields rejected Kael’s magic. A shiver chases up her spine.
The room erupts in murmurs of panic.
Fuck.
It’s so much worse.
Machines that blast fragments.
Elyssara’s stomach roils in disgust.
Rubi clears her throat, tucking her hair behind her ear, and silencing the space. She’s not chaotic like she usually is. Not disheveled and erratic. This time, she seems composed. Deliberate. Like a woman hungering for redemption.
“Those weapons are also inside Nymeris,” she announces.
“I saw them on an import manifest when I was researching threvenar. Countless shipments of undisclosed weapons that have not been logged in the military base. They are, for all intents and purposes, located in an undisclosed location somewhere in Nymeris.”