Chapter 36 Rhiannon
RHIANNON
Hemlock House was silent. Too silent. The six of us spread out, though Max took charge of my mother. I headed straight for Briony’s room, but it was empty. Throughout the house, as we moved back towards the foyer, where Max and Silea waited for us, came the soft calls of “Clear.”
Kara shook her head at me as she came up from the basement. “They’re not here.”
Mother’s head lolled a bit, but she was still breathing, her eyes still bright. “She needs the scrolls,” she said, her voice fading. “No one but me knew the entire ritual. We kept the knowledge of the many parts of it separate, but there’s a record—it’s in the scrolls. She’ll get them for Blaire.”
The six of us stood silently, all of us waiting. It took Kara nudging me with her elbow for me to remember they were waiting for me. Coronations didn’t matter to Maere. The ring was all that counted. I was the highest ranking Maere in the room.
“Move her to the living room,” I ordered.
Max nodded, and the six of us moved as a unit, supporting Silea until we got her lowered into Ember’s favorite reading chair, next to the hearth. The room was dark—the power was out here too.
Titania slid her phone out of her pocket. It was a thick, satellite phone, not a typical cell. Her bright green eyes flitted over the screen as she tapped away. “Power’s down all over the city—and in Aradios too. No word from Palladiere yet. Consulate’s called eight times in the last ten.”
The ginger Maere was Aradios’ communications expert.
She raised the phone to her pale face, her deeply freckled cheeks flushing with amusement as she listened to the messages.
When she hung up, she grinned. “Whatever you did, Rhiannon, you wiped everything clean. The Consulate has hard copies of everything, as you know.” I shrugged.
I did know, all too well. “But the Authority is in chaos. All the CCTV records are gone, and the banking?”
Titania laughed so hard that Ishtar placed a strong hand on her back. “Are you well?”
Tears of laughter streamed down Titania’s face. “Rhiannon disappeared billions of dollars. They’re already getting it back, but it’s going to be a mess for months—maybe years.”
Ishtar stood. “Do you have a generator? If I can get power running, I can use Briony’s computers to find out more.” The dark-haired Maere was nearly as competent as our Briony with tech.
I glanced at Max. “Show her where everything is. I’m going after Myrine.”
My mother looked up at me. “Do you know where she is?”
I nodded. “I have a pretty good idea.” I took a deep breath, and looked around the room. “Thank you for all of your help. Keep her alive ‘til I return.”
Ama knelt next to my mother, a duffel bag in her arms. She must have gone and gotten it from the car, and she was drawing out various syringes and vials of liquid.
She nodded as she took my mother’s pulse before she glanced up at me through her long, thick lashes. “I can give you a few hours, at most.”
“I won’t need that long,” I said, as I spun to leave.
If I looked back, my mother might say something to make me think I should stay with her—and not rescue my real family. As I reached the kitchen door, I heard her voice, clear and strong as ever. “You’re doing the right thing.”
I spared a single look back at her. “I know.”
Traces of the struggle were evident in the thick, wet grass in the garden. Sera had fought Myrine. I found her slumped next to the garden gate between the cottage and the house and broke into a sprint. She had no obvious injuries, her breathing was regular, and her heartbeat was strong.
I felt the back of her head, where a giant lump was already receding.
I pressed my hand to it, giving her as much of the abundance of royal magic I now possessed as I could.
Her eyes opened, shining silver. She smiled, but faintly.
“That feels good.” Immediately, her eyes darkened. “Myrine… Rhi, she has Briony—”
“I know,” I whispered. “Do you feel strong enough to come with me? We have to get our girl back.”
Sera grinned at me, nodding. Tiny as she was, before she was injured in the fire, she’d been the most vicious of all of us. The light that gleamed in her eyes now was one I could use. “Yes, we do.”
“Let’s go,” I whispered. “Be as silent as you can.”
Sera nodded at me, and we crept through the gate, stealing across the wet paths in Oleander Cottage’s garden. Movement in my peripheral vision stopped me in my tracks, just outside the mudroom door. Sera gripped my arm, pointing.
It was Stanley, but he wasn’t a spirit. He was fully corporeal, and a fairly average looking, if large, black house cat. I glanced back at the garden, and found the hedge of roses as high as it had been when Eryx and I were trapped.
But there were none of the whispers. None of the finger trap feelings that I’d come to associate with Cassandra’s illusion. Stanley didn’t blink out, either. He came to brush against my ankle, transferring a bit of magic straight to my mind.
Cassandra stood next to me, the golden light of true afterlife clinging to her. She was dressed as she would have been as a princess of Otrera, in a loose indigo gown with intricate beading at the hem, heavy gold jewelry adorning her ears and wrists, a diadem in her mass of rose-gold hair.
She smiled, softly. “I almost left, but then—” it seemed she choked on her words. “I—is she?”
“She’s in the house,” I said, knowing that Cassandra had stayed to see her sister into the afterlife.
There was something comforting about knowing that they would go together.
That perhaps they could mend things between them enough that neither would be held back from eternal rest. “Go to her now. You’ve done all you could here. ”
Cassandra smiled as the sound of someone hacking at wood rang out from inside the house. She pulled a fully corporeal key that I recognized out of the pocket of her dress and placed it in my waiting palm. “I locked the door,” she said, as she dissolved into golden light.
Sera gripped my arm, whispering, “A bit of luck, then.”
I nodded. “A bit.”
The hacking noise grew louder. I motioned for Sera to stay close, murmuring. “Get Briony out the second you can.”
When I had her assent, we moved as one, creeping through the mudroom and into the kitchen.
I could see Myrine hacking at the basement door through the back hall, and Briony tied up in the living room.
Even with the extra power I had from my initial moments as Otrera’s queen, I couldn’t fight Myrine and win.
She’d taught me everything I knew about fighting on the island. But everything I knew about killing, I’d learned here. There was only one way this ended. I held up a hand to Sera, then signed for her to stay down. Her eyes widened when she realized what I was to do.
Briony caught sight of me as I moved, and I pressed a quick finger to my lips, my Murder Queen bracelet catching the dim light that came through the kitchen window.
I took one breath in and envisioned my movements.
The trick, for me anyway, was to know exactly how I would move, where I might have to deviate if something about the conditions changed, and where I would strike.
Three locations to step into, four quick movements to my kill, depending on the potential outcomes.
Planning ahead for problems was what made it seem as though I murdered silently. I could kill Myrine quick and clean—she’d be dead before she even turned. But I needed a moment with her before she died, and that made things trickier than I’d have liked.
I moved quickly, without another thought, now that I’d decided. And as I crossed the threshold of the kitchen, I put the last bit of the island’s power into my movements.
“Myrine,” I called, my voice a sharp, staccato note in the cacophony of her incessant hacking at a door that was obviously spelled to be impervious to harm.
She never had been particularly observant about how magic worked.
Perhaps that was why she wasn’t given the kind of information that would have benefited Blaire most.
She turned, her eyes wild, ready to hack at me next with the hatchet.
But she hadn’t seen me draw my sword. She hadn’t felt it slide into her chest, pinning her to the basement door.
I put the last of Otrera’s borrowed power into the thrust. The magic would keep her pinned to the door until her death.
The sound of the hatchet clattering to the ground was what seemed to catch her attention.
The spell over the house slid away. It was a dusty, dark mess once more.
I didn’t want to think that meant Cassandra and my mother were gone.
Perhaps it only meant that Cassandra had pulled the last of her own power back to her.
Myrine frowned, so obviously confused. She tried to speak, but I held up a hand. “Don’t waste much energy on asking how or why. I’ll be happy to explain.”
I kicked the hatchet away from her and stepped back. There was no telling how well armed she was. She couldn’t hurt me now, but I didn’t want any measure of violence affecting anyone else.
“Sera,” I called, not taking my eyes off Myrine. “Take Briony out the front door.” I didn’t want the teenager anywhere near Myrine if there was a chance she might have a weapon on her that she could throw.
Behind me, there were soft noises of Sera moving. I found a kitchen chair at my fingertips. “Milady,” she murmured as she swept past me, into the living room.
Vaguely, I sensed her releasing Briony’s bonds, whispering to her what they were going to do. When they were out the front door, I dragged the kitchen chair to face Myrine.
“Is there any chance you’re going to tell me all of Blaire’s nasty plans?” I asked. There was no use in trying torture or any other means of ferreting out information. Myrine had taught me every method I knew.
Her cold eyes were filled with resolve. There were no more snarky jokes. No more banter. She simply didn’t answer.
“Fine,” I breathed on a heavy exhalation. “Will you at least tell me why you did it? What was the point of all this?”
Myrine laughed, harsh and cruel. “For all the same reasons you do anything. For Otrera.”
“Oh,” I sighed. “You don’t know me at all, do you?”
Myrine frowned, clearly trying to identify where she’d miscalculated.
I sat forward in the chair, crossing my legs. “I haven’t done anything for Otrera in centuries, Myrine.” I sat back in the chair. “Since my sword was stolen, I’ve been scrambling to survive. To help others survive.”
The creases in Myrine’s frown deepened. She was confused by this. For a moment, I was perplexed by her confusion. My mind raced over the information I had, and it was all there, so terribly clear.
“The night we got the swords back,” I explained, shaking my head. “You claimed that stealing them made us who we are.” A laugh escaped me, understanding rattling my bones. “You were right.”
“How so?” Myrine asked, gesturing to the sword buried in her chest. She coughed, blood trickling from her mouth. “It would seem otherwise at the moment.”
I smiled. “You did make us who we are now. Stealing the swords drove us apart—and then back together again. You gave us a compass that didn’t point toward the island anymore. Your actions forced us to stop thinking of Otrera as home. This is our home now, Myrine. These are our people.”
“Oh,” was all she said.
“Why did you do it?” I asked again.
She glared at me. “Because your mother was weak—hiding behind the mists was a cowardly move. An alliance with Blaire could have made us strong again. Could have brought Otrera back to the forefront of power.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Are you actually this foolish?”
She gritted her teeth. “I had everything in hand, you twit.”
Had. That meant Blaire didn’t have what he needed. She hadn’t delivered. It was why she was in here hacking uselessly away at a door that couldn’t open.
“He’ll kill them all, now,” she said. “The parapsychs in the Asylum. Even his own—” she seemed to think better about what she was about to say, her mouth clamping shut.
“His own what?” I hissed.
But Myrine just smiled. “You’re so clever, Rhiannon. Figure it out for yourself.”
She wasn’t going to give me anything else. Three movements. Four possible deviations. I had the blade at my thigh out and through the bottom of her throat, straight into her brain before she could say another word.
“I will,” I whispered, as her heartbeat slowed, then stopped.
My body was heavy, so very heavy as I pulled my sword from her chest. She fell to the floor with a heavy thump and I wiped my blade off on her clothes. It faded into incorporeality as I sheathed it, my muscles heavy with effort.
I couldn’t think of the last time I was this exhausted, and that was saying something.
The thought occurred to me that this might have pushed me too far, though I was uncertain what that meant for me.
I stumbled towards the door, through the kitchen, the maze of oleander in the faded wallpaper swimming before my eyes.
All the magic was gone now, and I’d taken dozens of hits during the rescue, despite the sword’s magic. My adrenaline was crashing, and my body was trying desperately to put me to sleep so it could heal, but I didn’t want to be here when I fell.
I couldn’t fall until I knew what had happened with Eryx, ‘til I knew he was all right. My steps were slow, and more awkward than I ever thought possible as I pushed the mudroom door open. The stone steps to the garden swam before my eyes. I didn’t want to tumble down them, but I saw no other way.
As I pitched forward, bracing inwardly for the sting of stone meeting my body, strong arms caught me. “I’m here,” my love said in that voice that could heal anything. “I’ve got you.”
I looked up into his crisp green eyes, some strength returning just from being near him. “Want to meet my mom?” I asked. “I don’t think we’re going to have time for pizza.”
“Absolutely,” he said as he swept me into his arms. I searched his face for any signs of pain or injury, and found none. He was tired, just like me. Before he pressed a kiss to my forehead, he whispered into my ears. “But we are getting extra mushrooms later, I promise.”
I wrapped my arms around his neck and closed my eyes, just for a moment, smiling. “That’s why I love you.”