Chapter 64 Thyra
Chapter Sixty-Four
Thyra
I’ve been plunged into darkness.
Pure and complete darkness. Heavier even than the seemingly endless night in the bloodlands because it’s…
Nothing.
No shapes. No forms. No air.
I gasp against the weight settling across my shoulders, not knowing if I’m breathing, the heaviness in my mind trying to push me down into an absence of consciousness I fight against with all my might.
At the same time, I struggle to believe I still exist.
Before I found myself in this darkness, golden energy had flooded the air around me. I recognized the signs of a blade vision, wrenching me away from Antony just when I’d discovered he was alive.
But this isn’t anything like the visions I’ve had before.
Dark nothingness extends in every direction and the silence around me is complete.
I can barely sense my body. My limbs may as well be made of liquid night as I try to take a step forward.
Only to stumble and fall to my knees.
My head is heavy.
My thoughts are heavy.
Maybe if I stop fighting it, put my head down, and sleep—
The hairs on my arms rise as the darkness breaks for a flash.
A dark field stretches out around me, dust swirling, my body seeming to lift into it, floating upward. A lightness shockingly distinct from the heaviness I felt only moments ago.
The field vanishes as quickly as it appeared, and the darkness and weight resume.
With a scream of effort, I push myself upright, managing to stumble a step, only to fall to the ground again, but this time, I feel grit beneath my palms.
When I look up, she is there.
The False Queen stands five paces away from me, her figure flickering in and out of view. One minute she stands with me in darkness, the next in that field of dust.
“Well,” she whispers, her lips concealed behind the curtain of her hair but a hint of surprise tainting her voice. “Your mind has broken through. But how, I wonder?”
She tips her head, her voice flickering like her form. “Maybe because two of the kings are with you… Or maybe because of the… Well, never mind. We’re due for a chat…”
With another groan of effort, I rise to my feet and step forward, trying to reach her, even though every labored step seems to keep us apart. “What have you done to me?”
She glides forward, her steps bringing her no closer to me, her voice stronger, although her surroundings continue to flicker in and out of darkness. “Are you not enjoying my gifts, Thyra?”
My brow furrows as I fight to remain standing. “Gifts?”
“The gifts I told you to accept when you first took the runes into your body.”
I remember the blade vision when the hammer crumbled. I saw the False Queen beneath the branches of a tree whose white flowers were falling around us.
She told me: don’t reject the hammer’s power. Accept the gifts I’m giving you. Take the darkness. You’ll need it.
“What gifts?” I repeat, my jaw tight.
Her hair sways across her face as she whispers, “Their powers.”
At that, black energy sparks across my right arm. I’m aware for the first time that I’m wearing dark clothing as inky as the False Queen’s dress, but my right arm is bare.
The runes along the ivory ribbon begin to glow and move.
Each one rotates as if on an axis, stopping at points to collectively form shapes before rotating into a different image.
First, snowflakes cascade along the ribbon.
Then, flames blaze across the material.
Finally, blood drips down my arm.
I jolt, but the runes don’t stop moving and I expect to see snowflakes again, only for the jagged lines to ripple into a pattern I don’t recognize. Circles? Ovals? The design is too disjointed to identify and the pattern doesn’t fully connect before it stutters and glides once more into snowflakes.
I struggle to breathe. “What is this?”
“A transference of power.” The curtain of the False Queen’s hair parts to reveal her cruel smile. “You’re draining the three kings, Thyra.”
I jolt. “What?”
“You’ve been draining them every night. A little at a time. During blade visions you don’t even know you’re having because—” She laughs. “You sleep through them.”
“No, that’s… Draining them?”
“Oh, come now, Thyra.” Her voice becomes mocking.
“Did you think that if you simply worked hard, you could become so strong so quickly? Did you not question how fast you’re learning to fight and how easily you now survive the cold?
How you can sustain your energy with the barest amount of food and water, or how the touch of frost doesn’t burn you like it used to?
“Did you not wonder why you find yourself overheated at times, too hot, your emotions more volatile, your physical needs…fiery? Or how you might find yourself able to leap into the air, sustaining suspension far longer than any lowborn or, indeed, any highborn ever should? And perhaps…in time…you might start to crave the taste of bloo—”
“No!” I wrench myself backward, grabbing at my arm as the runes continue to turn and turn and turn…
The queen tut-tuts at me as the drape of her hair sways away from her lips again, revealing her smirk. “Don’t fight it. Remember what I told you: kindness will always be crushed. Hope will always die. Except that now…”
She glides forward and this time, she actually comes closer, dusty air storming in the background. “Now, you’ll be the one doing the crushing.”
A deep weight drives me to my knees again, a heaviness in my chest and mind, forcing my head to bow, a posture of submission at her feet.
Not by choice. Never by choice.
“Why are you doing this?”
Her voice is suddenly furious. “Because I’m owed.”
She crouches in front of me and in that brief moment, I make out her eyes behind her hair.
Pale blue. Faded like mine.
And then…
Her irises transform to lustrous brown, then bright amber, then icy white, and back again, cycling through colors as if they couldn’t settle on one hue.
“Because they took and took and took,” she says, and I can’t ignore the raw pain in her voice, the fury in her ever-changing eyes.
“Until they took too much.” With her other hand pressed to her heart, she draws a shaky breath. “I will not allow them to do that to you, Thyra. You may hate me, but you will take my gifts—”
“Not gifts,” I say, my voice stronger, my head rising despite the weight bearing down on me. “You haven’t given me gifts. You’ve assured my death so I can’t break your curse.”
Whatever tirade she was about to launch into vanishes. “Well, aren’t you clever.”
“Against my will, I’m draining the power of men who only survive because of their strength,” I say.
“They reign only through brutality and fear. Their very lives turn on their ability to defeat their enemies both in physical battle and strategic planning. And now, I’m taking those abilities away from them. ”
With a groan of effort, I push to my feet, bracing against this deep burden that feels both internal within my heart and external across my body.
I don’t know how I’ll withstand the heartbreak of the terrible choice ahead of me.
Antony may have loved me, but if he knows I’m siphoning his power, even if he tries to help me, a dark seed will grow at the back of his mind.
I’m certain Stellen, who is driven by logic and whose body is already weakened, will reach the brutal conclusion sooner:
I am a threat.
I wasn’t before. Oh, I was an enemy. A prize. A power they wanted and needed. But I wasn’t a threat.
Now, I am.
“You’ve made me a danger to them.”
The queen also glides to her feet. “Now, you will surely find out how cruel they can be.” She pauses. “If you tell them.”
If I tell them.
Her eyes are concealed again, but not her lips. Her mouth rises in a cruel smile.
“Don’t tell them, Thyra,” she whispers. “Take their power. Use it to tear them apart. Rip at them before they rip at you.”
She steps away from me and with that, the weight evaporates.
My mind pulls back to an icy landscape, the space above me broken by skeletal tree branches reaching like desperate fingers.
Faster than ever, the blade vision is over.
In that moment, I’m aware of Stellen’s arms around me and his worried eyes and his voice asking me to come back to him.
I barely have time to hurl myself out of his arms, lurching forward onto my hands and knees before I vomit into the snow.