66. Cassiel
Iwatch Wren leave for only a fraction of a second before turning back to the tunnel, forcing my legs to obey. My hand closes around Dain’s shoulder, grounding us both for half a second before I push past him.
He races after me.
Ru’s safe, I tell myself. You got her out.
It’s the only comfort to be had.
The corridors above the dungeon are worse than when we came down.
Smoke clings low to the ceiling, thick enough to sting my eyes.
Somewhere nearby, something is burning—wood, oil, flesh.
The sounds of battle echo through the stone like a heartbeat: steel on steel, the crack of powder, the distant roar of magic tearing through the air.
We emerge into the open and it hits all at once.
Humans and fey clash across the courtyard, neither side yielding. Magic blooms and dies in violent bursts. A man goes down beside me with a scream I don’t have time to process. Dain drags me sideways before a bolt of green fire scorches the ground where I stood.
“Hyacinth—” Dain says, breathless.
I swallow. He wasn’t at the sentry point. I can’t see a body lying anywhere, but it could easily be buried beneath the rubble.
We don’t have time to check. I utter a silent prayer to the Saints, hoping that he simply got out of the way when it got too dangerous to stay.
Another burst of green fire sends us running. Though Dain’s inclination is to fight, I don’t use my weapon unless I have to. I don’t want to hurt anyone, and unless they’re wielding magic or dressed in our uniforms, it can be difficult to tell at a glance who is who.
Instead, I duck, weave, deflect—survive. My mind is already elsewhere, chasing a different kind of danger.
My mother.
We break from the worst of it near the outer wall, where the press of bodies thins just enough to breathe, and I spot a familiar face in the chaos.
“Hyacinth!”
He turns at the sound of his name, blade already half-raised before he recognises me. Relief flickers across his face, quickly buried beneath the urgency of the moment.
“You’re alive,” he says. “I’m sorry I had to abandon my post, they were shooting fireballs—”
“It’s all right,” I say quickly, not wanting to waste time on apologies. “Have you seen my mother?”
“I have,” says another voice.
I turn. Aunt Imogen stands behind us, covered in ash, dress slashed for movement, sword drawn.
“Aunt Imogen—”
“Ru—” she interrupts.
“She’s safe,” I say quickly. “We got her out.”
Imogen breathes a short sigh of relief. “Thank the Saints. When I found her tutor’s body, I feared the worst.”
“My mother—”
Her expression tightens. “I saw her—briefly. She was heading toward the eastern battlements, but Cassiel—”
“Thank you.”
I sprint onwards without another word. The eastern side is worse.
The closer I get, the clearer the lines of fire become.
Archers, alchemists, mages—anything that can strike from a distance is concentrated here.
Projectiles arc overhead in deadly, glittering trails.
The air smells sharply of powder and ozone.
My mother stands at the edge of the battlement, silhouetted against the burning sky.
Her movements are precise, controlled despite the chaos around her.
Every blow she throws is dangerously deliberate.
Small glass vials shatter against advancing fey below, releasing clouds that choke, bind, disrupt.
A line of attackers falters under her assault.
Even now, even like this—she’s brilliant.
And she’s killing herself to prove it.
“Mother!”
She doesn’t turn.
“Mother!” I push closer, dodging past a soldier reloading his crossbow. “Stop—please!”
She glances over her shoulder, irritation flashing first—then something softer, albeit fleeting.
“Cassiel,” she says, as if we are in a garden and not standing on the edge of a battlefield. “Have you seen Ru—”
“She’s safe, she’s out,” I say in a rush.
Mother breathes the shortest sighs of relief. “You shouldn’t be here,” she adds.
“Neither should you,” I fire back. “You’re barely recovered—you—”
“I am exactly where I need to be.”
Another vial leaves her hand. Another precise strike, hurled into advancing troops.
“Please,” I say, more quietly now. “This doesn’t have to continue. Talk to Nubaia. You can still—”
“No.” The word is calm, but fire flashes in those dark green eyes of hers.
“Mother—”
“You don’t understand,” she says, finally turning to face me fully. There’s a fever-bright intensity in her eyes I haven’t seen since before she fell ill. “This ends one way or another. I won’t let it be on their terms.”
A shift below draws her gaze.
I follow it.
I’ve never laid eyes on her before, but I immediately know who she is.
A towering, broad-shouldered, dark-skinned fey woman, marked with gold and white.
She wears no crown in her braided locks, but she is every bit the queen my mother is, every bit as beautiful as her granddaughter, and twice as terrifying.
Nubaia.
She stands in the courtyard, unmistakable even at a distance—power coiled around her like a living thing. Fey gather near her, but they keep their distance.
My mother’s expression changes.
“Stay back,” she tells me.
She moves faster than any human should, vaulting down the steps, already descending, already closing the distance.
“Mother—!”
No one who was asleep for as long as she was should be this mobile, but then she isn’t fully human.
We’re the same! I want to shout, except that’s wrong. I don’t want to shout. Shouting has changed nothing. I want her to understand. She’s fighting herself. She and Nubaia are the same—grieving mothers, desperate for revenge.
No matter how many other children will be lost in the crossfire.
I swear under my breath and follow.
They meet in the grounds. The battle warps around them, fey and humans parting for it. I am sure Nubaia could unite with her followers and bring my mother down together, but she wants this. The satisfaction of bringing her down by herself.
Nubaia moves first. Magic lashes outward, a sweeping arc of force meant to crush, to overwhelm—
My mother counters before it lands. A vial shatters mid-air. The powder inside ignites in a flash of pale blue, disrupting the spell just enough for it to collapse in on itself. The force dissipates harmlessly into the ground.
Nubaia’s eyes narrow.
“Alessandra.”
“Nubaia.”
They circle. I’ve seen my mother fight before. I’ve learned from her. But this—this is something else.
She doesn’t match Nubaia’s raw power. She never could, even when she was younger, so she’s learned how to fight back in other ways, like I did when I was blind. She anticipates. Redirects. Undermines.
A thrown pellet bursts into a sticky, shimmering net that tangles the edges of Nubaia’s next spell. A thin line of powder scatters across the ground, igniting into a barrier that forces Nubaia to shift her footing.
Nubaia adapts quickly. She’s just as skilled, just as controlled. Her magic grows sharper, more precise, testing for weaknesses, probing for an opening.
They are perfectly matched in the worst possible way.
And neither of them will stop.
My mind races.
Think. Think.
There has to be something—some way to break this before one of them—before my mother kills her and the war carries on, relentless.
Before Nubaia tears her apart and I lose her all over again.
My hands shake around the hilt of the stolen sword, useless and heavy.
I could run between them, but that would only get me killed and solve nothing.
I could try to reach my mother, but she’s beyond listening now—locked onto Nubaia with that terrible, familiar focus that means there is no room for anything else.
This is vengeance. This is grief with teeth and claws and poison in its veins.
And Saints, I know that look because I’ve worn it.
“Wren,” I whisper, like saying her name might conjure her from the air. “Please.”
If anyone can stop this, it’s her. She would know what to say, how to cut through all of this fury and make us all listen. She would shove herself directly into the middle of it, probably insult everyone involved, and somehow still be right.
But she isn’t here.
Or maybe she is. Maybe she’s fighting her way through the palace right now. Maybe she’s hurt. Maybe—
Nubaia strikes again, and my mother barely turns it aside. The impact cracks stone beneath their feet. Fey soldiers stumble back. Human guards raise shields too late.
I can’t breathe.
If my mother falls, everything falls with her. If Nubaia falls, her people will never forgive it. Either way, this ends in blood.
There has to be another way.
I search the chaos wildly, looking for anyone, anything—but everyone is occupied, locked in their own desperate corners of the battle.
I am alone.
No. Not alone.
I still have a voice.
I drag in a breath so sharp it hurts, preparing to scream, to throw myself forward, to do something reckless and stupid and hopeless—
“STOP!” calls a voice.
A light blooms across the courtyard. Not harsh like magic, not violent like fire, but warm and golden, like sudden summer cutting through the snow. It spreads across the grounds, impossible to ignore.
Everyone hesitates, even Nubaia and Mother.
A figure stands between them.
For a moment—just a moment—I think I’m imagining it.
“Evander,” my mother breathes.
He looks exactly as he did before, not as the boy in the dreamscape, but a man, dressed in gleaming armour like the suit we buried him in. He’s haloed by sunlight.
“Enough,” he says gently.
Nubaia freezes, this magic beyond her understanding.
My mother doesn’t move.
“You’ve both carried this long enough,” he continues, his voice steady, grounding. “It doesn’t have to end like this.”
“This isn’t real,” Alessandra whispers.
“It is,” he says.
The light around him fades… and he doesn’t. He remains standing between the two warring women, solid as ever. I was sure he was a ghost, an apparition from beyond.
Something in my chest stutters, but before I can even begin to understand, another presence rises from the edge of the courtyard by the entrance to the castle vault.