Chapter Seventeen
Elysia
The High Priestess steps toward me and releases the orb from her clutches.
It hovers just far enough away for me to not be able to touch it, its swirl of black and white spiraling faster the closer it gets.
Silence descends as the grove watches my fate approach.
My palms hover just above the orb’s surface as it reaches me, and for a moment, I allow myself to think of my family before I shut off that side of my heart and mind.
One of my hands snakes up to touch the ribbon from Penelope in my braid.
“So you don’t forget us on your journey. So you don’t forget me.”
My dad’s voice whispers, “My brave girl.”
Warm hands that cupped my face as my mother said with all the confidence in her heart, “You will be fine.”
I swallow the lump rising in my throat as I bury them in the deepest recess of my heart and open my mind to him … to the protector of my mind when I sleep.
“When you’re tested, think of me. Only me.”
I may not know why he said it, but at this moment, it doesn’t matter. My gut is telling me to trust him and this demand.
My hands lower.
The moment my skin touches the orb, the world disappears and I’m not in the grove anymore. There is no moss under my feet or vibrant trees that seem to breathe alongside us.
Only endless light.
It explodes inward through me. A burning surge that floods my body, probing and crackling through every corner of my being. It tears into my chest and floods my bloodstream, spirals through my thoughts, through my memories, through the cracks in my heart.
It’s like my soul is being dissected, examined, peeled open strand by strand to see what I’m made of.
I understand now what Maggie meant. The orb wants to see everything … who I’ve been, who I might become, what I’ll break for, and what I’ll die protecting. It’s not searching for strength. It’s hunting for malleability.
It wants to know if I bend. If I’ll bleed without snapping. If it can shape me into something useful.
“When you’re tested, think of me. Only me.”
The memory of him rises, crashing through the relentless search of my soul.
His arms around me. The smell of rain just before it breaks. The press of his hand against my back as I wept into silence.
He has no name. No promises. No face I can remember.
Just the Dromin elf that feels like safety.
The orb surges again, harder, deeper. I cry out this time, the scream ripping from my throat as I drop to my knees. Every nerve burns, every thought splinters, every shred of composure I’ve held up until now shatters in the pressure of this unrelenting light.
I hold on to the memory of his presence. To the weight of his hand at the center of my spine as he soothed me. To the inexplicable, unwavering trust that he will catch me if I fall.
The light changes and everything slows. Then … silence.
In that hush, a voice slides through my mind, smooth as silk soaked in shadow.
Do you trust the Dromin elves?
It isn’t spoken aloud, but I feel it.
The voice is everywhere and nowhere. It is the orb.
Do you believe in them?
My thoughts aren’t clear anymore, but one rises to the surface.
I trust him.
I don’t say it aloud … I simply think it.
I trust him.
The light fractures suddenly and the pain stops.
Suddenly I feel like I’m falling, and I slam back into my body like I’ve been thrown from the tallest peak of the Sacrum mountain range.
The wind is knocked from my chest and I gasp.
The grove rushes back into focus, the trees, the air, and the shimmering boundary. I’m on my knees and my vision blurs as my head moves, trying to take in my surroundings.
Then the sound comes.
Screaming, and not my own.
Lisbeth’s.
I turn, dazed and aching to the depths of my chest.
She’s on the ground, cradling Thalia’s small body in her arms, gripping her protectively to her chest. Auburn curls drape against Lisbeth’s arm, while open blue eyes stare at the barrier above us, the same as Virelle’s did.
Her chest doesn’t rise.
No.
My body tries to move, but it feels like I’m weighed down by stones.
Lisbeth’s scream finally jolts me from my stupor, the sound raw and broken.
“You killed her!” she roars at the High Priestess. “You took her! She wasn’t even being tested!”
The Priestess doesn’t flinch. She just stands there, watching me, like she sees something now that wasn’t there before.
I glance between her and Thalia as a fresh wave of agony rips through me and I splinter.
I’m moving before I even know what I’m doing. My knees scrape across the moss as I lurch toward them, my body trembling as I crawl. A wail rises in my throat that refuses to stay buried.
“No!” I scream. “No, no. Thalia!”
Lisbeth barely looks up as I reach them. Her face is pale, her cheeks soaked with tears, her hands still clutching Thalia like if she lets go, she’ll lose her forever, but she relents to me.
I drag Thalia’s body into my arms, fingers curling beneath her shoulders as I lift her, press her against me. I rock her like I used to rock my baby sister when she cried in the dark.
But Thalia isn’t crying. She’s cold and too still.
“What happened?” I scream, turning to Lisbeth with a voice that shreds itself on the way out. “What happened to her?”
Lisbeth’s mouth opens and closes like the shock is keeping her from forming words. Her voice, when it comes, is hoarse and broken.
“When you screamed … when you fell, she … she moved toward you.” Her eyes flood with fresh tears. “She reached for your hand. To steady you. To give you her strength.”
I blink, shaking my head, unable to process.
“And the orb,” Lisbeth chokes. “It lashed out. One strike. Right to her chest. She dropped before I could catch her.”
My heart shatters.
She died trying to give me strength.
I bow my head over Thalia’s shoulder and sob like never before. Not when I left home. Not when the dagger bloodied my hand. Not when I saw Virelle fall.
This is different, more raw than anything I’ve felt in my life.
This is the kind of grief that doesn’t come with numbness. It comes with guilt that roots itself in the marrow of your bones and never lets go.
My scream rips through the grove, echoing off the trees, louder than anything that’s come before.
Still, the Priestess says nothing.
When I finally lift my face, blotched and soaked and feral with rage, she’s watching me and smiling.
Smiling.
“You killed her,” I spit, my voice shaking.
The High Priestess lifts her chin, composed and untouchable. “She shouldn’t have interfered with the process.”
My stomach twists, bile rising behind my teeth.
She’s not sorry, she’s triumphant—because in her mind, this is all justified.
Her gaze lingers on me now, not with cruelty like before, but with certainty.
She doesn’t care that I’m still cradling Thalia. She doesn’t flinch at Lisbeth’s wild, tear-soaked fury. Doesn’t even look down at the body her magic destroyed.
She only steps forward, voice ringing across the grove with calm finality.
“We have our queen.”
I freeze while the other women shift behind us. Some gasp and some go completely still.
The Priestess raises her arms like the announcement is sacred, as if anyone here even cares after everything we’ve witnessed.
“Elysia Virellan of Edritch,” she proclaims. “You have withstood the full force of judgment. You did not break. You were chosen. The selection is complete.”
My chest is still heaving from sobs and Thalia’s weight is still pressed against me. The taste of grief hasn’t left my tongue, but something cold and clear cuts through the haze of it all.
Power.
Not because I want it and not because I asked for it, but because if she just handed me a crown, then I will wield it as a weapon.
My mind is unsteady and my heart is wrecked, but my voice comes strong.
“Then if I am your queen,” I say, voice rough but rising, “I give my first order.”
The High Priestess stills.
“Lift the barrier,” I continue. “Let every single one of these remaining women go. Alive. Right now.”
A murmur ripples through the line as the Priestess’s eyes narrow, her expression unreadable now.
The air tenses like the universe itself is waiting to see what happens next.
I hold her gaze, daring her to deny me.
I am Elysia Virellan of Edritch and I am done watching them fall.
The High Priestess studies me in silence for a moment longer, then she smirks, not out of amusement but condescension. It drips from her like invisible sweat.
“You’ll learn soon enough,” she murmurs, voice dipped in silk and something far more cruel. “What that title truly means.”
With a flick of her wrist, she turns away, stepping back toward her altar.
The air shifts and the veil that enclosed the grove shudders once, then splits like mist parting. The magic bleeds out of the trees, the glow in the moss vanishing in a blink. Light and color fade until what’s left is only a sparse, plain, snow-covered forest.
The barrier is gone.
Behind me, footsteps erupt. The remaining offerings waste no time … they flee.
They vanish back toward the town, tasting freedom with blood on their boots and scars in their minds.
“You have ten minutes before we ascend.”
The Priestess’s words are sharp and final, yet I can’t process them as I stare down at Thalia’s lifeless face.
A memory hits me hard, causing a broken cry to catch in my throat.
Us standing in the inn where we met, stopped at the door of her room as she glanced back at me. “We’ll be okay, right?”
“Of course we will,” is what I told her.
I bite down on my lip hard as fresh tears pour from my eyes and I curl myself around her, holding her to me as if I could will my own life into her.
“I’m so sorry,” I mutter over and over again through my sobs.
Eventually my sobs fade to shudders.
Lisbeth leans forward and brushes a strand of hair from Thalia’s face as I pull back.
Then she swings her gaze to meet mine. Her eyes are red-rimmed and hollow, but there’s steel beneath.
“You have to do it,” she says hoarsely. “You have to be Queen.”
I blink at her, throat thick, lips parting to protest, but she holds up a trembling hand to stop me.
“You don’t have a choice anymore,” she whispers. “Not after this. Not after them.”
She glances down at Thalia, then toward the many fallen bodies around us, and her voice shakes, but she forces the words out anyway. “You need to take the throne, and when you do, you change this. All of it. For Virelle. For Thalia. For every girl who died on the road here and in this grove.”
I stare at her, the words sinking inside of me like stones in deep water.
Lisbeth wipes her cheek, breath hitching.
“You remember this moment,” she says, “and you burn it into everything you become.”
I nod slowly, unable to speak.
I will not wear this crown for power. I will wear it for the women who were never given the chance to take another breath.