Chapter Thirty
Elysia
The world fractures around me.
Behind the High Priestess, war collides with shadow.
Rhune is still standing, but my heart tells me he won’t be for much longer unless I do something to help.
He can’t face this on his own much longer. Perhaps if his focus weren’t split among five people—three of whom he doesn’t want to hurt.
Blood drips from a new wound on his head, making violet bloom against his silver hair, dark against the pale gleam of his skin as it trickles down his face. His breath looks ragged, yet shadows still whip around him, fevered and violent, clawing at Sorryn’s golden light and Enari’s fire.
They strike against him in tandem, one after another.
I can feel the tremble of power even from where I stand. Each burst of fire and flash of magic crashes into Rhune’s shadowed barrier, which seems to be growing thinner with each attack.
Still, his shadows never stop and my heart surges at his strength.
They whip through the air in violent coils as Sorryn lunges again, a blade of light erupting from his hand, but Rhune deflects it with a column of darkness that splits the attack in two.
Fire surges in from the left and Rhune spins, his cloak burning as he throws up another barrier, barely in time to hold the inferno at bay from his body.
He doesn’t retreat or relent.
He fights, because he is all that’s between us and them.
I take a deep breath as the floor beneath my knees pulses with the reverberation of their battle. Magic skitters through the air like a war of their wills and magic … all things I can’t control.
But this … this I can.
I hold the dagger, firm and sure, even as my arms tremble and the roar in my ears crescendos into something deafening.
My voice doesn’t tremble when I speak. “You forced me to be here,” I say softly to Adamaris, whose shoulders are tight and her eyes trained on the dagger. “But you can’t force me to remain here.”
The air suddenly shifts as his gaze finds mine over her shoulder. For the briefest moment in time, everything else halts.
I see it hit him … the moment he realizes what I’m about to do.
I watch as his expression fractures. The fury that’s carried him through the fight slips from his face, carved away by something raw and unfiltered. His mouth parts, lips shaping a word I don’t hear but feel in the marrow of my bones.
Don’t.
His body turns toward me without thinking.
His shadows falter midair. One of them dissipates completely, struck by a wave of fire that he doesn’t even attempt to deflect.
It’s as if the war he’s been fighting vanishes beneath the weight of a single truth: that I might end it all with a single thrust of a blade.
In that fractured moment it’s just us, the blade, and the breath between two hearts.
Enari’s fire comes first as he forgets to guard himself.
It bursts across the floor like a snake loosed from a cage, its body coiling and splitting with every strike of her hands. Sorryn is already moving beside her, the light in his palm gathering sharp and deadly, condensed into a spear of pure white magic.
Together, they strike as my face morphs into one of horror, feeling like I’m watching this happening in slow-motion.
Rhune doesn’t move because he’s still looking at me.
Still watching the blade I’ve raised to my chest like it’s the only threat in the room.
“Rhune!” I cry, the word ripped from my throat, but it’s too late.
The fire wraps around him just as the spear of light slams into his side. His body lifts from the ground and then crashes into a stone wall, causing cracks to run through the area around him. His body slides down to the floor with a sickening thud that I’ll never stop hearing.
I scream as he coughs up a pool of blood before stilling once more.
I rush forward, but I only get two steps before a blast of magic slams into my chest and sends me skidding backward, the dagger flying from my grip and vanishing into the chaos.
Adamaris steps in front of me once more, the magic she’s channeling from an enchanted object crackling at her fingertips like lightning waiting for direction. Her lips curve into something twisted and pleased.
“Foolish girl,” she says, her voice almost pitying. “You never understood your place.”
She speaks, but I can’t focus on her. All I can see is Rhune, crushed and motionless.
Blood glistens in the hollow of his throat. His shadows twitch like they’re trying to lift him and put the broken pieces of him back together.
I’m in a trance as I stare at him, my eyes burning from the smoke in the room.
“No,” I whisper, my mind in disbelief and shock. A hot tear runs down my cheek as my voice begins to quiver. “You … you have to get up. Please, Rhune.”
I thought I was helping end this situation. Controlling what I thought was the most important thing to Adamaris and Sorryn. Yet all I did was allow Sorryn to remove one of his greatest opponents.
He knew all along that Rhune and I were the other’s greatest weakness, while we tried to remain blind to it ourselves.
“Rhune!” I scream, my voice hoarse as I try to run for him once more.
Adamaris’s magic coils instantly around my limbs. I’m dragged back across the floor, the world a blur of smoke and agony as I’m pulled farther and farther from him.
My hands try to claw the ground, to anchor me as my nails drag against the harsh stone, skin ripping off the tips of my fingers as I go. I barely recognize the pain as I try to thrash in her tight grip, desperate to break free and go to him.
He needs me.
It’s all my fault.
Then, beyond the sound of my heart breaking, I hear a voice like thunder.
“Enough.”
The word detonates behind me and the air surges.
I twist toward it and see Serenath’s arm trembling beneath the weight of her upper body being held up by it. She has her other hand poised and open, palm out.
“You think yourself a sorceress with your little objects?” she snarls at Adamaris. “Let me show you what a true sorceress can do, even at the end of her life.”
Amber-and-green energy that matches her eyes spins from her fingers, blinding in its brilliance. It grows and grows as Adamaris’s eyes widen and her hands disappear into her robes, seeming to search for an item.
The spell slams into Adamaris midstep, knocking her backward with enough force to send her crashing against the far wall.
The room floods with Serenath’s power, her hazel magic carving through the remnants of the Priestess’s control like fire through ice. The air sizzles with it, pure, untamed, and righteous.
She doesn’t stop even as I watch blood begin to run from her nose and eyes.
Another blast follows as she focuses on Sorryn, continuing as each one destroys her body, but she doesn’t falter. Not once.
The magic cracks the very stone beneath our feet as she cries out in pain.
I cry out her name. “Serenath, stop!”
She’s going to kill herself.
A smooth hand grips my arm tightly and my head whips up to find Enari as she yanks me to my feet. Her tattoos are flickering wildly, blue and unstable, her movements jerky like something inside her is resisting.
“Don’t,” I gasp, trying to twist away. “Fight this, Enari!”
Her grip is like iron.
She draws a dagger from under her robes and I don’t have time to plead as it flies toward my head.
The object cracks against my temple. The world tilts around me and everything fades at the edges.
I groan, rolling onto my side, trying to blink away the blurriness in my vision as my eyes open.
My wrists are bound in front of me, but my feet are free as I attempt to move them.
My cheek is pressed to smooth stone, damp with condensation, and there’s no light except for the faint symbols glowing on the metal bars all around me the beam of moonlight from a single window.
I hear the sound of breath, a rattling inhale that isn’t mine. I push up slowly, a wave of dizziness washing over me as the room spins in front of me, but I spot her.
Enari sits crumpled by the far wall, knees pulled to her chest, her head against the glowing bars opposite me. The blue tattoos winding down her arms are flickering wildly, sometimes bright, sometimes dim, like dying embers that refuse to fully go out.
Her eyes are closed and her fingers twitch.
“Enari,” I croak out.
She lifts her head slowly. Her eyes that I’d grown used to looking vacant and defeated under Adamaris’s control now look almost like her own again.
“I didn’t want to hurt you or him,” she says, voice cracking. “I tried, my Queen.”
My head throbs and my stomach rolls as I try to focus on her.
“You knocked me out,” I whisper, the memories coming back slowly.
Rhune.
Hazel magic stirs in my mind’s eye.
Serenath.
“She made me.” Her voice trembles, and I swear I see tears rolling through soot-stained cheeks. “They turned me into an object to control after the last queen told them I tried to warn her of the King’s evil. They gave me a choice to die or submit to the marks bestowed by the High Priestess.”
Her distrust of me from the moment we met suddenly makes sense. The shock she seemed to feel when I was kind to her.
It seems the layers of deception in this world of clouds and dreams never end.
I once thought that humans were the ones trapped, bound to the ground with the scraps the elves give us and what we can harvest and trade. Perhaps we are the rich ones, after all, surrounded by simplicity and love, not magic and betrayals.
I groan as a fresh wave of pain thrums behind my eyes.
I have to get back to the dining hall. I have to find Rhune and Serenath.
The chains at my wrists clink as I shift closer. “Your marks aren’t as bright or consistent. Is she still in control of you?”
“She’s losing control with her own magical reserves depleting to keep the enchantment over me,” she rasps as her head rolls back to rest against the wall.
“But she may kill me before that happens. I used all of the power I had in that fight and I haven’t been able to feed on dreams to replenish any of my energy. ”
I search her face for any will to fight, to not surrender to the fate they’ve marked her with. “Can you free me so we can escape together?”
She shakes her head. “No, there are enchantments all over these bars that I can’t break, but I can try to help with her hold over me fading. I’ll find Rhune, or Serenath if she’s still …”
Her voice trails off and suddenly what she was explaining clicks into place in my brain as the fog begins to clear.
“What happens if you are forced to use your magic with no source of power, Enari?” I ask sharply, tired of people coddling me from the truths of this world.
She hesitates for a moment before relenting. “Your soul is consumed to fuel the power, until it’s burned out of your body. It’s what I believe Serenath was pulling on at the end, and what the High Priestess will force me to do if this continues before I can feed.”
Horror grips my mind as my eyes fall to the dirty floor.
Her hands curl against the barrier.
“I’m going to find someone. I’ll come back for you.”
I shake my head as she pushes to her feet. “Enari, you’re in no shape to fight this battle anymore. If Adamaris forces you—”
She cuts me off with a heavy stare full of determination.
“You’re not like the last queen …” Her voice trails off before it steadies, a fierce certainty slipping through her fear.
“She didn’t see. She didn’t feel the way the world screamed for help around her.
You do. I see it every time I look into your gaze.
You know what it means to fight for something bigger than yourself. It’s my turn to do that.”
I don’t speak—I can’t—because if I do, the tears will start, and I’m not sure they’ll ever stop.
Her voice breaks as her tattoos flare to life with the step she takes away from me. “We … we need you to change this. All of it.”
She turns and casts one last glance over her shoulder. “If I don’t see you again, thank you for seeing me despite my attempts to hide in the shadows of your life. Thank you for your kindness.”
Then she disappears into the shadows, her flickering tattoos vanishing into the dark.
My hands press to my eyes, and I try not to sob.
Thank you for seeing me.
My body trembles with physical and emotional exhaustion. Pain blooms across my ribs from where Adamaris’s power slammed into me. My head thrums with a steady flow of pressure, making me feel dizzy.
Yet it’s the ache in my chest that threatens to undo me.
Rhune looked like he was dying the last I saw him.
Serenath might already be gone.
Enari’s life is on the line and I’m locked behind a wall of magic I can’t escape, and no powers to fight back, even if I did find a way out of here.
A frustrated scream builds in my chest before I let it explode out of me.
It echoes around me, reverberating against the walls and filling me with the energy to fight. I’m still breathing.
This isn’t the end.
I won’t let it be.