Chapter 45
ROOKE
While Lyrae was a powerhouse of intensity and purpose, her sister was a wraith.
“Give me the Triune,” Ariel repeated in Gravelock’s raspy voice, her unseeing eyes fixed hypnotically on the Triune, small, pale hands slowly clenching and unclenching at her side.
Silvery hair floated around her head like a cloud of spiderwebs, her dress—if you could even call it that—hung in gauzy slivers, her stick-like body moving jerkily toward me, surrounded by that soft glow of power.
Wyrdtracker.
No, she wasn’t moving toward me. I was irrelevant in this scenario.
Toward the relics.
The air in the throne room was already over-saturated with magic, thick and soupy, waiting for what came next, for the power to finally be combined into one purpose. Even the moonlight seemed to bend oddly, refracted by the blood circle, the spell pulsing inside this cylinder of power.
I clamped my mouth shut, the rest of the spell aching to escape, to complete the binding, but if I spoke the words now…
I had no idea what might happen. The ritual called for absolute silence, and if Ariel touched the blood circle, or gods help me, the relics, she might kill us all, by tearing a hole in the fabric of the universe.
If the old tales were to be believed.
But I couldn’t delay much longer.
The ritual should be happening, right this second, and where the fuck was Varian?
Ariel drifted closer, like she was carried on the wind, stopping just in front of me, our eyes meeting through the shimmer of magic, nothing else separating us except a nearly invisible layer of power that might not keep someone like her out.
Her eyes were fogged by an opaque mist, bare toes already brushing the edge of the painted circle as she craned her neck, searching for a way through.
“You’re too late, Venmir,” I muttered, shaking my head in disgust at her skeletal condition. “And sending a girl to do your dirty work. You’re nothing but a coward.”
“Those relics will be mine. You’ll never succeed. I’ll kill you, like I killed your father before you, and my only regret will be that you won’t get to watch me bend the Rooke magic to my will.”
I ignored him.
Every second mattered now; there was no room for error.
I had to keep going and pray my circle held.
Pray the gods took pity on me and blessed me with the Rooke magic.
I lifted my left hand and pressed my other palm against the Thorn's edge.
The blade bit deep, blood welling up immediately—darker than it should be, threaded through with veins of gold that glowed in the darkness.
Rooke blood. My blood.
Magic made manifest.
Magic drawn close to the surface. Magic I could taste, like bitter berries.
Ariel let out a low, keening moan, reaching, reaching, trembling fingers toward me before she yanked back with a hiss.
I let my blood drip onto the Mirror's surface. One drop. Two. Seven. Thirteen.
The Mirror drank my blood like a drowning man gasped for air.
Greedily, every drop disappeared, then the surface rippled, igniting with inner light—black shot through with veins of gold.
The faces of my ancestors became clear, a sea of dark blue eyes opening one by one, all of those judgmental gazes fixed on me.
Don’t fuck this up, seemed to be their message.
Believe me, I’m trying not to.
Now, the grimoire had instructed. Drive the Thorn through the Mirror's heart.
I gripped the Thorn with both hands, my palms slick against the golden handle. I raised the blade high, the tip pointing downward, and for a moment I hesitated. This was irreversible. Once the Triune was bound to me, I would become its keeper, its key, its prisoner.
“By thorn and crown and silvered glass, I lock these powers deep,
I call you from the shattered past and wake you from your sleep,
Become my blade, my crown, my right, the weapon of my line,
And wake the sleeping might of all my ancestors in kind.”
“Noooo,” Ariel screamed, throwing herself against the ward with a thundering crash.
My entire world tilted sideways, the Thorn slipping from my hand, clattering onto the floor, spinning round and round through the edge of the blood circle…
Landing right at Ariel’s feet.