Simon,
If Kestra survives the journey, then by the time you read this, she will be at the Blue Caves. She will leave them with magic in her fingertips and full memories of her role as Infidante.
Therefore, from this moment forward, any connection between you and Kestra is severed.
For your past defiance to me, you will give your life to the Halderians as their king, or I will take your life. I am Captain of the Coracks and I will have my way in the end.
Dominion armies are on their way toward Reddengrad. Trina is in command of your group, and I will join you as soon as possible. When I arrive, I will either greet a king or execute a fool. The choice is yours.
Your captain,
Grey Tenger
I crumpled the note and tossed it into the weeds, watching Trina’s shoulders deflate as I did.
“Simon—”
“Now I know why you offered to stay behind. You must have been bouncing on your toes in anticipation of watching me read it.”
She pointed at Gabe as Huge lifted him to the ground. “I stayed to treat him. And I need your help.”
“Let Basil do it, I won’t—”
“Gabe is your best friend, Simon, or he was. Help me!”
Numb to anything else happening around me, I dug through our saddlebags for the supplies Trina listed and passed them to Basil, who carried them over to her. Then I held Gabe while she wrapped the visible wounds.
“I’m sure his worst injuries are internal,” Trina said. “We should wait here a few hours and see how he’s doing. If he’s better, Huge will take him to Loelle.”
“I’ll take him now.” She knew full well why I was offering.
But Trina shook her head. “We have other orders. We’re going to the Hiplands.”
Of course we were. With a scowl, I asked, “Do you know why he wants me to be king? It’s because he can’t manipulate Commander Mindall. But he believes he can control me!”
She sighed, obviously tired of arguing. “If you’ve proven anything over the past couple of weeks, it’s that no one can control you. Take the throne or don’t, but either way, that’s where the Dominion is headed and we both know their plans for the Halderians. We have to help them.”
She was right about that much. War was certainly coming to Reddengrad, and the quickest route to their capital was straight through the Hiplands.
I heard the crackle of paper and looked over to see Basil holding the note from Tenger. When he’d read it, he frowned up at me. “Trina’s right. The Hiplands have to be our priority now.”
I snatched the note from his hands and stuffed it into the pocket of my coat. “You’re comfortable, then, abandoning Kestra to go to the Hiplands?”
“Of course not,” he replied. “But defending the Halderians must be our priority. Of all people, you should agree with me.”
Of all people.
I snorted and marched back to my horse to tend to its needs. Except that wasn’t really why I was there. I needed some way to get Kestra out of my mind, maybe forever. For all my efforts to save her from Tenger, he had won in the end. He had ripped her away from me and written that letter to gloat over his victory.
Trina said, “You should all get some sleep while you can. I slept earlier, so I’ll keep watch for a few hours.”
Huge offered to rest at the far end of camp and to keep one eye open for trouble as he slept. I had no doubt he meant that literally. I laid out my bedroll to guard the opposite end of camp, then groaned when Basil laid his nearby.
I closed my eyes, rolled away from him, and pretended to sleep.
“I do care for her,” Basil said. “But there’s nothing either of us can do for her now. You know that, right?”
“I’m trying to sleep, Basil.”
“The girl who’s with her now, the girl from Brill. I don’t trust her.”
Trina must have been eavesdropping. She said, “Wynnow has done nothing to earn your mistrust.”
“It’s not just me. Ask your physician—Loelle. She doesn’t trust Wynnow either.”
“She doesn’t like Wynnow, which is different. Loelle doesn’t like anyone from Brill.”
“Nor do we. There are reasons why Reddengrad has no formal relationship with Brill,” Basil continued. “They will cheat and lie and destroy others if necessary and without guilt because they consider the rest of us inferior. Worst of all, their long lifespans afford them great patience. Don’t you think it’s suspicious that they sent you the heir to their throne?”
“Reddengrad also sent us the heir to their throne.” I rolled over, making sure Basil felt my eyes on him. “Should we doubt your loyalties too?”
“I risked my kingdom to save Kestra’s life!”
“And her gratitude was expressed in promptly ending your engagement.” I sat up, though my head swarmed with dizziness. “Let’s settle this, shall we?”
Basil studied me a moment. “Still feeling the effects of the other night?”
“No.” I straightened up and thought that if I did get sick, I’d aim it all toward him. “Why do you ask?”
He smiled but glanced away. “She never poisoned me, that’s all I’m saying.”
Near us, Trina chuckled, still listening in. Fortunately, Gabe began coughing, which took her away to tend to him. It left Basil and me free to really talk.
“I don’t understand why she broke our engagement,” Basil said. “She only told me that she was confused.”
“There’s no confusion in her feelings. She didn’t want your affections before her memory loss and she doesn’t want them now.”
“Don’t you think I know that?” Basil said. “I saw the way she acted whenever you were nearby, and how patiently she endured my company when we were alone. I know where her heart is, where it really is. But,” he quickly added, “I truly do care for her.”
Trina began walking again through the camp, so I lowered my eyes, and my voice as well. For now, this was only between him and me. “If that’s true, then she still needs our help. She’ll leave the Blue Caves with magic. You understand what that means?”
Basil took a moment to absorb that, but he finally raked his fingers through his hair and said, “I can’t believe I’m saying this, Simon, but I think we may have something to agree on. She needs our help, together.”
I reached over and shook his hand, then we lay down to finally get some sleep. Despite my exhaustion, I stayed awake with lines of thoughts streaming in every direction through my head.
If I saw Kestra again, everything would be different. Magic would bring her more enemies, fewer friends, and an indistinguishable line between the two. Tenger was a perfect example of that, the friend who would give her magic, and the enemy who would one day kill her for it.
Stranger still, Basil had just agreed to help me protect her. We were finally on the same side of an idea.
From there, things became more complicated. I would have to go to the Hiplands, and if by some miracle we succeeded in holding back the Dominion, maybe I would have the chance to see Kestra again and determine for myself if things were truly over.
They were. I already knew it.
Tenger was about to destroy her in a way that Lord Endrick never could have dreamed of doing.
At the very least, he intended to separate us, maybe forever.
Which meant he was about to destroy me too.
I had awoken in the night long enough to know that I was in a wagon, that someone was aware of the fierce pain in me, and that they were trying to keep it as far as possible from my heart. It was no use. I was dying.
I tried to speak, and someone who identified herself as Wynnow offered me a drink from a skin. I didn’t remember anyone named Wynnow. And I wasn’t thirsty. I wasn’t anything.
The sun was high in the sky before the wagon stopped, I knew that much, though I didn’t know where we were.
A man said something about Blue Caves. I’d heard of them before, somewhere.
“Why are we
slowing?” a woman with an older-sounding voice asked. “She’s running out of time.”
The hourglass had already run out for me. My time was finished, so why did my crushed heart keep beating? Something was sustaining me, something beyond myself.
It was that woman who’d just spoken. Loelle? Somehow, I felt her connection to me. She was using magic to keep me alive, even as Endrick was using magic to kill me.
“We have to be sure there’s no Dominion around,” the man said. “The last thing we need is a fight here—or worse, to find Lord Endrick.”
Lord Endrick. Hearing his name sent a wave of pain through me and I moaned. I didn’t want to fight him anymore, I didn’t want to fight anything anymore, not even for my own life.
“Hurry!” Loelle said.
“I’ll protect us,” a girl said, though I faded before she finished speaking.
When I awoke again, I was being lifted from the wagon by a set of arms and then whoever they belonged to was running. Wherever we were going, the air around us was changing. It was bitter and icy cold. I began shivering and vaguely heard a voice say, “Something’s wrong.”
“No,” Loelle said. “She senses the magic.”
“Then is she awake?”
Silence passed. I wasn’t awake, but I wasn’t asleep either. I was just … existing.
“Give her to me,” Loelle said, and my all-but-lifeless body was passed into her arms. She grunted under my weight, and I perceived through my closed eyes that the light around us was nearly gone.
“Where …” I mumbled. That was all I managed to say, and it was a waste of effort. I knew these were the Blue Caves. I knew where I was. I wanted to tell her not to take me inside.
But after a few steps, I felt differently. The cold embraced me, enveloping me in its own protective shield. It swirled around me and within me and became part of me. I felt myself breathing easier, breathing deeper, and with each breath, I felt more alive. Light slowly began to fill the darkness, but it wasn’t the white light of death or the yellow light of the sun.
It was blue.
Blue like the skies on a summer day. Or like the Ashwater Sea just north of Highwyn. A warmer shade of blue even than sapphires, the same stones that were set into the eyes of the Sentries outside the capital.
I opened my eyes and saw an enormous cave of black rock that appeared almost turquoise in the light. What was causing the strong shades of blue in here? My head felt foggy, making it hard to think.
“Don’t be afraid,” Loelle whispered. “I’ll stay right beside you.”
She lowered me gently into a bed of water, where I drew my first comfortable breath in hours. The water was cool, even cold, but I felt warm. More than that, I felt life pouring into me such as I’d never experienced before. It was healing my heart, or returning it to me, freeing it from Endrick’s power. I flattened my palm over my chest and felt each beat, stronger than the one before it. I was an Ironheart no longer.
“I should be dead,” I whispered, then glanced up at Loelle. “You saved my life.”
Her smile was kind. Obviously, this wasn’t the first time Loelle had heard those words, but it was the first time I’d ever spoken them with a full realization of how inadequate my gratitude was.
She said, “You will leave these caves a different person than you were before. What will you do with this second chance at life?”
I smiled back at her. “My hopes are what they always were. I want my final words before death to simply be that I lived.”
She nodded, pleased with my answer. “Then you had better begin.”
I followed her gaze to the far end of the water where the source of the light came from deep below, casting the entire pool in a strong blue glow.
Loelle allowed me to observe that for a few minutes, then I asked, “What is that light?”
“That is the source of Endrean magic. It fills these waters. Kestra, it is filling you.”
I knew I was supposed to protest, that the consequences of what was happening to me could be terrible. I remembered how hard Simon had fought to keep me away from here, but as I lay immersed in these waters, my only thought was how wrong he had been. That if he understood how beautiful it was, how beautiful magic was, he would know that this was the right place for me.
“I want magic,” I said to Loelle.
“You were born to this.” Loelle had been dipping her hand into the water and now brushed her wet hand over my hair. “Claim your powers. Claim that which belongs to you.”
“I’m only half Endrean. Will that matter?”
“That’s what we’re here to find out,” she said. “But if your body could not tolerate magic, then you would have died in these waters.”
“I’m more alive than I’ve ever been.” I smiled over at her. “I want to swim.”
She smiled back. “Go, my lady.”
I dove into the water, breathing in the cool water as easily as I’d breathe air. Magic became my air instead, my life. The water flowed through my lungs and veins, transforming me, changing me, making me whole. The closer I swam to the blue light, the warmer I felt, the more complete I became. I passed through the blue glow to the light itself, basking in its presence until I knew upon swimming away that the light would come with me, because I was the light and the light was me.
Until I knew I had magic.
I surfaced near where I’d left Loelle, but emerged from the water perfectly dry. Stronger than ever, perfectly whole.
I raised my hands in front of me to examine them, turning them forward, then back. I ran them down my body, checking for signs of anything physically different about me.
Loelle laughed. “You look as you did before, you’ll think and act as you did before. But you will not be as you always were. You are greater than that now, or you will be, as soon as you come to understand all that you can do.”
“I want to know, I want to understand.” I reached my arms into the air, stretching my body as magic continued to spread through me. I felt it building in me, spreading strength as it traveled. Spreading light and power and knowledge. Things I didn’t even know that I knew.
Suddenly, I stumbled back, pressing a hand to my temple and gasping. Loelle stood. “My lady?”
It took a moment to catch my breath again, but only because I’d been caught completely off guard. I collapsed to my knees, trying to absorb what was happening to me.
Memories were flashing back into my mind, faster than I could sort them or separate them, like a series of pictures being thrust in front of my eyes, one after another after another.
“It’s all right.” Loelle brushed her hand across my back, lovingly, like a mother might do. Maybe like my mother had done for me, long ago.
I closed my eyes tight, but that only made it worse. “I can’t stop what’s happening, Loelle. I can’t see everything all at once.”
Her hand pressed against my back and my breaths became more even again. “They’ll slow down, in time,” she said. “And they’ll begin to come together.”
“Some are wonderful,” I said, noting a memory of my adopted mother, Lily, swinging me around by the hands in the gardens of Woodcourt. “Others are not.” I wished that closing my eyes was enough to keep out the worst of my history. Awful as those brief glimpses into my past were, no sooner had I retreated from the horror than the best of memories took their place. I tried to latch on to one and explore it further, but then it too turned to another and another again.
“Loelle, please help me!” Dizziness overwhelmed me, and my emotions were becoming stirred up. I collapsed to the ground.
Loelle crouched beside me and placed her hands on either side of my face. It didn’t slow the memories, but whatever she was doing calmed my responses to them.
“It takes great courage to relive one’s past,” Loelle said. “But you are the sum of all your memories. To withhold the bad would be to deprive yourself of all that those difficult times taught you. You can do this, Kestra.”
&
nbsp; “I have to.” I grabbed her arm and she helped me stand again. “I’ll tell you what I’m seeing. If you can explain it, I want to know. I want to know who I am.”
My eyes were already open when Trina called for us to rise. I’d barely slept ten minutes together and I had a pounding ache in my head, each pulse seeming to repeat Kestra’s name, a constant reminder that by now, she had claimed her Endrean heritage.
If that had happened, then I should have been happy that at least she was alive, and I was. But I also understood far too well that her fate was sealed now. I might already be too late to stop the events that were now set in motion against her.
I looked over at Basil as we began saddling our horses. “Before we go to Reddengrad, you need to send word to Tenger about where the Olden Blade is.”
Before I’d finished speaking, Basil began shaking his head, as if he’d already known that request was coming. “I’ll reveal that after the Halderians agree to fight with my country. Not a moment before.”
I stopped working to stare at him openmouthed. “How can you be so stubborn? If Kestra’s alive, she needs to retrieve it.”
“How can you be so stubborn?” Basil countered. “You refuse to do your part to seal our agreement, and then—”
“What you and Tenger decided has never been my agreement!” I shouted. “I owe you nothing!”
“Enough!” Trina pushed between us, then in a calmer voice to Basil added, “We have our orders and not a lot of time. Huge will take Gabe to recover at the Lonetree Camp. The three of us need to be on our way to the Hiplands.”
I shook my head, transferring my anger from Basil to her. “I won’t obey your orders, Trina. Not when I know your betrayal!”
Her eyes widened. “What are you talking about?”
“You sent a message to the Halderians, telling them where Kestra would be that day. That’s why they attacked!”
“I never—”
“I found the etchings in your notepad. I saw what you wrote to them.”
Trina shook her head. “I didn’t arrange that attack, Simon.”
“Then explain how they knew. Explain the note! Explain why your ears perk up every time the Olden Blade is mentioned. If Kestra dies, you will be first to try to claim it!”
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