by Hannah West
“Imagine,” he said, jumping nimbly from the chair. “This incantation is capable of bringing our loved ones back. But I’m the only one who can speak it.”
I fought it. I fought it with all of my being, but it came to me regardless: a vision of Ivria rising from her ashes, smiling the way she used to. There would be a glow about her, a glow from the beyond, but it would fade as she settled back into her ordinary life. We would talk of everything and nothing, as we always had. She would be exactly the same.
But my father—he would have changed. He would no longer be a maddening ghost of a man, no longer restless and troubled. He would look at me and see me. He would know that I needed him more than he needed to escape the confines of a life he should never have chosen for himself.
Devorian tugged on the bottom edges of the tablet and gently pried it from my hands, striding over to the mantel that held his parents’ remains. Realizing I had tumbled into a fantasy, I jolted after him.
“You know a resurrection spell would only bring back husks of your parents,” I said to his back.
He whipped around, lips stretched into a sneer. “They call you Ivria’s murderer, don’t they? Not to your face, but they whisper it in their own hearts just as you whisper it in yours. What if you were her savior?”
“Enough!” I yelled, my voice hoarse with grief.
“Ivria doesn’t have to be dead.” He caught one of the nearby girls by the forearm and steered her in front of me. “Tell her Ivria’s not dead,” he commanded her.
“Ivria’s not dead,” she repeated blandly.
“Don’t put this poison in my mind, you beast of a man!” I pushed past the girl to grasp at the tablet, but Devorian easily fended me off, twisting my arm hard enough to make me squeal. He ripped the tablet from my grip and flung me so close to the fire I nearly stumbled into the flames.
Devorian let out a piercing whistle, followed by a soft hum. His eyes traced the mystical runes as he held the tablet, firelight stretching his narrow features to wicked angles. He had begun the incantation.
Pushing off the mantel, I sprang forward and locked a hand over his mouth. I drew my dagger with the other and pressed the edge of the blade to the soft flesh of his throat.
After a breathless beat, Devorian began to laugh. My teeth locked together. I could become the fiercest, most cunning magician in the realm and elicromancers would still laugh at me. I wasn’t suddenly fearsome because I’d gained power—I was a clumsy, hopeless creature who broke everything she touched.
I pricked the very tip of my knife through Devorian’s pale flesh. As with Melkior, this physical release was the only tonic to soothe the anger that roiled through my veins, collecting magical vigor as it rushed to destroy.
“Sararesth,” Devorian hissed in response, shoving my knife away. He turned on me and his magenta elicrin stone shone radiant. The women scattered to the far side of the room while a whip of light shot out from his stone and snaked around my wrists, binding them together at my navel. Devorian smiled a lazy smile as my knife clattered to the floor.
Then he started the incantation from the beginning.
“Stop, Devorian!” I yelled. But the prince only raised his voice to drown me out. The utterances grew louder and more haunting as he became sure of himself, looking up at the twin urns each time he had to pause for breath.
“Stop!” I screamed. My temper was heating as I fought against my bonds, the power inside me still churning.
But before I inflicted any damage, Devorian’s shouting in the bizarre tongue quieted. He had finished the incantation.
We glared at each other as we drank in air. The light from his elicrin stone snuffed out, but the language lingered around us like echoes in a cave.
I watched helplessly as a crack crawled down the center of the tablet. With a deafening snap, the artifact split asunder and clunked to the marble floor.
Shadows passed by the balcony. We looked out to see a red moon partly masked by black clouds in a starless sky. The palace trembled as if responding to a faraway quake. Many of the women scurried from the room while others covered their heads and sank to the floor in fear. I knew my magic was not responsible for these disturbances.
“What have you done?” I whispered.
“I—I…” Devorian stammered.
“What have you done?” I roared.
The balcony doors slammed shut, shattering the glass. Bits of the ceiling crumbled and rained down on us. This time, it was no mysterious outside force, but the power that hibernated inside me. It ground across the rest of my being like steel against iron, and I wasn’t sure which was stronger, which would eventually break into brittle pieces.
My power overcame me. It wreaked havoc on everything.
Then the world faded to black.
ABS of pain shot up my hands and elbows. The back of my head throbbed. I coughed and blinked my eyes open, seeing only broken glass, dust, and rubble.
The library looked like the site of a ferocious battle. The bookshelves had toppled, and stray volumes littered the floor. Blood gleamed on bits of glass around me. After dabbing the top of my head with my fingertips, I realized it was mine.
I pushed up on my elbows, fearing carnage worse than I could imagine. But there was no one. The prince’s guests must have escaped before I turned the room to wreckage. Where had Devorian gone?
Fighting the faintness that made my vision tilt, I stood. My mouth was dry, which I attributed to the passing of time. The crimson moon could no longer be seen from the balcony, and tinges of dawn lurked outside the windows.
My soles crunched over the debris. The bed coverings were in tatters on the floor. The doors had been ripped from their frame. The urns had toppled off the mantel, their ashes scattered.
I did this.
The thought sickened me. Stepping around the tablet halves, I picked up my knife and passed through the open doorway into the corridor, where the candles on the sconces had burned low, their wax dripping like tears. But I halted and took a single step backward into the library.
Amid the wreckage, the marks hadn’t caught my eye at first. They were distinct: five diagonal scratches on the stone doorframe, each the length of my forearm. What could have abraded stone in that manner? I ran my fingertips along the strange markings. An inexplicable terror bored into my belly.
“Devorian?” I called. His name tasted like a curse on my tongue after what he had done. His words had turned the moon to blood and blotted out the stars. The ashes from the urns were still just ashes. But had something risen from them?
I roamed the dark hallways in search of Devorian, one of his servants, anyone. I found only more rugged markings on the walls. Slow-building terror mounted inside me. Whispers seemed to come from the very walls, the candelabras, the portraits. I touched the dried blood on my crown and the sore spot beneath it, hoping the wound was responsible for these delusions.
Panic began to pound in my chest as I crossed another set of markings and followed them to the next, letting them guide me up more and more stairs until I wondered if I was imagining them too.
At last, I followed a cold stairwell to a tower, the highest by my estimation. Tears of desperation stung my cheeks.
The door at the top had been dismantled. “Devorian?” I tried to say, but his name was barely more than a whisper. Darkness filled the room. I recalled the tale of Princess Rosamund, how Tamarice had tried to kill her with a curse but instead trapped her in an unconsciousness between life and death. After Bristal destroyed Tamarice and broke the curse, she found Rosamund alive and hidden away in this very tower—a happy ending for the heroine.
I cleared my throat and said the prince’s name again. This time, a shadow in the room shifted—no, not a shadow, but a mass of shadows. The handheld mirror I’d seen on the table in the library flashed with muted dawn light.
“Don’t look at me,” a gruff voice said. “Leave, unless you can undo this.”
I gasped and staggered back, nearly tripping down the
stairs. The voice was deep and ghastly, but it held a familiar dulcet quality. I squinted against the meager light of approaching dawn, discerning an enormous figure with a coat of bristling fur, hunched shoulders, jutting horns, and deadly claws that gripped the mirror handle.
“I said leave!” the creature bellowed, turning in my direction, its hot breath whisking loose hairs away from my face.
I ran.
My feet couldn’t tread down the winding steps fast enough. I fancied that the creature—Devorian, I admitted with a bout of nausea—pursued me with haste, raking at the walls as it went. But even when I burst out the front entrance and realized nothing had followed, I felt no relief.
My capacity to ruin did not stop at inanimate entities.
I wondered whether it could be stopped at all.
* * *
I ran until I reached the warped metal gates and grasped the rusty bars, fighting to fill my empty lungs. When I flung a frightened glance over my shoulder, the front door gaped at me like a dragon’s maw.
“What have you done?”
I whipped around. Ambrosine stood outside the gates, a silver filigree mirror like Devorian’s clutched in her hand. Glisette materialized behind her. They both still wore dressing gowns and slippers. Devorian had shown them his face.
Ambrosine yanked the broken gate open and the rusted metal screamed. The wind tugged on her golden hair and strewed it across her face. “Turn him back,” she said.
A loud clattering drew my gaze beyond the two sisters. The covered carriage we’d taken from Arna rumbled up the road. A second dose of dread leapt from my stomach to my throat like bile.
Glisette slipped past me and ran up the steps to the open doorway. But the broad door swung on its hinges and slammed shut in her face. “Devorian!” she called, pounding on the wood.
The carriage halted and Grandmum stepped out, her eyes like frigid pools. Perennia followed, blanching with obvious remorse. “I had to tell her everything,” Perennia said to me. “Once I saw…saw…”
I swallowed hard and resisted the urge to cast my eyes at the ground. The horses took up a high-pitched, restless neighing, perhaps sensing the presence of an unnatural creature nearby. A chill hurried up my spine.
“Have you no sense?” Grandmum’s voice teemed with restrained fury as she cast a long shadow over me.
“I—I was trying to—”
“Where’s the tablet? Did they ask Devorian to translate it?”
“I tried to stop him,” I croaked. Perennia must have told her about the men in white cloaks, and my clever grandmother had pieced everything together. “He read the runes aloud. He broke it.”
Grandmum pinned her thin lips closed and pivoted on her heel.
“I’m sorry!” I cried, launching myself after her. “They begged me to talk to him.” I gestured back at the princesses. “They said Devorian would never let you inside, much less listen to you.”
“I wouldn’t have needed him to listen,” she barked, gripping the door of the passenger compartment. “If I had known, I would have retrieved the tablet with or without his cooperation. This is beyond your purview, girl. Did he recognize them? The Summoners?”
“No. They wear masks. All they told him was that they needed him to read the incantation.”
“What incantation?” Perennia asked, shivering in her silk sleeves. “What was that quaking in the middle of the night?”
“How she’s going to fix Devorian is the only question that matters!” Glisette yelled over her younger sister as she stormed back to us.
“Devorian performed some sort of resurrection ritual,” I explained, frantic. “I tried to stop him and—”
“Resurrection ritual?” Perennia repeated. “You mean…he tried to raise our…?”
“Did it work?” Ambrosine asked, hope illuminating her face like a summer sunrise.
“You foolish girls,” Grandmum said, looking from them to me. “You have no idea what he’s set in motion.”
I clamped a hand over my mouth as I weighed the urgency in her eyes. Peeling my hand away, I asked, “What? What does the incantation do?”
“Awaken something best left undisturbed. And no, not your mother and father,” she snapped at the princesses, her tone wildly out of character. The rosiness fled from Ambrosine’s cheeks.
“What did it awaken?” I asked, trembling. I recalled what she had shared with me about the Summoners: worshippers of an entity they call the Lord of Elicromancers.
“A great evil lost to memory,” Grandmum answered, stepping into the coach. “But only Malyrra truly knows.”
“Who’s Malyrra?” I asked.
“The ambassador will make sure you reach Yorth,” she continued, ignoring my question. “Bring the tablet and tell the Realm Alliance what’s happened.”
“What do I do about Devorian?”
“You’ve done enough. Someone will know how to right him.”
“Where are you going?”
“To find Malyrra, if I can, among the fay,” she replied, looking me square in the eye. “To ask them what exactly you and Devorian have unleashed on Nissera.”
Had Grandmum gone mad? The fay were ancient ancestors of modern fairies, long extinct.
There was no time to ask. The carriage door slammed shut and the nervous horses seemed keen to answer the coachman’s prodding. The silence felt thick in the wake of their hooves striking cobblestones.
The sisters exchanged fraught glances before ascending to the entrance. Knees feeble and head throbbing, I trailed behind.
Ambrosine knocked. “Devorian?” she called softly, her voice wavering, as though she feared as much as hoped he would answer the summons.
The slat slammed sideways. Amid the shadows, I saw a flash of sharp canines. The eye looking out shone a burnished yellow-gold.
The sisters screeched and stumbled back. Perennia braced herself and whispered chants meant to help lift dark curses. “Hirafeth. Maras tacaral.” Dispel the darkness. Restore what was.
“Devorian,” Ambrosine ventured again. “Did the resurrection work?”
“No!” he roared. “They’re nothing but ashes. And I’m…”
His golden eye shot toward me. I cringed and fought the urge to scurry away.
Ambrosine clung to the open slot and emitted a sob. “Maybe Valory’s curse will fade.”
The word curse stung like a biting wind. Accidental outbursts of magic were one matter. A curse implied something else.
“Is there any word of the Water trickling back after she dried it up?” Glisette demanded, flinging aside the ridiculous train of her dressing gown to pace along the threshold. “No, because it’s still a pit in the woods with no magic. She needs to undo this.”
“I can’t,” I whispered.
“He’s a deformed creature, you useless twit!” Glisette spat, but by the time she finished, oncoming tears had broken through her temper. She gripped my shoulders and shook me. “You can’t leave without fixing this.”
I shoved her away. “Don’t you understand? You shouldn’t have asked anything of me! I can only warp and destroy. What did you expect?” I was nearly snarling, jabbing my finger like a weapon, eager to blame anyone but myself. “You goaded me into this.”
Glisette bared teeth that glistened like pearls, but the sneer soon slid off her face, leaving only despair.
Shame twisted in my gut. I raked in a breath and approached the prince. “I’m going straight to the Realm Alliance, Devorian. We’ve both done wrong. For my part, I’m sorry. I never meant for this to happen. I want to fix this, and I will ask for grace on both our behalves. But I need to bring the tablet so they understand what we’ve set in motion.”
A beat passed. The yellow-gold eye turned on me and the churlish voice ripped through the quiet. “You believe there’s someone who can break this curse?”
“The Realm Alliance will know what to do. But I can’t go empty-handed.”
“Step back,” he purred. “Turn around.”
/>
I retreated to the lowest step and did as he asked.
“All of you,” he growled.
With a choked sob, Ambrosine turned her back on the palace. The other two followed.
A lock clicked and the heavy door swung open. I flinched when the broken tablet clattered on the threshold.
“Tell them I’m sorry,” he said before slamming the door shut.
I whirled and started toward the iridescent tablet halves, but Ambrosine swept past me to pick one up and cradle it against her chest.
“What are you doing?” I demanded, snatching the other before she could.
“Mother and Father,” Ambrosine said, looking at her sisters. “The Realm Alliance will want to undo this if they can. But what if the resurrection is still in process?”
“Didn’t you hear the old woman?” Glisette asked. “That’s not what this does. Besides, resurrection rituals don’t bring back the person you’ve lost, just a shell that doesn’t belong in the world of the living.”
Tears tumbled down Ambrosine’s cheeks. “Just to see them again,” she said through a smile that prickled the hairs on my arm. She didn’t care how they came back. “Can you imagine?”
“I won’t imagine it,” Glisette said. I stepped aside so she could close the distance between them. The cloudy purple chalcedony at her sternum swelled with white light, and a distinct chill laced through the breeze. I hoped she was prepared to fight for the tablet; I couldn’t risk inciting another disaster. “And you shouldn’t either. Mother and Father are gone.”
Ambrosine resembled a cornered animal. The tiniest glimpse of light surfaced in her sky-blue elicrin stone, but she expelled another anguished sob and surrendered the tablet to Glisette, who handed it to me.
“Leave,” Glisette said to me, her bright eyes merciless. “Don’t show your face in Pontaval until you’ve fixed this.”
Eager to oblige her, I hurried away with the tablets, once again turning my back on the havoc I had wrought.
S we neared Beyrian, the city sprawling on a southern coastal inlet, I could taste the briny air and feel the sun’s warmth, but I couldn’t escape the recesses of my darkest thoughts.