by Elise Kova
Vi focused on Raylynn. “Baldair will not survive this. In some ways, that might be a blessing. If the future remains unchanged—” which was a bigger “if” than any of them could know “—there is a storm coming that will claim the lives of many in this city. Even if I saved Baldair now, I’m certain he would be taken then. Fate would catch up with him in more brutal ways each time his life was stolen from it. But if you were to leave—”
“No.”
“But you could—”
“I will stay by his side to the end.” Raylynn met Baldair’s gaze. The prince’s ocean-blue eyes were filled with tears. “On my terms,” she added.
But what Vi heard was, I love you.
“If you stay here much longer, you might not survive.” Vi didn’t know how she could make the woman understand that while Baldair’s life would come to an end regardless, hers wasn’t conscripted by fate.
“Death comes for us all.”
The expression knocked the wind from Vi. She remembered Taavin’s words and how ready he was to give himself over to fate. Before her were two people who had accepted much the same.
“It was fun while it lasted,” Baldair said to the woman gently caressing him.
“It was,” Raylynn agreed.
Vi stood wordlessly, excusing herself from the room. She gave the lovers space until dawn, waiting in the main room of the royal apartment. A new cleric arrived shortly after and Raylynn left with Vi.
They departed the Imperial wing of the palace together, stopping at an intersection in the servants’ halls. Raylynn paused, and Vi stood silently beside her.
“Thank you,” Raylynn said finally.
“You have nothing to thank me for.” Not yet, at least.
A tired smile crossed her lips. “Then why do I have the distinct feeling I have quite a lot to thank you for?” Vi’s lips parted. Raylynn held out her hand. “So, thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” she managed to squeak out. Vi’s fingers closed around hers and they clasped palms tightly.
With that, the golden-haired swordswoman departed in the opposite direction, as though this was the moment their fates diverged. Vi watched her go. Vi let her go.
Silent tears streamed down her face and fell to the floor in heavy drops. Vi fled to a quiet room where she could mourn alone. She wept for all the hardship and hurt, for everyone she’d lost all over again, and for the family she’d never known.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Vi staggered back to the Tower library. She impressed herself that she managed to change into black robes lifted from a storeroom along the way. Sure enough, Taavin was there, waiting on a window seat, reading, and looking as if he didn’t have a care in the world.
“You were gone quite a while.” He closed his book slowly. Dawn was breaking over his shoulder.
“Prince Baldair is dead.”
Taavin observed her, saying nothing. He didn’t even move. Vi wondered if he was judging her for what she confessed to the prince and Raylynn. She wouldn’t be surprised if somehow he knew what had transpired.
“Is he?”
“Yes.” Vi closed the distance and determinedly wedged herself between Taavin and the window. His arm wrapped around her. His embrace was the one thing that could keep her together. “Well, I don’t think he’s dead yet, but he will be very soon.”
Taavin was quiet for a long moment. Vi met his eyes in the reflection of the window. “Will we be searching for the axe today?”
“I don’t think so. The death of the youngest prince will be the catalyst. All of this is going to come to an end very soon.”
“You think so?”
Vi nodded. “If Vhalla has the axe, I think she might seek out the Caverns on her own to try to find some cure for him, or a way to cheat death.”
“Ah, cheating death—you get it from your mother.”
“Not funny,” Vi said deadpan.
“Forgive me.” He kissed her neck lightly and Vi wriggled closer to him.
“Let’s just… wait here for a while and see what happens? I’m tired, and just want to exist quietly for a while.”
“Certainly.”
At some point, she fell asleep in his arms. Around her, the day began like any other. Guards showed up for work, servants cleaned the halls, and the Tower initiates went in and out of their library, looking oddly at the anonymous couple in the corner.
Once more, time drifted around them and they remained untouched. Vi didn’t feel the turning of the hours. She didn’t feel hunger gnawing at her or exhaustion pricking her eyes. Taavin’s arms were stasis. They were the strength she needed to stand when the moment came.
And it came in the form of two familiar voices.
“… if there’s one thing Elecia would hate more, it would be being someone else’s puppet.”
Aldrik and Vhalla sprinted by the library opening. The man was half dragging her, leaving Vhalla to take two steps for every one of his long strides. Without needing to be asked, Taavin stood and extended his hand to Vi.
“What will your father…” Vhalla’s voice faded away as they continued racing up the tower.
“Shall we?” Taavin asked, almost thoughtfully.
“Fate won’t let us linger much longer. Durroe watt radia.”
Taavin echoed her and they sprinted behind the prince and the Windwalker. Vi and Taavin passed the Minister’s office in time to see the lone uppermost door in the Tower closing.
“I gave him that key,” Vi whispered.
“What?”
“Years ago… that was the room I was in when I first came to the Tower. Aldrik was just a boy. The night I left, I gave him the key.”
Taavin was silent for a long moment. Then, he whispered with fragile optimism, “Perhaps this is all how it was meant to be. Perhaps this really is the time we will succeed.”
“Let’s hope.”
Aldrik stepped out into the hall once more and began to stride down and away. Vi heard the click of the lock engage behind him. He was trying to protect Vhalla from his father? Had she overheard their conversation correctly?
“Let’s get a head start. They’ll go to the Caverns tonight. I know they will.”
They left the palace and rode out of the city. Vi set their course, heading down the Great Imperial Way, not taking the expected shortcut to the Caverns.
“It had to snow,” Vi grumbled. She doubted kot sorre would work in snow as well as it had in the sands of the Waste. She imagined strange-looking snow banks at the ends of ditches where her glyphs pushed through the powder.
“I suspected that’s why you were swinging wide.”
“We should have time. We’ll go to the cabin first and leave the horse there. We’ll continue on foot. It’ll be less noticeable than the horse’s tracks.” She prayed there was enough time for all of it.
But Yargen looked over them. She and Taavin made it to the cabin in record time. They started the hike to the entrance of the Caverns, Vi walking ahead with Taavin stepping in the footprints she left behind. Then they repeated “kot sorre” over and over. Their glyphs grazed the top of the powder, pushing and piling it to cover their tracks.
Just as they reached the cliff in front of the entrance to the Caverns, two horses could be seen in the distance.
“You think that’s them?” Taavin whispered.
“Who else would it be?” Vi looked to Taavin. “Listen, if this goes wrong—”
“It won’t.”
“If it does… I’m sorry, for risking it all.”
“Don’t apologize.” Taavin reached up, tucking a stray strand of hair behind her ear. “All you’ve done, you did for our world. Yargen could not ask for a better Champion.”
Vi swallowed all the emotions he inspired by just looking at her. She still had so much she wanted to say to him, and time was running out. But there was no opportunity now and she had to focus on what was to come next. “We’re going to need all the chants we can get in there.”
“I ha
ve an idea.”
“What?”
“Follow me.” Taavin led her into the Caverns, the stones glimmering under their feet. The world seemed to hold its breath. Almost all of Yargen’s power was now condensed in this one place, split across her, Taavin, and the Caverns themselves. “It’s a word Yargen told me long ago… but I could never make it work right in Risen. Perhaps it was meant for here and now.”
“What are you talking about?”
Taavin gripped a nearby crystal and uttered, “Chronot.” The entire cavern flared, a rune sinking into every crystal that lined the walls. It made them all glow with fractured portions of the glyph, power illuminating every corner. Time itself seemed to hold its breath in the presence of the magic.
“Slow,” she whispered.
“What?” He seemed incredulous at the translation.
“Chronot, to slow…”
“Yes, it makes glyphs cling longer. You should be able to cast two to four at a time but… how did you know that?”
“I heard it, in the word.”
“That’s not possible,” he whispered.
“But I did.”
“Only Yargen—” The sound of hooves silenced him. “Durroe watt radia. Durroe sallvas tempre.” Taavin chanted first and Vi followed. She tapped a crystal lightly, willing the Caverns to darken to their dormant state.
“There! There’s his horse,” Victor shouted, though his voice was different—deeper in some ways and pitched in others.
“We have to hurry!”
“Carefully!”
The mounts kicked up a confetti of ice and snow as they skidded to a stop on the ridge beyond. Vhalla was astride one. But Vi blinked at the man on the other. Aldrik?
No… Magic coated the man so thickly that Vi wondered how Vhalla couldn’t feel it. Victor was using an illusion of Aldrik to get Vhalla to the Caverns. Which was clever, she’d grant him that. Perhaps he doubted Vhalla would give him the axe otherwise.
It also explained why he was doing his best impersonation of Aldrik’s voice.
“We need to go. We’re close now,” Victor said with Aldrik’s voice as he dismounted.
“Right…” Vhalla regarded the massive entrance to the Caverns warily. Vi suspected the woman’s expression was identical to her own when she’d first laid eyes on the place. Even if Vhalla couldn’t sense Victor’s illusion, she could pick up on the gravity of this ominous space.
Something caught Victor’s eye. He turned toward the valley. “We need to go!”
Vhalla worked to keep up with Victor, plunging herself into the darkness of the Caverns. Vi took a steadying breath as she laid eyes on the axe. She didn’t know the details of what was about to happen. But she knew that, one way or another, the power would finally be hers.
Victor placed a crystal in the Caverns, much as Egmun had, and the space illuminated once more. Blue and white light washed over them and magic cascaded down from the ceiling like stardust.
“There’s no time,” Victor muttered.
As the two continued forward through the first archway, Vi released Taavin’s hand and he quickly used durroe to conceal them both in sound and sight again. She could no longer tell where he was, and in the Caverns, it was nearly impossible to make out his magical signature from any other crystal. Vi pressed forward, listening in on the conversation that was continuing before her.
“…we missed Victor along the way,” Vhalla said as Vi approached the archway that led into the antechamber. She was just in time to see Victor grab her. “Aldrik, your hands are cold. Let me go.” Victor laughed at her rising panic. The sound pricked uncomfortable goosebumps into Vi’s flesh. “Let me go!”
“No, I don’t think so, my little Windwalker.” Victor had dropped his poor attempt at Aldrik’s voice. “Do you know how long I’ve bided my time? Waiting, waiting! Everything has been going according to plan, and you will not take this from me now.”
My plan, Victor. I’ve been the one who was waiting, Vi thought darkly as she watched him shed his illusion. Victor had tricks up his sleeve she wasn’t expecting, however. He produced a crystal from his pocket, slammed it into the base of Vhalla’s neck, and coated it with ice to keep it there. Vi scowled, her spark tickling her fingertips. Victor had clearly taken it upon himself to do some additional crystal research.
She combated the urge to protect Vhalla.
Vi’s focus was on the doors that Victor brought Vhalla toward by force. A new barrier was there, albeit a clumsy one. Vi had wondered what exactly happened to “end” the War of the Crystal Caverns. She always suspected that people merely stopped going there, thus, no more monsters. But judging from the traces of Aldrik’s magic in the new barrier over the doors, the man had inherited some of his mother’s intuition when it came to the crystals.
Victor lodged an insult at Vhalla and threw her against the doors.
“Rhoko.” Vi held out a hand to help the barrier fall.
She watched as blinding magic wrapped around Vhalla, tightening across her. Vi could feel an aspect of the woman’s power knotting with the crystals. Victor was using the young woman as a catalyst, trying to unlock the door himself.
If Vi released her glyph now and destroyed the barrier, Vhalla’s magic would be wrapped in with it. There was no time to separate the two; they were intertwined. Vi panicked. Severing the magic could result in Vhalla losing her power.
Your mother found the strength to overcome overwhelming odds and be reunited with her power, thanks to this.
Fritz’s words appeared in Vi’s mind, as if ushered there by Yargen herself. He’d written them on the letter attached to the watch he’d gifted her. Vhalla had lost her magic in her time, too.
Have faith, Vi commanded herself. Everything was on a course for success. If she didn’t believe that, she couldn’t complete this task.
Closing her hand into a fist, Vi yanked her arm back. The thick barrier of crystals on the door shattered.
“Kot sorre,” Taavin whispered from somewhere nearby. The doors swung open, giving Victor access to the heart of the Caverns.
The man rambled madness to Vhalla as he carried her within, throwing her down like a rag doll. Ice coated the Windwalker, keeping her in place. Vi blinked, swaying, but kept her footing. Destroying the barrier had left her momentarily stunned.
“What is he doing?” Taavin whispered at her side.
Vi watched as he laid crystals around Vhalla’s prone form. What was he doing? Vi worked to get her mind moving again after the burst of energy.
“Don’t lump me in with the incompetent fools who are so hungry for power that they are blinded by it,” Victor boasted to Vhalla. “I am of a far greater stock.” He believed that because of Vi. “Egmun thought he could take this power, but he didn’t have you.”
It clicked for Vi, then, and she wanted to scream. She’d been so focused on driving the momentum to get the weapons to the Caverns that she hadn’t thought about how old actions would echo in the future. Around and around the world spun, mistakes made and made again.
“He was Egmun’s student. He knew the same things as the former Minister… he’s going to use her as a sacrifice.” She kept her voice a whisper.
Taavin’s hand clasped over her shoulder and he was visible to her once more. The touch barely registered through the numbness that tingled over her flesh like dark magic. “What?”
“I will kill you,” Vhalla swore through chattering teeth.
“Will you? I would certainly love to see that.”
“I will. I promise.”
“That would be impressive, as this place will soon become your tomb.” The Minister affirmed Vi’s suspicions.
“Are you going to let her die?” Taavin asked. His eyes were filled with genuine uncertainty.
“I don’t want to.” But Vi couldn’t promise she wouldn’t.
Vi stepped forward, out of Taavin’s grasp. He disappeared from sight. Trusting her invisibility to remain in place thanks to chronot, Vi strode fo
rward into the living core of the Crystal Caverns. She ignored the raving lunatic and prone woman as she walked around the edge of the room. The only reason she could ignore them was because she could feel the dark god underneath her feet, waking.
She’d given Raspian a taste of freedom for the War of the Crystal Caverns, and now he knew his time had come.
“I fear, my dear, that you must die without ever seeing my new world order,” Victor was saying. “But know that your death will build a society that favors sorcerers for eons to come.”
Vi positioned her stance wide, connecting her magic with the crystals around her as Victor wielded the axe. She was ready to make the transference. It would shatter the axe before it could wound Vhalla. That was how this would end, Vi decided.
But right as Victor was about to deal his final blow, a tall shadow appeared in the distant entryway, barely visible through the archways and doors.
“Aldrik!” Vhalla screamed.
“Vhalla!”
Mother above! Vi nearly shouted.
“It seems you shall be the first Solaris to die by my hand!” Victor said with glee.
Oh, Yargen, this was becoming a mess. Fire and ice battled as Aldrik and Victor levied their magic against each other. Chaos took over the Caverns and Victor finally put a temporary pause to it when he blocked the prince’s progress with a wall of ice in the doorway.
“Rhoko,” Vi whispered, hating herself for using the word. But she had to regain some control and contain the situation. Her magic flowed through the crystals on either side of the door, strengthening Victor’s barrier of ice. Aldrik slammed into it, hard, and winced. He banged his fists against the frozen wall, bloodying them. No fire or rage was going to break through her barrier.
Vi’s chest ached as she watched the frantic prince staring at Vhalla. Her hand pulsed with the magic that was keeping them apart. This suffering and the deaths that would follow would mean something when she ultimately succeeded. That was the only thing she could cling to.
Za and Sehra were in the Caverns now, too. Vi was grateful they came and escaped the Capital, until one of the warrior’s arrows managed to pierce her barrier with a flash of light. Sehra was using her limited Lightspinning to try and get through.