by Hanna Howard
When dawn finally reached the eastern horizon, I was so emptied of light that I could no longer fly at all. I hovered a foot above the Darkness, measuring out my strength in determined droplets to keep myself from falling onto the black surface, and clenched my teeth with such force it was giving me a headache.
The stars had faded, and the moon was a pale shadow in the west. The sky was silvery blue, lightening minute by minute, bringing the sun ever closer—yet I wanted to scream for it to hurry up. My arms ached from being clamped to my sides.
“Come on!” I bellowed.
My eyes were fixed on the Darkness, along with all my hatred, but in the periphery of my vision I could see the sky turning pink again. “You’re not having me today,” I snarled down at the pitted surface.
And then, just when I thought I must fall, the first beam of light broke the horizon. I shot up, into the infinite, deep blue, pulling the new rays into myself as I went. “Where have you been?” I demanded of the rising sun, which merely beamed at me. “We have work to do!”
The sun made no reply, but even the inky Darkness glowed molten gold as the brilliant rim crested the lip of sight and spread its rays across the infinite sky. I breathed deeply, gathering my wits, and carefully slipped my satchel around to my chest so I could reach a bit of food and water. Who needed sleep? I was a sunchild, and in four days the vernal equinox would give me all the strength I needed.
54
CHAPTER
Yet they were the longest four days of my life. The daylight hours remained intoxicating with their light, and the night brought moon and stars, but lack of sleep took its toll. I began to dread the nightly return to darkness. I focused with obsessive intensity on the enchantment below me, marking its changes to determine how close to Umbraz I had come. It was like following the landscape of some enormous, gruesome wound: the closer I came to the Royal City, the more the Darkness seemed to fester and boil.
But at last, on the morning of the equinox, I arrived.
While the sun climbed toward its zenith, the Darkness thickened and curdled below me, roiling up noxious, green-tinged clouds from its craggy surface, as if the enchantment here were boiling beneath a cauldron fire. I steered myself into this thickening fog, though it made me choke and gag, and found all the proof I needed: at the spot where the agitation seemed most intense—the Darkness shifting and swirling, sometimes appearing solid, other times like melted onyx—a dark terror curled into my chest, wrapping like a cloak around the place where my sun energy dwelt. It was a familiar anxiety—the fear that had nagged me my entire life beneath the Darkness.
Except now I had an antidote.
I closed my eyes and turned my focus toward the sun, still on the eastern side of its slow ascent, a little over an hour from midday. One hour from the equinox.
Drawing the citrine dagger, I let the sun fill me as completely as I could, trying not to think about Linden or Merrall, or what exact time Iyzabel planned to murder my brother. Instead I tried to remember what Yarrow had said about the equinox. He’d said there had been festivals on this day, and that sunchildren would join to send their light into the reaches of the sky as a symbol of peace. At noon they became as bright as the sun itself, soaring above the people like beacons of hope.
Hope. It rose within me, swelling in a great bubble that pressed painfully against my heart, containing the names of the people I loved most in the world: Eamon, Yarrow, Bronya and Roark, Merrall, Elegy.
Linden.
If they were not reasons to hope, I did not know what was.
I turned my face up and the sun pressed red, fiery light against my closed eyelids. I lifted the dagger and invited it in.
A rushing, roaring sound filled my ears. I opened my eyes. Sunlight poured into me, filled me, burned me, so I knew I was but a small star beneath the brilliant orb. The sun and I hung above the Darkness like a pair of challengers before a city gate. I turned my burning eyes toward the enchantment, the disease that hulked resolutely black above my kingdom, and fury stirred in my heart.
My kingdom. Not Iyzabel’s.
My people suffering beneath.
The sun’s energy rushed through me, out of me, down toward the Darkness as the endless light flowed into my body like an ewer pouring into an overflowing glass. Only now we were both infinite, the brilliant morning sun and I, and I was the conduit that sent the sun’s energy speeding down into the curse that had been built to contain it.
The Darkness seethed and heaved at the point the light touched it, wisps of smoke coming away with a smell like burning pitch, while sunlight rushed toward it in a scorching cataract. My body shuddered with the strain as the Darkness resisted, churning against the light. I hoped I would not shatter before the Darkness did.
I gripped the citrine dagger. With a wrenching effort, I forced as much energy as I could through my own body, down the blade, and into the pillar battering the Darkness. I gritted my teeth at the heat and screamed until my throat tore.
From below, I heard a deafening crack. Plumes of smoke issued from the black surface, curling long fingers from a spot far below me where the sun had pierced it. Though my body shook, I redoubled my efforts toward the weak point. There was a screeching sound and a jagged fissure opened, revealing the capital city far below in a blur of smoky gray and green. Another deafening screech, and the crack widened to a gaping hole.
Brimming with sunlight, I gave the sun one last look.
“Luminor,” I whispered, and flung myself into the fissure.
55
CHAPTER
I landed in the cobbled courtyard of the Black Castle amid a cacophony of screams. The hole in the Darkness was blinding against the black, a wall of sunlight cascading from one end of the courtyard to the other. I could hear people running, screaming, desperate to escape the light—or perhaps me. And while I understood their terror, there was nothing I could do now to assuage it.
I could still feel the pull of the sun, feel it warming my head and filling my chest, but the green light, cobbled streets, and familiar sounds of Umbraz brought back a wave of my old fear. As I stepped out of the wall of light, I could sense the sun retreating, giving in to the Darkness. The fissure did not snap shut, but it was only a few seconds before the Darkness had shrouded the light, and less than a minute before it sealed itself and covered the sky as if the sun had never been there at all.
I was alone.
I did not release my light, though. The plan was to attract attention. Slipping my hand into my skirt to make sure my dagger was ready, I let the sunlight drift around me in a shimmering cloud of gold, and walked, straight-backed and swift, toward the steps of the Black Castle.
The green lamps seemed weak and sickly beside my light, and in their shadow I almost didn’t notice the glimmer of silver as something shifted at the top of the stairs. I stopped halfway to the top.
A group of soldiers stepped forward and stood in a phalanx of armored bodies above me. They each held a drawn sword.
“The queen will see you, sunchild,” said a man in the middle.
“I assumed as much,” I said. I hoped my friends had managed to accomplish some of our goals, but the equinox was close now and I could not delay. I started up the steps again.
“You must submit to being bound,” said the soldier, holding something out. It was black, and gleamed when the light hit it. An obsidian band.
I stopped dead, raising my hands in warning. “If your queen wants to talk to me, she’s going to do it without that thing.”
The soldier nodded to one of his comrades, and the wall of silver armor parted as a tall, dark-haired man was shoved through. I would have known his face anywhere, which was the only reason I recognized him.
Linden’s wild hair had been cut short and combed neatly back, his stubbly jaw shaved, his well-worn jacket, cloak, and deerskin trousers swapped for a dapper black tailcoat and breeches. A silk cravat had been tied around his neck, and his boots replaced with a pair of fine, black
leather ballroom shoes.
He should have been brutally handsome. Instead he looked like a marionette.
The only thing about his attire that was not in strictest keeping with the current fashion was his left sleeve, which had been cut away at the shoulder to reveal his bare, wiry arm, ending in a clenched fist. His skin was unadorned, except for the black, obsidian band that had been fitted around his upper arm. As his chest thrust forward in response to someone’s prod to the back, he grimaced down at me, green eyes bright and agitated. He seemed to be shaking his head very slightly.
“You will submit,” said the soldier again, raising his sword toward Linden’s neck, “or your friend here—”
I didn’t let him finish. Snarling, I sent a bolt of sun energy smashing into his chest, and he staggered back with a scream, clawing at his armor as I had seen the man in the forest do. But in his place, more soldiers swarmed down the steps toward me, and I almost tripped in my haste to keep them in front of me as I shot sunlight from both palms, blasting as many as I could while their numbers continued to swell. I had brought a dozen of them down before another voice bellowed, “Stop, or they all die!”
My head jerked up. At the top of the steps, bound and gagged, each one with a sword against their throat, stood Yarrow, Merrall, Elegy, Bronya, Roark, Freda, and Sedge, all dressed in Umbraz fashion. The sight of them hit me like a physical blow, and I swayed a moment, fighting to regain my breath.
I scanned the soldiers, but even at a glance I knew there were far too many. I could not take them all down before at least one of my friends died. And Eamon was still trapped in the castle with Iyzabel.
I had to get inside.
“I’ll bargain for their lives.” I lifted my hands in surrender. “If you’ll release them, and take off their bands, I will let you bind me. You can set up a magical barrier to keep them out of the castle if you like, but I want them escorted safely away and freed before I will allow you to touch me.”
Yarrow’s eyes flashed like flint sparking flame, and he and Merrall both shook their heads wildly. Their guards jabbed and jostled them, and I started forward again, flames blazing up in my hands. The swords moved to press harder against all of their throats, and I stopped.
“Do we have a deal?” I demanded.
Two of the soldiers were conferring, but after a moment, one of them nodded. “If you move so much as a hair before the prisoners reach the gates, sunchild, we will kill them all. Do you understand?”
Beyond the heavy Darkness, I could feel the sun climbing toward midday. “Yes.”
They led my friends away. When the entourage stopped just beyond the gates to the courtyard, they stepped apart so that I could see, through the gloom, the black bands removed from Linden’s, Elegy’s, Merrall’s, and Freda’s arms. No band was needed for Yarrow, of course, if they had taken his Runepiece. I half hoped they would fight, half prayed they wouldn’t. Then a greenish light flickered, and my friends disappeared from view. The shield was in place.
As I watched the pack of soldiers march back across the courtyard toward us, trying to think what in dark night to do, I felt someone grasp my sleeve and yank. I whirled as the white fabric ripped, but something had already clamped around my upper arm, constricting it in a solid, inexorable grip.
I looked down at the obsidian band in horror even as I felt its power seep through my chest to the sunspot in my core and imprison it within a dark, impermeable shadow. The sunlight on my skin blinked out, and I felt my whole body weaken.
I raised my head.
Queen Iyzabel released my arm, her midnight-blue eyes glittering beneath kohl-painted lids as she smiled. “Welcome back to Umbraz, sunchild.”
56
CHAPTER
She didn’t even need to touch me to compel me forward; she merely twitched her obsidian-hilted dagger and I drifted after her as if on wheels. It felt as though someone had swapped my brains for wool. Why had it never once occurred that she might actually rob me of my powers? Now that she had, I couldn’t think of a single thing to do. I would be more useless than Eamon when the equinox hit.
Unless . . . Could the equinox possibly help me break free? It was the only hope I had left.
Just as I had once followed Madam Pearl through the great, ebony front doors of the Black Castle, a lifetime ago at least, I now followed the Witch Queen, my feet skimming the marble floor and my hands clamped to my sides as her soldiers flanked us into the cavernous entry hall.
“Meet us downstairs,” she said to one of the soldiers.
Then she raised her silver knife and used it to draw a large green circle in the air, which she flicked at me. The circle floated like a smoke ring and dropped over my head, falling past my shoulders, my hips, my knees, to settle on the stone floor around my feet so that I stood within it.
The floor beneath me disappeared. I plummeted through empty space, and I couldn’t breathe enough even to scream. Iyzabel, the entry hall, the green light—everything—had vanished, and all I could see flying past me was a whirl of shadow, as if I were passing through solid matter transfigured into smoke.
Suddenly the ground rose at me in a moment of clawing horror, and then—
Solid stone broke me apart like cliffs wrecking a ship, and for a moment all I knew was blinding, shattering pain. I gasped where I lay, robbed of air; and when it returned, garbled cries poured out of my mouth beyond my heed or control. Both my legs had broken below the knees.
I scrabbled helplessly with my hands, lying on my side without even the strength to raise my head, and my screams become a hideous, guttural sobbing. Nothing, not even the arrow through my arm, had ever hurt as much as this.
“Shut up,” said the witch above me in disgust, and my voice broke off as if someone had stolen it.
Her sharp footsteps receded, and though tears continued to course down my face and pool in my hair, the enforced silence had awakened me to reality. Eamon. The equinox. With a tremendous effort, I wrenched my thoughts away from my legs and strained to peer around. We had arrived inside some kind of crypt; it was dark, damp, and cold, and green torches shone rather than lamps. The floor and walls were stone. On one side, they recessed into a narrow staircase, and on the opposite end a range of iron bars separated shadowy catacombs from what appeared to be an embalming chamber.
A shiver ran the length of my body as I caught sight of the shelves and tables along a third wall, cluttered with glittering vials and evil-looking tools . . .
And the raised marble slab, upon which lay an utterly motionless, black-haired young man.
Eamon.
His eyes were closed—one of them seemed to be bruised and swollen shut—and his hands and feet had been bound with the straps anchored to the slab. There was no reason to tie up a dead man, I thought with a small burst of relief; and sure enough, I could see the slight rise and fall of his chest. It wasn’t too late.
“Ten minutes to the equinox,” barked Iyzabel to the aproned and bespectacled men bustling around the tables. “Get the other slab in place and move the girl.”
“No!” cried a voice from somewhere beyond Iyzabel, and while it was a voice I knew well, I couldn’t understand how it could be here. “No, you haven’t—you can’t have—” Linden’s yells were wild, hysterical, senseless, and I could see his long hands gripping the bars of the shadowed catacombs.
I gaped. How had he gotten here? I had watched the soldiers escort him—
“Hush, boy,” growled another voice I knew, and my thoughts spun into freefall. Yarrow too?
It was impossible. They were safe, I was sure—
But as I squinted to see beyond the bars, I caught sight of Linden’s shadowed face—filthy, thick with stubble, hair still wild and overgrown—and the truth hit me like a blow to the head. The people I had seen escorted to safety in the courtyard had not been my friends. They had been . . . illusions, I supposed, or strangers disguised by enchantments to look like them. And all along, the people I loved had been locked in
this dungeon . . .
“Siria? Is that Siria you’ve brought here, Your Highness?”
This time the voice was a woman’s; familiar, but not Merrall’s throaty tones, or Bronya’s or Elegy’s voices. I could see nothing behind the bars but another shadowy figure, but the voice was hopeful, refined, sycophantic. And as I recognized it, the bottom of my stomach fell away.
It was Milla Nightingale.
Iyzabel ignored her, focused on something her spectacled sages were doing.
“Siria!” Milla shrieked, a pale, clawlike hand shooting through the bars of the catacombs to grasp at empty air. “Tell her we’re innocent! Tell her we didn’t know what you were! Tell her! You know we don’t deserve this! We have always, always been loyal to the queen!”
Iyzabel flicked her silver knife once more, but this time the jet of light flew toward the catacombs, and Milla fell abruptly silent. Despite the sting of her words, I hoped Iyzabel had merely silenced instead of killed her. How long had Milla been in this dungeon? Had she been tortured in an effort to gain information about me? The thought made me sick.
But I didn’t have long to brood on it, because Iyzabel’s soldier thugs came for me then, one of them scooping me so carelessly off the ground that, had I been allowed my voice, I would have filled the crypt with my screams again. Every slight movement sent fresh waves of agony through my legs. When he set me down, it was another few minutes before I came to my senses enough to look around once more.
I had been given my own slab, right beside Eamon’s. I lay gazing at him for a moment, trying to guess the extent of his injuries, but then something behind him drew my eyes. Sitting amid all the cruel-looking instruments and strange vials on the table near the catacombs was a large, shiny black urn. The same one I had seen beside Iyzabel the night of the Choosing Ball.