by K. A. Linde
The thread. The bond. The curse.
Cyrene reached for it, even as she floundered in the darkness of her mind. Kael had dampened the bond, but it was still there. Still perfectly intact.
A signal in the night.
A spark that turned into a bonfire.
And then she latched on to it. Felt the bond like a welcome friend. She didn’t know what it could possibly do or how it could help in this moment. But it was all that she had left. Without it, Kael certainly would have been completely lost.
So, she followed the bond wherever it led her. Dove deep into it, as she had done that day with Avoca when she sat with Helly to heal her in the sacred waters in Alandria. She traveled farther and farther. Never stopping or thinking about the consequences. This was her last shot. Her only shot.
And then she landed in the Ring of Gardens.
But not the Ring of Gardens of today. Not the one where Kael presently bled out. This was older and had none of the pomp of the current garden. For one, it was smaller. As if the rest of the concentric circles had been added later to make it look more magnificent. The marble pavilion was replaced with a simple wooden construction. And still, it was beautiful. Perhaps even more serene than before. As if someone could actually come to this place for solace.
Cyrene turned in a slow circle, expecting to find Kael trapped in his own mind. Where she could draw him back out of this place and bring him to safety. Fight the darkness together, as he had always wanted.
But he wasn’t present. In fact, at first glance, she saw no one.
Then, a man stepped out from behind a pillar and smiled. He had on the royal green and gold of the Dremylon royal line. His broad shoulders were swathed in a ceremonial velvet cloak. His dark hair was long to his shoulders but brushed elegantly back. And those blue-gray eyes…she would recognize them anywhere.
“Hello, Cyrene. I have waited a long time for you.”
Cyrene stumbled backward a step in horror. Because standing on the other side of the tether was not Kael.
But Viktor Dremylon.
“What…what are you doing here?” she stammered. “How could you be here?”
“I am the other side of the bond. The dark part that bound it together with blood magic,” Viktor said smoothly. He stepped forward, down a step, and out of the pavilion. “You already know all this though.”
She nodded mutely.
He sighed and cast his gaze around the concentric circles. “I built this for her, you know?”
“For Serafina?”
“The love of my life.”
“Who you used and betrayed,” she accused.
“Yes,” he said simply. Not arguing the fact.
“How could you do that to someone you claimed to love?”
He said nothing. Just stepped closer and spread his arms wide. “I thought the circles meant that our love would last forever. That, despite everything, we had endured. I was forced to marry another. She had magic and could never marry someone so lowly as me. She became the Domina and wore the white and everything—everything—fell apart. But still, somehow, these circles meant eternity together.”
“Well, congratulations! The circles still stand. The bond still stands. And Serafina still loves you.”
His eyes snapped to her. “What did you just say?”
“She still loves you.”
“You’ve spoken to her,” he said barely above a whisper.
“She has been guiding me, as I presume…you have been guiding Kael.”
He nodded once. “I did my best to tether him to his soul. To do for him what no one was able to do for me.” His eyes were distant. “To save a part of him so that he did not end up with my fate. Every day, I regret the decision that I made out of jealousy and greed and obsession. To hope that someone could fight against Malysa’s influence where I could not.”
“You were a vessel.” She understood. “Once she got her claws in you, the darkness spread like an illness.”
“A plague,” he corrected. “Until the only part of me that still existed belonged to Sera. My love for her that even Malysa could not destroy. And to hear that she still cares for me…after what I did, I don’t deserve that.”
“No, you don’t,” she agreed evenly.
He laughed once, a short bark. “You are so like her. I can see her in your face and the way you move and the way you speak so freely.”
“Well, she is my ancestor.”
“Yes, tell me how,” he asked eagerly.
“You don’t know?”
He held his hands out again. “You witness my prison. I have not left my Byern in two thousand years. Just passed from Dremylon to Dremylon. Never quite helping them to evade her.”
Cyrene couldn’t imagine. She couldn’t believe that he had been here this whole time. Trapped and unable to move on or do anything but stay tethered to the curse he had created so long ago. But she didn’t pity him. Perhaps it was a fitting fate for a weak man who had let the monster rule him so.
“You believed that you had killed her daughter, Anne.”
“Anne,” he whispered. “I never knew her name.”
“Serafina’s friend sacrificed her own child in Anne’s place. She deceived you to save her.”
“Good,” he breathed.
“And now what?” Cyrene asked. “I came down here to try to save Kael. Despite everything he had done under her influence. Things that he should be held accountable for. Many think that he should perish for his acts against humanity. And yet, here I am, trying to save him.”
“Because you love him,” Viktor said simply.
“I understand him,” she said. “We are not you and Sera all over again.”
“You could have been.”
She saw his answer for what it was. The truth that stung. They could have been. So easily. Serafina had fallen in love with a man in Eleysia. She’d had a baby and a new life. She could have had that life forever. But she had chosen to return to Byern and Viktor and the life of torment.
Cyrene had had that choice taken from her. It was a different path. One that diverged. She had never freely chosen Kael. Not the night when he’d attempted to take her honor…whether it was because he was a courtier, as she had suspected, or because he felt the bond so completely, as he’d claimed. And not when she had come back to him, bent and broken with her heart a mess as he tried to help her put it back together. Even as the darkness had eaten at them and she’d tried to find herself again, she had known the truth.
Kael was her mirror.
And her enemy.
And worthy of redemption.
If only for that fact and his love for Elea and Alessia. If for nothing other than that Cyrene hated for Malysa to win anything. What could Kael have become if he had never received that black book? What great things could he have done for their country? Could they have been friends? Fallen in love?
She’d never know.
Because of Malysa.
And Cyrene would do anything she could to put a stop to Malysa’s influence forever.
“I tried to help him fight,” Viktor said. “I taught him how to protect you from the Braj. To work within the confines of Malysa’s power. It’s up to you to save him. I did all that I can.”
“Can I save him? Is there enough of him left?” she pleaded, fearful that she already knew the answer.
“He’s like you, Cyrene. A survivor,” he told her. “Would you give up?”
She shook her head, and he smiled. It was all that she could do not to feel like she’d been punched in her gut by that look. He looked so like Edric then.
“I knew that you wouldn’t,” he said.
“I will try one more time. I don’t know how much more time he has.”
“Time works differently here,” he told her. “To him, it’s only been a minute.”
“He might not have many other minutes.”
“I believe in you.”
And something within Cyrene’s heart seemed to heal. The l
ast two years she’d been broken, not just by what had happened in her own life, but also by what she knew of Serafina’s. Seeing Viktor here, so radiant with love for someone he knew that he didn’t deserve, it mended that last fragment. Proved that love would always win out. Even against Malysa.
So, she felt for that piece of herself. The open and loving and rash and fearless girl who wanted to discover the world and not conquer it. Who wanted to love the people and not rule them. Who had no desire to have enough magic to destroy it all or remake it in her image.
“Tell Serafina I love her,” Viktor said, his voice breaking.
“Tell her yourself,” she said.
Then she flung her arms wide and released the raw power of her own soul. The one that was so full of light that she couldn’t even feel her own blood magic any longer. She cast it down the bond. Through the part of her that connected her to Kael. Perhaps the last thing that had been holding him together all this time. To give him Viktor. And his guidance. And always—always—an ounce of her light.
Malysa’s darkness was a plague.
And it could be defeated.
Cyrene’s magic ignited not into flame, but pure sunlight. The summer solstice reigned supreme overhead, and she harnessed the sun as its own weapon. Used it to shine bright and blanket the world. Then she pinpointed that ray of light and threw it at Malysa’s darkness within Kael.
And, from her place along the tether, she watched the darkness burn.
Burn until it turned into nothing but smoke.
Then even that was eradicated by the force of her will.
Not a drop of darkness remained. And all that was left was pure sunlight.
She opened her eyes to look at Viktor one more time. He tipped his head toward the light with a smile on his face. And then he was gone. Returned to the love of his life at last.
Cyrene pulled herself out of the bond, out of Kael, out of it all.
And, when she opened her eyes once more, the curse was broken.
61
The Debt
Orden
Orden threw his hunting knife with practiced precision. It was more instinct and muscle memory than anything else at this point. He watched the blade sink between the eyes of an assassin that would have killed Gwynora. He owed her too much as it was. Her father’s and grandmother’s blood was on his hands. He’d do what it took to save her from that fate here today.
Though she was the most magnificent fighter he had ever witnessed. A weapon of skill and smooth, effortless craftsmanship. She had her mother’s grace and her father’s finesse and her grandmother’s fortune. And he had loved her like a younger sister since the moment he was brought into the Network to train with Drystan.
“Nice one,” she said with a smile. Her brown skin glowed, and her black hair was wild. This was her sort of party. The one they had trained for all those years.
“Watch your three o’clock, or those blood-magic bastards are going to get through,” Orden commanded her. Even though she was in charge. But, in a battle, the only thing that mattered was staying alive.
“Aye, aye,” she bit back.
They pushed through, following the path of Sarielle’s destruction. The flames still licked the ground in some places. The charred remains of soldiers were obstacles to overcome as they cut the rest of the way through to the blood-magic soldiers.
First priority: take them out.
He didn’t want to have to be fighting them and the Indres at the same time. Not if he could help it.
Orden and Gwynora had nearly reached the front line, taking out soldiers along the way, when a group of Guild members appeared in their path. And in the lead was the general Braj of Malysa’s army—Wara.
Gwynora stopped short. She pulled her dueling blades tight to her sides, preparing herself to spring.
But Wara just laughed. A deep, inhuman thing. Her eyes flicked from Gwynora to Orden and back. “We finally meet.”
Gwynora narrowed her eyes. “Finally?”
“Oh, yes,” Wara said, matching Gwynora’s footsteps. “I have waited a long time to meet you, Gwynora Weyburn, and you as well, Orden Dain.”
“The only thing that you’re going to meet is the end of my blade,” he snarled.
“How do you know my name?” Gwynora demanded.
“I have known your name for years, dear girl. Hunted you,” she hissed. “I want to finish the job.”
Something froze in the back of Orden’s mind. Something that he had been avoiding for far too long. A debt that he owed to a girl who had lost her father. Who had lost her father to a Braj.
“Finish…the job,” Gwynora said softly.
Orden could practically feel Gwynora vibrating with the knowledge right at the tip of her tongue.
“Yes.” Wara threw back the hood of her dark cloak. “For I wore the face of Drystan Weyburn.”
Gwynora’s grip tightened on her blades. And then she screamed at the top of her lungs and charged after Wara.
Orden cursed baldly and jumped into the fight. Guild battled all around them, but Wara seemed to have ordered space for her to finish them off. But that wouldn’t happen. Not as far as he was concerned.
Gwynora moved like dance. Fluid. Her blades an extension of her arms. With the power and ferocity she had always possessed, coupled with the strength and amplification of her unleashed magic, she was a firestorm—deadly and unstoppable.
He had fought with her so long and had the same training, yet she outmatched him. It was a beautiful thing to watch.
Even as Wara was able to hold both of them off. One sword against three. The Braj was not fluid. Not in the same way. It was as if she were built of something other than flesh. As if her very essence could control her movements in a way no human could.
Orden had fought many Braj over the years. He had killed his fair share, defending Drystan and later with Cyrene. But Wara was not like the others. She was more.
Stronger, fiercer, more cunning. She held them off as if she were hardly trying. And perhaps she was. Which was terrifying.
No wonder Drystan had finally succumbed to the Braj assault.
Malysa wanted magic to be eliminated. What Drystan had been doing with the Network would have eventually brought magic back into the forefront. No amount of Braj deaths would have stopped Malysa from ending his life. And, as she assumed, ending the Network, too.
But it survived. It survived with him and Gwynora and Ahlvie and Rita. It had died with Fenix. But he was a symbol, not the end. And they would prove that Wara was not going to end the Network. Not then, when she’d killed Drystan Weyburn, and not now.
Orden launched into his attack. He had no magic. No defense like that. Just his training and instincts and the fire in his veins. But that would have to be enough.
His sword whirled through the air, connecting with Wara’s thigh. She roared as he sliced through the connective muscle.
Gwynora followed it up by holding off Wara’s sword and slicing into her side with the other.
“You are weak!” Wara roared. “You are nothing!”
She pivoted off of her bad foot and turned toward Gwynora. She grabbed the sword Gwyn had used to open her side and tugged it forward. Gwynora hadn’t been expecting it. She stumbled a step forward. And Orden watched the encounter with horror. Saw what was coming before it reached her.
“No!” he yelled, ramming into Wara’s blade and sending it skittering across the open field.
Wara shrieked. Having lost her poisoned blade that would have delivered the death blow. He’d saved her. His mission was complete.
Then, he felt it.
A knife.
Wara had a spare, and he hadn’t seen her pull it out. Only felt it as it lodged in his chest.
He gasped as pain overtook him, and he collapsed backward into the muck.
“No! Orden! No,” Gwynora cried.
He blinked up at her. Watched her magic burst out of her. Encompass her like a swirl of angelic light. Held Wara
in place with the weight of that anger and then unleashed it on the Braj. Wara’s body parts scattered across the open field. Blood spraying everywhere, coating Gwynora’s front.
Then she was beside him.
“Orden, you can’t do this to me,” Gwynora gushed. Tears were coming to her chocolate-brown eyes. “Medic!”
“It’ll…be okay. My…debt…is paid.”
“There was never a debt, you idiot,” she cried.
Orden brushed a strand of hair from her face. “I’m…proud of you.”
Then he blinked one more time and lay still.
62
The Battle
Quidera
Quidera slew soldiers.
Over and over again.
Cutting them down into neat little lines.
Following the path that the dragon Halcyon had left for her people.
They were surrounded on both sides by the Byern soldiers, and still, her people cut them down like poisoned cacti in the desert. A scythe to end their existence. Cull the pollution to allow roots to grow anew.
Quidera was not unaccustomed to hardship and death.
The desert was her mistress.
It could never be tamed. It could only be endured and survived.
A battle was much like her lovely Tygh.
And she would weather this storm like a wall of dust rolling in from the west. Never stop, never give up, and pray that the gods were listening.
Jenstad, Alchia, and Cambria were behind her along with her husband, Hulen. She had wanted to leave them farther from the center of things. But they had refused. Claimed it was their battle, too. And no amount of cajoling or trying to pull rank or reasoning had changed their minds. They believed they had been called by Cyrene to fight this day. The only hope Quidera had was that she stood between them and death.
She and Hulen had never been able to have children. Not after she had gotten the scar that ran from her eye to her mouth. That matched the one that ran along her abdomen. The ones that had nearly killed her.