by Morgan Rice
“Barely a sound from her,” Valin said. “No sign of any trouble from the rest of the inn, either.”
“You go down and eat,” Sebastian said. “I’ll watch her for a while.”
He took Valin’s chair, wishing that he could pick up his daughter and cradle her while she slept, but he didn’t want to risk waking her, not then. Instead, he sat back in the chair, watching her, thinking of how precious she was as she lay there.
“Your mother will come back to us soon,” Sebastian whispered to her. “Then, everything will be all right.”
He had to believe that Sophia would return at some point. She’d gone to find her parents, but even in Morgassa, he guessed that she would hear about the war in her kingdom soon enough. Sebastian would hold on until she got back; he would make sure that her kingdom, and her daughter, were safe.
Sebastian sat there watching Violet until his eyes started to close. They’d been riding so hard now, for so long, that it just wasn’t possible to stay awake.
He dreamed of the past, of the days when he had been very young. Even then, his mother had been fierce and demanding, hard edged and even frightening to a small boy. For so much of the time, Sebastian had found himself watched by tutors and nurses, and he found himself dreaming of being followed around the palace by them, searching for him as he went off in search of… in search of what? He was looking for something, and he couldn’t find it, while all the while, in the background there was the wailing of a child who was hungry, or lost, or…
As Sebastian snapped back to wakefulness, he couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong, something was missing. The candles that lit the room had gone out, and Sebastian scrabbled around until his hands found one of them. He lit it by feel, biting his lip in frustration as he did so. Flickering light filled the room as Sebastian held it up, and as he did, he gasped.
“No…”
One of the ivy covered gaps was now uncovered, revealing the night beyond, while an empty space now stood where the crib once had. Sebastian felt panic building up inside him.
His daughter was gone.
CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR
Sophia headed for Stonehome, and an army grew around her. With almost every step that she took, it seemed that more people joined her, coming in from the places that they’d run, and from the small villages that they passed through.
“Why Stonehome, my lady?” Lani asked. “The survivors say that it is gone.”
“It is the last place that I know my daughter was,” Sophia said. If she was going to find Violet, she had to start somewhere, and Stonehome was the best place that she could think of. “And it’s more than that. I have to see it. I have to know what they did.”
“Will the Master of Crows’ men be there?” Aia put in. The warrior didn’t seem entirely worried by the possibility, merely interested.
“My hope is that they’ve moved on,” Sophia said. “The New Army is like a plague of locusts. It moves in and it kills, then moves again.”
She tried not to think about what that might mean for the people she cared about. The Master of Crows wasn’t someone who took prisoners, or held back. He didn’t compromise or negotiate.
“I shouldn’t have gone to Morgassa,” Sophia said.
“If you hadn’t, then you wouldn’t have found your parents,” Lani said. “And I would not be free. Forgive me, my queen, but there are some things that should not be unwished.”
“I’m sorry,” Sophia said. “I didn’t mean it like that. It’s just… if I’d been here, I could have done something.”
“You do not know what you could have done,” Aia said. “Perhaps you would have been able to stop everything, but perhaps you would have died. A warrior deals with what is.”
“I’m no warrior,” Sophia said.
“You defeated more men than even the twelve could cut down,” Aia said. “You command us, and a forest cat that can kill just as easily. You might not fight with blade and pistol, but you can win wars with you mind.”
“Then I should have been here,” Sophia insisted.
Aia shook her head. “Because you went to Morgassa, you have us by your side. You have the fire stone to use. If you’d stayed, could you have stood against the Master of Crows?”
“I…” If Sophia had been Kate, she would probably have said yes straight away. Instead, she shook her head. “I don’t know.”
“And now you have the power that’s needed to defeat this evil,” Aia said.
Sophia thought about the stones that Kate and Lucas had gone to find. “Part of it.”
“Focus on that,” Aia said, “no matter what we see in Stonehome.”
Sophia did her best, and they kept going on the road to Stonehome, marching now, a column of those who had fled and those who had been waiting for her to arrive. There were soldiers in it, and warriors from Stonehome, and more.
Even so, when they got to Stonehome, Sophia felt her heart break.
There were no soldiers around it now, although the churned up moorland on every side showed just how many there must have been. Sophia didn’t need any skill in tracking to see the direction that troops had gone, heading north in a great wave of men and horses. They’d been moving quickly too; quickly enough to abandon their cannon because they would only slow them down.
Within Stonehome, there were the dead.
They lay in piles and circles, almost too many to comprehend. With so many of them, they almost became numbers rather than people. Almost. Sophia saw Vincente’s body, fallen at the walls amongst a pile of enemies. She saw the bodies of men and women she had met, some soldiers, others just people who had run from Ashton. One woman had been a servant at the palace, and it made something tighten in Sophia to realize that she didn’t even know her name.
There were crows there everywhere, hopping amongst the dead, feasting in a way that would have been horrifying even if Sophia hadn’t known that every peck of flesh they took was feeding power to their master, and even if she hadn’t known the people they feasted on.
“Get away!” she yelled, drawing on the power of the land, sending a flicker of it out in a burst that scared the birds into flight.
“They will report back to their master,” Aia said.
“Let them,” Sophia replied. “We were never going to sneak up on him.”
“We need to bury them,” Lani said.
“We need to burn them,” Sophia replied, and she wasn’t sure if that was the fire stone’s influence or not. It made sense though. Burn them, and the crows couldn’t feast. Burn them, and the Master of Crows wouldn’t be able to take his toll. “Gather the bodies up. Build pyres. Work quickly. I need… I need to look.”
She needed to look for Sebastian, and her daughter.
Sophia stalked among the dead, not able to push back the horror of it all as she had to stare at body after body, wanting to be sure, needing to be sure that Sebastian and Violet weren’t there somewhere. She felt tears falling down her cheeks silently at the sight of so many dead, even while the people who followed her collected them for the pyres, the people of Stonehome collected with reverence, the soldiers of the New Army thrown into hastily dug pits.
Sophia was still walking among the dead when a man approached, bowing. He looked exhausted, as if he had walked the length of the kingdom.
“Your Majesty,” he said, gasping for breath. “I heard that you were back in the kingdom. I have news!”
A part of Sophia wanted to say that whatever it was, it could wait until the dead were collected, but there was something about the way he said it that suggested that it couldn’t. Then there was the fact that he’d obviously kept walking even past the point of exhaustion.
“What news?” Sophia asked. “Who are you?”
“My name is de Lacy,” the man said. “I escaped from here, along with a few others, when the attack came. We met the king and the princess on the road.”
“Sebastian and Violet are still alive?” Sophia demanded. “They’re sa
fe?”
De Lacy nodded. “They were safe enough when I saw them, although I can’t say for sure now. They were talking about going north to Monthys, and that’s just... not a good idea. They had a couple of others with them.”
Hope flared in Sophia. Violet and Sebastian had survived this. They were on their way to safety, and Sophia knew where they were going. She would be able to find them, and together in Monthys, they would take the kingdom back from the Master of Crows.
“Thank you,” she said, taking de Lacy’s hand. “Thank you.”
“My queen,” Lani said. “The pyres are ready. Will you speak?”
“I…” Sophia knew that she should. She had to find the words to tell the people around her that all this death would be worth it somehow. She had to tell them that there was still hope. She could do that though, because she had hope.
“I’ll be there in a minute,” she promised. “There’s something I need to do first.”
She reached out to the land beneath her, connecting to it with her magic. She felt its furthest reaches, and she knew it as intimately as she knew her own skin. She sent her attention out along the road north towards Monthys, looking for her husband and her daughter.
She quickly caught the blazing light of Violet’s power, white and pure, almost blinding in the distance. It made her easy to spot, and Sophia took some comfort in that, but there was also fear. If she could spot Violet so easily, then so could others. So could the Master of Crows.
Even as Sophia moved her attention closer, she could see the cavalry of the New Army thundering along in the direction where Violet lay. She saw the Master of Crows running along into trees that hid him from view.
She saw the light of her daughter’s spirit wink out.
“No,” Sophia said as she pulled back from the sight of it. “No.”
Before, the grief that she had felt had been a general thing, for too many people at once to cut right through her. Now, it felt as though the whole world was collapsing in on her. Sophia collapsed down to her knees, wrapped up in the pain that seemed to fill the world in that moment.
Her daughter was dead.
She cried until she felt that she might have been able to fill a lake with it, sobbing so hard that it shook through her body, and felt like it was ripping her apart. Somewhere in that pain, Sophia felt a storm beginning above her in response to her stretched out power.
Arms wrapped around her, lifting her to her feet. Lani and Aia were there, holding her between them.
“My queen, we should get you inside. The rain-”
“The rain doesn’t matter. None of it matters,” Sophia said. “Violet… my daughter is dead.”
She wept again, the weight of the loss all but crushing her.
CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE
Kate moved towards the shadows who stood in the pool. “I know you aren’t real,” she said. “I know that you’re just an image of him, and not the real thing. Sophia and Lucas aren’t real either.”
“Your hatred is real though, and your anger,” the Master of Crows’ shadow said. “That is the part of this that matters. Has anyone showed you Will’s death yet?”
“No,” Kate said, and she didn’t know if she was just replying, or begging not to be shown. It didn’t make any difference. The pool of shadows shifted, and in it, Kate could see Will standing there, trying to distract the Master of Crows, trying to set light to a damaged cannon to attempt to destroy him. She saw Will smiling in victory before doing it, and the Master of Crows fleeing with inhuman speed.
“Why show me this?” Kate asked. “Are you just trying to hurt me?”
“Not just,” the shadow said.
Behind her, Kate heard the sound of footsteps and spun to see Lisare there.
“Kate, you can’t do this. You need to prepare yourself more before you try to take the stone!”
“Stay back!” Kate warned her, holding out a hand as if to ward her off. “I need to see this.”
The shadows in front of her laughed then, all three, and both Sophia and Lucas’ voices were perfect.
“You do need to see this,” the shadow whispered, and now it shifted so that it was her. “You need to see who your real enemies are. Is it the Master of Crows, or is it the ones who stood by and let the boy you loved die, when they had the power to prevent it?”
“No,” Kate said. “I won’t listen to you.”
Inside, she ached with pain at seeing the way Will had died. She wished that she could have been there for him. She wished that she’d had the power to keep him safe.
“The stone can give you power,” the shadow said, as if it had heard her. “It can give you the power to strike at all those who deserve it.”
The shadow of Sophia stepped forward then. “Did you see that Will was alone? I was his queen. If I’d been there, I could have ordered him back.”
“I took us around the world,” Lucas’ shadow said. “If I hadn’t come, then you would have been there with Will, not all those miles away across the ocean.”
“Of course, you know who you really blame,” the shadow of Kate said, locking eyes with her. “You could have been there by his side. You could have saved him.”
“Kate,” Lisare said, holding out a hand. “Step away from the pool. Each stone has power, and this one’s will overwhelm you if you go to it now. It will turn you into a twisted version of yourself. It will use all your worst traits to fuel itself.”
“But then,” the shadow said, and now it wore Siobhan’s form, “you know that game already, don’t you, apprentice?”
“You’re dead,” Kate said. “Nothing you say or do can hurt me now.”
“Dead, along with so many others,” the shadow said. “You said that it wasn’t your fault when you were possessed, that you couldn’t be held accountable for what happened, for who you hurt. Yet, who left herself open to being taken? Who gave herself over just to be more than some peasant girl aching for vengeance?”
“I was trying to be a warrior,” Kate said. “She tricked me.”
“She told you the price of what you wanted,” the shadow said. “You wanted it, but you didn’t want to pay the price. You set in motion things that set you against the Master of Crows and killed the boy.”
“I…” Kate wasn’t sure what to say to that, because beneath her in the pool of shadows, chains of events were unfolding, showing her actions, showing her again and again how they led inexorably to Will’s death.
“Don’t listen, Kate,” Lisare said. “Come on, step away.”
“You can’t step away now, can you?” the shadow said. “You know it’s your destiny, Kate. All you have to do is give in to your anger at your brother and sister. All you have to do is strike down their shadows.”
“I don’t hate them,” Kate said, shaking her head. “I love them.”
The shadows shifted, showing her parents. “You always loved us, but why? We left you. We abandoned you as a child, then again when we let death claim us. We didn’t take you with us. We left you in the House of the Unclaimed.”
“That wasn’t how it happened!” Kate yelled. “You’re twisting things!”
“That’s what the stone does,” Lisare said. “Kate, your feet.”
Kate looked down at her feet, and saw that she’d stepped into the shadows. They lapped at her ankles like water, yet felt more like smoke.
When she looked back up, Sophia and Lucas were there again in shadow form, the Master of Crows standing behind them.
“Look at them,” he said. “Such power in them, and so little in you. They pity you, you know, Kate? They think you’re the weak one, the helpless one.”
“It’s true,” the shadow Sophia said. “You were always the foolish sister who fought too much and didn’t think enough. When you had power, you were useful, but now… no wonder I sent you away.”
“No,” Kate said, shaking her head. “That’s not how it happened!”
Distantly, she was aware of Lisare’s voice there saying somet
hing, but she couldn’t make all of it out.
“…listen… it exists for trickery… it twists things…”
“Sophia doesn’t need you now that she has me,” Lucas said, speaking over it. “You should never have been born, really. If I hadn’t had to go away, no one would have needed you.”
“Will never needed you,” the Master of Crows said. “He said nothing about you when he died.”
“No!” Kate screamed, lunging forward. She plunged through the shadows of her brother and sister, bursting them apart as she plunged her sword into the Master of Crows’ shadow again and again. It became a shadow of her, and Kate kept stabbing, hating herself almost as much as him. She hadn’t been there for Will. She had caused so much pain.
She spun with the shadow, grappling with it, then saw the shadow stone at its heart. Kate reached out, grabbing for it, her hand plunging deep inside it. She felt her fingers close around a stone that wasn’t a stone: a thing of pure shadow made solid. She tore it out, roaring in anger even as she plunged her sword deep into the thing in front of her.
It melted away, revealing Lisare reaching out to her behind it, the blade protruding from her chest. She seemed to try to say something, and then fell back, her blood flowing into the shadows of the pool.
They seemed to boil, writhing up around Kate.
Another death for your sister’s toll, a voice whispered inside her. If she hadn’t sent you here, none of this would have happened. There is a battle brewing, and you know what you must do, don’t you Kate?
Kate knew. She had to kill Sophia, had to kill Lucas, had to kill everyone who got in her way. She could feel power flowing back into her as the shadows ran through her, opening up the channels that she had burned out in their service, that they’d destroyed so that she wouldn’t be a threat to them.
Kate understood their evil then. She understood the way that they’d used her to become things as vile as the Master of Crows had ever been. Sophia had always been a manipulator, and now Kate understood all the steps that she’d taken in manipulating her way to the throne, and why Will had died because of it.