by Erin Hayes
He could feel the magic radiating from the charm, nearly enveloping him, slowing the Ravagers. He needed to take it back, to harness that protection. He kicked off one of the beasts and stretched his arm farther, but it was too far.
Alec tried to push his body up to crawl closer, but the Ravager’s could only be slowed down so much without the sundial in his direct possession; now they swarmed him again, fighting with each other to get to him.
Adira squeezed her eyes shut and turned her face away, and Alec’s chest tightened. He was as good as dead, and now she knew it as well as he.
Dvorak slowly turned his back as well, then started off into the woods.
The guards, Adira in tow, followed. As pain seared Alec’s flesh, his audience blurred in their procession back toward the castle.
His fingers scraped against the earth in a futile attempt to bring himself closer to the sundial charm, but the horde of Ravagers consumed him. Darkness crowded his vision. The love of his life flickered in and out of his sight until finally his world went black.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Adira sat slumped on the edge of the bed, staring into the nothingness between herself and the vanity across the room. Alec could not be dead. This couldn’t be happening. Not after everything they had been through. He wouldn’t just leave her like that. He would have fought back sooner. Would have escaped somehow.
It’d almost worked. Her sundial—the magical protection she’d given him. It’d slowed the Ravager’s down. But to what end? To prolong his suffering? Her gift to him had become nothing more than a curse, the beasts reducing her best magic to torture and pain.
She pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes. How had it come to this?
Nika snapped her fingers in front of Adira’s face. “Come on, now. No good sulking. Your wedding is in a few hours, and now I have to start all over!”
Adira slanted a glare toward Nika. She couldn’t be serious.
The woman crossed her arms. “I don’t know why Dvorak even bothers with you! Useless! You don’t care about anyone but yourself. I spent hours getting you ready—now the dress is soiled, your feet are dirty, make up smudged. You know, you aren’t the only person in this castle who needs to prepare.”
Digging her fingernails into the comforter, Adira ground her teeth together. “Get. Out.”
Nika waved her off. “No time for that.” She motioned her hands for Adira to stand. “Come on, now. We have to get you out of that dress and into another.”
Adira got to her feet and advanced on the woman. “GET! OUT!”
Nike took a step back. “Fine,” she said, thrusting the new dress toward Adira. “Then get yourself ready. And if you don’t, don’t come crying to me when Regent Dvorak learns of your disobedience!”
With that, the woman stormed out of the room, and Adira crumbled back onto the bed, crying into the new dress. At the sound of voices in the hall, she pressed her lips together, trying to quell the tears to hear what was said.
“…done.”
“You’re sure?” Regent Dvorak’s voice that time.
“Yes,” the first voice replied. A man with a gruff tone—probably one of the guards. “Samuel found and identified the body.”
Adira’s hands clenched into tight fists. Not Alec’s body. Please.
She burst from the bed and across the room to swing the door open.
“Whose body?” she demanded.
The guard and the Regent both widened their eyes. The guard looked to Dvorak as the Regent’s expression leveled off. He folded his hands in front of him. “Alec Kladivo.”
“He’s dead?” she whispered.
“Don’t be daft,” Dvorak said. “Of course he’s dead. What did you think would happen?”
Adira’s mouth opened, but instead of words, all that left her was a trembling breath.
The Regent tipped up his chin. “He was a traitor, Adira. I suggest you do better for yourself and your friends.”
As Dvorak turned to leave, the guard approached the door and guided her back into the room.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” he said. “Alec had many friends inside these walls. Today, we grieve with you.”
The guard locked up behind her.
She swallowed, shaking her head. No. Every fiber in her being resisted the Regent’s words. An emptiness replaced her hurt, quickly making room for anger. No. It would not end like this. The Regent would not take everything from her.
Adira threw the clean dress on the bed and strode over to the window, taking in the scenery of the horizon. Somewhere in that distance was Miss Balek’s home, bare of Miss Balek, of Adira, of all her friends. But Adira had brought something with her. Not a physical item, no, but the collective knowledge of all she had learned there.
She closed her eyes and started from the beginning, replaying everything she had been taught, every spell she had cast, ever page she had read. As she took in a deep breath, she could feel the magic within her. No, she couldn’t cast it outward with the metal cuff on her wrist, but she would take care of that when the time came. All she needed right now was the magic to be there, inside, guiding her.
She’d read the book Alec had brought her a hundred times; she could recant every word by memory. But none of them meant anything at the time. Even now, the worlds scrolled by in her memory as she desperately grasped to pluck anything useful from the remembered pages.
Adira released everything. This was not a job for her mind. She let the magic take over. Confusion swirled through her thoughts as she let her inner energy show her what she needed to do.
Eventually, the memories blurred—all but one.
The Origin Spell.
Adira opened her eyes and gasped. She tried to shake it away. That couldn’t be right. Even attempting the Origin Spell would be a death sentence. But when Adira tried again, again she was pulled to the same spell.
God, she wished Miss Balek were still here to advise her. Everything she had read on the Origin spell ended in the spell caster’s death. No one had ever survived it, and it was no wonder. Every step of the spell was time sensitive, and it all began with ingesting a poisonous, deadly herb.
Adira swallowed, curling her hands into fists. The Origin spell might kill her, but certainly it would be a better way to die. And if it might at least save her friends, she had to do it. She’d spent her life trying to save herself, and that had gotten her this far. Gotten her to where she needed to be now.
But this time, it was time to save the Sector.
Adira soon found herself at the bottom of the dumbwaiter chute, dressed in her normal clothes. This time, however, creeping around the castle would be far more difficult. The kitchen was bustling with people preparing the wedding feast.
She inched down the dumbwaiter door and peered into the room from the safety of her cramped box. Everyone was absorbed-enough in their activities that she might be able to weasel her way out while their backs were turned, but there was no way she could just walk right by them once she had.
Holding her breath, Adira inched the door down a few more inches, then reached out and to the side and quickly snatched a white apron and hat from the hook on the wall beside the dumbwaiter. Once she had covered her clothes with the standard kitchen uniform, she waited until one of the cooks were hurrying back with a pot of boiling water.
“Watch out!” he called. “Hot water!”
All eyes on him. No eyes on the dumbwaiter. Adira slipped out and closed the door behind her.
“Hey, you! What are you doing?”
Adira froze.
“Don’t just stand there! We’re already behind schedule.”
“Right,” she said in a gruff voice to mask her own. “I’m on it. I’m just looking for the carrots.”
The man behind her grumbled something unintelligible, then said, “Well, you won’t find them staring at a wall! If the pantry’s out, go to the garden!”
Adira nodded and kept her head ducked as she careened out of th
e kitchen and into the hall toward the back exit. Hopefully this was the way to the garden.
As she continued through the hall, the Regent’s voice boomed from one of the sitting rooms. She ducked down another hall, pressing her back against the wall. Well, she wasn’t going to get to the garden that way.
Standing there, her chest heaving with anxious breaths, tears blurred Adira’s eyes. Alec should be here. He should be somewhere. Alive. Adira’s throat pinched in. If she was certain of anything, it was that Dvorak could not stay Regent. Even if she died in her effort to end his reign. But she wouldn’t be able to do that if she kept thinking about Alec.
She couldn’t stay still. Staying still made her think, and whenever she thought, she thought of him. Grief was a distraction that would cost her her life too soon. She needed to stay focused and stay moving.
Adira hurried down the hall, around another turn, and straight toward another door. Just a few more feet.
A guard came from a hall on the opposite end and stepped into her path. “Where do you think you’re going?”
Keeping her head down, she waved her hand toward the door. “Garden. We need carrots.”
This wasn’t entirely untrue. The kitchen did need carrots. They were out. And one of the plants Adira needed was part of the carrot family.
The guard heaved a breath that came out hot against her scalp. Then he leaned down and whispered in her ear. “You’ll have to do better than that next time.”
She tried to step around him, but he cut into her path again. “Go that way,” he said, pointing behind him. “And once you get to the edge of the garden, don’t look back. Run.”
The words chilled through her. This guard knew who she was. And he was…helping her?
She nodded once, still keeping her face hidden just in case, and hurried outside. As the door closed behind her, she heard the guard speak again. “Regent Dvorak! I’ve been looking for you. There’s something that needs your—”
Adira didn’t stop to hear the rest. Whatever distraction that guard had planned wouldn’t last long. She needed to get the herbs and supplies she needed from the woods and get back to her room before anyone noticed she was missing.
Once through the garden, Adira bolted toward the forest as instructed she didn’t look back—not until she safely reached the tree line. Her throat burned so badly she swore she could nearly taste blood, and her legs ached, but she couldn’t rest now.
As she hiked through the woods, she paused when she reached the path that would lead to where Alec had died. Her throat closed in. At this very moment, she was closer to Alec than she’d been in days, and yet, there was more distance between them now than ever. The space between Adira and Alec was life and death, and that rolled darkness over Adira’s flesh.
He had died for her, and yet she stood here now, wishing it had been her. Wishing she could join him. And she might, soon enough.
Blinking back tears and sucking in a breath, she forced herself onward. Now was not the time for such thoughts. She loved Alec more than life itself, but she also loved the family she’d made through Miss Balek, and she couldn’t be selfish now. That time in her life was past.
Once she reached the outskirts, she started scouring the ground for any herbs that would have overgrown from the outlands in. She needed three things: water hemlock, nightshade, and white snakeroot.
She laughed bitterly to herself. It was as if she was trying to kill herself. And, indeed, she might. But her intentions here weren’t to join Alec, but to save her friends. She ground her teeth together, trying to push him from her mind. It seemed as if he had become her every step, her every breath. The pain of remembering him was crushing her mind, her heart, her lungs.
Adira growled, then grabbed the leaves from a nearby bush and ripped them off. She let out a wail and collapsed to the ground, sobbing. Her chest heaved breaths too quick to calm herself, and her hands trembled as she closed them into fists around a handful of weeds.
After a few minutes, she wiped her face and swallowed her grief once more, then stumbled through the blur of her tears to find the plants for her spell. She found the nightshade first. She would need lots of it—enough to make a wine, as it would be sweet enough to act as a carrier for the rest of the potion.
She picked the shiny black berries from the dull leaves and collected them in her small leather pouch until the pouch was half full. Once she’d gathered enough, she continued on, her fingertips soon itching from plucking the nightshade berries.
Nearby, she spotted clusters of small white flowers indicative of white snakeroot, a plant so dangerous that not only would consuming it kill you, but even drinking the milk or eating the meat of an animal who ate the plant could be fatal as well. This one she would need in smaller amounts. She plucked several of the white flowers and dropped them in her pouch as well.
The water hemlock took a while longer to find. The outskirts were old farming land, and celery and parsnips still grew wild here, causing Adira to pick the wrong plant several times. Once she found it, though, she was able to collect a fair amount rather quickly.
With all the herbs tucked away, she stood and stared back in the direction of the castle. She needed to get back soon. She’d wasted too much time looking for the water hemlock. They were probably looking for her already.
But she couldn’t just walk into the castle with a pouch of known deadly plants. She needed to prepare the tonic first.
She headed toward a large boulder to use as a workspace, and her feet wavered beneath her. She caught herself on a tree and took a deep breath. She shouldn’t have picked so much nightshade. The contact was already making her vision spin. She took a few more wobbly steps, then had to clutch another tree for balance as she lost her stomach in the underbrush.
Sweat beaded on her face and neck, and her skin went cold, but she managed to make it the rest of the way to the boulder. She gripped the sides, steadying herself, but it would be no use. She couldn’t do anything feeling like this.
Adira tipped her gaze and scanned the area. The river that ran from the outlands and up past the castle was only a few yards away. If she could make it that far, she could clean the poison from her hands before she continued.
Between bouts of dizziness, Adira made it a few feet at a time toward the river. When she arrived, she scrubbed her hands in the cold water and splashed some on her face. Closing her eyes, she sighed. She didn’t feel any better, but hopefully it wouldn’t get any worse.
Near the riverbank were patches of mint, and she took a few leaves and chewed them to help quell the nausea, then made her way back to the boulder. She needed to be more careful.
Adira dumped the contents of her pouch onto the large rock and lifted the small bottle that had been buried at the bottom. What she really needed was a mortar and pestle, but the only place she knew to get one was Miss Balek’s, and she would never make that hike now.
She would have to make do with what she had. One way or another, she was going to make this deadly concoction, even if it killed her. And it probably would. After all, that’s what the potion was designed to do.
Chapter Thirty
Since losing his parents, Alec wondered about the afterlife. Were spirits divided into heaven and hell? Was the afterlife for humans only, or did all living souls go there? Animals…plants…Ravagers? If there was heaven and hell, he knew where the Ravagers would go, but what about himself?
Or did souls, as some people believed, remain on Othala, walking around a parallel plain, unable to touch this one.
As Alec stared down from outside of his body, a feast to the Ravagers, he ground his spirit teeth together. He could not simply watch over this world and do nothing.
What had his parents believed? How many times had his father—his real father—told him about the vows they took on their wedding day. When the officiate said, “To death do us part,” and his father said, “No even death could do us apart.”
That was the love he had for Adira.
Death could not stop him.
And neither would these Ravagers.
Searing pain rocketed him back to consciousness. He wheezed a breath.
You’re alive, someone said. It sounded more inside of his head the first time, but when the voice spoke again, it was an audible whisper. “You’re alive.”
Barely, he thought.
He opened his eyes. Darkness. He blinked. Light filtered into his consciousness, but everything was blurry.
“Hurry!”
He knew that voice. Anastazie. But she was in a cell back at the castle.
He pressed his palms against the soil and lifted his head, blinking until his vision cleared enough to see. “Anastazie?”
The little girl stood at the edge of the Sector One, her hands balled into fists that she was now shaking excitedly. “Oh, Alec! You’re alive! Please hurry!”
Alec tried to get to his feet, but stumbled in his effort, landing just a few feet from Anastazie. He braced himself. Wait. He was forgetting something. The sundial.
Slowly he turned back, still on hands and knees, to scour for the necklace.
“Alec, please. If the Ravagers sense you are alive, they will come back! You need to get out of there!”
“I need the sundial,” he muttered.
Anastazie let out an exasperated sigh, then bolted into the outlands, just past him.
“Anastazie, no!”
She swiped the sundial, then ran back, grabbing Alec by his arm and pulling toward the Sector’s border. There had to have been some magical strength involved for her to pull off that one, but Alec was too beat down to think on it.
Ravagers seeped out from the forest line. They sensed life. That was what they were after. Not flesh. Not blood. Life.
Anastazie had the near strength of a man, surely due to magic, but it wouldn’t be enough to pull Alec from the outlands before the Ravagers reached them.
He forced himself to his feet and hooked his arm around her to help guide her ahead of him and to safety. He stumbled sideways, but turned himself in time to take a few steps closer to the border. Falling, he caught himself on his hands, more in crouch this time. Then he spring back up and toward Sector One once more.