Nor nodded. “Did her crew survive the attack?”
“They did. Smart soldiers, able to defend themselves. I believe the Godstars protected them as well, knowing what the future holds.”
“Bring them to me,” Nor said. “We will send out another message. If she didn’t believe the last...this one, she won’t ignore.”
Darai inclined his head to her, then left Nor to her thoughts.
There was much to consider. But for now, she turned the flames of the fire back up to a full roar. Then she lay down, curling up beside the hearth, and allowed herself, finally, to drift off to sleep.
CHAPTER 24
VALEN
Memories were fickle things, for they often warped or revealed different sides of themselves with the passing of time.
Valen felt the reality of this, perhaps more keenly than he ever had, as he beheld the door leading to his sister Kalee’s old bedroom. He could almost hear her voice echoing in the room beyond; could almost see Kalee’s face, her eyes bright with life and laughter.
Nor had once looked at him like that, too. And now she might never do so again.
His other sister had changed a great many things about this estate since taking over, and Valen had been glad for it. When they’d first arrived, they’d torn through the halls of Averia together, ordering servants and droids to remove everything that reminded them of the Cortas family. Later that night, they stood together in the wide, green courtyard, watching Valen’s past burn to ashes in a towering pile. So high, they’d stacked those mementos, that those who looked up from below on the city streets could see the trail of smoke spiraling into the cloudless sky.
It was a reminder that everything old was now made new. That the ways of General Cortas, and the old Mirabel, were now behind them.
He’d loved seeing the changes. Loved seeing the past melt away.
But Valen hadn’t been able to bear the thought of anyone touching Kalee’s things. She had been the one bright spot in his otherwise lonely childhood, and her memory had given him the strength he’d needed to survive in Lunamere. Knowing that she would have wanted him to live, to walk in the sunlight again, had been what kept him going in that constant darkness.
“Stop here,” Valen said to the droid guiding his chair along. He was still too weak to walk, even after spending most of the evening in the medical wing of the estate, being assessed.
His body was failing him, in ways that utterly mystified the doctors and med droids.
But Valen knew the truth.
It was his power, and the strain it placed on him, that was doing this to him. He’d felt that strain ever since the minds in his fortress had grown three layers of cells thick. As it expanded, day by day, the strain only got worse.
Now he could scarcely think, scarcely keep himself together unless he was in that very fortress. The world beyond his mind was a place of pain and exhaustion, but inside, the fortress walls were like a safe harbor. Or a drug that kept pulling him back for more. Sometimes Valen wasn’t entirely sure which was more accurate.
Back in the med wing, he’d been pumped with fluids and given a decent meal, most of which Valen could hardly keep down. And now here he sat, in this wheeled chair, on the threshold of one of the two places in Averia that he had never allowed Nor to touch.
“I have been instructed to stay by your side,” the med droid said in its robotic voice.
“Instructed by who?”
“Master Darai,” the droid told him.
Valen sighed. “Of course.” The old man was inescapable, even when he placed someone else in his stead. “I’ll just be a few moments.”
The droid’s expressionless face did not move. It simply stood there, waiting patiently like an obnoxiously loyal dog.
Valen turned back to the heavy oak door, his fingertips running across the tiny lines gouged on the door frame. Little by little, they stretched higher and higher, closely spaced at first, then further widening until they finally stopped near Valen’s shoulder.
Those marks had kept track of Kalee, as she grew.
As Valen stared at them, he couldn’t help but think of another set of tallies, carved across the sharp sides of two bloody twin swords. He wondered what Androma Racella was doing right now; whether she’d seen Nor’s message, and started her journey toward Arcardius.
Valen knew Andi. She had her faults—too many to count—but she was fiercely loyal. She’d come.
It was only a matter of time.
With a sigh, Valen opened the door and wheeled himself inside Kalee’s old room.
It felt like a dwelling for Kalee’s ghost. The lamps were off, but the night sky cast its own light, fully visible now through a wall of windows. Many of the rooms in Averia were designed this way, the better to see the beauty of the manicured grounds beyond. It would be dawn, soon.
As he surveyed the space, Valen saw Kalee as a memory, fully formed and perfect.
She stood before her wall of windows, wearing a gown of all white, dancing as the sky shed moonlight on her ringlet curls.
A flash of bright light.
A screech that sounded like metal colliding against rock.
Then Androma Racella appeared in the room, bathed in Kalee’s blood. Her hands dripped with it. Her eyes, silver as the stars, were cold enough to balance out the crackling heat of her electric blades.
Valen hissed between his teeth, and shoved all thoughts of Kalee and Androma away.
This room was empty. Absent of any life at all. It was Valen himself, and his cursed past, that brought back the ghosts.
He remembered Andi telling him once that the dead taunted her. The memory of Zahn taunted Valen now, too. The snap decision. That final, fateful push and shove, and the gunshot going off. Nor’s panicked scream, as she realized Zahn had been shot.
Valen’s own horror as he realized he’d been the one who caused it.
Why could the bullet not have gone elsewhere? Into the building, or another enemy, or even one of Androma’s crew, standing close by Nor’s side?
Would Nor ever forgive him? She had to. They were a team, the Solis siblings—his power, and her plan. Valen wasn’t sure what he would do if she didn’t.
White sheets covered all of Kalee’s belongings. They looked ghostly in the light of the moons, even more so with the frost coating the windowpanes. He wheeled himself across the room, staggered to a standing position and tore the sheets from Kalee’s four-poster bed. Dust rained down from above, landing on his shoulders like flakes of snow.
Beneath it, her old bed was untouched, and his chest ached at the sight of it.
His hand hovered over the plush, intricately designed blue quilt. Threads of purple woven in with the blue, signifying the two moons of Arcardius.
In his mind, Valen saw Kalee as she once was, lying on her stomach on the bed, her socks unevenly pushed down around her ankles, a book outspread before her as she skimmed over the pages.
If she were still alive, she would have heard him entering this room. She would have glanced up at him, her eyes rolling as Valen gave her some message from their father about training, about duty, about...
All of the things Valen had never cared to learn.
How funny, now, that he was practically a prince. And how far, yet again, he had fallen.
And Nor might never forgive him for what he’d done.
The doorway between their minds was closed. Thick obsidinite bars covered it, so that Valen couldn’t even reach through and knock if he’d wanted to.
And he did want to.
The guilt was a monster, writhing within him. But so was the feeling of loss. Abandonment. And with that...anger.
He’d saved her. Again and again, Valen would hold fast to the truth that he had saved his sister by pushing that enemy with the gun aside.
But you killed me in t
he process, a ghostly voice whispered to Valen, and he swore it sounded like Zahn’s.
Valen sank down on the bed in despair.
They only had a short time left, before the satellite was complete. And once Androma came, their mission could finally unfold.
Nor might not ever forgive Valen on her own, but perhaps, if he kept working, if he was loyal to his breaking point...perhaps he would still remain a part of something.
For he could not bear the idea of being cast out, left to navigate this life alone again.
He sighed, sinking back against Kalee’s mountain of pillows, wondering how many times she’d felt the weight of their father’s world on her chest as she lay in this very spot.
He closed his eyes. Within his mind, his power waited. It sang his name.
With a twist of his brow, he focused, breathing deeply in and out, pushing aside the pain, the exhaustion, the fear that he would never be good enough for anyone, maybe not even himself—and especially not Nor anymore.
One moment, he was lying in Kalee’s bed.
The next...
Valen set foot inside the confines of his mind.
* * *
Valen’s boots crunched across those old bones as he walked past the demons he’d slain, toward the fortress doors.
They opened at his touch, and as they swung forward, he caught a glimpse of the Solis sigil on their front. How much comfort, how much pride, that sigil had once given Valen. But now he felt cold just looking at it.
As if he didn’t belong.
He tried, once more, to call out to Nor.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Sister, please forgive me.”
His words carried up the hillside, past the valley full of bones, up to the doorway that connected his mind to Nor’s.
They echoed back to him, shut out and unheard by her.
With a sigh, he turned away and entered his castle. He walked aimlessly past cell after cell, peeking inside, ensuring that the minds held within were still loyal to Nor. That they didn’t fear Arachnid, didn’t harbor any doubts in their queen.
With each doorway, he normally felt lighter, like his footsteps were walking on air.
But tonight, Valen found himself slowing. Weakening with every step.
“Rest,” he told himself. “I just need to rest.”
He stumbled toward the castle wall, the cold obsidinite stones grazing against his arm. As he leaned against it for support, catching his breath, something caught his eye.
A crack in the stone floor.
It was small. A tiny fault line, that anyone else would have passed by without noticing, were they not the creator of this place.
Valen knelt, running his fingertips across the crack. Cold seeped out from it, causing him to shiver.
But he could fix this.
Close your eyes and will it to be so, Darai had once taught him, when Valen was learning how to build this very fortress. He’d fashioned row after row of cells, staining them black, filling them with minds, placing torches beside each and willing those flames to life, too.
He’d become a king here. A king who needed no crown to reign supreme.
But today, when he tried to will that crack back into nonexistence, it disappeared for only a moment—and another quickly appeared in its place.
“Strange,” Valen murmured to himself.
With great effort, he drew himself back to his feet. His chest ached with ragged breaths, and as he took step after step toward the exit, a trail of bloody droplets followed in his wake.
Drip.
A drop of blood from his nose, staining the stones.
Drip.
Another, beside a second crack in the floor as Valen neared the doors.
Drip.
He heaved those doors open again, grunting at their sudden weight, heavier than they had ever felt before.
Valen did not make it to the top of the hillside. His legs gave out beneath him, that weakness from the real world inexplicably manifesting here, in the landscape he had created with his power. He tried to stop the tears from coming, but it was already too late.
And so, alone in his mind, Valen curled up in his cloak beside the dead and sobbed.
CHAPTER 25
LIRA
Lira took the lead as the three girls filed into the room, their footsteps seeming all too loud. This receiving room was meant for smaller gatherings, but the decor still held enough grandeur to marvel at. Pristine, grooved walls soared upward, at least three stories high, before meeting the gold crown molding bordering the ceiling, and a few tasteful couches and chairs were scattered throughout the space.
Thus far, the room was empty, save for the three of them. None of them had any idea why they’d been summoned here, and Lira couldn’t help feeling a twinge of unease. She’d obey any command given by her queen, no matter where it took her, but how could she serve properly with no information?
She’d failed Nor during the attack, and had not been able to ease her mind since.
“Are we in trouble?” Gilly asked in a small voice. Lira wished she could provide a reassuring answer, but she, too, was wondering the same thing. They had been in the barracks, getting ready for breakfast, when the queen’s personal guards arrived to escort them away for some unknown reason.
Zahn, the queen’s head of security, had died in Arachnid’s attack. A flicker of worry echoed through her as Lira wondered whether the queen would blame them for his death. Lira knew that she blamed herself, at least in part—they should have found a way to do better. But no matter how hard they tried to protect everyone, it never seemed to be enough.
Breck just looked at her with a question in her eyes. Before she could put voice to it, however, a door on the right wall opened, and Queen Nor emerged from it.
The three girls instantly dropped to their knees.
“You may stand.”
They stood without hesitation, like dolls on a string and the queen, their puppet master. Lira assessed her carefully while keeping her head dutifully bowed. Queen Nor wore a plain black dress that fell to her ankles, and her hair was tangled, her usual elegant updo an utter mess. In all the times Lira had seen her, never had the queen looked so unkempt. And her eyes were so tired, so sad.
Lira couldn’t blame her.
She held her breath as Nor shifted her gaze to each of them, holding on to her silence. Lira wished she would just speak already, even if it was to punish them. She deserved punishment for failing the queen—perhaps she even deserved death.
“If you think I called you here to punish you, you’re wrong.” All three girls let out a breath. “But that doesn’t mean everything is alright.”
Lira nodded. “Please accept our condolences, my queen, for those who were lost in the attack.”
Nor stiffened, and Lira froze, hoping she hadn’t said something wrong. Then the queen acknowledged her sentiment with a slight tilt of her head, and Lira relaxed slightly.
Nor tucked a stray strand of dark hair behind her ear before speaking. “We cannot let the resistance continue to thwart our efforts. So we are going to bring their most precious member under our control.”
“Andi,” Gilly breathed.
Nor gave her a sly grin. “Correct. That is why I called you here. We need to find another way to draw Androma to us.”
“But how do we do that when she knows we are loyal to you?” Lira asked, brow raised.
Their queen stepped up to her, arm outstretched. She placed one long, nimble finger under Lira’s blue chin. Nor smiled again, but this time, it was menacing.
“We will have to do something she cannot ignore.”
“What do you have in mind?” Breck asked from beside Lira, arms crossed.
Nor dropped her arm and stepped back, scanning each of them. Her eyes were sharp, even through her pain. So stro
ng. So powerful.
Lira would do anything for this woman.
Anything.
Nor smiled sweetly. “I am going to kill one of you.”
CHAPTER 26
DEX
“You coming in?” Soyina asked, raising a tattooed brow at Dex. They had made their way through the maze of caverns to Klaren’s office, which now stood before them behind closed doors. Apparently that initial meeting in the cave business had just been for theatrics after all.
Andi straightened up, swords strapped over her back as if she were preparing for battle. Dex would have very much preferred to be on full alert like her, but such a task was proving itself difficult, as he was currently nursing a wicked hangover.
“Strange,” Soyina said, looking at Andi and then back at Dex. “You used to be able to handle your Griss a little better, Arez. Getting soft in your old age?”
Dex not-so-casually scratched his nose with his middle finger. “Just let us into the spider’s lair, Soyina.”
“As you wish,” she said cryptically, opening the iron door for them and striding away.
“You look like you’ve just barely survived a war,” Andi murmured, coming up beside him, playing with her messy braid.
Dex shrugged. “Technically, I have,” he said quietly. “I survived a crash landing, an ice dragon attack and, scariest of all, the new General of Arcardius. And let me tell you, she’s positively terrifying.”
Andi hummed. “Always glad to keep you on your toes. But I’m warning you now—if you keep anything from me again, I’ll throw you into a deep, dark dungeon.”
“A dungeon? I hope it’s the fun kind.” Dex winked.
“Very fun.” Andi smiled, running a finger across his chest. “I find immense pleasure in your pain.”
A shiver of apprehension ran up his spine. “You scare me sometimes,” Dex said honestly.
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