by Lindsey Duga
I recognized the altar immediately. It was the same one where the dwarves had cut out Myriana’s heart, the same one where the first girl had received the Heart. I also recognized the heap of azure robes at the altar’s base.
Millennia.
I started to cough again, the fear of seeing Myriana—of being too late—escalating as I coughed up more black liquid. But the egg’s shell was intact. If Myriana had released a five-ton dragon, surely we would’ve known by now.
We slowly drew our weapons. Brom notched an arrow into his crossbow then withdrew a silver dagger. Swords out, Zach and I crept forward.
“Millennia?” I called.
The pile of robes didn’t move. I shot a look at Zach. He frowned and gripped his sword, the leather grinding in his tight grasp.
“Millennia?” I tried again as we inched forward. Every now and then I’d glance up at the giant egg, hoping for some clue—some sign as to what was going on.
No movement—from the egg or Millennia. Could she be dead? And if she was, did that mean the Evil Queen had died, too? Or simply moved on to her next host?
When I was about twenty paces from her, something glimmered at my feet, catching the light of the purple torches flickering at the perimeter of the room.
It was a piece of mirror drenched in blood.
The shard I’d driven into her thigh. I bent and picked it up with trembling fingers.
“I had hoped that mirror had been lost to time.”
Startled, I dropped the shard, and it shattered.
Millennia lay on the ground, facing me, with her head resting on a pile of her gorgeous black hair. Her eyes were wide open, but they were not blue as I’d hoped they’d be. They were violet.
“But I should’ve made sure of it, just as I should’ve made sure you died in that cave.” Her lips moved to form the words, but her voice was not Millennia’s. It was Myriana’s. Stronger. Deeper.
Whatever happened to her between the last cave and this one, her possession had gotten stronger. But she was still too weak to attack us yet. That much was obvious from the body lying twisted on the ground.
I looked to Zach, and he nodded. Swords drawn, we raced toward her. Halfway there, we hit an invisible wall and flew backward, skidding across the cave floor. Rocks and loose pebbles cut into my skin. The two of us groaned and blinked through the dust at the shimmery purple dome surrounding Millennia’s body, now visible.
I cursed. A protective Illye circle.
She moved her head toward her dragon egg and laughed. “Give it time, my dear descendant. I’ll be ready to fight you soon enough. Thanks to your little move with the mirror shard, I had to heal this leg.”
I picked myself up, and so did Zach. I dared not look behind me, but I prayed Brom wasn’t there, that our charge had not been in vain and Brom had been allowed to get into position.
Slowly, she sat up, her black tresses falling across her face like a curtain. “Curse this body,” she growled. “You have no idea how painful it was, listening to my host encouraging you to not use the Royal’s Kiss, but I admit, controlling her mage magic was difficult enough.
“And yet…” She sighed, her shoulders rolling back in satisfaction as the Illye circle crackled overhead. “It was so easy to enter her heart.”
I closed my eyes briefly. Oh, Millennia. You were heartbroken at losing Tarren. It’s not your fault. Sadly, it would’ve been too easy for the Evil Queen to take hold of a devastated, angry girl who hated Royals.
The Illye shield surged with energy, purple lightning arcing over the dome and striking the cavern’s wall, sending large pieces of stone to the floor.
“Don’t do this, Myriana. You don’t understand what you’re doing,” I said, my knees trembling from the Sense, from the fear—from both.
Her violet eyes flashed to a color so dark it looked almost entirely black. “I don’t understand?” Her red lips twisted down into a grimace of pure loathing. “I don’t want to hear that from you.” She raised her hand and stroked the language of the dwarves carved into the side of the altar. The symbols pulsed purple under her hands, glowing like amethysts under firelight, and the Illye circle fizzed with power. She was gaining strength from the altar—the egg—the very air laden with darkness.
“You,” she snarled, “a princess who denounces emotions. Who denounces Love.”
At her last word, Love, dripping with disdain, I realized that the creature that stood before me wasn’t just all the darkness in Myriana’s heart. It was her love as well. Though it had been twisted by all the other dark emotions—the hatred, rage, jealousy—they had turned her love into something poisonous.
And suddenly I did understand. I understood everything.
“That’s why Myriana established the Legion. Because she’d literally cut out all her emotion,” I said, “she cut out you. She had nothing but logic and reason left—”
“I’ll KILL you!” she screamed. Myriana twisted her hand and the Illye shield dropped as a tendril of darkness suddenly burst forth from the egg’s shell, reminding me of how the enchanted water in the well had lashed out and dragged me into its depths. The tendril hit a spot just to the left of Zach and me like a whip, cracking the cave floor open.
Instinctively, I searched for Brom before I remembered where he was supposed to be. Just find a good spot, Brom, and be patient. I imagined him hiding behind a rock, crossbow poised, just like when he shot the mountain elk.
“Myriana!” I yelled, before she raised another hand, ready to strike again. “Please stop! Listen to me—”
My words were lost on her.
Zach and I pushed away from each other as the tendrils struck the ground where we’d been standing. We landed hard on our backs, the wave of residual darkness sweeping over us like a sandstorm, driving more evil into our noses and throats. I turned over and vomited black liquid as thick as ink. Zach was choking on it, too.
“Stop calling me that!” she screeched, “I am not that weakling who couldn’t kill Saevalla. The sister who betrayed her. I was so close to smothering her with a pillow—the same pillow my beloved slept on when he was with her.”
Her voice was hysterical—shrieking—the words of a heart tortured by centuries of hatred and anguish.
“I’ll kill them all, though—I swear this to you, princess. My son will burn this world to the ground, and I will create a new world. One without magic Kisses. And Royals. And fools believing that a new race of mortals walked among them.”
The members of the town who had pushed Raed to produce heirs with Saevalla. She wasn’t just extracting her revenge on Royals. She wanted everyone to pay.
“My real children will survive. And no one will ever have to suffer the pain of knowing love and loss. They will find peace in the afterlife…as I never could. As you will.”
Myriana flexed her wrist, and another tendril of darkness lashed out, the Illye shield dropping once more. This time it would’ve hit us, but Zach was too fast. He picked me up and leaped out of the way, the darkness hitting the stone floor with the force of a black lightning strike.
We dropped to our knees, my heart pounding, and watched in horror as Myriana wiggled her fingers at us. “So close. What a fast prince you are.”
Then she raised both arms, and before another strike of energy could be unleashed from the Illye circle, I screamed the words I’d been practicing in my head for an entire day.
The only spell I knew to stop her.
“You’ll hurt the baby!”
Myriana froze. Her violet eyes wide with shock and…fear?
“What?” Her voice was hoarse from her screams.
I cradled my stomach. “Please, Myriana,” I begged. “My child. Please spare my child,” I sobbed. At this point, it wasn’t hard to cry.
Zach pulled me into him protectively, shielding me, like the perfect father would.
Myriana stared at the two of us, darting from my face to Zach’s then back again. Her arms trembled above her head, ready to un
leash another deadly strike that neither Zach nor I would be able to survive.
But our bluff had worked.
It was the one weakness we could exploit. Make her hesitate. She was willing to burn down the whole world, but she couldn’t kill a baby—the one thing she’d loved with all her heart.
Burn down the whole world, but save one pregnant woman? It didn’t make sense.
But then, Love didn’t make sense.
Her face twisted into a mixture of worry, anguish, and rage as she lost her focus, and the Illye shield dispersed in a final crackle of energy. “You’re lying—”
Her words were cut off by the sharp release of an arrow and her own scream of pain. An arrow had lodged itself in her shoulder, a hair’s breadth from her neck.
Pride blooming in my chest, I followed the arrow’s trajectory to where Bromley stood on top of a fallen piece of stone, aiming his crossbow down at the Evil Queen.
“Rest in peace, you witch,” he said.
Chapter
Thirty-Four
Possession
The idea had come from our fight against the griffin, only this time Zach and I had been the bait while Brom had lain in wait for the perfect moment when both the shield and her guard were down.
Millennia convulsed, her body shaking like she was having a seizure, and she fumbled to pull the silver-tipped arrow’s shaft from deep in her shoulder. Wrenching it out, she threw it on the ground, the arrow clattering on the stone floor, blood dripping everywhere.
She glared at Brom and then mounted the stone altar, thrusting her hands onto the egg.
Darkness rolled over the open wound on her shoulder, already beginning to heal. Then the darkness flowed into the egg, pooling at her hands, swirling and growing like the Queen’s and the dragon’s powers were converging somehow.
“Brom, get down!” I screamed just before the effect hit me—as if someone twisted a blade buried in my chest. I coughed up more thick black liquid and stumbled, trying to stay up. Zach reached for me, but as his hand grazed my wrist, the mountain shook.
Darkness came from every corner and crack and seeped into the stone altar. Inky black tendrils like vines crawled along the egg’s shell.
I couldn’t scream. I could barely even breathe. The darkness was sucking the oxygen out of the air.
The mountain shook again, and the stalactites trembled. I cried out as Brom dropped from the rock and rolled onto the floor. He didn’t move—I prayed he was only knocked unconscious and nothing worse.
Zach raised his sword and sprinted toward Millennia. She lifted a hand, curling her fingers like a claw, then thrust it to the side. Zach’s feet swept out from under him as an invisible force knocked him into the cavern’s wall. I screamed for him and tried to run, but my legs were heavier than lead, and I fell to the floor. The darkness was collapsing on top of me. My lungs were filled with it.
I was drowning again. Like I had when my mother raged at me. Like I had in the well. I remembered the way the cursed water had pulled my body, twisting my muscles and making them scream in agony.
What had saved me?
Zach.
His name came to me as it did then. He said he was going to protect me that night by the fire. I believed it with every ounce of hope I had left inside me.
I crawled toward him as the cavern floor shook under my hands and knees, praying to every star I knew that he was still alive. I barely registered that the egg’s shell began to crack. Whatever star was listening answered my prayer—Zach shifted on the floor, groaning and shaking his head.
A surge of strength flowed through me, and I managed to get to my feet. He was alive. That…that was all that mattered. If he was alive, I could figure out something else. We could still defeat Myriana. As long as he was still alive.
Zach was the secret strength that had saved me in that well, just as he saved me now by giving me the strength to keep moving. If Zach did that to me, then what would the thought of Tarren do to Millennia—her one true love?
With great effort, I changed course, stumbling over loose rubble from the craters in the floor. Millennia was still in there—I just had to reach her.
I walked toward Myriana, aware of the cracks in the eggshell growing, the mountain shaking around us, and Zach struggling to his feet behind me.
I stopped a few paces from the Evil Queen.
“Myriana!” I screamed over the booms coming from the egg.
Myriana twitched but didn’t look in my direction. Darkness flowed from the air into her body then out through her hands, entering the shell like she was some sort of conduit, feeding the Sable Dragon the energy it needed to hatch.
“You didn’t fail them!” I yelled.
She looked over her shoulder at me, her violet eyes blazing.
I spoke the words I knew that somewhere, deep down, she needed to hear. Underneath all that evil. All the hate. She was a mother.
“Those babies. The ones you couldn’t have—you didn’t fail them. It wasn’t your fault.”
She wrenched her hands from the egg and lunged for me. Her hands wrapped around my neck with such force that I fell to the ground. The stone collided with my back and rattled my bones.
Straddling my stomach, Myriana’s hands began squeezing the life from me. “Don’t talk about them.”
I struggled to form words. My vision blackened.
“Y-you d-didn’t fail Tarren, either.”
Myriana’s hands froze on my neck.
“Just because you couldn’t rescue him on your own—you can’t blame yourself, Millennia,” I whispered through the rasp in my throat. “It wasn’t your fault.”
The queen’s eyes burned a violet so deep they turned indigo. “I wasn’t strong enough.”
Millennia. I tried to shake my head, though her hands still held a viselike grip around my neck. “Yes, you are. You’re plenty strong. He gives you strength, doesn’t he?” I gripped her wrists and squeezed gently. Because it’s what Zach gives me.
The violet in her eyes flickered to a deep blue. There was something there.
“That’s what Love does, right? It makes you feel pain, but courage, too.”
Millennia’s hands twitched, barely loosening their hold.
“The Legion is wrong.” I forced the truth out of me as if I were cutting into my own skin and baring all. “We’ve always been wrong. We put power and blood and logic above everything else, when we should’ve been ruling with our hearts.”
Hearing myself admit this was like making another incision into my skin. But I couldn’t stop. I had to keep going so I could sew the wound back up tight. So that it could heal properly.
“Love does exist. I saw it in the way you talked about him. You still love him. You always will. And it makes you stronger. You’re not weak like her, Millennia. You didn’t cut out your heart or abandon your feelings—you embraced them.” I grabbed her hands, feeling Tarren’s ring on her finger. “Why else would you still wear this ring? I know you can push her out. Please, please don’t let her win.”
She blinked. Blue irises.
Overhead, a crack in the egg splintered. The loudest boom yet shook the floor as the black tendrils reached the top and seeped into the open cracks.
“Remember Tarren.” I tore her shaking hands away from my throat and threw my arms around her, squeezing tight. “Come back to him, Millennia. Come back,” I cried as the egg gave a gigantic tremble.
Millennia’s eyes cleared into her beautiful ocean blue as Zach caught up, standing over us. “Tarren…” she whispered.
From above, a great claw the color and texture of obsidian broke through the shell, sending a fragment flying into the cave wall and shattering.
The Sable Dragon was awake.
Millennia’s face twisted in pain. “Ivy—I can’t hold her back—Myriana—”
She held on to me—held on for dear life. I opened my mouth to respond, to tell her to fight back, feel the love she had for Tarren. To drive the Evil Queen from her
heart.
“Kill me, Zach.” The words were barely out of her mouth before Zach had the blade of his dagger pressed to her throat.
Shocked, I couldn’t move. The Queen was still inside Millennia, and if we killed Millennia, then we would kill the Queen. It had been the plan all along, but…
Around us, the mountain was crumbling. Rocks and stalactites fell from the ceiling. The obsidian claw scraped against the shell from within, causing more pieces to fall like giant boulders.
“Kill me—hurry!” Millennia cried, tears running down her pretty cheeks, bringing red blotches to her face.
Zach’s hand shook. He stared at Millennia in horror, but the dagger pressed deeper into her neck. Droplets of blood gathered at the edge of the blade.
Logic said to kill her. The Legion said to kill her. Perish emotions and vanquish doubts. Lead by example.
I tugged on his wrist. “Don’t—please, don’t.”
I couldn’t let him. How could we kill an innocent girl whose only crime was loving someone too much?
“Do it. I don’t want her to use me as a puppet. I want her out, even if that means taking her with me.” Millennia tried to shove me away.
I held strong. “Then get her out. Get rid of the feelings that make her stronger.”
“I—I c-can’t.” Millennia pitched her head forward, sobs shaking her body. “I’ll never stop hating the Legion. I can’t let these feelings go.”
“Then change them.” I grabbed her shoulders, just as another dragon claw broke free. “Forgive the Legion. Forgiveness is harder than giving up. I won’t let you give up like she did, Millennia. Tarren would want you to love.”
Millennia stared at me through her tears. Zach jerked his blade away, his face a mixture of doubt and anguish. He couldn’t do it and, for the first time, I felt so grateful for what I always thought was his weakness—his faith in Love.
Millennia collapsed into my arms.
I held on to her until Zach jerked me back. I almost fought his grip, but then I saw why he’d ripped me away. Purple flames bloomed from Millennia’s chest and spread, dancing over her shoulders and neck. She gazed upward, cheeks streaked with tears, her face calm and peaceful.