by Anna Holmes
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she asks, frowning.
“You honestly think you could just charge in wherever the Queen just was with a trifling amount of magic like that and abduct the most powerful caster of my lifetime and yours combined?” He chuckles. “You have much to learn, child.”
“Well, you’re the professor, aren’t you?” she says, wriggling her fingers in the same way I’ve seen Alain do it, readying her magic. “Why don’t you give me a hint?”
He laughs once more, and I swallow, my fingers dampening around the hilt of my sword. Taunting her seems a bad move, but between the pair of us, I think we’ll have her. I am distracted, though, worried about Tressa, worried about Alain, worried about the whole damned city. I’m glad to have the Professor’s expertise today.
But then his laugh sharpens. “All right, then,” he says. “The prince is locked up in the vault, openable only by the Queen. You’ll need a hand. Educational enough?”
Jori’s gaze flicks to my wrist, and in a horrible, nauseating moment, I realize that this isn’t a taunt. It’s instruction. She begins a long run down the aisle, and Thorn strides to the open door. I make a run for it, but he shakes his head. The tiles under me buckle, dislodge, and start taking out the others around me one by one, until I either have to jump out of the ring or be tripped. In the last moment before the door is shut, he catches my eye. “My regards to your father,” he tells me, satisfaction in his face. The door slams shut in mine before I have a chance to answer.
I don’t even have a moment to shout after him, to scream not you, too, to wonder why it is no one in my family can seem to hang onto a trusted advisor, because Jori is right there. With a flip of a hand, she sends one table crashing toward me, then another, then another. She’s not aiming particularly hard, because all it takes are a couple of sidesteps, and I’m still upright. “Crow, stop this,” I tell her.
“Why would I do that?” she asks, an eyebrow arching high. “All I have to do is separate you from one of your hands.”
“You know why.”
She tilts her head to the side. “No, I really don’t. I do this and I get everything I ever wanted. Alain back. You, dead. Your miserable country in shambles. Probably finally a promotion. Don’t know what a girl has to do around these parts, but if I don’t make at least commander for this, someone’s head will roll.” She squints at me, her eyes set on my neck. “Preferably yours.”
“I told you once. I don’t want to fight over Alain, Crow.”
“What’s to fight over?” she asks, throwing her hands upward. I tighten, bracing for some sort of magic, but it turns out to be just emphasis. She smirks as my shoulders come back down. “Scare you?”
“Volatile people do tend to do that.”
“Is that what I am?”
“I don’t know what to make of you, honestly,” I tell her, leaning an elbow on one of the upturned tables. “One minute you’re a loyal servant of the Legion, the next you’re working under your own power and killing a prince. Which is really you?”
“Neither version really wants me to let you walk out of here,” she says. “So you can spare me the diplomatic outreach.”
I raise the sword in a salute. “Very well. Have at it, then.”
She lifts a hand, then pauses. “Why don’t I want to fight you?”
“No, no, you wanted to fight. Let’s fight.”
I angle my sword toward her chest, inching forward a bit at a time. Jori watches the point for a moment, a tinge of amusement coloring her cheeks, her lips pulling up. “So fight.”
“Whenever you’re ready.”
Jori folds her hands behind her back, then looks over her nose at me. “Why don’t you want to fight me?”
“The same reason you don’t want to fight me,” I say, swiping the sword through the air and holding it low at my side again. The words don’t come easily. I don’t really want to say them, but they’re what needs to be said if we’re ever to stop this dance. “You were once a part of Alain’s life. Neither of us want him to hate that you have a place there.”
Her lip curls. “What?”
“You kill me,” I tell her, “and you’ve lost him permanently. You know better than I do what happened to him last night. Do you really think a bit of magic is going to turn his head anymore?”
“You’re losing me, you insane monarchist harlot,” she spits. “Why wouldn’t you want him to hate me?”
“Because he’s miserable when he hates.” I shake my head. “You confuse me endlessly, Crow, but if you love him—and I think you do—you don’t want him miserable.”
Her face hardens. “All misery fades someday.”
She turns her face from me, and for second, I think I see some doubt there. This may be the hardest fight I’ve yet had, and it’s not Jori who’s the opponent.
It’s easy to join her in seething anger. In fact, I have already, every time I threatened her. It hadn’t worked. It hardened her more.
And isn’t that what I’ve said in just about every speech since war’s end? Hatred hardens. There’s far too much in common between all of us. Including—and possibly especially—the pair of us. My arm shakes as I move to sheathe the sword. As gently as I’m able to, I say, “Then let yours.”
Jori’s head whips up. “Oh, I intend to.” She flings an arm out, then draws her hand closed sharply across her chest. Something that sounds like a blade passing through the air whisks past my ear. For a slow, stupid moment, I wonder if she has an invisible weapon, but I find out quickly enough when the next blast of air ricochets off my crown, knocking it to the floor.
Stupid, Caelin. It’s the same gesture Alain makes to summon the wind. The air is the blade, and I know it’s sharp enough to sever, because my braid lays on the floor next to my displaced crown. She moves to summon another, and this time I shut my eyes, swallow hard, and bring up my sword in the best guess I have, listening for the rush.
I manage to block it, by some miracle. The metal reverberates, and by the time the air reaches me, it’s reduced to a sort of aggressive puff. She glowers at me, then lifts her hand again. One more blast, then another, then one more. I block the first, the second glances off the edge of my sleeve, a chunk of the velvet joining my braid on the floor. The remnants of my hair drift obnoxiously into my face, and I reach up to swipe it out of the way just in time to block the last gust of air she sends my way.
She stands, staring for a moment at my hand. At first, I think she’s sizing up the best way to sever it again, but I see that one of the shafts of light from above has caught the emerald of the ring on its place on my left hand. I lower the sword again for a moment. “You,” she says, her voice quiet, “know nothing of misery. You, who knows nothing but victory.”
“Crow—”
“Shut up,” she heaves, her voice echoing in the cavernous hollow of the library, the heavy metal ticks of the clock the only answer. “Shut up and think for a moment. Think of everything you love about Alain. I have a few guesses. His absolutely defiant hair. That funny little face he makes when he's concentrating—you know, like he’s interrogating the book. The way his hands move. They look so fragile, thin, long, but when you see him casting or writing or turning a page, you see how strong they are. That sort of dent right over his hip. The way his voice changes when he tells you he loves you. The kiss right behind the ear. Think about those things, and then imagine they’ve been ripped away from you all at once. That’s losing. And I swear, you will know what that feels like. So no. I won’t kill you.” Another table flies at me, and I narrowly miss this one. She moves toward me anew. “But you will learn that loss.”
I get another volley of air blades. Some move straight for me, others whiff to the side. Have I turned her too wild to focus? I manage to whip the uneven ends of my hair out of my face long enough to get a good look at her and realize that no, she’s bluffing.
I wonder.
I ease the offending ring from my finger with my thumb and catch it be
fore it falls, still blocking a bit at a time. The next time I bring my hand up to shove my hair from my face, I hook the end of the earring into my ear.
Sure enough, the next few blasts of air are accompanied by a ringing sound. I take in a deep breath, move to parry only the true strikes, and start for her.
Doing no harm to those who harm you is difficult. I knew this when I tried to sell the concept to my people in the days after the war, after they and their neighbors spent ten years harming one another in the way that only people can. And really, I’d like nothing better than to try to clock Jori at this point. I am pretty pissed about the haircut, and there’s still the matter of Alain’s enslavement. But Alain was right, as I always knew he was. There can’t be two queens, one who says one thing and one who does another. Even for Jori Crow.
As I approach, she takes a step backward. “Stop this,” I tell her again. “And I’ll return you to your people.”
“Spare me your simpering platitudes, valsht.”
“What would you like me to say?”
“Begging for mercy is good,” she says with a shrug, reaching behind her to fling an iron candleholder in my path.
I dodge the falling metal, and she floats gracefully backwards, as though on the very air itself. A pounding comes from the door, and distracted, she turns. I take the moment to lunge for her and attempt to pull her arm behind her back. She throws an elbow into my chest, and I stagger, winded.
All right, so I’m not a saint. I’m not going to sit here and be battered. Another pound breaks up the ticks of the clock, the shrieks of our footsteps against the marble floor, our traded grunts and missed shots and failed spells fizzling against the walls and bookshelves. The library isn’t quiet anymore. She pushes another blast of air at me, and this time when it meets my blade, it sits there for a moment, then shoves back against me. I stumble, but right myself quickly enough. This time I swipe across her face and draw blood, right under her perfect cheekbone. She shrieks and comes back at me with double the force.
Another boom. She glances nervously in the direction of the door again. So she hasn’t planned this. In the midst of her next attempt, the doors at last fly open, yielding to Daryon and friends. All except Larkin and August, but help all the same. I sag in relief. “Well met, Daryon,” I call to him.
“I wanted to make sure you had a chance to reconsider,” he shouts. “Hold fast.”
Jori ducks under my arm and spreads her fingers, holding the palm flat. The shards of the tiles Thorn broke under me earlier go flying at the new arrivals. Four sets of cries of pain sound, but I’m turned the wrong way in an attempt to catch her between my leg and my arm. And yet again, she wrenches away.
Jori aims a fresh kick to my chest, and I dodge, but just barely, catching her ankle and throwing her aside. I guess I’ve taken for granted just how much magic Alain can do before tiring out. She’s had to resort to physical blows in order to keep the fight going. Good. She rolls to her forearms and jumps up ably. I strike her with the butt of my sword across the face, and she falls backward. Playing my game now. Maybe I don’t have magic, but this I can do.
She straggles back up enough to look my way and fling a burst of flame inches from my face. I throw myself down and take stock. I’ve avoided a singeing, but now I am on my back. I move to get up, but she knocks over a table onto me. It’s incredibly heavy. She sets a foot on the rungs of the leg of the table nearest my chest and steps down—hard.
I cry out, and even over that, hear something crunch before I really feel it. When I do, though…I can’t breathe, can’t even struggle to get her off me. Out of the corner of my wavering vision, I see a large hand pull her away and toss her aside. Daryon uses the other to wrench the table off of me and pull me up.
Wrong arm. It’s not broken, but something near it definitely is. I prod my rib cage and sag. That’s it. “Are you all right?” he demands.
“Duck,” I wheeze out, but not quickly enough. Another blast of air slices between us, and a deep line of red blossoms from Daryon’s right eyebrow and down to his chin.
He lets out a bestial roar. “MY FACE,” he shouts, his hands clamped over it.
Jori drives back Rin, Feyn, and Ghent with a semi-circle of fire and shoves Daryon aside. “Sorry, handsome,” she says. “You’re in the way.”
He rebounds quickly and moves to engage her again. I use one foot to balance unsteadily and the other to swipe her legs out from underneath her. I drag myself back up to my full height and close the short distance between us, placing the point of my sword to her neck.
“Do it,” she dares.
“I don’t want to,” I say, bracing my side with my other arm. “But if I have to, I will. No one is taking him.”
“I disagree,” a voice says from the doorway.
Everyone else in the room is suspended, stricken, like the statues in the memorial garden. I reach out for Daryon’s arm, try to pull. I may as well be tugging on stone. There’s just Jori, the newcomer, and me left. I’ve seen this before—Alain’s done it a few times. But this is different. Every single person in the room, every face is frozen in pain.
Their captor is a woman, tall, stately in a silvery dress that curls around her legs like smoke as she walks. Her head is smooth and hairless, though a pair of crystalline ridges spiral around her skull. She strides through the wreckage, serene, almost beatific, her hands folded in front of her.
Her very, very blue hands.
Jori takes this moment to thrust the heel of her hand up into my broken ribs. Pain shoots through my torso like lightning, and I crumple. She flips up, and places her boot on my right shoulder. “Which one did I poison again?” she asks, stepping down. I bite down on my lip to keep from making noise. “Must be the other one,” she says, lifting up to come down on the left.
I slice at her calf with the sword still clutched in my hand, and she falls. I pull myself up, heaving with the pain, turning my sword on Orillia. “Don’t come any closer,” I tell her, though with the way I'm gasping, it sounds weak.
“I don’t have to,” she says. “Alain will come to me.”
I shake my head, newly chopped hair flying into my eyes. “He won’t.”
“You think you know him, this boy of mine?” she asks, her lips pulling back in a smile. “He’s his father’s sentimentality. I’d thought we’d managed to take care of that, Sergeant Crow.”
Jori grits her teeth, her leg hugged to herself. “He’s—upstairs. In the vault.”
“I know,” she says mildly.
“If you take her hand—”
“I don’t care for blood.” She eyes me appraisingly a moment. “Besides. I won’t have to.” She lifts her voice, a terrible, beautiful resonating sound. “Alain, this is your last warning.”
I try to lean against the table, but no matter what I do, it strains my ribs, stings my legs. “He can’t,” I say. “Only I can unlock that door.”
She turns, her head swiveling later than the rest of her. It’s a fluid motion, but inhuman, her wild silver eyes fixing on me. So much like Alain's, and so different. “Oh, he will.”
Without warning, every book springs from the shelves immediately around me. I run as fast as I can, but I fight waves of pain, nausea. The shelves ahead of me explode in a flutter of torn pages, then the ones behind, and I am caught. I swing my sword to deflect from my face, but my body is pelted with book after book. The corner of one catches me right in the ribs, and I fall.
My vision wavers anew. A blue blur appears before it. “The left one, was it?” she asks Jori, who struggles to stand behind her.
My fingers claw for my sword, and she smiles. “Oh, sweet future daughter of mine,” she croons. “There’s no need for that. This won’t hurt a bit.”
The earring begins shrieking so loudly, I can’t think. There’s a pop, and my skull bursts with pain on my left side. She reaches out, fingers like ice, running down my neck. “No,” I tell her. “This will destroy him.”
She smiles
pleasantly. We may as well be looking at each other over the cups of tea we held in our meeting, the cups of tea we promised one another in the future. “That’s what I’m counting on, dear.”
It’s small at first, but slowly, the pain flares back to life just where my neck and shoulder meet. A familiar pang at first. I lived through it once; I can do it again.
But then it spreads. Not just in my shoulder anymore, but out across my chest, down to my broken ribs. Up my neck. To my heart, the center of me. My soul.
Everything—everything—hurts.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Alain
Panic floods my body when I hear the first scream. Caelin doesn’t even scream when she has nightmares. And they only get worse, louder, reverberating in my chest where my heart is supposed to live.
My first thought is to the gate, but I’ve been trying to get it off its hinges ever since I heard Jori start throwing things down below. Stop, I beg my mother.
Come stop me, she taunts.
Nothing else will. I know that full well. After our lessons growing up, after the way she tormented Elle. Mother is unbound by anything other than her orders and her own will. My fingers close around the bars one last time, and then I shove myself back from the gate and tear through the room, looking for something, anything.
There’s a window.
I don’t know that I could control a fall from this high up. I mean, it would end the fighting over me, and it would be a lie to say that I hadn’t considered it the moment I understood that my existence was engineered for a purpose.
But there are too many people who need Alain the person regardless of his status as Northshore the weapon, and it’s to that end that I start shoving things around, looking for a different way out.
Behind the heavy metal cabinet is a hatch. It’s small, but it's meant for a person to climb through. I try the little metal ring in the center. Locked.