“How are you going to find Elias?” Hazen asked, knowing already what my first priority would be.
“I won’t,” I shouted back, as we neared the fighting. “He will find me!”
We reached the edges of the township, ignoring the few, scattered men that grappled around us, as they were too occupied to take much notice, and took in the scene before us. I never could have guessed that the Synfee Empire possessed such an army. All the way along the bank of the Raven River, separating Castle Nest from Kingsbed, hoards of men struggled against each other; the mass of bodies ballooning around the edges of the wall that Elias had tossed me over. I could see waves of colour too, with the majority of silver, black and pearl seemingly backed against the wall and the river. They were outnumbered by red. The soldiers pushing them back each boasted a red cloth on some part of their person; brandished by the hilt of their sword, bandaged on their arm, or tied about their head.
I was spared the wonder that threatened to hold me frozen, by a mangled shout that spread across the sea of people, elevated eerily to raise goosebumps along my skin.
“He can feel your mind,” Hazen spoke, his eyes turned toward the sky, concentration etched into the lines deepening on his forehead. “It has enraged him… he is coming.”
We spread out unconsciously then, Harbringer and Hazen flanking my sides with Rose behind us, the slight incline we favoured giving her an aim over the top of my head. I felt the lack of Cale’s presence keenly, but it only fed the rage that had risen inside me when I had looked into Rose’s eyes. I filtered it out into my Force, using it to feel the earth around me, to gather a hold on whatever I might use against Elias.
“Beatrice Harrow!” The scream reached my ears before Elias broke free of the battle and stormed toward us, a small group of soldiers trailing behind him, protecting his back.
“They are all Force users,” Harbringer sounded at my left. “Be careful.”
I grinned, feeling an absurd sense of serendipity. These people had been my enemies once already, they had destroyed Red Ridge and Flintwood, had thrown the kingdom into a dependence that allowed Grenlow to manipulate and bribe the people.
They are the soldiers in black, silver and pearl, I realised, somewhat dumbly. I walked into the midst of Elias’ army the day I walked into Flintwood.
My grin widened ghoulishly, an expression I am sure had never graced my face before. With the severity of my emotion, my glamor slipped off naturally, and I embraced the monster within me. I couldn’t wait for Elias to reach me, I twisted the dagger in my hand and took off at a run, my golden-tinged hair flying behind me.
“I killed the human,” Elias snarled when I reached him, sidestepping the swipe of my blade, “and now it seems I must kill the synfee!”
His small contingent of Force soldiers ran at me, but I blasted them back with a wind so strong that Hazen, Harbringer and Rose were also knocked back. Elias grinned, waving his hand before him, but I countered the invisible barrier—which would have sent me, too, flying backward—by directing it viciously toward the ground. The earth vibrated and split, a crack as big as my foot spearheading toward Elias. He jumped over it and a circle of flame burst around us, barricading me in with his Force-users. Almost as soon as the wall was constructed, his soldiers clutched at their skulls, crying out in a pain so severe, I had to block out their screams to concentrate on Elias. The show of mind power by Hazen and Harbringer seemed to have annoyed him, and his next attack was lashed out viciously. The blast of wind hit me from every side, buffering me between seemingly solid walls that threatened to crush me as I stood. I managed to push them away, but they flared the flames around us further, and I called desperately upon the rain, half-surprised when the big, fat droplets began to pound down around us.
This, too, annoyed Elias, and he waved his hand again, my dagger flying of its own accord from my hand and landing in his. He reached back and with a flash of his arm the knife was flying toward me, propelled by the force behind his elemental power. I propelled my own elemental toward it, but he was strong, and it did not change direction as I had intended. It hovered, trembling in the air, halfway between the two of us. Elias took a step forward, his deathly eyes staring straight through me; his hands were steady, mine were trembling. My hold on the knife slipped, and it flashed toward me before I managed to stop it again. Sweat was beading down the sides of my face, and the soldiers around us—contained within our dying wall of fire—were on their knees, crying out at their mental torture. I knew I wasn’t going to be able to hold it much longer, and I could see Hazen out of the corner of my eye, running at the dwindling flames, determined to reach me before my knife did.
I will stand before every knife leveled at you. His words came to me unbidden, and I opened my mouth to shout at him to stay back, but Elias had already noticed him. The pressure against me increased, my own concentration slipping, but just then a man pushed in front of me. The impact of the dagger meeting his chest propelled us both backwards beyond the circle of wet embers. I gasped in breath after breath, overcome with horror at what had just happened so rapidly I was still trying to process it. We had both been so intent on Hazen’s approach that we hadn’t seen the other man rush forward. I could feel his blood spreading over my stomach, warm and sticky, his heavy convulsing driving me painfully into the ground. He was lifted from me, and I watched him float into the air bidden by, I assumed, Elias.
“Nareon…” Elias drawled. “You’ll not get in the way again. Silly of you really, wasting yourself on the girl, since I will kill her anyway… but first…”
The ragged man—whom I now recognised as the person Nareon had been controlling once before—screamed as the knife twisted in his chest. Hazen reached my side, his hand grasping mine tightly. The Nareon in my head began to scream in tandem with the man in the air, and I crumpled over, hands covering my ears.
“Stop!” I cried, unbidden. “Please, make it stop!”
He was dying all over again, and I was powerless to stop it, but it was forcing another reality into the forefront of my mind. Kill him now. I didn’t know if the urge had come from Nareon, Hazen, or even myself; but it was suddenly essential. I rose, my limbs heavy, my body undergoing some kind of torture through its connection to Nareon. I didn’t have my dagger anymore, but I didn’t need it. I looked around, knowing that she would be near, and found Rose standing just beyond the circle of burnt ground, her crossbow raised, leveled. I narrowed my eyes on Elias, exerting the full power of my Force into the ground, where gnarled, heavy vines escaped from deepening cracks, tearing across the earth. They rose the length of his legs, binding him to where he stood, capturing his arms and slithering around his neck, turning his face to me.
A crack of lightning struck the ground only a few feet from where I stood, but I only walked forward, drawn to where my power hummed in ferocious, untamed pleasure. The vines began to bite into his skin, embracing him tightly, and he seemed powerless to stop them. His Force-user army did not rise to defend him. They were dead.
“Are you ready to leave this place, Elias?” I reached him, another flash of lightning striking close by, leaving a distinct, burning stench in its wake.
The sky rumbled and Elias’ laugh rumbled with it. “Never,” he declared, as the crossbow bolt cut through the vines and buried itself into the center of his back.
His eyes grew wide in disbelief, staring down at the tip as it extended, barely, from the centre of his chest. Rose turned and walked away, having finished what she came here to do, and I hoped that she would reach the tunnels safely. We all stood in silence then, witnessing the veil of death descending upon Elias Soulstoy. I was sure that Nareon’s host body had perished, as the screams inside my head had quietened. Ashen appeared—as if summoned by the deaths of his brothers—just as Elias slackened against the mould of roots. Where they previously held him prisoner, they now cradled him in death.
Ashen was grasping two curved blades and blood was smudged down his arms, dirt coveri
ng his face. His eyes found Elias, flicked to the crumbled, bedraggled body that had once housed Nareon, and then found me. We shared the loss of Nareon in that look, knowing that we were perhaps the only two people left in the kingdom who would really mourn his passing, just as we both knew that he would not come back this time. He had been driven by the guilt of knowing what he had created, driven to end his brother’s life once and for all, even if it destroyed his own. He had taken on more than any one of us.
He had taken on Elias.
I turned to the battle still raging before us, and lifted my arms to the sky. The heavens seemed to open, outpouring a diabolical power from above. The ground shook, threatening my footing, as the rain became a drowning blanket, blocking my vision. The smell of sulfur preceded lightning strike after lightning strike, battering the earth with my uncontained wrath. And then just as suddenly, the assault was swept away. Heads turned upwards in wonder, their fighting forgotten as their weapons flew from their hands, hovering in the air above them, forming sharp, metal clouds.
Perhaps they could sense my power, or perhaps the clouds gathered around the spot where I stood, but gradually, every eye found me.
“The Queen’s army!” shouted Ashen, whose swords had remained in his grip.
He shoved one of those swords into the air now, and a sea of fists violently tore through the wind below us. They were waving their red flags, shouting things into the storm that were lost on me. I lowered the confiscated instruments carefully; curious as to how Elias’s remaining army would react to my show of victory. People began snatching their weapons out of the air and dropping to their knees, golden-glinted eyes peering at me through the slow curtain of rain that remained. It reminded me, eerily, of the day Nareon had died. Except that those people had not been mine. These are my people, I realised. My army. What remained of Elias’s contingent soon became clear, as they were left tensely clutching their weapons, wavering in indecision.
Walking past my friends, I waved a hand behind me, and Elias’s vine-cradle lengthened, the stalks twisting, reaching further into the air, until their charge lay statue-still and deathly limp in their overarching display.
“A Tainted Creature,” I called. “Elias Soulstoy has finally met with the death that had twisted his mind, and your homes—the very ground you walk on—for generations!”
I waited as the whispers travelled backward through the people, my message relaying amid the shouts of approval from my own troops.
“No longer will the water run toxic,” I continued. “No longer will the ground wither upon itself, starving entire villages into ruins! You will no longer live in darkness, but in freedom! The reign of the Soulstoy Inheritance is finished!”
I turned from the outcry, reaching for Hazen, who stepped to my side, taking my hand securely in his, allowing me to raise our hands into the air.
“The kingdoms,” here my voice gained strength, my heart propelling the words into their own, “will stand united!”
The outcry was fast in fading, the kneeling people bowing their heads, showing their respect for the union that, unbeknownst to them, would protect them in the oncoming war. Slowly, the standing synfees began to find their knees, seeing no alternative for themselves.
Chapter Twenty-Three
From the Reign, Comes the Drought
The months following the death of Elias saw a procession of processions move through our lives. We attended funeral after funeral, as well as a ceremony to honour the bravest of my own men, who had dedicated themselves to fighting for me under the direction of Teddy, Quick and Sweet. Flora had been included in the ceremony, as she had secretly sewn the hundreds of red flags, all embroidered with the death mark: my supposed sigil. Once the ceremonies had tapered off, Hazen, Miriam and Rose returned home, needing to take care of their own preparations for the joining of the two kingdoms. I took Harbringer and Quick with me to Red Ridge, where Dom’s people awaited, having set up their camp in the ruined city by my own direction. They welcomed me with a feast they barely had expense for, and I spent the next few weeks pouring my Force into the earth, coaxing it further back to health, as huts were constructed, and roads were dug around me.
It was on the day we were set to leave that I found myself at Harbringer’s tent, pacing the fledgling patches of grass outside.
“You’re going to ruin all your hard work,” Harbringer grumbled from inside.
“Can you come out here?” I pleaded; a little exasperated that he had known I was there the whole time.
He chuckled, flicking the tent opening aside and stopping before me.
“What can I do for you, Lady Queen?”
I winced at the formality. “I have decided to rearrange my Council.”
He arched an eyebrow. “Really? Would that be because half of them are now dead, or…?”
My wince deepened a little. “I know I should have done it earlier, but I’ve been trying to deal with everything. I think we all have. I trusted Leif; I think I may have even liked him, you know, as a person. I thought we were friends. It’s just…” I shook my head, unwilling to let the confusion and hurt affect me in that moment.
“I know.” Harbringer seemed to hesitate, but then his hand lit upon my shoulder. “And I know you miss Nareon.”
I nodded. “Thanks.”
He grinned. “Anytime, Harrow. Now tell me, what position have you degraded me to?”
I laughed, a lightness filling my chest. “Promoting, actually. I want you to be our Ambassador. I can’t think of anyone better. You will be travelling a lot between this kingdom and the other, and you, more than anyone, have a place in both.”
“What about Ashen?”
“Ashen will be my advisor. A little too close to the crown for him, maybe, but I trust that he will not let me down.”
“I trust that you are right.”
“So will you? Will you be the new Ambassador?”
He mocked a bow. “Whatever you desire, Lady Queen.” He lost his smile then, and I saw a shadow of how broken we really were. “Thank you,” he finally said.
Since Harbringer had accepted the new position, I instructed him to stay back in Red Ridge for a few more days, and only Quick accompanied me back to the castle that night. We passed the training grounds that I used to fight in, when I was still learning to control my Force and curb my hunger, and Quick slowed his horse to a stop, gazing at the sands.
“It seems a lifetime ago,” he muttered, looking back at me.
I reached out and caught his hand. “We have entered the next life, then.” I squeezed his fingers and he smiled.
“Do you think it will ever be like that again?”
I laughed. “I hope I don’t find you up in the tower room again playing cards with the other two,” I warned. “You’re in charge of my army.”
His eyebrows flew up. “I’m what?”
“I want you to command the army, Quick. You, Teddy and Sweet. I want you to divide the men into three divisions, so that it is more manageable. And I want you on the Council.”
He pulled his hand from mine, already shaking his head. “No, no, no. Our job is to protect you—the kingdom is too turbulent right now. Opening up one spot on your personal guard is too hazardous a move, let alone all three. It leaves an opening for anyone wishing to avenge Elias!”
“I’m doing away with the personal guard,” I informed him, another laugh bubbling to the surface at the horrified look in his eye. “I’m not an unwilling little girl-queen anymore. I’ll not hide behind people, and I’ll certainly not encourage people to think I’m less capable than Elias or Nareon.”
He opened his mouth to argue, but I spurred my horse into action and preceded him into the stables. I jumped from the saddle as he entered, and was out the door before he could continue the argument. I found Gretal and asked her to gather the people I needed, and then I climbed to Nareon’s glass-walled chamber. Ashen arrived first, having just come back from Castle Nest to deal with the poisoned waterways, and he
sauntered over to me, dropping an arm over my shoulders.
“You got some sun, sweetheart.” He smirked, as though he were making some kind of joke.
I touched my cheek and turned to the glass wall to examine my reflection. I was golden. Frowning, I pulled my glamour back into place.
“It slips off without my knowledge now,” I grumbled.
“You’re no longer preoccupied with the person you should be, Lady Queen,” he grinned and took a seat. “You simply are. It is beginning to show.”
Just then, Teddy and Sweet burst into the room, Quick only a few seconds behind them.
“It’s a bad idea,” Sweet declared.
“You must reconsider.” Teddy was attempting to be the voice of reason, his tone imploring where his cousin’s had been adamant.
“Reconsider what?” Dain asked, entering the room with more caution than the others had displayed.
“I gave them an army,” I answered, as Isolde came through the door, “and this is the thanks I get.”
Isolde and Dain shared looks of equal horror, and soon joined in the protests of the others. Only Ashen stayed quiet, his shoulders shaking with subtle laughter.
The Soulstoy Inheritance Page 26