by Violet Grace
‘The Princess,’ Damius says. ‘Deliver her to me. Destroy the rest.’
The pycts swarm forward. They flick their wands but, unlike in the train station, no mud flies from them. The pycts look as surprised at this as I am. Perhaps their magic is too weak to work in Volgaris.
Jules draws her remaining sword and charges into the fray, picking off pycts from side to side. Tom, using his horn like a sword, impales the approaching pycts and tosses them to the ground. The Protectorate charge, meeting the pycts head-on, throwing the snarling creatures aside like ragdolls.
I watch pyct blood pool on the ground and am sickened by the final proof of my failure.
A horde of pycts circles around me, trying to herd me towards Damius. Their stench and the pus sores on their skin make my stomach curdle. I don’t want to hurt them so I keep them at bay with short sharp blasts from my fingertips. I think I’m the only one relying on the Art. But I have to. I wouldn’t stand a chance in hand-to-hand combat.
The Protectorate is vastly outnumbered, but the pycts are untrained, lacking the discipline for coordinated attack. The Protectorate is a battle machine. Officers take to the air, while those on the ground push back the horde.
But the Protectorate’s aerial advantage doesn’t last.
The pycts improvise, bounding off the walls with their powerful legs and leaping at the fairies, dragging them back to the ground.
The place is a chaotic mess. Through the remains of the wall, I watch the battle spreading throughout the building. A few remaining agents and tourists are caught up in the fight. They run for their lives, pursued by monsters from another realm.
Three pycts leap at a Protectorate officer from different directions, grabbing and slashing at her. They pull the fairy to the ground and beat her like street thugs.
I lift off the ground above the pycts circling me and reluctantly fire off rapid blasts of magic, sending all three pycts flying. I’m too late. The fairy remains on the ground, motionless.
A pyct swipes at Abby, knocking her to the ground. I go to fire off another blast but Jules is there in an instant, impaling the pyct with her sword in one hand and helping Abby to her feet with her other.
And then it gets worse.
The thunder of hooves echoes through the building. I turn to see horned creatures charging forwards behind the pycts, clouds of dust following them. But these aren’t unicorns as I’ve come to know them; they’re more like a cross between a woolly mammoth and a rhinoceros, right down to the armoured plates that cover their bodies, battering and smashing walls and tiles. Small tufts of coarse hair poke out between the joins in their hardened plates. Fairies, unicorns and pycts scatter or are trampled and crushed by these brutal creatures.
Tortured shrieks fill the air. One officer of the Protectorate after another falls, the beasts’ claws slicing through armour as if it were cheap linen. The Protectorate officers use the Art on the approaching beasts but they’re too weakened, their spells seeming to only enrage the animals rather than injure them.
At the far end of the room, Damius watches the unfolding slaughter with pleasure.
Then, amongst the chaos, something changes.
There’s a lull. Groups of pycts step back from the killing. The trampling of hooves, the clashing of swords, is dying down.
I look around, trying to work out what’s going on.
The remaining officers of the Protectorate have dropped to their knees, flailing about on the ground, howling in agony or curled in balls of pain.
Tom cries out to me. He’s transed back to his two-legged form and his face is contorted in pain. I push and kick past pycts and run over to him, having trouble breathing.
Jules and Abby writhe on the ground as well. Their hands are beginning to curl into rigid crooks. Hair sprouts between the open sores forming on their skin. Their eyes turn crimson.
The RNA virus is taking hold. Their transition to pycts has begun.
I scan the scene. The same metamorphosis is overtaking all the Fae.
Tom pushes me away. He screeches and starts swiping at some imagined predator. I’m not sure if he’s hallucinating from the virus infecting his brain or from the pain of the transition.
And then I know what I must do.
chapter 35
‘I’m ready to deal,’ I say to my uncle as I approach him.
Pycts stare at me like quizzical dogs, trying to work out whether I’m friend or foe. They yap and claw, but clear a path. The thunder and stamp of their feet echo around the room, only just drowning out the cries of Fae being turned into pycts.
‘This will be amusing,’ Damius chuckles.
‘The antidote to the virus …’
Damius tilts his head back and looks down his nose. ‘In exchange for?’
‘Me.’
‘No!’ It’s Tom’s voice. I can just make it out above the snarling pycts and the groans of pain and agony.
I don’t look at him. I can’t.
‘Take me,’ I say. ‘Kill me, do whatever you want with me. Just reverse this virus.’ I know not all Fae want Damius on the throne. In fact, I’m willing to bet most don’t. But surely anything would be better than turning into pycts.
‘You are in no position to bargain,’ Damius hisses. ‘As arrogant as your mother. And just as naive.’
‘I’m the reason for your Fae rebellion. With me gone, you eradicate my mongrel blood and you can take the Crown. Undo what you’ve done, and you can do with me what you will.’
‘You flatter yourself, dear niece.’ He kicks a broken beam across the room, flattening a row of pycts. ‘You’re weak. Crippled by morality. You’ve got nothing inside you except fear and shame and uncontrollable rage. A disgrace to your bloodline. You’re nothing more than a genetic accident and you’ve only lived this long because I have allowed it. If you didn’t possess the key I would have killed you thirteen years ago. You had your chance. Now my patience is at an end.’
He pulls the Chalice from inside his coat and thrusts it into my hand. ‘Open it.’
I hesitate.
Damius lifts his arms, aims his ring at General Sewell and fires off a golden blast. The bolt hits her in the heart. She gives a yelp of pure pain then turns to dust.
There’s a collective gasp from the Protectorate. But I swear Jules’s voice is the loudest.
‘Who’s next?’ Damius says, looking around the room.
‘No, no. Stop, please!’ I beg.
‘Open it.’
‘Okay,’ I say. ‘Just stop killing people.’
Even though it repels me, I wrap my fingers around the Chalice. My hands grow hotter and hotter. The blue, green, red and white swirls that pattern the cup begin moving, slithering around the glass like coloured serpents. I’ve awakened something in it. I stare down at it, entranced by its power and beauty, desperately, silently imploring: Where is your key? And what is it? Tell me what to look for.
It sickens me that I’m actually trying to give the key to Damius. But what choice do I have? I cannot be responsible for all this death, for the destruction of the Fae.
‘Forgive me, Gladys,’ I whisper, and close my eyes, poised to listen to the cup’s hidden secret. It’s a soft hum at first, growing louder.
I calm my breathing and still myself to receive the message.
Nothing. Vibration and movement without meaning.
What did I expect? Did I really believe I was so special that it would pipe up and give me an answer?
‘Tick, tock,’ mocks Damius, sounding bored, but his eyes are fixed on the cup.
I can’t look at Tom.
Or Jules.
Or Abby.
I’m ashamed to find myself hoping that their transition to pycts has advanced so far that they do not understand I am about to betray all the trust they placed in me, that I’m not the girl they hoped I was.
Damius turns and fires another lethal blast, felling a unicorn whose transition to one of the rhinoceros-like creatures is almost comple
te.
‘No, please! Stop, stop. Please, stop,’ I cry.
‘You are responsible for this,’ Damius says. ‘Give me the key and this will end.’
I turn the Luck of Edenhall over in my hand, inspecting it, searching for any clue at all. The pulsating rhythm in the Chalice grows louder, more insistent. It’s mirroring my heartbeat. The colours swirl faster, writhing through the glass, combining, breaking apart and recombining in new arrangements.
‘One. Last. Chance,’ Damius spits through gritted teeth. He aims his ring at Tom and screams, ‘Give me the key!’
‘I don’t have the key!’ I scream back.
Damius levels me with a look of seething rage.
‘I don’t have it,’ I whimper. ‘I’ve never had it. Just stop. Stop it.’
‘You just signed your boyfriend’s death sentence,’ he says, and releases a fiery burst in Tom’s direction.
I lunge at my uncle, sending him off balance. Damius’s blast misses Tom by millimetres.
Damius recovers quickly, swinging around and knocking me to the ground. I look up at his cold, murderous eyes.
‘Without the key you are worthless,’ he says as his boot crunches down on my fingers.
I don’t fight him. I’m done.
Damius looks almost disappointed by my surrender.
‘How could you have saved your people, when you can’t even save yourself?’
I can’t respond. He speaks the truth.
I look over at Tom, who is now barely recognisable. His muscles have wasted and his flesh is starting to sag off his frame. His fingers have lengthened, his back is hunched. He stares at me as if he’s saying goodbye.
‘Just get on with it,’ I say quietly.
Behind me, I hear Jules cry out. She tries to scramble towards me, but stumbles and curls up into a ball of pain. Abby is writhing on the ground near me, oblivious to what is happening.
‘Look at you,’ Damius says, crunching down further on my fingers. ‘Your humanity sickens me.’
With a smirk, he lands a boot straight to my gut. I whimper as the air is pushed out of me. I clench my jaw against the pain and close my eyes, sinking into the darkness. In the distance, screams of distress from all the Fae I failed form a chorus.
As my mind collapses in on itself in pain and shame, a memory sparks to life. And then another. I claw my way through every agonising, bitter memory, reliving every occasion I was told I didn’t matter and believed it. All those times I remained silent, frozen and invisible.
Tom said that memories make us who we are. What do these memories make me?
But he also said that I don’t have to make myself small anymore. I’ve been hollowed out and crushed by smallness; I don’t know if I can be any more than that.
You already are. Come.
The voice is muffled but I recognise it.
It’s my voice.
I follow it.
An oasis of stillness nestling somewhere between nowhere and everywhere envelops me. I peer into it and the ancient wisdom stares back at me.
Gladys’s words echo in my ears. I thought it was just one of her silly riddles, but I was wrong. Everything Gladys ever said to me had a purpose, as if she was planting seeds to bloom days, weeks or years later, when I was ready.
Gladys saw something in me, something more than my broken spirit and my human weakness. Something Damius didn’t see. Something I couldn’t even see myself.
Until now.
All that you seek is already within you.
Gladys saw the key in me.
And now I see it too.
I’m not the girl who fell.
I’m the one who got back up.
My eyes spring open.
Wide open.
Damius swoops like an angry hornet, readying to launch another kick. I catch his boot mid-air, shock registering on his face. I hold his boot firm and spit the blood from my mouth onto the shiny black leather.
‘I am not afraid,’ I say, releasing his boot and wiping the blood from my mouth with my sleeve.
‘Nice try, dear niece, but it’s too little, too late.’
I stagger to my feet. My fear has vanished. I’m not even angry anymore.
With my remaining strength, I summon the Luck of Edenhall into my hands. Holding it out in front of me, I bellow, ‘I am the key!’
Damius’s eyes widen. He stares at me in confusion or dawning realisation, or both. Everyone is staring, stunned.
It’s as if their agonising transition has been momentarily stalled.
Tom watches me out of his bloodied and swollen eyes. I make the only choice I can make.
I raise the Chalice above my head and cry out:
If this cup should break or fall
Unbridled power heed my call.
With the full force of my body, I slam the Chalice onto the broken tiles of the Poynter Room.
The air echoes with reverberations as the cup fractures into millions of tiny glass shards.
Each shard sets off a chain reaction, shattering again and again. It’s impossible, how many shards of glass there are, but still there are more. Coloured shards spread over the chipped and broken ground.
Time slows; fractures.
Breath stalls.
I stand my ground.
I’m the calm at the centre of the blazing furnace. The serenity beneath the raging sea.
I hold out my hands and call the power of the Luck of Edenhall to me, summoning the magic particles lying dormant within each fragment.
A rainbow hue rises up, expanding into space and filling the room with shimmering crystal snowflakes, suspended in the air all around us.
Damius swipes at the iridescent dust, trying to gather it towards him, to capture it, control it. The power slips through his fingers.
‘I am moral, I am Fae. Only I have been entrusted with such power,’ I say to Damius.
I call to the power, welcome it, imbibe it.
And, finally, I unleash it.
I am power
I am control
I become life
and I become death
Unbridled power, to me obey
Return these pycts back to Fae
The air crackles as I send the Art out into Volgaris, rushing through every corridor in the V&A and into the grounds outside. Down every street, inside every door and window. Across every garden, field and forest. It sizzles as it collides with each pyct and Fae, undoing the virus. I open portals to Iridesca and Transcendence and send my magic into those realms.
His army gone, Damius lets out a primal howl. Even with my mother’s stolen energy, his magic is no match to overcome this. To overcome me.
A black cloud of ravens descends, swirling around him in a cyclonic fog of darkness.
And then he’s gone.
All around me, the pycts and half-turned Fae are returning to their normal bodies, shaking themselves as if they have just woken from a nightmare.
Through the sea of bodies I see Callie, looking bewildered but unharmed.
Tom rolls onto his feet. He’s bloody but the pyct virus is weakening.
I run to him.
He enfolds me in his arms, squeezing me so tightly that my wounds hurt. But I don’t care.
He touches his forehead against mine, and we are still, our hearts beating in time.
epilogue
My hair is swept back in a vintage chignon. Brina has been fussing with the braided coils on either side for what feels like an eternity. Callie straightens the train of my dusty rose raw-silk gown. The bodice is embroidered with gold thread and the skirt cascades to the floor in a waterfall. It’s the most beautiful dress I’ve ever seen.
Brina steps back, admiring her work. ‘You’re the picture of your mother, Your Highness,’ she says for what must be the thirty-eighth time today.
‘You look like yourself, Chess,’ Jules says.
My eyes brim with tears at her words. I blink them away. I had wondered what it would take for Jul
es to use my first name. Now I know.
She is kitted out in her formal Protectorate uniform: a thick grey wool suit with epaulettes and gold buttons. A collection of ribbons and medals is pinned to her chest. She itches under her collar and pulls at the tartan sash on her shoulder.
I’m guessing she’d prefer to be in her bodysuit.
I suck in a calming breath as I step out of the curved arched door of Windsor Castle.
The night air breaks with the deafening roar of cheers and clapping. Thousands of Fae line the path to the Temple, forming an honour guard. The full moon of Albion casts silver light over their faces and I note that all of them are looking straight at me.
I take two steps and my self-consciousness and embarrassment from the attention fade as the path bursts into a bloom of pink. Magenta blossoms, the Fae symbol of gratitude and appreciation, are tossed into the air all around me.
As my satin slippers step upon the blossoms I realise that all of these people have come out at midnight, the time of new beginnings, to celebrate my coronation, and not just because I’m Cordelia’s daughter.
I didn’t let Gladys down.
After I destroyed Damius’s RNA virus, I used the unbridled Art contained within the Luck of Edenhall against itself and destroyed every last shimmering speck of it. There’s no power left in the Chalice for anyone to fight over or abuse. The Art in Volgaris remains conditional on payment, so technically King James and Queen Signe’s Treaty remains intact.
Not everyone is happy that I destroyed that power. The traditionalists in the Order of the Fae snipe that I ruined their one chance to free the Art in Volgaris. But this is what Queen Signe sacrificed herself for. It’s what Gladys would have wanted me to do and what humanity needs to be safe. So as far as I’m concerned: sorry, not sorry.
The Agency’s pride is dented after their defeat at the V&A, but not enough to make war. As far as official relations between the realms go, everything is as it has been for the past four centuries. The official explanation for the damage to the V&A is a terror attack. Several commentators have speculated that it must have been perpetrated by the same people who broke into the government facility the day before. That would be Tom and me. Good thing I don’t want my data entry job back.
