by Adalyn Grace
“Tell your mother I’m sorry,” he whispers. “And take care of her, please.”
I still, trying to process the words even as Father draws away from me. But there’s no time. Our makeshift world blurs, and fire claims my peripheral vision as I’m thrust back into the blazing throne room, where Bastian and Kaven duel through the smoky haze.
My eyes are drowned in sweat and smoke as I watch Father lift his sword from the ground. He twists it to press the tip of the blade against his stomach, and I buckle as horror freezes my limbs.
“Father?” It’s like I’m back on Arida’s beach, begging him to turn and look at me. But he shuts his eyes instead, a single tear rolling down his cheek. “Wait, please!”
Arida’s High Animancer, the King of Visidia, plunges the sword deep into his stomach. I barely catch him in time to help his body to the ground. His shoulders heave beneath my fingertips, just once, and I feel the very moment breath leaves his body and his soul disappears to the gods.
He did this to break his connection with Kaven. So that I could kill him without worrying about hurting Father or destroying his soul.
He did this because of me.
Somewhere behind me, Bastian’s yell slices the air. But I can’t look at him.
All I see is Father’s blood pooling over the marble, surprising the hesitant flames around him. All I see is how his body sags deeper into his blade and his hands fall limp at his sides. Fire makes its way to him, burning through his cape and plaguing his skin.
Even amid the flames, I’m cold as frost.
My chest constricts with breaths I do not take. Father’s blood slithers around my boots. I stumble to my knees beside him, staring until my vision goes as red as his blood.
There’s no point in looking at his chest—it doesn’t move. Or his eyes—which stare unblinking into the space ahead of him. He’s gone.
Dead.
And he’s left me the responsibility of an entire kingdom I cannot fail.
Rukan is heavy in my hand, pulsing with hunger I have every intention of feeding.
A monster stands before me with a vicious smile and eyes that shine silver as a full moon as they stare down at Father’s blood. It doesn’t realize that I am a monster, too.
“I’ve won.” Kaven’s words are as firm as a prayer. He presses his palms to the blood, looking at it like it’s a gift from the gods themselves. He raises his palms to his lips and coats his tongue in the very thing he’s desired most.
In Kaven’s distraction, a breathless Bastian draws a bone and quietly coats it in his brother’s blood. He must plan to curse Kaven to it, but when he raises the bone to try, he stumbles back with a hand to his throat, then his stomach. He’s choking, gagging, reaching for something I cannot see. Blood coats his lips and trails down his chin, though I see no wound.
Not another one. He can’t leave me, too.
Kaven turns to him, surprised, and smiles.
“What did you do to him?” I snarl, readying my dagger as Bastian drops to his knees and lets the bone clatter at his side. As he falls, I stumble back, throat constricting as it searches for air. My body seizes and shakes as warm blood glides down my own chin, as well. I’ve no idea how or when it got there.
Kaven says nothing. He keeps staring at Father’s blood, and his awe snatches my breath until I’m nearly suffocating. It takes all my power to force myself to stabilize, chest shaking as I lunge for him. All I see is red.
Red. Red. Red.
Red as the blood Father bathes in.
Red as the blood Bastian falls to the floor and chokes on.
Red as the blood that will forever stain my soul.
Red like the coat of blood I will weave over Kaven’s corpse.
I thrust Rukan into his leg and bury it in his skin with a twist. Kaven doesn’t even scream. He pulls me back by my hair, but I rip my dagger free and slice through the strands until his grip falls with hair no longer mine.
“Tell me what you did to him!” I scream it this time, movements erratic, vision spinning. I think I strike him again because there’s blood on my hands. Mine, his, Father’s. It all falls the same. There’s no keeping track of whom it belongs to, anymore.
Bastian slaps his hand against the ground and wheezes for air he cannot find. My vision blurs, and Kaven’s face flashes across it.
“The curse,” he whispers. “The moment you harm another creature, may this magic eat you from the inside out.”
My throat tightens with recognition. Those are Sira’s words, the ones she used to curse Cato.
“What are you talking about?” Bastian’s eyes are rolling into the back of his head, and I can barely focus.
Because I know the answer. My temples throb as my own eyes twitch back and forth, threatening to roll into the back of my skull.
“Bastian just triggered the Montara curse.” Kaven’s fingers dance along the hilt of his blood-crusted sword. He holds his chin proud, as if he’s thrilled by the blood we bathe in. By the chaotic destruction he’s caused.
My vision pulses black. I can no longer keep track of all my wounds, or the amount of blood that drains from me. I think back to Zudoh—to the tiny object Kaven cursed me to, almost impossible to see.
Bastian’s hair.
Then I think back to Keel Haul, where until Bastian grabbed my hands, I felt empty. Like a shell. He was the only thing that made me feel even a little like my normal self.
I was right to believe no man could have such a strong hold on me. It’s not Bastian himself that makes me feel whole, again. It’s because he’s the missing piece of me. My magic and half my soul are cursed within him.
There’s no denying the truth in Kaven’s words. As Keel Haul held claim over Bastian, Bastian now holds that over me. Where Keel Haul held his magic, he now holds mine.
My feet sway beneath me, and my slowing heartbeat reminds me of after I’d fought the Lusca.
A smudge of something bright orange flickers at the front of the room, near the door. It dances through the flames, a trick of my bleary eyes. The smoke that fills the room with thick plumes is taking its toll. I struggle to grip Rukan in my shaking palms as my injured knee seizes. It betrays me, bringing me to my knees.
“It’s time for balance to be restored to Visidia.” Kaven steps over me and lifts his sword above my head. “I will lead these people into a better future.”
Pain is the fire that fuels me as I ready both daggers; we’ll strike at the same time. If I’m to die, then I’ll drag him to death at my side.
Kaven swings, and I thrust upward and pour everything left within me into the two blades that tear through Kaven’s chest. I wait for his blade to come down on me, but instead it clatters to the floor, and blood rains onto my face.
Kaven’s blood. The silver glow of his eyes winks out as he falls. His hand is gone, scattered a foot away and on the floor.
Ferrick stands where Kaven’s body has fallen, a guard’s sword in his hands. His chest shakes when our eyes meet, and he tosses the sword beside him. He drops to his knees as I fall and catches my head before it smacks the marble.
Icy blue lines eat their way across Kaven’s skin as Rukan’s poison eats through him. The moment his chest stops moving and he lies face-first on the ground is when I smile.
Then I shut my eyes, too.
EPILOGUE
Sometimes I think about how it would’ve been better if I never woke up. I think about what it would’ve been like if Ferrick had left me on the floor beside Father’s body, and if Suntosan healers weren’t on our island that night. I would never have had to deal with the bodies. Hundreds of them, Zudians, Kers, and royal soldiers alike. I wouldn’t have to deal with imprisoning Aridians I once thought of as family, like Casem’s father, or see confused and broken families.
I wouldn’t have to answer so many questions with lies.
Did you defeat Kaven with your magic? Did you disappear to protect the kingdom? Did the High Animancer know about the attack? Did you?
I wouldn’t have to exist as only half of myself, and rely on a single man to sustain my existence.
Sometimes I think it would have been easier that way, if only Visidia would have let me die.
But every time I think this, I remember Mother’s face when I opened my eyes. It was warm like the sun with tears that fell from her eyes like stars. I remember the way Vataea hugged me fiercely, and how Ferrick cried in my hair as I held him and cried, too. I remember the way Yuriel whispered his thanks to me like a prayer, and how Casem fell into a bow at my feet. Mira hasn’t left his side since he stood back up.
I also remember Bastian, shaking, bloody, and scared, but sighing relief into my skin as he held me. I remember the unspoken promise when he took my hand, and the way he refused to let go.
I turn my head, watching the soft rise and fall of Bastian’s chest as we lie in the gardens, the place where everything first changed.
This man has a piece of my soul. I’d wondered whether that might be the case someday, but now that decision’s been made for me, and the idea of it curdles my stomach. Because how can I be sure that any of it’s real?
I try not to think about the hold Bastian has over me, because that hold won’t exist for long. I refuse to allow a curse to dictate who I must spend my hours with, or who I must keep close. Though I care for Bastian, I don’t want it to be because of a curse. I want it to be because I choose him.
He shakes as I watch him, tremors roiling through his chest every so often. While he’s mostly stable now, his body is still weak and struggling to process both the sudden reawakening of his curse magic as well as the Montara curse.
Bastian’s head turns, hazel eyes opening slowly to the golden sunlight of early fall. When he spots me watching, he casts a lazy grin and draws himself to his feet. Carefully, he reaches out to take my hand. Giving it to him is the only thing that makes me feel whole again, and I hate it.
I will break the curse on the Montaras, reclaim my soul, and ultimately restore proper soul magic—Sira’s version—to the kingdom. But there’s something else I must do, first.
“Are you ready?” he asks.
Nerves gnaw my bones as I look toward the waterfall, imagining everything that awaits me behind it. Bastian squeezes my shoulder.
“You were born for this.” He steps forward and presses a kiss to my forehead, where Father’s final kiss still burns.
My eyes sting. If only we’d been quicker to return to Arida. If only I’d ended things back in Zudoh. Father would still be alive.
If only.
If only.
I clamp my eyes shut and run my fingers over the sapphire necklace that sits heavy around my neck.
Today, I do not wear only the color of Arida. I wear a sleeveless dress of solid white to represent Zudoh’s reintroduction into the kingdom, adorned by two anklets of matching strung pearls. They clash magnificently with Rukan, sheathed on one side of my hip, and with my steel dagger on the other.
“I’m ready.” I take hold of Bastian’s hand, and he laces our fingers together as we head toward the main gardens.
The crowd before us is a shifting wave of black, pinks and reds, greens and blues—and even white—that stills as we approach. But there’s no amethyst. The only Kers here are those employed as royal soldiers and palace guards; we’ve still much to do if we’re going to earn back Kerost’s trust.
Raya and Zale are some of the first I notice among the crowd. Looking at them, with their stomachs full and their eyes glinting, eases the pain of this day some. Though there are far fewer Zudians here than there ought to be, it’s a start.
It doesn’t change that the crowd is half the size it was for the execution, nor does it change that I’m only here because Father is dead. Nothing will ever change that.
My stomach coils tight, reminding me that while Kaven is gone, the kingdom is more fragile than ever. And it likely will remain that way for some time, because today, for my first act as queen, I’ll be reinstating the right to practice multiple magics. It’s time for everyone to be given their freedom.
Though I anticipate many will welcome this change, its success will depend on whether Visidia’s people believe me when I tell them that the beast is no longer a concern.
Visidia’s restoration depends wholly on my people’s trust in me. And for that reason, they cannot know about the curse on the Montara blood.
No one can know I’ve lost my magic, or that Bastian holds it. No one can know of Aunt Kalea’s treason, or that the soul magic within us is corrupted because of Cato. Nor can they know of Kaven’s followers who are being kept in the prisons far below, or of the strange mix of curse magic and soul magic some of them possess.
At least not for now.
I won’t be like Father, or the rest of the Montaras. My people will learn the truth one day soon, after I break the Montara curse and make soul magic available to them.
But until then, they need someone to lead them into this new future. They need a ruler they can look up to while the foundation of our culture shifts, even if they might consider that ruler a fraud.
I don’t deserve to sit on this throne—how could I, after all the damage the Montaras have done to this kingdom?—but someone has to repair Visidia, and I’m the only one who knows the secret to how.
Mother’s gaze is soft as I approach. She bows her head to me, and though it’s not customary, I bow mine back.
A throne of burnt ivory and charred whalebone waits for me on the same stone slab where my performance took place half a season ago. Though it was suggested I have it remade, I demanded the scorched throne be kept. It’s a reminder not only to my people—who will look at it and know exactly what I’ve done for them—but for myself, as well.
This throne killed Father. And it might one day try to do the same to me.
Aunt Kalea stands at the left corner of the throne, her head bowed. When her eyes lift to find mine, my chest constricts, forcing breath from my lungs.
I see more of Father in her now than ever before. I see him in her molten eyes and firm jaw. In her sun-kissed olive skin, and the thin wrinkles at the corners of her tired eyes, which are dimmed by the weariness of mourning we all feel. Aunt Kalea may never be comfortable with the magic coiled around her soul, but slowly she’s adjusting.
I tried everything I could to ensure her life remained in Ikae, but in the end, it didn’t matter. I may have spared her from having to sit on the throne, but soul magic has claimed part of her. Her only hope is that I’m able to find a way to break Sira’s curse.
I pass Ferrick as Mother guides me to the throne, where he stands tall at my right side. He’s had his outfit personally tailored, again—an emerald-green blazer with sapphire cuffs and gold trim. Though I’d never put the outfit together myself, Ferrick’s grin is broad and his chest is proud as he waits to accept his new position not as my fiancé, but as my top adviser.
The faces of my people lift as they inspect not their new heir, but their new queen. I clench my fingers on the arms of the throne as Mother offers me a crown. The skeletal eel with jagged teeth sits above my brows, and a spine of bone and jewels curves down my back—the High Animancer’s crown.
Father’s crown.
My crown.
She fits it onto my head with shaking hands while draping a cape that shimmers like an opal over my shoulders, and all the while I bite the inside of my cheek, willing myself not to tremble beneath the weight of it all.
“Bow.” Mother turns to address our people. “Bow to your queen, who has saved this kingdom from those who sought to destroy it. Bow to your High Animancer, who offered her own life in order to save yours, and who lives to tell the tale.”
I dig my fingers into the cape, pulling it closer as I lift my chin high.
If there’s one truth I know, it’s that I will make things right for my kingdom. That is my fate, and I will do whatever I must to see it through.
“Bow,” Mother says in a voice that booms acros
s the too-small crowd. “Bow to High Animancer Amora, your new Queen of Visidia!”
And everyone does.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Holy crud, I can’t believe we’re here and that I finally get to write this. It’s an official Book!
I’ve been blessed throughout this process to work with the most incredible people. As someone who believes everything happens for a reason, I first have to thank God for paving this path for me and putting those people in my life. Publishing is no easy feat, and looking back, it’s clear that every hardship I faced was to get me to these incredible people.
First and foremost, Mom and Dad. Thank you for always supporting and believing in me, and for telling me I could accomplish whatever preposterous dream I had. You’re definitely responsible for my overconfidence, but hey, look, it worked! Because of you, I was never afraid to put myself out there and try. I know there’s a lot of blood and stabbing in this book, but please don’t lock your doors when I come visit. And I really hope you skimmed over the kissing scenes, let’s never ever talk about them. I love you!
Josh, my wonderful boyfriend. Thank you for telling me to write this book, for helping me be able to do so after the accident, and for all your love and support. I’m glad you looked past the purple lipstick.
To all my siblings—Steven, Stefanie, Spencer, Bryan, Maryanna, CJ, Kristin, Sarah, and Rich—because I know I’d never hear the end of it if I didn’t put your names in the book.
Hillary Jacobson, literary agent extraordinaire, for always believing in me and this book. Thank you for all the calls, the emails, the weekends, and the million hours you put into reading and supporting this book so that it could be the best possible version of itself. This story would not be the same without you.
Jenny Simpson and Tamara Kawar over at ICM, who offered excellent notes and early first reads.
