Burn them, Kol shouted as he raised their joined hands where the white light of her magic had become a flame of orange and yellow that leaped toward the swarm at their feet. She raised her other hand, sucked in a breath that felt like razors against the heat inside her chest, and yelled, “Kaz`zhech! Punish them with fire.”
Flames shot from her palms and scorched the ground, latching on to the brittle grass and sweeping outward in a blaze of orange with brilliant white at the center. The heat seared her from the inside out, and she shook, desperately holding on to the terrible strength of Kol’s dragon heart as she turned to strafe the entire circle around them with fire.
Insects scrambled away from the flames but then curled up and turned to ash as the fire caught them. The scent of roasted bugs—bitter and pungent—hung heavy in the air, stinging Lorelai’s eyes.
Her legs trembled, her teeth chattered, and every part of her body throbbed as the dragon’s fire scalded her. The heat was a monstrous presence pushing, pushing, pushing against her chest until she could barely breathe. Until she thought her skin would split, and her bones crumble. She tried to keep her hands raised, but spots were dancing at the edge of her vision, and her muscles had lost their strength.
Kol let go of her hand and gently lowered her to the ground, though she could hear the collar whispering hurt, punish, kill while his dragon heart begged for more violence.
“You did it,” Gabril said quietly as he crushed one last twitching spider beneath his boot. The field surrounding them was a smoking pit of insect carcasses and burned grass, but the fire, once it had finished the task Lorelai set before it, had extinguished itself.
The awful heat of Kol’s dragon’s fire seeped out of her, and she drew a breath of the pungent, smoky air. The pain was gone. She was still awake. Kol was still in control. And Irina had once again weakened herself without winning the fight.
Are you okay? Kol asked as he knelt beside her.
She was better than okay. Triumph was a radiant light blazing within her. She threw her arms around Kol and laughed.
We did it. She lost again. And now she’s weaker, the road is destroyed, and we’re one step closer to finishing this.
His arms came around her and pulled her close for a moment, his heartbeat a wild cadence beneath her ear. We make a good team.
The warmth behind his words made Lorelai suddenly, excruciatingly aware that she’d thrown herself against him. That she was still holding him. That her heart was beating as wildly as his.
She dropped her arms and got to her feet on legs that still shook. I’m . . . sorry? Yes. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to . . . That was great. Really great.
What was she doing? Had she lost her mind? She looked at Gabril’s face, his brow raised at the two of them as Kol climbed to his feet. Thank heavens the starlight didn’t show the blush that was heating her cheeks.
I’ll pretend I don’t know about it, then. Kol sounded amused.
It was just . . . You know what? I don’t want to talk about it.
He grinned at her, the stars gilding his red-brown hair with silver. Why not? It’s kind of . . . fetching.
She rolled her eyes. Come on. Let’s get out of here in case Irina recovers fast enough to send something else after us. She hurried to catch up to Gabril, who was nearly at the edge of the Hinderlinde Forest, feeling the warmth of Kol’s affectionate amusement behind her and the heat that still lingered in her cheeks.
THIRTY-ONE
THE TINY VOICE of doubt that had whispered relentlessly in Irina’s ear since the night of Lorelai’s betrayal had become a deafening roar.
How had Lorelai stopped the collar from torturing the Eldrian king? How had she taken control of the mountains, the water, and the land and defeated every spell Irina threw at her?
How had Lorelai thwarted Irina’s will? Irina’s heart?
Either she’d had training—unlikely since Irina had kept an eye on every semipowerful mardushka in all Morcant in case the princess tried to return to her mother’s roots—or she somehow had more raw power in her fingertips than Irina had ever realized.
More power than she should possibly have.
Her deepest fear had become a reality: Lorelai was stronger than she was. There was no explanation for it. No reason that Irina could find, though she tried.
Had her birth been unusual? Had one of the fae from the realm of Llorenyae fled its home kingdom and found succor in Ravenspire in exchange for gifting the princess with extraordinary power?
Irina’s skin grew cold, and a finger of ice slid down her spine.
She needed answers about Lorelai’s birth—about the magic that ran through the princess’s veins—and there was only one person who could give them to her.
Her stomach roiled, and her heart beat in sharp, uneven bursts.
It was time to face what lay beneath the garden’s monolith.
She swept through the hushed hallways of the castle, Raz clinging to her neck, and kept her expression cold and forbidding as her pulse tapped a frantic rhythm against her skin. She ignored the maids who ducked out of her path, the nobility who turned as if to speak to her, and the pages who scrambled to open doors before their queen reached them, and ignored as well the thread of fear that trembled along her spine. Her guards walked behind her, their hands on the hilts of their swords.
She burst into the castle’s entrance hall, barely sparing a glance for the gleaming floor that had once been covered in blood and destruction.
She had no time for sentimentality. No room for the ache of loss and betrayal.
A page threw open the castle’s front entrance, and Irina strode through, her spine straight and her head held high, though she shook as the chill of the early morning air settled against her exposed skin.
“Your Highness, perhaps a coat would be in order?” her guard asked.
She ignored him.
The path to the garden led down the front drive and then cut to the left and wrapped around the western turret. The monolith glowed beneath the morning sun, and the flowers that blossomed around it reminded Irina of blood against snow.
Tatiyana’s blood.
Tatiyana, who no longer had a voice to speak or a will to overcome, but whose heart still lingered in her bones and would give Irina the answers she sought.
If she could stand to see what else her sister’s heart contained.
“Leave me,” she said to her guards as she forced her steps toward the monolith.
Her steps slowed as she left the crushed stone path to walk on the circle of midnight black dirt that surrounded the monolith. The flowers seemed to reach for her, their sharp edges eager for a taste of her blood. She bent to allow Raz to slither onto the ground, and then parted the flowers with her hands, heedless of the tiny thorns that left cuts scattered across her skin.
Her heart beat faster, and her breath came in sharp, unsteady bursts as she sank to her knees on the rich, black dirt, crimson flowers latching on to her hair and the sleeves of her dress. Facing the glittering white edifice that marked her sister’s grave, she gathered her remaining strength, ignoring the weariness that was already pulling at her, and plunged her hands into the soil.
The ground was the same Ravenspire ground that had been grudgingly submitting its heart to hers since the moment she’d set foot in the kingdom over nine years ago. She’d mined its power and bent it to her will countless times, ignoring the drain she’d put on it for the sake of ensuring her reign.
This time, there was no ignoring the resistance she met. The depletion of the land’s power that had once surged to the surface every time her bare skin grazed the ground.
She focused her power, her will, and magic exploded down her veins, out of her palms, and into the ground. “Kaz`prin. Bring me what I seek.”
The soil bubbled and heaved. Irina held on to the soil’s heart, exerted her will, and refused to falter even as she felt Tatiyana’s heart slowly rise to the surface.
With one last shudder, th
e ebony casket ascended from its resting place, split in two with a tremendous crack, and then Irina was holding the bones of her sister.
Irina tried to speak, but her voice was caught in the suffocating thickness of the panic that closed her throat. The bones in her hand were from her sister’s rib cage, the shelter of Tatiyana’s heart, and the place where the strongest residue of what had once been a living being would still reside.
Murderer.
The thought was a whisper in the back of Irina’s mind, and she nearly dropped the bones in shock.
It wasn’t her sister’s voice. It couldn’t be. The dead were dead. Nothing could bring them back to life to speak new thoughts, new words. It wasn’t her sister’s voice.
It was Irina’s own.
Her eyes stung, and she glared down at the bones she held. She wouldn’t have had to kill Tatiyana if her sister had been less desirable, less lovable, just . . . less. Instead, she’d taken their father’s love, their uncle’s favor, and the kingdom that should’ve been Irina’s—and she’d done it all without once acknowledging that she was leaving her older sister out in the cold.
That she was a thief. A selfish thief who deserved her fate.
Irina clung to the knowledge that she’d done what had to be done to right the wrongs stacked against her, but her throat didn’t ease. Her eyes still stung.
And her heart ached in a way that had nothing to do with the toll of magic.
The bones seemed to burn her palms as she forced herself to say, “Zna`uch. Reveal to me the secret of Lorelai’s power.”
For a moment, it seemed her sister’s heart would fight hers, but Irina was desperate, and Tatiyana had no will to exert. The queen blinked the tears from her eyes and raised her voice. “Zna`uch. Reveal the secret of Lorelai’s power.”
Images struck, faded and blurry at the edges. The ebony carriage entering Morcant. The evergreen crashing into Tatiyana and slicing her to pieces. Blood pouring into the pristine snow and carrying splinters of the carriage with it.
Tatiyana, lying on the ground and looking into the forest, where she locked eyes with her sister.
An understanding of what Irina was now capable of. Of what Irina would do.
A handful of ebony cradled in her sister’s blood. A whispered incantor.
The heart of the carriage’s ebony bowing before the power in Tatiyana’s blood and sending that power, that magic, into the ground, where it raced away from Morcant like a streak of light that pulsed brighter and brighter as her sister struggled for air.
The light reaching Ravenspire’s castle, burrowing into the stone, and searching for the one with lips as red as blood, hair as black as ebony, and skin as white as snow.
Lorelai, asleep and unaware. The light leaping from the stone, pouring over Lorelai’s skin like a blanket, and then sinking into the princess’s blood as Tatiyana breathed her last.
Irina dropped the bones, her hands shaking as rage obliterated the thickness in her throat and dried the last of her tears.
Even in death, her sister had managed to steal what Irina most wanted. Even in death, Tatiyana had stolen Irina’s chance at a happily ever after.
Lorelai, the untrained half-Morcantian girl, possessed her own magic and every last drop of her mother’s as well.
Irina couldn’t fight that. Not with the Ravenspire ground turning against her. Not when her heart stumbled and burned every time she did the simplest spell.
Lorelai was coming for her, the Eldrian king by her side, and there was nothing Irina could do about it unless she found another source of power to bolster her own.
Another heart to bend to hers and give her its strength, its will.
A heart that wouldn’t poison her blood as the hearts of those in Ravenspire all seemed to do.
She climbed to her feet and left her sister’s bones lying scattered on her open grave. Tatiyana may have thought she could finish Irina by giving her daughter more power than any mardushka had a right to own, but Irina had a weapon her sister could never have foreseen.
She had the human heart of a Draconi warrior just waiting for a new chest to call home.
THIRTY-TWO
IT TOOK MOST of the day to travel halfway through the Hinderlinde Forest. All three of them were covered with scratches and bites. Lorelai had been so exhausted after using the weary heart of Ravenspire to destroy the roads and then using Kol’s dragon fire to fight Irina that she’d been unable to walk on her own for the first few hours. They stopped in the late afternoon in an abandoned shack that Gabril remembered using when Lorelai’s father went hunting for deer in the spring. The shack was small—maybe twice the size of their tent—and its lone window was covered in the same dusty grime that coated the floor inside, but it was well-built and had a fireplace.
Lorelai paced the floor, her thoughts racing, while Kol started a fire and Gabril readied a small pot with the last of their beans for dinner.
The longer she waited between attacks on Irina’s infrastructure, the more time she gave the queen to recover her strength. If she really wanted to have the advantage when she entered the capital, she needed to hit Irina again.
Tonight.
The strength of Irina’s response would give Lorelai valuable information about the queen’s current state of health. Information that would help the princess decide if she should continue attacks from outside the capital or make her move against the castle itself.
It’s a good plan, Kol said as she glanced out the window and considered her options, but maybe you should eat first. Rest a little.
Every second I rest is a second I give Irina to rest too.
True. But you had dragon’s fire inside you today. And you barely slept last night. He held up a hand when she turned on him, her thoughts blazing into his mind. I’m not saying I don’t trust you to know what you’re capable of doing. I’m just saying maybe some beans would be a good idea. Not just for your sake but for Gabril’s. Whatever you do tonight, all of us have to be ready to respond.
He was right. It had been a long, hard day for all of them, and if she provoked a response from Irina now, they would have to fight. They would have to run.
They had a much better chance of surviving if they’d eaten and rested for a while.
I admire the way you think. Kol smiled at her as he stacked the extra wood he’d gathered beside the fireplace and took a seat at the rickety kitchen table.
She gave him a look as she took a chair for herself. What is that supposed to mean?
He raised a brow as Gabril set the pot of beans down in the center of the table. Are you always suspicious of compliments? I meant that I like the way you constantly analyze the situation, decide on a course of action that makes the most sense to you, and then just . . . do it. You want to go after Irina now, and if you had no one but yourself to consider, you would. But you don’t do what’s best for you. You do what’s best for those you’re trying to protect.
So you’re saying you and I are alike. Minus the fact that I’ve yet to try to kill you.
And I’ve yet to call you fetching.
And I’d never lock my headmaster in his toilet closet.
And I don’t have magic. But otherwise, yes. We are a lot alike. He grinned at her, and she smiled back until Gabril slapped a spoon against the table.
“Mind telling me what’s so funny?” he asked as he spooned beans onto their plates.
“Nothing.” Lorelai avoided looking at Kol.
“Then if nothing is funny, you two can stop grinning at each other like village idiots and start eating your dinner. I imagine tomorrow will be another difficult day.”
And here I thought I was winning him over.
It would be easier if he could see into your thoughts like I can.
Oh, skies, no. That would be a disaster. A flurry of images raced through his head—Kol kissing girls in spacious bronze hallways, the wound his father’s disappointment had left in him, and the night he’d stared at Lorelai’s face while she
was asleep. Lorelai’s cheeks warmed as he said, Don’t look at those.
Gabril gave them a look that said he knew something was going on and was determined to get to the bottom of it.
Lorelai shoved a spoonful of beans into her mouth. They were hot and tasteless. She swallowed quickly, and said, “Actually, I want to destroy the communications towers tonight. I can use the ground here to get to the ones in the capital and the surrounding area. Irina’s response will tell us a lot about her current state of health, and it will help me decide if I should enter the capital tomorrow or keep battling her from afar for a few more days.”
Gabril looked from her to Kol and back again before saying, “That’s a good idea. How much rest do you want to take before we leave the shack and try it?”
She almost asked how much rest he needed, but swallowed the words before they could pass her lips. He’d tell her he didn’t need any, and she wasn’t going to argue with him.
“A few hours,” she said, though the restless energy that filled her sent magic to her palms and made it hard to sit still.
Gabril nodded and kept a close eye on the two of them as they finished their dinner and spread their bedrolls out on the cots that lined the shack’s western wall.
Three hours later, Lorelai was surprised to find that she’d slept, and that she felt more focused as a result. She pulled on her boots, braided her hair, and shrugged into one of Leo’s thick sweaters—the closest thing she had to winter wear since she’d lost her coat in Nordenberg.
The sweater smelled like campfires and mountain air. She hugged her arms across her chest and imagined what Leo would say if he was with her.
He’d tell her they needed costumes before they entered the capital.
And that she needed to prepare a thunderous oration—heaven forbid he call it a simple speech—to deliver once she saw Irina.
And he’d laugh at the risk they were taking, a reckless gleam in his eyes as he stood beside her no matter what.
The Shadow Queen (Ravenspire) Page 24
