The cracked mirror stared back at us, reflecting the fear in our eyes as I pressed my fingertips to the fractured glass. My fear of being captured wouldn’t let me think properly as I unleashed the magic, and it exploded through my chest and into my arms and joints. As it collided with the mirror, the spell refracted off the broken glass and blasted outward, causing a storm of electrical intensity to radiate around us.
Sweat beaded on my clammy hands as I reached out again, feeling as if I couldn’t breathe, as though the spell had sucked away all my magic and left me an empty shell, but I knew we had only one way out. I had to create a portal.
I tried to ignore the queen shouting to her guards. They’d most likely spotted the magical spell I’d just used, which meant they would’ve spotted us, too.
“You can do this,” Kull whispered, reassuring me.
I nodded, tears blurring my eyes as I pressed my fingers to the broken shards, praying I could open the portal. Trying again, I listened to the pounding footsteps of the elven guards as they drew closer to us.
I can do this. I can open the portal…
But as I attempted to call the magic once again, my weakness was unable to keep Theht at bay, and the piece of her that had invaded my mind broke free from its prison.
I cried out as it took me, pain shooting from my head into my hands and down through my feet. Gasping, I felt my body growing numb.
I can’t let this happen!
Another voice intruded on my thoughts. Yes, you can. It is time for me to come forth.
No! Please, no!
The world seemed to fade around me as the goddess took control. From the edges of my consciousness, I watched the elves close in on us. I watched as they shot my friends, stunning them motionless on the ground. I watched as they smashed what remained of my mirror, a waterfall of crystal shards that broke into thousands of pieces. A piece of my soul went with it.
The sound of shattering glass was the last thing I remembered.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Light pierced my eyes as I gasped awake. A massive headache pounded through my skull. I wanted to cry out but only managed a hoarse moan.
As my consciousness returned, I realized I was tied up near the altar where Maveryck had been. The light came from a portal that was open above the altar, though I saw no signs of anyone until I was able to focus better.
Bodies lay scattered around the room.
Most of them were covered in blood. The room was barely recognizable from how I had seen it earlier. The destruction was epic—only piles of rubble remained where the coffins had been. In fact, the only objects still intact were the six weapons of the Madralorde brothers, which were placed around the raised altar and glowed with an intensity that blinded me.
Acid churned though my stomach as I tried to make sense of the situation. I sat up straight and focused on my breathing, feeling the headache diminish as I did so. The sound of footsteps came from somewhere, but piles of rubble blocked my view. I grasped at the ropes tying me and found them loose, so I pried them off.
As I stood, dizziness disoriented me for a moment, but I steadied myself and managed to make it to the altar. My stomach sickened as I found a pool of dark, drying blood staining its surface.
Behind the altar, I found the remains of the vachonette egg. Tears stung my eyes as I knelt by the shell. Hopelessness tried to overwhelm me. With the egg destroyed, I had no way to get my stepfather back. I wanted to sit on the floor and cry—nothing ever worked how I planned, and now I’d failed at saving the one person who had cared for me my entire life.
I carefully picked up a piece of the fragile shell, finding it surprisingly heavy. Such a waste! That my stepfather should be destroyed over such a small item didn’t seem fair, but nothing ever seemed fair.
Magic no longer coursed through the eggshell, making its destruction weigh even heavier on my heart. But I couldn’t give up yet. Was there still a chance I could save Kull and the others? I placed the shell back on the ground where I’d found it. Standing, I stumbled away from the altar and searched for my friends, or for anyone alive. I had to stay focused on them. If I thought of anything else, I knew I would lose it.
The violence was worse than I’d thought from my vantage point on the ground. The elves had been massacred. Limbs lay strewn about, discarded like garbage. Tattered clothing and blood were all that remained of others. Frantically, I searched for Kull, Heidel, and Maveryck, but I couldn’t find them.
“They’re not here,” a voice said.
What appeared to be queen Euralysia emerged from behind the rubble, although her form was blurry, her skin tinged in orange, and her eyes glassy.
The instant I saw her, I knew everything I had feared most had happened. She had used the vachonette egg and the Madralorde weapons to call Theht back. The queen and the goddess were now one. She grimaced as she clutched her hands to her stomach, making me realize that whatever power the queen was using to control the goddess must not have been working well.
“I have become Theht,” the queen said, approaching me. “The same that has happened before has come to pass once again.”
“Where are my friends?”
“I will tell you soon, but first, you must know something else, something I have been trying to communicate to you for a very long time—a mystery you have been grappling with—the truth of the nature of our universe.” She outstretched her hand. “Let me show you.”
Mystery? What was she talking about? Part of me was curious to find out, but my fear won out and I drew back. “No.”
“I beg you to reconsider. There is more you must know. The queen and I are one, but this is not the first time I have inhabited another’s body. I was male, long ago, when the first books were written. I had taken another form, and since then, I took another form still—that of a woman. Now, I have taken the queen.”
Her body shimmered as waves of magic, so intense I felt queasy, coursed through her skin.
Theht fisted her hands until the waves of magic stopped pulsing. “But the queen cannot contain me, and I cannot last in this form for long. A piece of myself exists within you still. You must give it to me.”
So, that’s what she really wanted. She wasn’t whole yet—she still needed the piece of the goddess that existed inside me.
“What if I don’t?” I asked.
“Then I will take it from you,” she said, “but that is not my first choice.”
I connected the dots. She needed what was inside me to be whole, and she needed me to give it willingly.
“Show me where my friends are first,” I said, “and then I might consider it.”
She smiled, a look that made me shudder. “Yes, I was hoping you would ask.”
My heart fell. That was her plan. She was using my friends as leverage to get me to give up the piece of the goddess I held. But maybe that was good news. It meant they were still alive.
“Take my hand, and I will show you everything. There is so much you don’t yet understand. Let me show you. You will understand why I have taken the queen. I am not your enemy, Olive. I never have been.” For a moment, she sounded like the princess.
My heart pounded as I stared at her hand. “First, show me where my friends are.”
She hesitated, not answering, then met my gaze, her glassed-over eyes making my heart race. “After I show you the vision, I will take you to your friends.”
It wasn’t what I wanted, but it was good enough. “Is that a promise?”
She only nodded.
I knew I couldn’t fully trust her. I knew the moment I took her hand she would have power over me. But I had no other way to find my friends.
When the time came, I would do everything within my power to stop her. That thought stayed with me as I took her hand, making swirls of colorful magic ignite between us. My stomach lurched as the floor fell away beneath my feet. We rose above the floor, looking down. From the altar going outward, a burn p
attern marred the floor, mingled with specks of blood. What remained of the egg glittered in bands of gold and black, its destruction threatening to overwhelm me again, forcing me to focus on my current task and not on the tremendous loss I would be forced to soon accept.
The room faded as we rose higher and higher, over the castle, above the jungles and wild lands, over Laurentia, and finally, over the clouds. We only stopped when we were floating above the planet.
Whether I was still in my body or not, I wasn’t sure, but since I was able to breathe where there was no atmosphere, and since my pain was gone, I realized we must have been caught up in a memory.
The goddess floated beside me. Sparks of lightning danced through her eyes and coursed through her arms like blood through her veins.
“Why have you taken me here?” I asked.
“Because it’s important for you to know where you come from. To do that, I must show you the beginning.” She glanced behind us. “Look.”
I followed her line of sight and saw a dark object moving toward the planet. As it neared us, I realized it was an asteroid. Fear took hold of me for a moment when I realized the asteroid was on a collision course for our world.
“This is the past,” the queen explained, “the first time I gave life to our worlds.”
As the asteroid entered the atmosphere, it flared in an orange glow, then plummeted for Earth’s surface, igniting the world in a blinding fire. Although the spell protected us and I knew this was only an image from the past, I still felt as if the heat singed my skin, a phantom pain that spanned eons of time. The explosion wrapped the planet, filling the world with a fire that engulfed an entire continent, then expanded to Earth’s oceans. As the world exploded, I watched it split into two realities—Earth and Faythander.
I wasn’t sure why Theht wanted to show me this. Perhaps as a display of her power, or maybe to show what she planned to do to the world again? Either way, watching the birth of Faythander was an experience I wasn’t prepared for. I’d read about it my entire life, but seeing it now, so close I could feel the breath of life as it filled both worlds, was enough to make tears spring into my eyes.
Two worlds as one. Two different realities. One with magic, the other without, both filled with life.
Magic blossomed on Faythander, glowing in radiant beams that wrapped the world. My home, I thought as I watched the magic unfold.
Theht’s voice intruded on my thoughts. The time has come, she said. You, Deathbringer, shall know the truth of your existence.
The truth? “I don’t understand,” I said.
“You will. Watch.”
A shadow emerged from behind the two planets. At first, I wondered if one world had eclipsed the other, blocking light from the sun to create the illusion of a third planet. But as I watched, my heart began to pound and I realized that I was seeing not a shadow, but another world all together.
“Dalgotha,” Theht said. “The world I inhabit.”
My mind tried to grasp her words, but it was too much. Could it be true?
“There is a third world, separate from Earth and Faythander, though born at the same time. A castoff. A world born in the shadows. A world of fire and death, where the atmosphere is damaged and cannot protect its inhabitants from the cosmic rays of the sun, where life exits only by taking energy from others.”
We moved away from Earth and Faythander to hover over Dalgotha. Although it was a planet, I felt the pain of the world—of its damaged atmosphere, of the plants barely able to survive, of the species living a truly horrific existence—and I felt people living there as well. Past the pain, I felt the fear and terror of the world’s lifeblood being siphoned away. It was an odd feeling that was hard to describe, though it felt as if anything living on the planet would have been forced to take energy from others—a place where death and murder would have run rampant. Is that what Theht meant about taking the energy from others?
“This is my world,” she said. “This is the place I have survived in for eons. It is my home. And it is my prison.”
“Is that why you want to come to Faythander?”
“Yes. My world is dying. It will support life for only a short time more. It is time for me to move to another home, but to fully do so, I must have the energy. I can only inhabit this body for a short time. To fully enter into your world, another event is needed.”
“Event? An event on an epic scale, you mean. Our world has to be destroyed, and you want me to do it.”
“It will be reborn, not destroyed. In order for me to fully cross, I will need enormous amounts of energy. It was attempted once by the brothers you call the Madralorde, but the energy was not focused enough, and so it settled in the place where the castle now stands, fueling its spell for eons.
“But the time has come again. You must use your energy to set another asteroid in motion in this plane, and you will be the one to bring it to the world. It will be a glorious day, Deathbringer.”
“But it will kill everything on Faythander!”
“It will eliminate most of the life, but not all. Just as before, some will survive, and then it shall grow and flourish.”
I shook my head. “I refuse to be a part of this. I will do everything in my power to resist you.”
“You have no choice. The prophecy has been spoken.”
“Then I will stop it. I will do whatever I can to stop it.”
“You will fail. You cannot change the future. Do not deny your destiny.”
As she said it, I felt her words echo within me, stirring the piece of herself that existed in my mind. I was shocked to feel it take hold of me, grappling my power away. Resisting, I held tight to my magic, but in this state, without being in full control of my body, she easily overcame me and ripped my power away.
Our bodies traveled away from the three planets, past the moon and Mars, to the edge of the asteroid belt. We stopped near one of the bigger asteroids, so large it must have been three miles across. Bits of ice sparkled on its surface—beautiful, but exponentially deadly.
As I stared at the asteroid, pain rippled through me, shredding my energy apart, bleeding me from the inside out. The force was so violent I screamed but couldn’t hear my own voice. Power exploded from every cell in my body, ripping and tearing until the magic collided with the asteroid, spinning it off trajectory onto a collision course with Earth.
“It has started,” her voice said. “In a few months’ time, the asteroid will arrive at our planet, and you shall be the one to guide it to our world.”
Her words seemed to come from far away as the energy surrounding us faded.
“Know this,” her voice whispered. “My purposes cannot be thwarted. Those you call your companions cannot help you. Your dragon protector will die soon, killed because of your own inadequacy to save him.
“Indeed, the man you love will be the one to kill you. He does not love you, for you have never been loved. And you never will be. You shall die alone, as this is the lot of all our kind.”
Her words pierced me deeper than I thought possible, hitting at some inherent pain that I’d always carried, a feeling that I had never been loved, that I never would be worthy of anyone’s love. It was something I’d never admitted to anyone, and it was a scar that ran deeper than all the rest.
Those thoughts stayed with me as I reappeared not in Tremulac castle, but in the catacombs under the elven keep.
The headache returned to my body as I lay on the cold paving stones. As I lay there, I realized the queen was gone. Kull, Heidel, and Maveryck were in the cell with me. Kull and Heidel were both bruised and bleeding, but at least they were conscious. Maveryck, however, lay on the ground, his skin ashen, his chest unmoving.
“Olive,” Kull said as he came to my side.
I couldn’t make sense of anything. Being taken into a memory from the past, shown the destruction of Earth and the birth of not two planets, but three, and then having every ounce of energy drai
ned from my body in order to set an asteroid on a collision course with Earth, was enough to make me collapse.
I grabbed Kull’s hand as he came near, feeling the warmth of his presence melt the chills that had burrowed inside my heart. Tears burned my eyes as I realized what Theht had forced me to do. The worst part was knowing I had been powerless to stop her. She held so much power over me, and now, with the asteroid coming toward our planet, it was only a matter of time before she took over my body once again and struck our world.
“Kull,” I whispered, shivering.
“Olive, what’s the matter? What did she do to you?”
I couldn’t find the words to answer. It was too much. The wall I’d built to hide my emotions threatened to break, and keeping my pain inside only hurt worse. But it’s what I had always done, so instead of crying and releasing my pain, as a normal person would have, I kept my heartache buried inside, creating a canker that grew larger with Theht’s words so fresh in my mind.
With my energy spent, not even able to lift my head, I lay on the stone floor, realizing I had doomed Faythander forever. I clutched Kull’s hand as it if were my lifeline.
And perhaps it was.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Time blurred. I knew we had left the elven castle and headed south. I knew Maveryck was dead. Someone told me they had found a way to save my stepfather, but I couldn’t understand how. The only coherent memory I had was of sitting in a light carriage, looking out over the nighttime landscape and focusing on the stars, those glassy orbs that haunted my vision, knowing that somewhere out there a piece of a star was headed for us—for me.
After that, nothing made sense until we arrived at Silvestra’s castle. The witch—her pitch skin sparkling under the light of the moon, her silver dress moving like a fairy’s wings filled with magic, with a spell on her lips—touched her finger to my head.
I exhaled.
My mind returned to the present. I was shivering and cold, though I had a blanket wrapped around me. We sat in her ballroom, and the ceiling overhead looked like the bands of the Milky Way—appropriate and mocking at the same time. Though the room’s light was dim, I knew there were others there with us.
Silverwitch Page 33
