“Then allow me to threaten you some more. You put a chain between my wrists and I’ll kill you with it.”
Notus bellowed a sound of outrage, standing abruptly, and the high pitch of steel echoed throughout the hall. We’d barely lasted ten minutes into our food. His stormstone blade pointed at me from across the table, and all the guards shifted closer. Zephyr stood too, tracking Notus and the blade. Auster stopped eating.
I locked an equally hateful stare on Notus as I reached across the table for a piece of bread. He took it as an insult, a mockery of his threat, which I wasn’t afraid of, and he intended for his blade to come down on my wrist, which would have severed my hand.
Instead, he met an invisible resistance as every marking over my exposed flesh shone with my magick awakening in a natural defense. It wasn’t without great effort to push through the effects of the nebulora they kept me weakened with. My forehead quickly beaded with sweat and a tremor shook through me.
“How is that possible? There’s enough nebulora to incapacitate a dozen celestials laced in those manacles,” Auster said incredulously.
“You really don’t know me very well,” I said, my voice starting to waver with exertion. “Not even in our past, or you would have known I’d been building a tolerance to nebulora against my skin for decades.”
Lightsdeath whispered dark chants throughout my mind. It could turn these manacles that were still suffocating a lot of my power into dust. Lightsdeath could make rubble of this castle and the High Celestials within it if I justgave over to it.
My vision scattered with silver stardust, a warning of that deadly power pushing to the surface of my subconscious. It was too tempting while my rage stirred hot in the presence of Auster and Notus, but my right mind rang with the alarm warning that I had no experience with Lightsdeath, and this fortress held too many innocents for me to risk unleashing reckless magick.
Just let go.The power caressed my thoughts. Dark with intent, but unlike Nightsdeath, it was pure, bright starlight that wanted to become me.
I pulled my hand back, just enough to touch the tip of Notus’s blade, still pointed at me. It pierced my flesh, beading a drop of crimson, which only made my magick more potent. I watched my violet light scatter over the length of his sword like lightning before the stormstone shattered over the table.
I am in control.I soothed my own emotions, taming the unhinged magick pushing to take over after that taste of violence.I do not fear myself.
Notus pulled his arm back, now only holding the hilt, with absolute shock and fury lining his face. I let go of my magick, panting shallowly to collect steady breath.
He roared, a sound that declared battle between us.
“Guards!” Notus bellowed.
Those bearing his house color of gold advanced, but Auster’s guards in navy intercepted them while Zephyr’s small force in turquoise stayed put, uncertain but braced in case their High Celestial gave an order to intervene. Conversations faltered, words falling away into uneasy silence as sharp, cautious glances darted across the room. A quiet hum of anticipation pressed against the walls, coiling tighter with every passing second.
Watching Notus and Auster at odds stroked a dark satisfaction in me. Perhaps I didn’t have to do much at all to watch their pillars of union collapse, and I planned to make sure they would be buried in their own wreckage.
I stood carefully, facing Auster. “He’s always despised me. I have been nothing but compliant here.”
A muscle in Auster’s jaw worked as he slipped a look at me that softened only for a second before targeting Notus. “I think it’s best if you allow me to handle the Maiden here for now. You should return to Althenia.”
Triumph gleamed in me.
“You can’t be serious,” he spat.
Auster hated nothing more than for his authority to be challenged. Ironic, really, when he sat back unfazed as I challenged Notus’s jurisdiction.
As the gentle voice of reason over the palpable tension, Zephyr interjected, “Brother, we need a governing figure over there anyway. Your feelings toward Astraea only complicate things here.”
Notus’s cheeks reddened and his gaze stretched, keeping his outrage from exploding out of him. With a disgruntled sound, he stormed from the room, still humorously clutching his bladeless hilt.
“I should make sure he doesn’t take out his anger at you elsewhere,” Zephyr said, casting me one look of reprimand before he followed his brother out.
The silence that followed turned heavy. Auster’s stare slowly spread over my skin when I didn’t meet it.
“So you’ve been pretending those manacles and the nebulora have kept you incapacitated? You could have escaped any time?”
I didn’t want to expose that advantage, but I hadn’t wanted to lose a hand to Notus’s blade either. Now I had to scramble for an excuse.
“It weakens me greatly. If Notus challenged me to a fight, he would have won while I still have these on,” I said flatly.
Raising my hand, the sleeve of my white gown slipped high enough to expose the red torn flesh of my wrists and the manacles. Auster gave no reaction to seeing them; his suspicion still swirled in that brown stare of judgment.
“I don’t believe that for a second. You always have been far too cunning,” he said. The cold, distant tone braced me, and with the motion of Auster’s hand, guards advanced for me. “There’s one way to test your capabilities against the effects of nebulora.”
