“A containment spell,” Avalon said. She looked at the Elven princess, whose spine had stiffened. “The kind that might prevent an object from being removed from any certain place.”
“The mask,” Kyrie mouthed. “Where did you find it?” Hadrian had filled Kyrie and her father in on their task upon arriving here; it was the only way they would agree to help Avalon, the only way Hadrian had been able to enter the House.
“In the catacombs beneath the House of Ice, sealed within the wall of a tomb.”
“And who removed it?” Kyrie asked.
With reluctance, Avalon pointed to herself.
“I see.” Kyrie paused to take a breath. “Whoever sealed the mask away must’ve been absolutely certain that it would never leave the realm. Which leads me to believe the spell was bound by the realm’s Heart.”
Avalon’s eyebrows flicked up. “AHeart?”
Kyrie nodded. “It’s an old legend. People once believed the magic that belonged to each of Elderyn’s realms came from beneath the surface of the earth—from the realm’s Heart. The source of power if you will. All the realms apparently have one. And spells sealed with the magic from a Heart cannot be broken except by the person who made the spell to begin with.”
“Well, I am certainlynotresponsible—”
The Elven princess held up a long hand, as if to tell her to wait. “The only other way a spell can be broken is if the person attempting to break it is of higher blood.”
A shiver skittered down her spine. “You cannot mean…”God’s blood.
Kyrie’s eyes flicked about, as if afraid someone was listening. Though the guards were out of hearing range, Kyrie’s whispers were almost too quiet to make out. “The land here is rife with Old Magic,” she hissed. “Even the trees have ears.”
Enough was implied for both Avalon and Sable to understand, and the latter was stunned into silence inside the mask.
Avalon remembered back to when she’d unearthed the mask, and a surge of power had been unleashed from someplace dark and nameless. It never made sense that the king had left the mask unprotected in the catacombs; he only would’ve left it if he was certain no one would be able to take it. And if Kyrie was telling the truth about the hearts of the realms… That meant the king had bound the mask to the tomb by wielding the unlimited magic of the Heart contained beneath the Realm of Ice. And if Avalon had broken the spell, then that meant…
Sable?Avalon’s inner voice trembled.What does this mean?But she knew what it meant, and it terrified her.
It took Sable a minute to answer.It means… It means you might be the same as me.Someone of higher power, Avalon thought. A goddess, or…something. All this time, she’d believed she was human. All this time, she’d believed she was mortal. The idea that she was anything more than ordinary frightened her. Ordinary was all she knew. She had become used to beinglessthan everyone around her. Weaker. Plain. Uninteresting.
She could be wrong,Sable said, her tone gentle.
She could. But something told Avalon she was right. It only made sense now—especially after the Wraith had raised the question of why the king had given her that bracelet. A bracelet made of iron—a material ineffective against mortals. But against the Folk, or someone of higher power… someone with gods’ blood…
“You have something else on your mind,” Kyrie observed. “Best ask me now while we still have the chance.”
“Hadrian told you of the book.”
Kyrie waited, her earrings catching the sunlight.
“We are in need of the Star of Midra.”
The Elven princess’s delicate features altered into cold stone. When she spoke, she was careful not to make eye contact. “I’m afraid I cannot help you with that. The Star is no longer in our lands.”
When Avalon opened her mouth to say something, Kyrie interrupted, the two words that drifted off her tongue nearly inaudible. “They’re listening.” Despite the heat hanging in the air, her breath snaked along Avalon’s neck, raising her skin to gooseflesh.
Without another word, the Elven princess left the bridge.
She did not look back.
~
With Lord Aldan at his side, Hadrian strolled through the network of connected balconies that hung high above the gardens and the rushing river, listening intently as the dark-haired Elven king told him of the century-long war that had driven his people to near-extinction.
Several hundred years had passed since the final battle of the war—the Battle of Ice Bay—that had segregated from society everyone who had even a fraction of Elven blood, including those who were untouched by Corruption. Elven magic was different than the magic of the Fey; unlike Fey, if Elves abused their gifts, the magic would eventually turn them into mindless beasts bent on destruction. After the war was over, the Elves—innocent and guilty alike—continued to be hunted and executed for the many lives they’d ended while under the influence of Corruption, their population dropping a startling amount.
“Most of what’s left of our kind now live here, at the Elven House,” the lord was saying. “Elves have enough trouble conceiving as it is, and since the mass executions, our numbers have failed at recovering. Most of those who survived the war are too old to successfully have children, and so I have watched as so many innocent people pay a horrible price for one man’s sins.” The man he was referring to was Gandraian, a warrior who’d led corrupt Elves into battle upon battle, staining the land in blood.
