“The…the prince…reversed card.” A prone woman at Kaelis’s feet twitches. Her armor has been fractured with veinlike cracks of purple-black. It looks as though some kind of livingthinghas covered it completely. A monstrosity that poisoned the metal itself.
No, more than the metal. I stare in horror as the woman lifts her face. Her cheeks are pockmarked with voids—as though she’s being eaten from the inside.
What sort of monstrosity…
“The prince is void-born!” she screeches with her dying breath.
Kaelis closes his fist, and the moment he does, the womanexplodes.She cracks as though made of glass and shatters, the pieces turning to smoke. The ground left behind is singed and bare, much like the stone of the crater.
“Enough of this.” Kaelis turns to another Stellis, purple flames dancing around him in an aura of accursed power.
Cards rise from his deck. Each one slowly twitches, then twists, turning from right side up to upside down. The top of the card is now the bottom. The figures on the card are distorted and changed, as if the ink has come alive. They take on a sinister look before swirling like achaotic mess—as though an invisible artist cannot decide, time and again, what the symbols and frames of the card should look like.
Emilia begins to run.
“No you don’t!” I charge after her as Kaelis’s magic bursts.
Tongues of cold purple-black fire race toward the other Stellis. The wind howls, and the clouds move across the sky so fast it’s as though time has sped up. The ground ripples under my feet. Even the bedrock shudders in terror before this unnatural abomination.
But my focus is only on Emilia. She trips, falling, twisting. My blade halts as she raises a hand.
“Don’t!” Her palm trembles. There are more screams behind us—cut short to make space for a silence so eerie a chill races up my spine. “Would you really defend…that? Thatthing?”
The point of my sword is under her chin. I narrow my eyes. “That thing? Thatmanis my future husband.”
As my blade plunges into her chest, I lean forward. A dark shadow overtakes me. Motes of purple flame lick around us like rain falling. I know he’s there without him saying anything, but my focus is only on Emilia as the light begins to leave her eyes.
“This…is for my mother. I never meant to kill you. I never meant for you to bear the sins of your family, made well before you were aware. But you forced my hand.”
“S…sister…” Emilia chokes out and goes limp.
I inhale sharply, the metallic scent of blood filling my nostrils. Even with her dying breath, she focuses on Alor. I’d do the same, and my insides twist so painfully I almost wince even though she’s the one with the sword plunged through her.
“Alor doesn’t need to be a part of this,” I whisper, even though she’s far from being able to hear. “So long as she stays out of my way…our cards will not cross.”
Leaning away, I dismiss my blade. The weapon disappears, but the blood on my hands remains. It persists even as magic flares behind me with a flash of obsidian and violet. Flames dance across Emilia’s body, engulfing it, swallowing it whole. Like she was never really there.
One by one, across the field, the other Stellis are consumed by this raging, deadly, accursed magic. All around me is an inferno of glittering twilight and shadow. As if I am being caged in. As though I’m next.
Exhausted and spent, I push on the ground, and then my knees, somehow finding the will to stand. Tilting my head toward the sky, I take a steadying breath and turn, not knowing what I’ll find.
Kaelis is a few steps behind me. The air around him is alive with the power he flings from twisted cards. His hair is vibrant and shimmering, purple flames tangling with it, both highlighting and darkening it. The heavy velvet of his cloak flutters from currents of magic in the still air.
Like radiant midnight, he is a monstrosity not of this world. Glorious and horrifying.
“Clara.” His eyes finally turn to mine. There is a spark I’ve never seen in them before—glowing lilac rings the edges of his usually indiscernible pupils.
“Will you kill me now, too?” I whisper. “Now that I have seen too much—now that I know your secret?”
Kaelis leans away, standing straighter, as if narrowly avoiding a blow. “I was protecting you. I have always been protecting you.”
“I don’t even know what you are,” I whisper. But somewhere, deep within me, I knew. I knew it all, and I ignored it. The warnings of my mother; the feeling in my marrow whenever he was near. Perhaps it was something in me, some element of being a Major, reacting to him and whatever this was.
“If I’d told you the truth, I would put you in danger.”
“Enough!”My scream echoes into the crater. I don’t care who hears, who sees—let them all come. Let all of Oricalis come. Let him burn the damn thing to the ground and me with it. I return to my earlier sentiment. It’s time to finish what we started. “If you love me at all, if you want me at all, tell me the truth.”
“What was I to say? That all the rumors about me are true? That I am as cursed as they say and yet desperately,desperatelydesire you? That I am the antithesis—an affront to the fate you embody? That despite allthis, you have been my reason for living since before I even knew you?” Panic tempers his power like a damper on flames. The aura he bears oscillates wildly, writhing. “I watched you leave me once, Clara. I was forced to carve you from my life. I would never risk it again.”
