I feel his spike of magic, but I don’t wait to see what he does. Instead, I race through the corridors, down into the bedrock of the academy and the foot of the mountain. I head to the apartments where the Worldkeepers have been staying.
They are all awake, talking rapidly, as I burst through the door.
“They know. They’re here,” I gasp. “They know my disguise. Ravin is leading the Stellis to the academy now—they’re at the doors.”
“What?” Vaduin takes a step forward. I’m glad he’s usually down here at night and not up in his room in the professors’ wing.
I tell them all that’s transpired. When I’m finished, I expect them to hate me—to have yet another reason to loathe me. Instead,I am met with utter and unwavering determination. Each one of their expressions is a portrait of one of the stone statues of the past Worldkeepers, as resolute as the rock of the Stone Citadel itself.
Vaduin takes a step, then another. He places his hand on my shoulder, and for some reason, I flinch. There’s something that still puts me on edge in his expression. “Do what must be done; we’ll help hold them off. But do not forget us when your wish is made. Make the world you promised: one for all.”
I nod, knowing he’s sacrificing the one thing he truly wanted: to see the wish be made. “I swear it. This time, the power will be ours.”
“We’ll know if you don’t use your wish wisely. We’ll remember, after all.” He grins slightly and passes me a blank card. I know by the feel of the paper that it is the one I need to ink the vessel and I pocket it carefully. Then he turns to the rest. “This is our last stand. Our chance to show Naethor that he will not destroy us quietly.”
“You’ll find extra decks in the reading classrooms—every student is outfitted with a full one to read. Arm yourselves,” I add for any who don’t know.
Vaduin places a deck in my palm with a nod.
“You’ll need it,” I object.
“As you aptly put it, I can easily get more. And you look like you need it more than I do.”
My fingers tighten around it, and I slide the cards into the holster at my thigh. “Thank you.”
They leave, and it’s just me and Arina who remain. She lingers in the doorframe. There’s no hesitation in her stance, nor trembling uncertainty.
Just pure resolve.
I swallow hard, guilt already threatening to drown me. It’s still too soon. She’s still too frail. But then I blink and she’s no longer the girl I struggled to raise on the streets. No longer the broken young woman Ravin discarded. She’s Arina, a force of nature. Beautifully defiant. Ready to burn the world.
“Are you ready?” I know the answer before asking.
“Yes.” Without missing a beat.
I exhale slowly. “You were always stronger than I gave you credit for.”
“I know.” She grins. “Glad you’re starting to admit it.” I laugh softly and shake my head. Right as I’m about to leave, she stops me with “Clara, there’s something I need to tell you.”
“Arina, there’s not a lot of time.”
Yet she hesitates. I know the look of my sister gathering her courage with a single breath. “I know you didn’t want me to read for you about using the World…”
“But you did anyway,” I finish for her, a streak of anger tearing through me that’s gone as quickly as it came. “What happened to your philosophy of not reading for people unless they explicitly ask?”
“This time, it seemed too important not to.” She lifts her chin, not backing down. “I had a sense—an overwhelming, nausea-inducing fear of what was to come. So I read, not for you, but formyself.In that reading, I saw myself inking the Star and you by my side. I saw the font of the World and the specter of death. Then…nothing. I laid more cards, and I saw a castle, twisted, different. A grand hall dressed for a ceremony, drowning in blood. I saw a shadow fall across allOricalis and an unending calamity that follows. Noble clans fallen. A violet flame that knows no end—that spreads across everything as we know it.”
My heart stops.
Kaelis.
I see him as she speaks. I see the man with the crown in the vision of what he sacrificed to the Chalice. Kaelis the king. I hear Ravin’s utterances of his monstrosity. I see the shadows that have loomed over him from the first moment we met and feel the terror that ripped through me at their first appearance, the wonder at their last.
“The visions were hazy at best, I admit,” she continues, “but if you cast the World as you intend, all we know will be destroyed.”
A tiny part of me still doubts. But Mother’s voice is so quiet and so far now, her warnings faded like whispers on a breeze.
When I speak, my voice is steady. “That is the goal. Sometimes, things are so broken that nothing can be salvaged; we must destroy them before we can rebuild. The world I want is something new that will flourish from the ashes of this one.”
