Page 149 of Queen of War and Ruin

Gerard glances at me, clears his throat, and then turns to Lilias.

“Uh, Princess,” Gerard begins. “What did you see in Vsenrog?”

My wife frowns. Blinks.

“Varitan attacked us,” she says, as a crease appears between her eyes. “The whole ballroom collapsed in front of us. That had to be part of the weapon, right? It had to be magic.”

“Right,” Gerard says, narrowing his eyes. “Varitan attacked. Is that really what you saw?”

“That’s enough,” I say.

Elrick is looking at me like he’s starting to regret treating me civilly this morning, and Lilias is frowning in a way that makes me think she’s revisiting her memories of that night for the first time. I take a deep breath, then hold up my right hand, my empty palm facing the ceiling.

All elves have magic, Varitan told me. Fire, illusions, healing.

And this morning, while life bustled around me in the old hunting camp, I ducked into the old shed where I once found a dagger, pulled the door closed, and tried to use the magic clinging to the silver chain. Fire seemed the simplest, so I started with that.

It was easy. Much easier than I’d expected. The magic in the silver chain leapt to my hand like it was just waiting for me to ask.

“What is this supposed to—” Gerard grumbles.

Petrys hushes him. I frown at the open space above my hand, then tug on the thin whisper of magic that hums inside the silver chain. I shiver as magic dances across my skin.

And a single flame blooms in the air above my upturned palm.

Elrick leaps backward, his chair crashing to the floor. Anura holds both her hands over her mouth. There’s the low rasp of metal against leather as Gerard pulls his blade from its sheath.

I let the magic go. The flame vanishes. Elrick curses under his breath. Slowly, almost against my will, I turn toward my wife. Lilias stares at me with wide eyes.

“H-How?” she stammers.

I glance down at the table. The muscles in my arm ache, just like they did this morning when I first practiced that trick. It always takes a toll, Varitan said. It is never easy to wield magic.

“Varitan,” I admit.

And then I tell them everything.

Varitan’s private chambers. His training. Silver chains falling to the floor. His horrible description of elven ancestry. I leave out the part about my mother, my real mother, but it hardly matters. I still feel raw and exhausted by the time I’m finished, like I’ve stripped naked in front of them and counted all my scars.

When I finally fall silent, the sky outside the window is black and the tiny, silver flecks of the stars dance above the mountains. Lilias’s eyes shimmer as she stares at me. I swallow; my throat feels raw. Elrick shakes his head, and the lamp on the table flickers in the soft breeze coming in through the open windows.

“Shit,” the prince of Marion mutters under his breath.

When he looks up at me, he seems older, somehow, than when he greeted us in the courtyard this morning with a streak of flour on his cheek.

“Zarek,” he begins in a low voice. “You don’t need to do this.”

I blink. That’s so far from what I expected him to say that it takes my mind a moment to catch up.

“Like Gerard said,” Elrick continues, waving a hand at Gerard, “Malrik’s damned weapon. It isn’t our problem.”

I open my mouth, then close it.

“Even if you could stop this weapon, this magic,” Elrick says, “no one would ask that of you. Hells, you saved our lives in Ethiria. You got my sister and Gerard out of Vsenrog. Maybe this elf taught you how to do a few things with, uh, magic. But that doesn’t mean you could stand against the armies of Vsenrog. And it doesn’t mean you should.”

I look down at the table, where long shadows dance across the polished wood. I think about screams splitting the air, dust rising to blot out the sun. And then I think about the pale pink rosebuds climbing the blackened walls of what was once the palace of Dungal.

“Vsenrog destroyed my kingdom,” I say in a voice that’s almost a whisper. “They murdered my parents. They ruined my entire life.”