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Sira, Queen of the Below—and now Queen of the Enchanted Vale—looks down upon her land with amusement.
My heart sinks down into my stomach, and a cold sweat breaks across my forehead. This is the woman who took everything from us. Treated her children like prisoners for years. Nearly murdered Dayton. Was responsible for George’s death and my mother’s and brother’s.
That hole inside me—the one that I opened with the Baron of the Green Flame, the one I closed despite the pain—throbs like a gaping wound. I may not have access to that power anymore, but I don’t know if I’ll ever forget this feeling. This rage.
My teeth grind together so hard, I think they may crack, and my legs are tensed as if readying to run out there.
And do what? Kill her? With what magic?
She’s more powerful than any of us. Especially with the rose.
It hangs from a silver belt at her waist: a clear bell jar, gilded along the base. Within is the glassy red rose. Fractures of mythkarite glimmer in the dim light. With that rose, Sira can control the wills of her creatures.
How can we face such a force?
There are no options. For now, we must lie in wait.
My gaze darts to Rosalina, and though she has never felt the poison of the Green Flame, I see that rage. Her eyes shimmer like glass, and she looks as if she’s about to do just what I wanted to. I grab her hand and clutch it hard to my chest. Her gaze drags to mine. I squeeze her grip three times and watch her release a breath.
A hush ripples across the grounds as Sira raises a hand. Her hair flurries around her face with the force of the storm.
“My children!” Her voice booms, magically amplified yet still as silken and sharp as ever.
A monstrous cheer erupts. Goblins slam their fists to metal, harpies screech, and trolls bellow and stamp their feet.
On my other side, I hear thin breathing. Wrenley’s turned away from the castle’s remains, her knees pressed to her chest, hands over her ears, rocking. Those brilliant blue eyes don’t blink, not once.
“Cas!” Kel snarls as Caspian, who was sitting at the very edge, crawls out from the cover of the trebuchet to make his way to Wrenley. He wraps his arms around her, locking her in an embrace.
Sira’s gaze seems to pierce through me, even from such a distance. “Gone are the days of false grace. We have burned the weakness from the heart of this world. We have torn down their golden thrones! We have erased Aurelia and her poisoned line! The high princes are no more!”
Another wave of roaring, brutal joy crashes through the abominations. Kel’s lip curls in a way that reminds me of his wolf.
Sira lifts her arms. “But the roots of Castletree still run deep.”
The cheers hush.
“Try as we might to cut them out, they burrow deeper like an infection. So I have a new vision for us, my beloveds. If we cannot destroy the roots…” Her hand forms a tight fist in front of her face, snapping a line of shadow in half. “We shall make them ours.”
The shadow tornado spirals faster beneath her, appearing to drill into the earth.
A scratchy voice calls out, a goblin perhaps: “But how, Your Beauteous Righteousness? Castletree has always belonged to her.”
“Not. Anymore.” Sira’s lip twitches. “For I, Sira, Queen of the Below, hold a power that made even the false queen grovel at my feet. I will bind my life force and my magic to Castletree’s roots and become an entity more powerful than any god from any world!”
My mouth tastes like ash. It’s not possible…
And yet, isn’t it? Aurelia turned to Sira when she needed to learn how to tie George’s life force to Castletree. If Sira were to bind herself to Castletree…
Everything she has ever tried to create has turned rotten. What kind of entity would she make of herself and our home?
“For now, I must gather my strength. But in two fortnights, the sky will be illuminated by the full moon,” Sira says. “In that hour, I shall enact a ritual of moonlight and devastation. And when it is complete, there shall stand a new Castletree. One that answers to my magic and my magic alone. A magic Aurelia deemed perverse. Evil. But this is the power that will remake the Vale.” A light sparks in her green eyes. Not the Baron’s flame but an insanity all her own. “The old realms are dying. Let them! Winter, Spring, Summer, Autumn… One by one, they will fall without their precious queen’s magic. And I will raise new realms from their ashes. Realms for all of you, my children. For every creature ever denied a seat at the table. For every outcast, every broken thing cast aside.” A smile curves up her face. “For every beast.”
The crowd howls, the sound ringing through my bones as if they’ve turned hollow.
“The next full moon will signify the rebirth of the Vale!” she screams. Great tendrils of shadow spark out from the storm, driving into the earth like anchors. The ground shakes, and the creatures explode into screeches and hoots.
“We need to move while they’re still occupied,” Kel yells.
