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“Sile!” I cried, flinging magic out in bolts as the windows began to burst. Be still.
Thousands of knifelike glass shards froze where they were, scintillating as they hung in the air, reflecting fragments of lightning and fire.
I could feel every sliver straining against me as I held them in arrest, groaning with the exertion.
Please, I silently begged. Hurry!
And then I saw it: the mast of a schooner, pulling away from the pier.
The glass began to quaver in the air, thousands and thousands of glittering pieces juddering against my hold. My ears were ringing, my hands shaking from the strain, but I hung on until the ship was clear of the waterfront and halfway to King’s Gate.
Tears pricking my eyes, I watched it diminish. “Empyrea keep you,” I whispered.
Then I let go.
36
The tower was the center of it all.
To get to it, I pushed through mighty wind, over bucking earth and surging tide. I was lashed by rain mixed with glass, scraped by the tumbling rocks of the falling terraces, and scratched to shreds by thorns of the plants grown rampant and ravenous. Lightning-strike fires were scavenging the roof the castle, and burning ash was flung into the black sky, as if the stars themselves had turned to fire. Once on top of the bloodleaf field, I could make out several places where the leaves had been crushed by footsteps, though most of the brackish sap had already been washed away in the rain and red waves crashing on the rocks.
Inside the tower, however, all was eerily quiet.
One step, then another. Up, up, up, alone save for the howl of the wind and the painted figures on the wall, telling the tragic story of those doomed siblings who started this all. Achlev. Aren. Cael. I lingered at the last panels for a moment, gazing at their inscrutable faces. Then I steeled myself, ready to put an end to the sequence they’d put into motion all those years earlier.
This is it, I thought, armed with Victor de Achlev’s vial of blood in one hand, my luneocite knife in the other. Then I pushed the door free and strode out onto the tower’s open pinnacle.
Outside, the firestorm was raging, whipped by the circulating wind into a cylinder of flame. The city below was completely engulfed, the scorched streets standing out like a black triquetra-shaped brand against the blaze. Above my head, however, hung a perfect circle of star-studded sky, the eye of the storm. Marking its center was a dim void: the black moon.
“So glad you could make it, Princess.”
Toris had Zan forced to his knees, still bound and gagged. They were surrounded by a thatch of bloodleaf that had grown voraciously, clawing into any crack in the mortar, any imperfection in the stone. I took one step toward them, then another. Zan watched my approach with heavy, feverish eyes, shaking his head as if to say You shouldn’t have come.
Toris tapped his knife on Zan’s shoulder. “I think the prince here was hoping you’d renege on our bargain.” He laughed. “He must not know you at all.”
“We had an agreement. I’ve come to deliver my end of the deal.”
“Would it surprise you to know that I never had any intention of delivering mine?”
“Not in the least.”
“I can’t finish my business until the last gate has fallen, and for that to happen, the prince has to die. There is no other way.”
“So what purpose does this serve in your scheme?” I lifted the vial and unstopped the top. “Why do you need this blood so very badly?” I gave it a lazy little swirl. “The blood of our most revered Founder. It’s supposed to be just a symbol, and yet . . .” I tipped it and let a splash of blood fall out onto the tower stones. “You treat it like it has a greater importance.”
Toris’s eyes were locked onto the vial. “Do that again and I’ll kill him.”
“You just told me you would kill him no matter what.” I tipped the vial and spilled the blood again but more liberally this time, a long, thread-like stream. “I want to hurt you, Toris, for what you’ve done. To me, to my country, to everyone I love.” My eyes flicked back to Zan, who was struggling to breathe against the gag. “If this is how it must be done, so be it.”
“Stop!” Toris demanded, eyes bulging. “You don’t know what you’re doing!”
“Tell me,” I said. “Tell me why this blood is so important to you.” I tipped it again and let it splatter on the ground. A third of it gone. A half. Two-thirds . . .
“It’s mine!” Toris barked. Through his teeth he said, “So help me, if you spill even one more drop . . .” He lifted Zan’s chin with the point of his knife, and a bead of blood slid down the edge and onto Toris’s hands. His knife was luneocite glass, twin to my own, the one that had once belonged to Achlev himself.
That’s when I knew.
Toris’s visage was little more than an illusory overlay, like the one I’d used to make Falada’s white coat seem black. A simple trick that, once seen, could not be unseen. I circled him in astonishment, staring at a truth that was simultaneously incredible and intolerable, extraordinary and obscene.
