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“Your brother, Erik,” Merden said, toasting the mist before tipping the vial into her mouth. I growled a threat at her when I understood what she had - whose power she was swallowing. She only smiled, opening the second. “Your mother, Amelie.”
I moaned as the sweet, powdery scent of my mother flooded toward me. I struggled to fling ice magic at her, but the mist blocked me, intent on letting her finish for some Goddess-forsaken reason. All of this powerful, stolen blood would give her blood magic so much more strength.
Did the mist mean for me to fail?
“And thefin de vieof your grandmother, the former Queen Valda,” Merden shouted, drinking down the final vial and smashing the glass pieces beneath her heel. A roar of rage spilled from my lips as I felt the mist drop its control, and the crowd was deafening in my ears. Rushing water, hurricane winds, thunder rattling the bones of the earth.
I wrapped her mind in ice, freezing each limb one by one, but she wriggled free like a black-eyed snake. Her body levitated before me, impossibly buoyed up by the strength of my family. Blood she had no right to drink - power she had no right to claim.
It was too much. She bore down on me, the icy rivers of magic turning liquid red as they formed before my eyes. It was power like I’d never seen - never known was possible.
“This is how you rule, little princess. Not by following rules, but by creating them,” Merden hissed down at me, before the blood magic crashed into my body, paralyzing my mind and knocking me to my knees. She pressed harder with her power, toppling me face-down into the dirt.
I felt the twisting agony of my twoaima, Kassian and Acadian, in my chest as they watched from above, and I wanted to send them the message that everything could still be okay. If I could hold out just a little longer... I could...
The mist formed a wall between us, bouncing the blood magic away and ending the second round. I stumbled to my feet, my brain sloshing in my skull as I tried to rally.
I’m sorry, were the only words that made it to myaimabefore I slammed the door on my mind.
Somewhere in the crowd, a wolf whined, and the guards brought our weapons. The third match began.
I flew at Merden with my blades, but her magic was so much stronger than any weapons training I’d ever done. Blood magic was forbidden for a reason, and Merden had been guzzling thefin de viefor a decade. Her breath smelled of dragon, of Qilin, of one of the most powerful Queens in our history.
She’d swallowed them all down in my absence, and nothing inside of me was going to be strong enough to beat that conglomeration of magic.
Nothing except a Goddess.
Still parrying the attacks I could with flashes of steel and fangs, I dug deep into my magical reserves, scraping my soul for everything I had. Finally, I bumped up against the barrier I’d been searching for.
Cold, icy, and solid.
Khione’s power hung in my chest like a block of ice, silent and locked away from me like the box I’d found frozen in Ice Clover Lake. Like theBook of Iceghosted into my skin, blank and terrifyingly silent.
Help me do this, I growled in my head, searching for the spark of Khione’s voice or the tendrils of power she’d shown me before. Something. Anything.
Why was she fucking here if she wasn’t going to help me win?
You know the way out, she hissed back.Let. Go. Release your control over the outcome and let the magic of Haret do its work.
I need your power, I insisted, wrenching myself loose from Merden’s mental grip one more time and throwing up my arm as if I could block her magic that way.
Let. Go. The way is decided for you, Khione insisted, and something crumbled inside me. I didn’t want to walk this path. The ancestors wanted more of me than I could give. Khione’s power was still hers, and I truly had nothing left of my own. My control shattered and slid around me in shards as I fell to my knees before the false Queen of Saori Sang.
She bore down on me with enough blood magic to whip my braid into a noose around my neck, and I clawed at my skin, gasping for the mist to start its fucking flow already.
Let. Go.Khione’s words echoed again in my mind, grinding against my mental walls and taking them apart as well.
So I let it happen. I let go. I stopped fighting Merden and gave in to what the mist wanted - stopped trying to force my own plans and let the magic of Haret flow in and around me.
Merden stumbled toward me, but even her immense power was waning. Stolen blood didn’t last long enough - you had to keep stealing more. Even so, I knew I had lost the final round. Merden had something I didn’t, but I was going to let the magic take charge.
Panting, Merden tipped back a final vial of blood into her mouth, laughing like rusty nails over glass at the crowd’s booing. Lifting her arm for dramatic effect, she toppled me to the dirt with magic she’d drunk from my own father.
“I surrender,” I whispered to the mist swirling around my face, and I thought I saw Grand-mère nodding to me in the iron gray fog as my eyes slid closed around the vise of pain inside myskull. It was what the ancestors wanted, and because I trusted them, I let go.
Boots thudded around me as guards helped Merden out of the pit, and I scented Kas when he leaped down beside me.
“Come on, Kana. Get up. You can still pull through this-”
