YEARS OF MUD and disuse had cemented the heavy iron grate above Saran and Odan’s heads to the courtyard floor. She couldn’t remember a single day when anyone bothered to show the courtyard an ounce of interest, least of all to clean from the stone the mud tracked in by horses. She beat her hands against the metal and mud rained down on her head in heavy wet globs.
Saran pushed with all her might, and beneath her, the Ice Mage pushed with all of his, his arms wrapped so tightly around her waist that under any normal circumstances she probably would have flayed him. But given their current predicament, she welcomed the help.
“Put your back into it, Princess,” Odan muttered through gritted teeth as he strained to hold her and keep his balance.
“Shall I give you a boost and you try it?”
Saran shifted and did as he instructed, placing her back against the grate and standing with all her strength. The grate lifted away too quickly for it to be of her own doing. Hard hands dragged her from the hole and to her feet. Saran jerked from their grasp and whirled to take in her surroundings.
Darshan waited at the top of the staircase, standing between the castle’s open doors. His men stood at the foot of the entry stairs, between the two great fire pits that topped the short pillars at either side of the stairs. A mess of haggard faces, as dirty as the muddied earth around them, filled the courtyard. For them, time stopped when they allowed Darshan into the city, and it wouldn’t start again until they knew for certain who would take the throne.
Even the stableboy, who always greeted her when she arrived home, watched hopefully from his usual spot near the fire pits, along with his soldier friend who occasionally fed the flames out of boredom. The hatchet he used to whack small logs into kindling lay propped against the pillars. Saran eyed the tool, fiddling with the Bind around her wrist.
“I used that same route, you know, to escape your father the night your mother died,” Darshan said as he sauntered down the steps.
Saran smeared the mud from her face. “It has seen better days, I’m sure.”
Darshan eyed the hole darkly. “Tell the others to come out.”
“Come out,” Saran called down. The Ice Mage wiggled his spindle-thin body from the drain.
Darshan drew his sword. “And the king.”
The king. Her father. Saran shifted involuntarily, as if he’d struck her, looking back to the black hole in the earth. Her father deserved no sentimentalism from her, and yet she couldn’t stop the part of her from feeling sorrow at the lost chance to redeem him. Saran knew what he was, knew how she hated him, and yet some small childlike part of her loved him anyway. “The king is dead.”
The courtyard hushed, the crackle of the fire pits growing like a roar in her ears.
“And you live?”
“He died a natural death, so I live.”
Darshan’s ocean gaze settled on Saran, and he sheathed his sword. “Then it’s over. We have no cause to quarrel. The king is dead. Long live the queen.”
No cheers followed his proclamation. The men and women around her glanced between themselves and murmured, but no one fell to a knee or shared in Darshan’s enthusiasm. Perhaps they were in shock.
Saran spotted Madam Ophelia leaning out of an open window. The woman sported a deeper frown than usual, and Saran had to guess that she couldn’t be pleased with how things were turning out. Her hopes of a Grand Feminine were lost if Darshan seized power through her.
Darshan whirled on his men. “I said, long live the queen!”
“Long live the queen!” they returned in one rattling voice that echoed off the bastion walls and rickety towers stretching to the sky. Saran stared at Darshan, burning her gaze through him and reading every part of him. He possessed great intelligence, a truly gifted manipulator who could rival Yarin in his coldness. He’d befriended her, befriended Rowe, and he’d used them. Knowing that every step she’d taken since joining his cause had been to get him to this very moment made her ill.
Saran knew that his men outnumbered hers. She knew that they were loyal to him. She knew that, if she did not go along with his ruse, he could whisper a word, and she’d be just as helpless and damned as her mother had been to Yarin. She couldn’t fight him, not without magic. She couldn’t fight him, not without numbers. She stood alone against him, and her only saving grace would be that she carried the courage of a Vanguard and the devious, conniving nature of a D’mor. Together, those traits had been what her father had hated and admired most about her. She understood that now.
Saran needed Darshan in order to earn the trust of the people, just as he needed her in order to earn the legitimacy of the throne.
She stepped away from Odan, waltzing languorously to where Darshan stood. The rebels parted for her. The princess stole a glance at Madam Ophelia, finding it hard to tell the woman her plan in such a fleeting manner. There wasn’t enough clarity or emotion in the brief meeting of their eyes to put Madam Ophelia at ease for what would happen soon. Saran couldn’t afford to have a vengeful healer with knowledge of poison on her hands—or, perhaps, she needed just that. A dark idea began to worm its way into her brain.
Saran turned her gaze back to Darshan and raised her muddied face high. “Long live the king.”
The courtyard roared.
The cheers thundered through her chest. Just as quickly as they’d begun, they fell away to whispers. The clear sky turned dark at an unnatural pace. The courtyard, forgetting the proclamations of king and queen, turned their heads to the black cloud gathering in the distance. Blacker than any storm Saran had ever seen, it sped toward them like the angry rush of an exploding volcano.
Blue light flashed at the corners of her eyes, and two figures tumbled out of a crackling electric portal, one half dragging the other. Her heart seized in her chest.
“Rowe! Keleir!”
Rowe’s eyes lifted, his gaze alive with his element and the static so thick in the air around him that she imagined, if she touched him without the bind, her heart would stop as easily as if he’d crushed it in his hand. He guarded his brother with a wall of current to keep out anyone willing to do them harm. He lumbered toward them, pulling Keleir’s lifeless form with him until he dropped the Fire Mage in the mud at her feet. The field of power sparking around him fell away just as quickly.
She fell into the mud next to them, hugging and kissing them without worry for those who watched. Tears of relief and joy washed freely down her cheeks. Not until she saw Rowe’s grave expression did she pause long enough to really see them. She turned her eyes to Keleir, who lay heavy against the earth. She hadn’t realized it before, how his legs hadn’t helped Rowe carry him, how he hadn’t responded to her kisses and her words of love. He lay pale. Still. Like death.
“No …” She shook her head and patted his face harshly, trying to wake him. “No!” She reared back to strike him, and Rowe grabbed her hand. Saran struggled to look away from Keleir and meet his eyes.
“He’s not dead. Not yet. He killed with magic to save me, Saran. It comes for him.” Rowe pointed to the distance, to the great black cloud of ash that rolled across the sky and fell around them like rain. A hideous face appeared, a monster bearing down on them. “He sacrificed himself to save my life.” Rowe’s wide blue eyes pleaded with her, an unspoken request she read all too easily. He wanted her to save Keleir.
Saran looked down at the Bind around her wrist and then to the black cloud swirling above them. It hovered, moments away from devouring Keleir.
She’d promised to save him from the Oruke. She’d vowed to set him free.
Saran pressed a kiss to Keleir’s lips. She loved him, he who called to her soul, he who fed it with fire. She would not lose him. “Hold Keleir. Keep him awake. Slap him. Punch him. I don’t care what you have to do; don’t let him accept this fate.”
“What are you going to do?”
Saran scurried to her feet and looked deep into Rowe’s worried eyes. “I’m going to get the key. I understand where it is now.”
Rowe nodded feverishly, drawing his brother into his arms and slapping at his face to wake him. He slapped him hard enough to snap the Fire Mage’s eyes open. Keleir gasped, struggling to breathe, as if he’d died and been brought back to life by his brother’s raging need for him to exist. He searched the cloud above them. A sea of black threatened to steal the whites of his eyes. The ash that rained down on them disappeared beneath the Fire Mage’s skin, each drop absorbed by him, each one taking him closer to death.
“Saran’s here. She’s gone to get the key. She’s going to save you,” Rowe promised.
Keleir shook. “No. Stop her.” He struggled to sit up, struggled to push his brother away.
“Why?”
“There is no key!”
Rowe blinked and spotted Saran as she fell to her knees near the woodpile and grabbed the hatchet from the rubbish. She pressed her arm against the stone stairs and lifted the hatchet into the air. In one unflinching strike, she partially severed her hand from her wrist. She didn’t scream, but Rowe did. Everyone did.
Saran didn’t hear them over the roar of pain in her skull. She lifted the bloody hatchet again and brought it down a final time, severing the hand completely. She made a terrible sound, not quite a scream, and pushed to her feet. The Bind slipped off into the mud, and her eyes lit with white light. The Princess of Adrid cradled her bleeding wrist to her chest and turned to face the black ash cloud, lifting her glowing eyes to the heavens. The ash-formed face grew lower and larger over them. It opened its mouth and snapped ravenously at the air.
Darshan’s men fled but he stayed, along with Odan. Madam Ophelia watched from the window with triumph in her eyes as the Time Mage, the Grand Feminine she’d made, lifted a shaking hand to the sky.
“I understand your anger,” Saran told the storm, her voice quivering with pain. “I understand you want vengeance … but I can save you. I can turn back time. I can make you live again. All of you. Let me give you life. Let me forgive his debt.”
Swirling, gold light tangled around her ankles and stretched up her legs to coil round her outstretched hand. Her injured arm bled heavily where she pressed it against her clothes, pouring in red rivers to the earth at her feet.
The Time Mage stretched her fingers out to the ash cloud and forced her will upon it. Saran knew no words to control it, no spell to undo it. She used her will and her will alone to change what could not be stopped. The cloud morphed and struggled, raging silently against her power.
Behind her, Keleir gripped Rowe’s hand and struggled to watch. He shook his head fiercely at his brother and snatched a handful of Rowe’s long black hair, pulling him low enough to whisper, “Stop her.”
Liquid black stretched across the whites of his eyes as the Oruke grappled for control. Keleir struggled to hold it back, but he grew tired of fighting. He’d fought it for so long already. He couldn’t keep up. The Oruke would win and, if Saran stopped the curse, it would be free to slaughter as it wished. Keleir’s grip on Rowe’s hair eased, and he wrapped his hands around his brother’s protective arm. “Let. Me. Go. Let me die. Please.”
Rowe shook his head. “I can’t do that.”
“Please stop her. Protect her. Love her, but let me go. Please let me go.” Keleir settled into the mud. “Please, Brother, let me die. I want peace. I beg you. I beg you. Before it’s too late.”
Rowe had never seen his brother cry, never heard him beg for anything in his life. Not when their father beat him, not when the village elders carted him off to be tortured. Keleir accepted pain with pursed lips and cruel eyes, but he never begged. The look of fear and agony in his eyes tore a hole in Rowe’s heart.
The Lightning Mage nodded to his brother, wincing at the pain of agreeing to such a terrible thing. With one hand, he squeezed Keleir’s. He rested the other atop the Fire Mage’s white hair. “As you wish.”
Keleir smiled through pain. He dropped his hands to the mud and stretched his body upon the earth, where he accepted death and freedom as one. The black stole his eyes, swarming around the red, which lit with orange embers. The black swept over that, too, and passed away like a storm. The red burned as bright as fresh blood, and Keleir Ahriman was no more.
Rowe jumped to his feet and ran for Saran, calling to her over the roar of the ash storm. She turned her attention to him briefly and, with a voice like a choir of women, ordered him to stop. His feet planted into the mud against his will. He couldn’t blink, couldn’t breathe, even his heart stopped in his chest. He froze, while time carried on around him.
Saran struggled to hold back the cloud. It bore down on her in an arch, stretching out tiny ash tendrils in search of Keleir.
“I won’t let you have him!” The world blurred before her, not from tears but the blood now covering her clothes.
The ash cloud opened its mouth and snapped at the air. Saran pushed forward, screaming, and plowed her foot into the earth. Blood ran from her nose, and her brain boiled in her skull. The world grew dark around the edges. A roaring started in her ears, so loud it blocked the rattling of her Bind as it wiggled angrily of its own accord near the steps where she’d left it.
Her vision failed her first. She went blind, and her knees buckled. The hold she kept on Rowe snapped, and he grabbed her before she fell. She fought to hold the ash back but ultimately lost the strength for that too. Her power snapped like a stressed rope. The cloud dove down and wrapped around Keleir in the same instant. It soaked into every part of him, his mouth, nose, and eyes, until it disappeared within his body, filling and destroying what life he had left.
The power Saran exerted over the cloud had built around her, like a pail too full of water and running over. The energy needed to go somewhere.
It exploded, reverberating out over every surface of the castle, city, and out into the grassy fields yards beyond the wall. It raced down corridors, over walls, windows, and roofs, turning ancient ruin into newfound glory, restoring the worn and broken city to a form it had not resembled in centuries.
Saran could not see Rowe, nor could she see her magic fix her broken home. She felt the Lightning Mage’s arms tighten around her, heard his throaty roar of defeat. The pain she felt ebbed to nothing, and a cold metal band settled over her wrist.