Beneath my feet, I felt the undeniable hum of magic. My bruised legs wavered under me, and a cold, dread certainty settled in my stomach.
Too late. Thousands of people in the border fortresses and the villages below, already dead and not even knowing it. All our border defenses, fortifications, and carefully laid artifice traps, doomed to fall. Mount Whitecrown loomed above us, a serene black outline against the starry sky; no one could guess the magical forces Ruven had unleashed upon it, set irrevocably in motion, ready to rain ash and ruin upon us all.
“No,” I breathed. “There must be some way to stop it.”
Ruven spread his hands. “My lady, you are the expert on artifice here. But I have been assured that there is none. I’m afraid your efforts have been in vain.”
“Not quite in vain,” Zaira said. Cold fury suffused her voice. “I get to do something I’ve always wanted.”
Fire blazed up in her eyes all at once, blindingly bright, filling them end to end. And without any further warning, a wave of flame roared from her—all the anger at Ruven she’d kept pent up all this time, unleashed at last in a devouring inferno. All her rage for Terika, for the servants with burn marks on their skin, for the children whose bones he’d fed to wolves. It exploded from her at last in a terrible blast of light and fury, and it swallowed him whole.
Or it seemed to. A tower of blue-white flame raged where he had stood, clawing up higher and higher, toward the belly of the sky itself. It washed the entire hilltop in light; the villagers cried out in fear and tried to shrink from it, but Istrella’s binding still held them fast. Heat seared my face, and I threw up a sleeve to shield myself as best I could.
“Die,” Zaira ground through her teeth. “Die, die, die, damn you.”
A shrill, agonized cry came from the flames, and I flinched at the sound. But then it descended down through a wild howl to something far more chilling.
Graces protect us. That was laughter.
It was the sound of madness. A sharp-edged laugh, true and free, full of surprised mirth.
And then he stepped out of the column of balefire, trailing flames and still laughing. Blue fire wreathed him, clawing at him with unanswerable power and hunger; smoke rose off him, and his flesh rippled as it kept trying to sear and shrivel, but he kept repairing it even faster.
“So this is how my father died.” He held out his hands and stared at them. Fire leaped up from his arms, charring away the leather of his coat, but he remade that, too. “Alas for him, he was not a Skinwitch. It would seem I do not share his weakness.”
“Burn,” Zaira hissed. “Burn, you cursed demon.” Blue tendrils of flame danced all along her hair, her shoulders, her back and arms; it poured from her eyes and her hands and raged all around Ruven. But he stood there, undaunted.
“I must thank you,” he said. “You have given me proof that what I hoped is true. With all the life in Kazerath to fuel my power, I can strengthen and rebuild my own body even beyond the capacity of balefire to destroy it. I alone, in all this world, am truly, unequivocally immortal.”
My stomach twisted. This was our doing. He was right; if balefire couldn’t kill him, nothing could. Graces protect us all.
“My fire will never go out, so long as you have life left to fuel it,” Zaira rasped. Her voice was harsh, wicked, and beautiful, speaking with the tongue of the flame itself. “Let it eat all the life in Kazerath, then, until you have nothing left to feed it but your own.”
Ruven shrugged. “If you wish. We can start with these.”
Behind us, someone screamed.
I whirled in time to see the talkative innkeeper drop, convulsing in a brief moment’s agony before he went still. A bent old woman followed.
“Stop!” I cried. “Stop killing them, you monster!”
“It’s not I who’s killing them,” Ruven said. “It’s you, warlock.”
Zaira didn’t answer. Her gaze stayed fixed on him; her eyes were fire. She was lost to her flames.
Emmand crumpled to the ground next. His final wail, a lost and broken sound, tore at my heart. Tears started in my eyes, but the heat of the balefire sucked them dry before they could fall.
Graces curse it. All we were doing was killing innocent people.
“Revincio!” I cried.
The night went dark. Zaira tumbled to the hard rock, like a puppet with its strings cut. Sounds of fear and grief came from behind me, and the terrible stench of burned human meat lingered in the air.
The breeze stirred Ruven’s coat. A ripple shook down the length of it, and it was smooth and whole again, minus the embroidery. His ponytail streamed on the wind, growing back to its full length. He smiled at me.
“And here we are at last, Lady Amalia. Just the two of us.”
My hands formed tight fists, my nails cutting into my palms. “They were your own people. Emmand looked up to you. Do you have no shame whatsoever? A good ruler’s life is lived as a sacrifice for the sake of those they rule.”
“What a dreadfully dull way to live.” Ruven shook his head. “Shame is a symptom of weakness, my lady. It is not for those who stand astride the world, such as we do.” He held out a hand toward me. “Come. We have perhaps an hour before Mount Whitecrown erupts. I’m directing the blast to the south, into the Empire, but still, best to not be too exposed when it happens.”
He didn’t cast so much as a glance at Zaira, lying crumpled at my feet, the wind stirring her hair. Afterimages of balefire still danced in front of my eyes. I wrestled to contain my anger.
“You have quite some nerve, to behave solicitously toward me after all this. Do you truly expect me to believe you care for anything but my bloodline, when you cast the lives of your own people away so easily?”
Ruven’s eyes widened. “But, my lady, you are so much more than your bloodline! No, no, you do not understand how highly I value you.” He shook his head. “This won’t do at all. Why, for instance, I still have a stockpile of the excellent potion that boy used to make for me. Just think of the possibilities, with the Cornaro heir under my dominion!”
I did, and my stomach twisted.
“There was another man who thought an alchemical trick was sufficient to subvert the Council of Nine,” I said coldly. “He paid dearly for his error.”
Ruven chuckled. “I never can intimidate you, can I, Lady Amalia? You are not so easily cowed. Ah, it’s no wonder I admire you.” The hand he’d stretched out dropped to his side, and he shook his head. “I look forward to many more wonderful conversations with you as my guest. But first, there is one small matter to take care of.”
I didn’t like the shift in his tone. I slid one of my last rings into my palm. “And what would that be?”
“Your warlock.” He sighed. “I’d hoped to control her, but I fear my father was right about her after all. She’s simply too dangerous to live.” He reached for Zaira’s windblown hair, like a curious child hoping to catch some in his fingers.
I slapped my ring down on the volcanic rock at my feet. A circle of golden light instantly blazed up around Zaira and me. Ruven pulled back from the ward, like a cat with an unexpectedly wet paw.
“This will last at least three hours,” I lied. “Your guests are waiting for you in the castle. Do you truly wish the other Witch Lords to come and find you here?”
Ruven’s eyes narrowed. “Very well. Stay up here in the open for the eruption if you wish. You are still in my domain; I don’t need to be here in person to exercise my power upon you. The land itself will detain you for me. I’ll be back for you once my guests and the mountain are both settled—if you survive.”
He turned, his black coat swinging behind him like a wave of deeper shadow in the night. “Enjoy the view,” he called cheerfully. “I can think of no better display to celebrate my ascension.”
I waited tensely, counting the heartbeats as he paced off across the bald crown of the hill. The trapped villagers cringed away from him as he passed, lit from below by the fading lines of light beneath their feet, but he didn’t so much as glance at them. Emmand’s corpse lay stretched toward him, sad and still, his hand flung out on the rock.
Once he was gone, I counted a few minutes longer. Then I reached for the ring lying next to Zaira on the cold stone, but the protective circle sputtered out before my fingers touched it.
“One moment,” I muttered to Zaira’s unconscious form, and I ran to the control circle, ignoring the stab of pain in my side as I moved.
A faint red light still shone from the graven lines in the rock, making it easy to examine the design Namira had carved there at Ruven’s command. It was a complex circle, with patterns inside patterns and long arcs of runes spelling out terms and rules with careful precision. This was the work of a master. Grace of Wisdom, grant me insight.
My heart descended into the murky forest below the hilltop as I studied the design. Ruven was right. It had already discharged the magic that would drop the containment and create a sudden release of the pent-up pressure in the mountain; that was done. And the artifice circle included no way to reverse or undo it. Mount Whitecrown would erupt, with whatever force remained to it after our efforts to decrease the pressure, and it would erupt within a few hours. There wasn’t even time to evacuate.
The only section of the circle that seemed to still be active was the second stage of the enchantment, which would open a path for the eruption and point the force of the blast down the passes into the Serene Empire, toward Ardence. A single rune indicated the direction, painted on rather than graven, so Ruven could choose his target himself when he triggered the eruption. That second phase hadn’t taken effect yet and could still be altered. But this wasn’t pure artifice; it was designed to connect to and work with Ruven’s vivomancy. Without his blooded connection to Mount Whitecrown, merely moving the targeting rune would do nothing.
A blooded connection to Mount Whitecrown. The door and the Truce Stones had recognized my blood as that of the Lady of Eagles. It was worth a try.
I placed my hand on the warm stone, feeling the carved lines of the artifice circle beneath my fingers, and closed my eyes.
I knew the stone. The planes and angles of this wind-worn slab of rock occupied a comfortable space in my mind. My awareness didn’t reach beyond to the hill below me, or the trees at the edge of the open space, but this rough, grainy rock beneath my fingers I knew. And I could wrap my mind around the enchantment worked into it, and feel how the magic connected to the rock, and to something else as well. Something massive and ancient, with a terrible fire rising up within it, raging with a power beyond that of any Witch Lord.
But it knew me. Half the mountain belonged to my bloodline. All the awful majesty and destructive fury—it recognized me.
I could do this.
My eyes snapped open. I memorized Ruven’s painted rune, then rubbed at it with my sleeve. It was still wet and smeared off easily enough, ruining the deep blue velvet.
I drew my dagger and cut my finger, freeing a trickle of blood.
And froze. Hells. I had to redirect the eruption somewhere. There were villages and fortresses all around Mount Whitecrown. Whatever I chose, someone would die.
The artifice design offered four possible locations for the direction rune, corresponding to four vents or weak points in the mountain.
I pictured the map of the border that I’d pored over in Highpass, with all the little forts and passes and villages marked carefully in different colors. I had to balance innocent villages against vital alliances, and key defensive fortresses against the lives of people I knew and loved.
One option aimed back into Kazerath, toward Ruven’s castle, and it was tempting to direct the blast there. But not only would that likely kill Zaira and me, as well as wiping out a few villages whose twinkling lights I could spy in the valley below, it would mark the end of any budding alliances I might have built with the friendlier Witch Lords. And I doubted it would do more than inconvenience Ruven himself.
The currently marked one certainly wasn’t feasible; it would destroy our border defenses on a critical pass, killing hundreds or thousands of soldiers, and likely wiping out the town that supported the border fortresses at the foot of the mountain, which would add thousands of civilians to the death toll. A third option would force the blast westward, into a river valley scattered with villages and packed with both Vaskandran and imperial troops facing off across heavy fortifications. While the angle seemed more likely to keep the devastation mostly on the Vaskandar side of the border and might decimate their forces there, it would lead to heavy loss of life, including many civilians—and I stood a strong chance of killing Marcello, Terika, and the escaping Falcons as they crossed the mountain’s western shoulder on their way back home.
The final option was to skew the eruption eastward, along the ridge of the Witchwall Mountains. The terrain in that direction was too rough for farms or villages. But I might well catch Roland and his crew in the blast, since they were positioned on the eastern flank of the mountain, altering artifice circles.
There was no way around it. People were going to die. I had to choose whom to kill: Marcello and Terika and the other Falcons, Roland and his soldiers, or Zaira and myself.
My belly clenched with nausea, and a soft whimpering sound escaped my throat. This was terrible. I’d almost rather Ruven had dragged me back to the castle as his unwilling guest than kneel here, my friends’ faces vivid in my mind, and choose which of their lives to snuff out forever.
But this is what my mother does. This was what the Council of Nine did, every day. Choosing between good and evil was easy. Choosing the lesser evil, and knowing that your choice damned people to death, was the part that hacked off pieces of your soul.
This was the task I’d been born to, and that I’d taken up willingly when I accepted my role as my mother’s heir. This was part of the duty I’d accepted when I came to the Conclave as a Serene Imperial Envoy.
I took a deep breath, reached out a trembling hand, and sketched a new target rune in the eastern quadrant.
Please don’t be there, Roland. Grace of Mercy, protect him, I beg you.
There would be few civilians, if any, in the rugged stretch of the Witchwall Mountains that bordered Mount Whitecrown’s eastern flank. The imperial border fortresses in those passes lay farther south, and should be protected by the next line of peaks. The headwaters of the River Arden might become even more choked than they had been by the eruption of Mount Enthalus three years ago, but we already had plans in the works to mitigate that issue, and I could apologize to Domenic later. It would be a red stone I owed him, a minor grievance; easy to make amends.
Only Roland and his handful of soldiers would have to die.
Only my cousin, so serious and brave, who had finally talked our grandmother into letting him go to the border, on my advice. The cousin who had played with me in the halls of Durantain castle when I was small, and helped me up into the branches of the apple tree in the garden. Roland, who would give his life for me in a heartbeat; who would give his life for anyone. Roland, heir to the throne of Callamorne, who would never see what a good king he would have made despite all his doubts.
I rose, legs trembling. My eyes were dry.
He might still make it to safety. The eruption might be minor enough to spare him, if our alteration of the other circles had had time to do its work. But that wouldn’t change the fact that here, in this moment, I’d been willing to kill him.
This was what it was to be a Cornaro.