57. Chapter Fifty-Seven

Chapter Fifty-Seven

Z ylah couldn’t tear her eyes from her brother’s lifeless body as Holt gently pulled her away.

We’ll come back for him, Zylah, I swear it. But we need to go. His thumb brushed against her ribs where he held her, his magic and something else rippling over her skin. Do you feel that?

The strange magic. She forced herself to look away. To swallow down her pain and grief, to let it fuel her ire. Her vision began to clear; Holt had been healing her as they moved, his magic pressing against hers, checking, testing, reassuring. Kej’s and Daizin’s voices registered over the clash of metal. Nye’s too. They were at the rear of the palace, a wide expanse of stone paved terrace, soldiers fighting around them.

Zylah called her sword to her hand, moving with Holt to strike down a vampire before seeking out the source of the magic. A gasp escaped her at what awaited them. An upturned pool shimmering in the air, just like the one she’d seen in Nye’s book back at the Aquaris Court.

“My grandfather calls them gates,” Raif said beside them. Rose stood wide eyed at her brother’s side, black blood splattered across her face, her blue eyes silver as they reflected the strange magic.

A window felt like a more obvious description to Zylah, but if it was indeed a gate to another location, Ranon and Aurelia were undoubtedly there. Holt’s agreement echoed in her thoughts, and Kopi chose that moment to swoop down to her shoulder, a quiet trill his only greeting. She had no doubts he’d been in the city for days, likely since she’d asked him to remain with Saphi at the camp.

Kej scoffed beside them at Raif’s words. “Magical trapdoor? Convenient.”

The soldiers at their backs seemed to share the sentiment, but Zylah was already unspooling her threads, gritting her teeth as she sent them through the gate to whatever lay beyond. “Priestesses. Dozens of them. And Ranon and Aurelia.” Waiting for the blood moon to be at its peak, to begin the ritual to free Sira.

“Then what the fuck are we waiting for?” Kej stepped forwards, but one of Daizin’s, or maybe they were Nye’s, shadows shot out to pull him back.

“I’ll go first.” Rose’s swallow was audible, but Raif didn’t protest, and Zylah knew that was precisely why the Fae had offered.

It had been barely minutes since Zack’s death, and though she hated the thought of leaving him behind, every moment they hesitated was a moment Ranon and Aurelia came closer to releasing Sira. Zylah didn’t want to consider what chaos the three of them together might be capable of unleashing, what suffering they could inflict across Astaria.

Rose stepped up to the gate, her reflection glancing back at them for a moment as she held her palm up to the shimmering light. The soldiers beside them gasped as the Fae disappeared through the pool of magic, a hand poking through the glittering ripples a moment later, beckoning them to follow. Raif tried to go first, but Nye’s and Daizin’s shadows held him back, the general stepping through before the vampire. With a tug at her shadows, Raif followed, Daizin and Kej trailing after him.

Zylah glanced over her shoulder, but her brother’s body was already out of sight.

He’ll receive a general’s funeral , Holt reassured her.

Kopi hooed, pushing off from her shoulder and flying through before Zylah had the chance to send him away. He’d never led her astray before. She stepped through the gate, Holt following, the strange magic passing over her skin. Her threads were working, moving, spreading out in every direction including down as she took in the details of their new location.

An icy wind whipped at her hair as what remained of Nye’s unit followed through the gate. Above them, the night sky with its blood-tinged hue, below, rock and root and passages Zylah was all too familiar with.

“This is how you came and went,” she said to Raif. How he had moved freely to and from Ranon’s maze when he held her captive, somewhere amongst the rock and dirt beneath their feet.

Despite the lack of an iris in his one good eye, Zylah knew he met her gaze when he dipped his chin, and at her side, Holt’s wrath flared, a ripple of his magic sending Raif back a step. No one protested the warning, not even Rose, and Zylah considered, not for the first time, that although Rose might care for her brother, perhaps she didn’t agree with all that he’d done.

They’d entered a rocky passageway offering them some cover from what lay beyond, but Zylah’s threads still couldn’t quite make out what they were walking towards, whether Raif had led them all into a magical trapdoor, as Kej had put it. They were up high, high above the maze, but what awaited them felt fractured and broken, the howling wind and the rolling crack of the clouds the only discernible sounds.

Nye’s and Daizin’s shadows rose up to offer them a small amount of coverage from what lay beyond the passage just as a Fae cried out. A vampire had followed them through the gate, a few soldiers working together to take the creature down.

“Can you close it?” Holt asked Raif.

But as another vampire stumbled towards them, Zylah already knew the answer.

“My grandfather is rather tight-lipped about his magic.” There was no missing the disdain in Raif’s tone, but it didn’t help their predicament.

Holt raised a hand to the pool of magic, roots shooting up from the rock to lace across it. Zylah joined him, a hand pressed against the other side. She let her roots spiral with his, working together to seal the gate even as another vampire slammed at it from the other side.

“It’ll only hold a little while,” Holt told the soldiers, giving orders for a few of them to remain on guard. A snarl sounded from the other side, then the unmistakable thud of a weapon hitting the wood, and Zylah knew that a little while was a gross overstatement.

Something hummed, the rock beneath their feet vibrating with the force of it. Thunder cracked, the wind picking up, a familiar cry cutting through the din.

“Grimms,” Zylah breathed as her threads sliced through the haze of so much magic. “Three nests. And Asters. Ranon and Aurelia are with the priestesses… and… something else.” Zylah frowned. “ Someone else, I think, but it feels strange.” Her brow scrunched, the way ahead concealed to the others by Nye’s and Daizin’s shadows, but with Zylah’s other sight, what she saw had her sucking in a breath. Not humming. Chanting priestesses, dozens of them.

Including Nye’s soldiers, there were less than twenty of their crude cohort in total. And it was almost midnight.

“I’ll feed you to a grimm myself if you’ve fucked us over,” Zylah hissed at Raif as a group of the strange creatures spotted their position from the skies.

“Noted.” Raif pivoted, swinging his sword at one of the grimms as it swooped down for them.

“Stay in position,” Holt reminded them all. In position behind him, so that he could use his magic if needed. When he needed. Because although he’d tested it a few times since he’d been held captive, he hadn’t used it in close proximity to allies. To friends. To those he couldn’t, wouldn’t, risk harming.

But maintaining any kind of formation was close to impossible. Hordes of grimms attacked, splintering their group and driving them apart. Zylah had been all but blind the last time she’d encountered them, and as she swung to miss sharp talons, she took in their hideous form, their leathery wings stretched too tight over white bone, their muzzled heads snapping four rows of razor-sharp teeth.

The narrow space forced them all to spread out, to push ahead along the passage, the wind growing fiercer but the creatures undeterred. Zylah opted for a dagger and short bursts of evanescing, Holt following her through the aether to fight at her side. Lightning struck rock somewhere above them, pieces of it shattering and taking out a few of the grimms.

There were too many of them. She reached out with her threads to as many as she could, strands of her magic curling around clawed hands, around the tips of wings, around throats. Holt’s warning to pace herself was barely a whisper in her thoughts as Zylah heaved. Creatures fell around them, some colliding with each other, others screaming as soldiers or her friends finished them off. More would come, and she told the group as much.

Lightning struck again as they came closer to the chanting priestesses, Nye signalling for them to wait. Zylah slid behind the cover of a rock beside her friends, their faces in shadow from the blood moon above.

Ruins. The fractured and broken objects her threads had tried to trawl across despite the weight of the magic. At first glance, it might have once been a shrine, a circle of broken pillars reaching to nothing but rock and the strange night sky. The space was vast; Zylah’s estimate of the number of priestesses wildly inaccurate. A lowered section held them all, a hundred or more kneeling on the cold rock, arms raised to the sky, not an inch of space between them. Every one of them chanting, bodies undulating, oblivious to the storm raging on.

Above them all, Ranon stood before three statues, his eyes glowing as red as the orb at the end of his staff, the same crimson as the moon above them. At his side, Aurelia. Zylah knew before her threads even reached the priestesses nearest their group that Aurelia’s strange bubble of magic shielded them all. At the perimeter of the space, three Asters stalked the shadows, heads already swinging to their position.

Panic flared, but Zylah shoved it down. Aurelia had still been weak the last time she and Holt had seen her, and Zylah would put money on it the Fae was weakened still, her magic split too many ways to bolster her father’s ritual.

But guessing which aspects of her magic had been impaired was a gamble. Her paralysing touch had been weak, her compulsion of Holt only effective with everything she’d combined with it: the vanquicite, Thallan, her father. Zylah listed off each of those points to steady her racing heart, Holt’s fingers pressing against her lower back in quiet reassurance. She felt no fear from him, only his strength, his resolve and sheer determination to end this.

Shatter the orb. That had been the goal they’d all agreed upon before they’d left the safety of the tunnels beneath Virian. But with Aurelia protecting her father, they’d have to deal with her first. A soldier cried out behind them, groaning as a grimm dragged him through the dirt, and then all of them erupted into movement, creatures darting from above, Asters charging.

Zylah and Holt broke off for Aurelia, Raif and Rose joining them. If they were about to side with their mother, Zylah was ready for it, her threads curling at the siblings’ feet.

Aurelia’s gaze fell upon her daughter, the sight of Rose pulling her from the shield around her father and the priestesses, a smaller one shimmering as it wrapped tightly around her body. But as Holt took a step in front of Rose, Aurelia’s expression crumpled. “Ignium!” she commanded, and Zylah snapped her threads over her mate for all the good they might do.

Nothing happened. Zylah loosed a breath, and as Holt took another step towards the Fae, roots shooting up from the rock to reach through Aurelia’s shield, she uttered a warning. She might still be able to evanesce .

But Aurelia’s eyes widened in horror as roots began to wrap around her legs, her attention darting momentarily back to her father, the shield over him and the priestesses still intact. “Ignium!”

A grimm swooped low for Holt and Zylah whirled, aiming her dagger for its exposed throat. Two more came, but Raif dealt with them swiftly, and it was only then that Zylah realised Aurelia commanded the creatures. At the perimeter of the circle of priestesses, soldiers and their friends fought with grimms and Asters, wind and magic and thunder filling the space, the air crackling under the crimson hue of the moon. The priestesses’ chanting grew louder, Ranon echoing words in a language Zylah didn’t understand.

All of it pressed at her skin, at her temples, her chest, the pressure of whatever Ranon was trying to do building. Behind Aurelia, her father turned to the statues, the centre one cracked and ruined, the one on the right far too similar to the statues of Pallia Zylah had so often seen.

“ Ignium! ” Aurelia screamed, and this time, Holt paused, everything around Zylah seeming to slow, narrowing to the sight of his roots receding into the rock.