59. Chapter Fifty-Nine

Chapter Fifty-Nine

Z ylah’s ears were ringing. Or maybe it was her head.

Holt’s arms were already around her as they were both thrown back, a groan erupting from him as they slammed into rock. Zylah rolled to her side, Holt moving with her, his magic pulsing against hers as they checked each other for injuries, their bond pulling tight between them.

Someone was screaming. Zylah looked up just in time to see Raif’s ash swirl around his mother, black flakes sticking to the Fae’s skin.

“You started all of this,” he hissed, his fangs at their full length, black eyes glaring down at Aurelia. “Let me end it.”

“Raif, let go!” Rose pleaded as their mother’s magic rippled in the air, an unspoken threat Zylah didn’t doubt Aurelia would follow through on. But Raif didn’t do as his sister asked.

Their mother met magic with magic and Raif cried out, both of them falling to their knees, but still he didn’t relent. So much ash, flecks of it covering Aurelia almost entirely. Her skin, her hair, her face, even her mouth as it opened in a silent scream and the particles of ash became cracks in her flesh.

Holt braced an arm around Zylah at the force of the magic as Raif gave everything he had, as Aurelia pushed back against it, too late. The fissures shattered just like her shield, every ashen piece of her floating away with the wind.

Raif slumped into the dirt, but behind Zylah and Holt, Ranon’s voice cut through the eerie quiet. For the first time since the shield and the orb had shattered, Zylah took in the sight around them, blinking against the shadows dancing in her vision.

Every priestess was dead.

Grimms and Asters and soldiers lay unmoving at the perimeter of the broken shield. Only Nye and Kej hobbled towards them, Daizin hunched between the pair, a soldier at their side. Every other soldier that had come through the gate with them was dead.

“Stay behind us,” Holt told their friends, helping Zylah to her feet. Beyond the circle of dead priestesses, Ranon took a step closer to the statues. Only two were no longer statues, but Fae, both of them seemingly a little dazed, but entirely whole.

Zylah recognised Pallia immediately, the sight of her grandmother alive and well bringing tears to her eyes. And the other—

“Sira,” Ranon said reverently, clutching what was left of his staff without the orb at its tip, reaching out towards the ancient Fae.

Holt shifted his stance, angling his body to cover Zylah behind him. Her threads were still intact, her vision impaired but her other sight remained. Yet breaking the shield should have depleted them entirely. Should have left them both utterly defenceless. The moments before it shattered they’d almost burnt out, almost reached the bottom of what they both had to give, but she could feel Holt’s magic pressing against hers, the strength of it wrapping around her.

Aurelia’s shield, Holt mused. I think your threads rewove her magic into you. Into us.

That… was a possibility. But something told Zylah it wouldn’t be enough against Ranon and Sira, and from this position, they couldn’t attack without injuring her grandmother as she stepped free of her strange tomb.

The third statue had shattered entirely, fragments of stone crumbling around it. Imala, Zylah presumed. Sira’s gaze slid to the broken stone of her sister’s tomb as Ranon called her name again. But she paid the male no heed. Her attention shifted instead to Pallia, her mouth set in a grim line, magic sparking between her fingertips, the air crackling with centuries-old power.

Zylah wasn’t certain who struck first, but the force of their blows sent both ancient Fae staggering backwards, and even Ranon stepped away from them, barking words in the same strange language he’d spoken during the ritual. And though her instinct was to help her grandmother, Ranon was an easier, less powerful target to pick off first.

My thoughts exactly. Holt summoned his sword to his hand, and Zylah did the same. She didn’t let herself glance back at her friends, only focused on Holt’s presence at her side, on his unwavering strength as she tested the power of the magic her threads had woven for her. For them.

As if he recognised his daughter’s magic, Ranon tore his attention from Sira and Pallia to face them both. His eyes no longer glowed red, and though he gripped his staff tightly, the end nothing but a jagged mess of glass, he stood at his full height, no signs of his previous ailment affecting him.

“Aurelia told me you were a mated pair.” His eyes darted between the two of them. “She’d done such an excellent job of destroying your bond, it was like it had never existed.” The ancient Fae chuckled. Chuckled. And then the laughter faded, followed by a wrinkle of his nose in disgust. “Yet here you stand, stinking of each other. And my daughter—”

“Is gone.” And Zylah didn’t doubt he already knew, had felt it, and hadn’t bothered to help her, too focused on his ritual. Behind Ranon, Sira and Pallia fought, vicious blows of magic leaving both of them breathless.

But Ranon merely cast his gaze over Zylah’s shoulder to where his daughter’s remains had fluttered away with the wind. “Pity. She might have been useful—”

Holt moved. Magic erupted from him, twined with flame, but Ranon raised a hand and the fire merely passed around his body, as if he’d bent the air around him to evade the blow, not a single hair on his head out of place.

Not the air, Zylah realised. The aether.

Holt attacked again, and this time she joined him, threading her magic with his to reinforce the attack, but still, the Fae remained unaffected. At their backs, their friends fought against foe, vampires that had broken through the gate.

“ Mora ,” Ranon snapped, something rippling over their shield. “Mora!” Ranon barked again, and this time, both Holt and Zylah staggered forwards, weapons tumbling from their hands as the Fae’s command seeped through their magic. Aurelia’s magic. Nothing against Ranon’s, and the bastard grinned like he knew it. He took slow, deliberate steps towards them both, delight flitting over his features at the way they’d stilled.

Zylah’s stomach twisted. Aurelia had possessed a similar ability, and the memory of Holt kneeling before the Fae in the dirt outside the mine had her breath stuttering.

Rocks fell as Sira and Pallia fought, but Ranon merely raised a hand and the rocks turned to dust, cascading around them all like rainwater. The ancient Fae tipped the jagged end of his staff in Holt’s direction. “All good pets know more than a single command.”

Zylah swore under her breath. She’d only broken one command. But she could break another. With Aurelia’s magic buzzing through her veins, her threads wrapped tightly around her and Holt to weave a shield like the Fae’s, pulling at Ranon’s command simultaneously.

The ancient Fae paused, the only sign of apprehension he’d shown since their arrival passing so quickly over his features Zylah almost missed it. Holt felt the crack in the magic at the same moment she did, his roots shooting from the rock at Ranon’s feet and sending the Fae to the dirt with a grunt. But as Holt released another wave of his magic, something knocked Zylah off her feet.

Sira.

She turned to face the Fae with a groan, one hand clutched against her stomach where the magic had struck her. Zylah staggered to her feet and lifted her gaze to the ancient Fae separating her from Holt.

Only it wasn’t Sira.

It was Pallia.

Her grandmother came towards her, Sira unmoving in the dirt beyond. “Time to give what was promised, Zylah. We had a bargain.”

Zylah had only ever made three bargains in her life: one with Holt, another with Malok, and the third… “It was you. In Kerthen.” When Zylah had been in so much agony she’d have given anything to make it stop.

“I will take your pain and in return you will give me your assistance when I call upon you, without question, without hesitation, without consideration… I will ask for it, and you will give it freely. Do we have an agreement?” Pallia had asked her, when she’d had no idea it was her grandmother who’d offered aid.

“Why?” Zylah asked, wincing at the blows Holt deflected from Ranon, though he countered just as fiercely. “When you came to me all those months later, you told me to stop Marcus. To get the vanquicite removed from my spine.” She’d almost died at the hands of an Aster before her grandmother had appeared to her, just as otherworldly and ethereal as she’d grown up believing the gods to be. But what better way to have someone do your bidding than to offer them help when they needed it most? She cast her gaze at the lifeless priestesses, a fate that could so easily have been her own. “It was all for this. To set you free.”

Pallia wore her hair in a braided crown atop her head, her violet eyes the exact shade Zylah’s had once been. Her attention shifted to Sira’s body in the dirt, at the shattered statues they’d emerged from, pressing a hand against her strange tomb. “Confinement comes in many different forms. My daughter never possessed power to rival mine, so this was the best she could come up with.”

Zylah didn’t hide her surprise. “My mother put you here?”

Her grandmother merely hummed. “When she finally learnt the truth.”

“Get the stone removed. It was put there to keep you safe,” Pallia had told her. “She was trying to hide me from you.”

The ancient Fae chuckled softly, like this was all some strange game she’d been playing, like they were all pieces for her to strike out at her whim. “And it worked, for a while. But two decades was nothing against the centuries I had already waited for her to give in and provide an heir. Her love for your father was always her downfall.”

Zylah’s parents. Her parents who she had been so desperate to find, spoken of by her own flesh and blood as if they were nothing but inconveniences in Pallia’s plans. And an heir, because Pallia needed her own bloodline to release Ranon.

Both Fae and human history had gotten it so very, very wrong. Vilified Sira when all along it had been Pallia who was the true villain. And Saphi had warned them all, told them that Sira had begged her to stop during a ritual. Because they had never been Sira’s rituals; the priestesses truly had been Pallia’s from the beginning.

Pallia reached out a hand, and with a curl of her fingers, Zylah was lifted to her toes, dragged through the dirt by invisible hands and brought before her grandmother.

“You wanted this,” Zylah murmured, staring into eyes that should have been full of love, but instead she saw nothing but hate. Spite. “For Ranon to be free. For him to kill; to create enough power to free you.”

Pallia hummed, studying Zylah’s face just as closely, her chin tilted to look up into Zylah’s eyes. “It was always them he sought. First Sira. Then Imala. When I told him about Sira and Arioch’s child, when I looked upon his face…” She held a hand to Zylah’s, and Zylah couldn’t help but wonder if it was her mother Pallia saw. “I knew he would never want me the way he wanted her.”

“Aurelia was theirs?” Then Ranon had been wrong… or had known and used her to serve his purpose, anyway.

“No.” Pallia waved a hand at the statue that had shattered long ago. “Aurelia was Imala’s and Ranon’s.”

Beyond Pallia, Sira began to stir, but Zylah didn’t dare draw attention to the Fae, or to her own silent attempts to break through Pallia’s magic. Holt still fought tirelessly against Ranon, and if her shield around him faltered, if Pallia turned her attention to him instead… Zylah couldn’t consider it. She needed to keep her grandmother distracted. “Where is Sira’s daughter?”

A shrug. “Ranon had me dispose of her.”

Dispose. Zylah almost choked at the word. And if any part of history had been right, she would wager that Sira had started a war over it, just as any mother with her power would have. “When Aurelia thought it was her mother who came to her, thought her mother was Sira. It was you. You used her, too. You used all of them. All of us.”

Kopi hooted once, flying out from amongst the rocks to settle on Zylah’s shoulder. He’d remained out of sight since they’d passed through the gate, mercifully, but now it seemed he wanted to offer up a distraction, too.

Her grandmother canted her head. “Even he disowned me.” She sighed, though the sound was forced. “I forget how busy you’ve been, Zylah. You have your mother’s irritating tendency for tenacity.”

“Your daughter,” Zylah snapped. Of all the monsters Zylah had faced, here was the greatest of them all.

Pallia merely laughed, but it was broken and brittle. “She was a means to an end. I couldn’t tell you who sired her; it was of no consequence to me, so long as I secured an heir. All I needed to ensure was that my bloodline wouldn’t end.” She trailed a sharp nail down Zylah’s cheek, pressing against the flesh. “I hadn’t anticipated she would use it against me.” Her grandmother raised a hand to stroke Kopi’s feathers, and the owl dug his little claws into Zylah’s shoulder as he ruffled his wings to evade Pallia’s touch. “No matter. I have all that I need.”

The ancient Fae took a step back, a wide smile spreading across her face. She raised her hands to the blood moon, magic crackling at her fingertips as she held Zylah’s gaze. “I require your assistance, granddaughter.”