57. Gwyneira

57

GWYNEIRA

L ike something out of a nightmare, my stepmother passed through the glass wall. Her eyes never left me. A satisfied smile was fixed upon her face.

And her eyes were so calm, they made my skin crawl.

“You’ve run for so long, Gwyneira, desperately pretending to be something you’re not. But that ends here.”

She walked closer. The light reflected strangely from her skin, as if she was made of scales and metal, not flesh. As she moved, the air warped and rippled, tiny new fissures of darkness shedding from her like feathers falling from a molting bird.

My eyes darted to the demon. Beyond the misty glass wall, he was on the ground but, thank the gods, alive. Niko was with him, sword slashing to keep the harpies and green-skinned creatures at bay.

“Do you want to know what I’m going to do to your allies, Gwyneira? How they’ll suffer because of you?”

Shudders rolled through me, but as I pulled my gaze back to her, I tried to fight them down. She wanted to hurt me. Scare me. Get inside my head.

But she wasn’t the only one with a goal here.

“You have to stop,” I told her, making my voice as level as I could while I backed carefully toward the tree, my arm outstretched behind me. “Send the Voidborn back. They’re destroying everything.”

“Is that what you think is happening?” She shook her head as if amused by me. “You’re so limited, Gwyneira. You always have been.“

I ignored the jibe, taking another step back while I drew upon the magic link I shared with my men. Let my stepmother believe I was trying to reason with her. Only a little farther, and I would reach the tree trunk.

And then I’d kill the thing she’d twisted into destroying the kingdom it once symbolized.

“I admit,” my stepmother continued. “I applaud this little menagerie of allies you’ve collected. Seven dwarves. A vampire prince with angel blood—or is he king now that the rest of his family line is dead? One of your men even hides a demon.” She smiled. “They’ll all be most delicious when I drain them dry.”

Beyond the glass, my men were barely holding their ground against the onslaught of Voidborn. But still their power filtered through to me, answering my call.

“Please, Stepmother,” I said, taking another step backward. “I know you want to keep the throne, but you have to see the damage you’re doing. You can’t rule Aneira if it ceases to exist. If the whole world does. You have to stop this. There won’t be anything left to rule if you don’t.”

She gave me a patient look. “I’m not going to rule Aneira, you silly girl. I’m going to rule everything. ”

I took another step back, but a shudder went through the soil. Roots snagged my ankle, tripping me. Falling backward, I barely caught myself with both hands on the rough ground.

Pain shot through my palms as the sharp roots tore my skin.

My stepmother merely laughed. “Look at you. Honestly believing that Aneira could be enough for me.”

Blood welled on my palms, the wounds stinging and throbbing. The image of that poor giant dying when the tree branches stabbed him flashed through my mind. Desperately, I tried not to think about it.

If she won, I was dead either way.

“But you’re destroying Aneira,” I said, not taking my eyes from her. “You’re destroying the entire world. ”

She scoffed.

Twisting my leg carefully, I tried to extricate my ankle from the roots. “You’re doing exactly what the Voidborn want, don’t you see that? You’re not ruling anything. You’re acting like their puppet. ”

Rage flashed across her face. Her blue eyes snapped to me, more alive than they’d been this whole time. “You pathetic little brat. I am no one’s puppet.”

I paused, searching for something to say that would keep her talking rather than trying to kill me. I was so close to the trunk. If I could get free of these roots, it was only a short distance more to reach?—

Tingles of magic licked across my bleeding palm.

I froze.

“You know,” my stepmother said, looking at the battle beyond the glass. My men had been driven back to the main gate of the castle. I could barely see them past the Voidborn surrounding them. “I was going to kill you first. Rid you from my presence once and for all, like that damned Huntsman should have done ages ago. But now…”

She chuckled as Niko stumbled under an onslaught by the Voidborn. Dex raced to his rescue, barely managing to drive the monsters back before more lunged at him. “Now I think I’ll make you watch.”

Swallowing hard against panic, I strained for the magic I’d just felt. It hadn’t been like the corruption my stepmother wrought. It was different. Brighter.

The taste of fresh apples flitted across my tongue.

I tensed, but the flavor didn’t turn to vinegar and poison in my mouth. It tasted of my childhood. Of summers spent playing beneath the broad and beautiful branches of this tree.

And it felt like a promise and a desperate, dying plea.

The real tree of Aneira was still here, beneath all the poison.

Shivers coursed through me, driven by understanding that fell over me like snow. My blood was calling to the tree, not just because the generations of my ancestors who’d lived and died in this place, but because…

The prickling magic grew stronger against my palm.

Because the tree and I were the same. The castle and maybe even the nexus too. Each of us had been twisted by my stepmother’s magic. Each of us had been forced into being something we were not.

I always had been tied to this place. And what she’d done to us—me, the tree, the castle, the nexus itself—it affected us all. Every time my stepmother had tried to twist my home, every time she’d wrought magic to tear my world apart, it had nearly gutted me. Her power had sent me spiraling into darkness, no matter how far away from here I’d been.

Aneira was more than my nation. Lumilia was more than my city. We were connected. We always had been.

And we were still fighting to survive.

“Tell me, Gwyneira.” My stepmother turned back to me. “Here you are, all alone, cut off from your precious men. There’s no one left to save you, and nothing you can do but watch them die. So do tell me. What was this all for? Some noble delusion of dying for your daddy’s throne? A misguided effort to avenge that stupid man?”

I shook my head, never taking my eyes from her. “No.”

“Then what was it? Why wouldn’t you just crawl away and die like you were supposed to? This whole world was always going to be mine. There’s no one left to save you, this world, or anything .”

I dug my fingers into the dirt, my palm stinging and tingling. “There’s me.”

With all my might, I sent my magic rushing to join the remnants of the tree’s original power. Drawn by our connection, the energy of my men came with it, merging with my own.

Fire, water, stone, and wood. Nature itself and power like the sun. Like the energy of the stars.

And my power at the heart of it all.

“What nonsense is this?” My stepmother’s amused and incredulous voice came from far away. “You think you can take this place from me?”

Roots climbed over my fingers, my wrist, encasing them like the tree was gripping my hand.

Niko’s power surged within me, bringing understanding. The tree wasn’t attacking.

It was trying to help.

I smiled, drawing on Dex’s magic. “Grow.”

Fresh roots ripped through the soil. Spreading fast, they tore into the flagstones, racing for the edge of the glass dome.

“You—” My stepmother spun, flinging out a hand.

Fissures of nothingness shredded through the roots. Pain screamed through me and the tree alike, but then the demon’s fire was there like my veins had suddenly turned to rivers of flame. Whipping my palm toward her, I let it go.

Eyes wide, she spun. Her magic caught the blast with a slash of nothingness, devouring it.

But my diversion stopped the attack on the roots long enough for them to hit the glass wall. The wood scaled the misty surface, stabbing it over and over.

And the glass cracked. Groaned. Broke like crumbling frost around us. The roots fell back to the earth, but they didn’t stop there. Surging forward, they charged at the Voidborn monsters, tangling around them and yanking them away from my men.

Melisandre stared. “You little… You think this means you’re winning? Because one little tree listens to you?” She glared. “Try fighting this. ”

The hairs on my arms rose, a sensation on the air like dark lightning preparing to strike. Her hand flung down, aimed at the dirt and stone.

Magic pierced the ground. Through the roots of the tree, I could feel it racing down into the depths of the earth.

Racing for the nexus.

Our magic chased it, following the roots through the earth. Rot and corruption tangled around us, trying to devour our energy and that of the tree alike.

And deep below us lay the nexus. Like a dark cloud in my mind, my stepmother’s corruption engulfed it in a swirling mass of vicious, hungry magic.

Melisandre’s power hit the dark cloud, merged with it, drew it in like she was drinking its blood. With every drag she took from it, dark veins rushed out through the earth, pouring more power into the rot climbing over the castle. Shudders shook the ground, making the stone and dirt crumble.

Horror gripped me. The nexus was dying. A few ley lines still ran to it, but their power was twisted and corrupted. Countless more lay around it like severed veins, their uncorrupted magic bleeding out into the earth, never reaching the nexus with sufficient strength to let it fight back completely.

She’d broken this. Torn it to pieces in her battle to take control of it. But at the core of that dark cloud, there was still light.

She hadn’t yet claimed it all.

Casimir’s magic and Byron’s surged inside me, and my vision changed. Where before I’d seen a dark cloud, now there were pieces and fragments of spells. A map of magic, and a puzzle too. I could see places where the ley lines should have been, and places where they could still reach the core of the nexus beyond the darkness.

If I did this just right.

With the magic of my scholar and vampire as my guides, I reached out for the severed ley lines.

It felt like wrapping my hands around a bolt of lightning. Worse.

I was burning. Dying. All of reality was ending and beginning and bleeding out, and I was too.

The demon’s strength surged through me. Byron and Casimir’s skill with magic too. Clay’s power cooled me, and Lars’s gifts made sure I didn’t burn. Dex’s energy urged the ley lines to grow while Niko and Ozias fought to hold the earth steady.

I wouldn’t die.

Drawing the ley lines with me, I sent my power into the darkness, threading it like a needle through the shifting cloud. Ahead, the light grew stronger and brighter the closer I came.

But the ground was shaking, and despite our efforts, my body was held in place by the fresh roots of a tree still fighting for its life.

I was running out of time.

“Please,” I whispered. “Please hold on.”

I drew the ley lines past the dark and into the light.

Magic surged around me, blinding and brilliant, as the ley lines connected to the nexus again. It blasted outward, driving back the darkness, shaking her hold.

She’d broken this to take power over it.

It wasn’t broken anymore.

But she wasn’t through yet.

My eyes flew open as the earth shuddered so hard, it fractured the roots holding my hand in place.

“You…” Melisandre stood where she’d been, her gaze on the ground like she could see straight through to the nexus. “You little…” A chuckle escaped her.

Of every reaction she could have had, that chilled me the most.

Her voice became a snarl. “This world is mine.”

“No, it isn’t. Stepmother, you have to stop?—”

“It isn’t?” Her eyes snapped over to mine, and another tiny laugh left her. “You think you can just say it… it isn’t, and that will be that?” Her eyes skipped over the courtyard again, finding my men. Maybe even seeing the thrum of the link between us all.

Her humor faded into a grim certainty. “It isn’t. It…” A strange sort of peace came into her voice. “It isn’t. But it always was so small, anyway.”

Wariness prickled through my veins. Behind her, the Voidborn had left off attacking my men. They’d simply stopped . As one, they turned to where my stepmother and I stood. Their glowing eyes locked on Melisandre with a look that chilled me.

Anticipation.

“He told me that, you know,” she continued. “He said it, over and over again, even though I couldn’t see it. But he was right.” Hate and rage twisted her face when she turned back to me, like the words were bitter and terrible but true. “Alaric was right .”

I fought the urge to retreat from the look in her eyes. It wasn’t sane. It didn’t even seem like she was actually seeing me.

On the far side of the courtyard, my men were weaving past the Voidborn as fast as they could, trying to reach me but clearly wary as hell at the battle that had just stopped for no reason they could see.

“Stepmother, whatever you’re thinking, please don’t?—”

“There are whole worlds out there.” She cocked her head at me with a strangely mechanical curiosity that never reached the cold deadness in her eyes. “Did you know that? Whole realms whispering to one another. Telling stories to one another. And I… I really thought I could be satisfied ruling it all from this one little world?”

Oh no.

“I am a goddess . I am beyond them and will overthrow them all. And you…” She gave a tiny giggle, like it was all so simple. “Why, you will be reduced to ash. The dust of your entire existence will be lost in the void, and if the other realms ever imagine you existed at all, it’ll be as barely more than the memory of a dream.” Her laughter turned cruel, a hint of the woman I knew coming back into her blue eyes. “Nothing left of Gwyneira and her men except a foolish… little… fairytale .”

She snapped her fingers. The ground shook as the tiny fissures of nothingness raced from the courtyard and the castle to converge behind her. The slivers of emptiness swirled together, spiraling in the air at her back until they merged into one inky black portal into oblivion.

“Gwyneira!” Dex ran toward me, the others on his heels and Casimir flying ahead of him.

All around the courtyard, Voidborn surged out of the monsters they’d inhabited. In a flood of black smoke, they dove into the portal.

“What the fuck?” Clay shouted.

“Just run , dammit!” Lars snapped back.

A rumble came from the castle, and suddenly, vines and tendrils of rot surged across the courtyard.

“Oh hell .” Clay waved his arms, frantically urging the others on as they veered around the darkness and strained to reach my side. “Go, go, go!”

But the fungus-like ropes didn’t care about them. Climbing over each other, the vines piled higher behind my stepmother’s back until they could pass over the edge of the portal to the void.

The moment they touched that darkness, the earth itself groaned. Everywhere the vines rested began to crumble like sand.

Behind my stepmother, the void swelled larger. It wrapped around her like a black cloak and flowed over her like she was sinking into an inky pool.

And just before it embraced her completely, Melisandre’s lips curled into a vicious smile. “ This , my pathetic little stepdaughter, is how your story ends.”

She flung her arms wide. Nothingness erupted around her in a wave.

There was no escape.