24. Vale

Chapter 24

Vale

T he council came for me in the middle of the night.

Hugging my knees alone in Kian's bed, I stared at the closed bedchamber door while Freya insisted that the council wait until I was properly dressed to sequester me.

"We do not answer to you," Dorian protested, his voice carrying through the thick wooden door.

"They don't, but you do , my progeny. Remember who you are speaking to, Dorian, before I make sure you cannot speak at all." Freya's voice was dark and deadly, her part to play just as important as mine. "It is not proper for you to enter her bedchamber?—"

"Don't you mean the general's bedchamber?"

I didn't know who was ballsy enough to say that to Freya, but the unsettling squelch coming from the other side of the door was not comforting at all. If I had a guess, it was body parts landing on tile, but I didn't want to know for sure.

"Does someone else want to impugn the Duchess' honor, or do you want to allow me to get her dressed? You forget there is always someone more amenable to take your place on the council, good sirs. Preferably someone with more sense."

"Rune?" I'd relayed the plan to the linchpin of it, knowing it was all too easy for the whole thing to fail.

"I'm ready, my Queen." His voice was a small comfort, proof this might work.

"I'm scared. What if they try to keep you in the caverns? What if they try to hurt y ? —"

"They can't. I left the keep hours ago."

It wasn't much to calm my nerves, but it was something. The ways all this could be sabotaged was endless, and I hated we didn't have more time to iron out the details.

In the hours I'd spent with Xavier alone in his cabin, we devised a plan of action that would keep me alive. Acting surprised and afraid that I was being sequestered by a bunch of men who likely wanted me dead wasn't the hard part.

No, the hard part was making sure Freya remained my chaperone. It was imperative I had someone I trusted with me for this to work. Though, it might be less of us convincing them and more Freya just saying it and it being so.

She was talented like that.

When the door opened and she noted the dagger clutched in my fist, she gave me a small tip of her lips. Then she slipped through, locking it with a snap of her fingers.

"Let's get you ready."

Thirty minutes later, Freya and I were flanked by eleven of the twelve members of the council as we strode through the corridor to the throne room. The twelfth needed to go to the infirmary to put his intestines back inside his body, and I wondered why Freya couldn't have taken a few more out before we walked into this obvious trap.

She'd helped me into a dress meant for battle, the unsuspectingly warm leathers covering me completely from neck to wrists all the way past my ankles. It was almost completely black, the thickly scaled bodice protecting my ribs and stomach. But that wasn't the only defense. The underside of my arms and the top of my shoulders were scaled as well, and the split skirt revealed sturdy leather pants with that same reinforcement on the thighs.

The outfit was a smaller, dressier version of the leathers she typically wore, making me feel almost prepared for whatever they would throw at us. But when we entered the throne room with its wide columns and giant arches, real fear took hold of my middle and refused to let go.

Idris sat on his throne with Kian and Xavier at his flanks, his expression so closed down it was as if he was protecting himself from me.

"It's just a mask, my brave one. Nothing to worry about."

I almost wilted in relief. We were on shaky ground, he and I, but a part of me still trusted he would fulfill his promises, trusted he would honor the agreement we'd made.

Idris stood, and based on protocol, everyone but me knelt. The giant ring on my finger meant that only I stood, dipping my head to show my deference.

"It has come time for the second trial. As with all trials, they shall remain secret until they are to be performed. As is custom, you will be blindfolded on the journey so you may react to the events in a true testament to your power and connection to the Ashbourne line."

"You can do this, Vale. Rune is with you. I am with you. And no one will let you go into this alone."

"Do you accept this test of your will, your connection, and your loyalty to this crown?" he asked, and I thought of saying no for a split second. My gaze went from him to Kian to Xavier and back again.

Nyrah. Remember who you're doing all this for.

"I accept," I whispered, my fear of what was to come selling it more than anything.

Then, without another word, a blindfold was slipped over my eyes, and the trial began.

The carriage ride seemed to take hours, the back-and-forth rocking making me sick to my stomach. Or maybe that was the nerves. Freya sat shoulder to shoulder with me on the bench, her attempts at making me laugh fruitless, but I appreciated her trying.

When we stopped, the familiar sound of the falls signaled we were in the right place, but when hard hands practically yanked me out of the seat, my relief crumbled to dust.

The sound of a sword unsheathing had my breath coming in panicked pants, the urge to rip off my blindfold almost too much to take.

"Touch her like that again, Dorian," Freya hissed, "and I will take your hands along with your tongue. With silver no less, so neither will grow back."

"You're not even supposed to be here," he grumbled, his hand gentling on my shoulders as he guided me closer to the roar of the falls.

"And you're supposed to treat the intended of the king with more respect than you'd give a sack of grain, but here we are. Is this how you've treated every Luxa who has participated in the second trial? Given how much disdain you've publicly shown to Vale, should I look into the validity of their deaths? Should I encourage their parents, their families to investigate? Or should you just treat someone with respect?"

Dorian pulled me to a stop—gently this time—and turned me so the falls were to my left. "I would never. I want this curse broken just as much as you do. I would never?—"

I could almost feel Freya's eyebrow mocking him. "Uh-huh."

He let out a gusting, long-suffering sigh. "I apologize, Your Grace. I sometimes forget my strength, and I let my prejudice of the guild taint my actions. Please forgive me."

Turning to his voice, I hoped he could see my raised eyebrow. It wasn't as good as Freya's, but she'd taught me well. "I know you don't like me. I don't much care for you either, truth be told. But we don't have to like each other. As long as you truly care for Idris, as long as you are loyal to him, you can hate me all you want."

A ball of light formed in my palm, bright enough I could see it through the blindfold. It was so hot, it was its own mini sun, burning like a beacon in the middle of the day.

"But if you touch me in anger one more time, Freya will have to gather your innards in a potato sack and send them back to your family because there will be nothing left of you. Are we clear?"

His gulp was audible over the rushing of the falls, and his hand left my arm like the leather had branded him. "Crystal, Your Grace."

"Fantastic." I let the light wink out, pulling the power back into myself before I overused it. The last thing I needed was to get a bloody nose and pass out, though, that had been happening less and less. "Then let's get this show on the road. What am I supposed to be doing here?"

"I'm sure Freya explained the process to you," a familiar voice said, but I was having trouble placing it.

Freya snorted. "I actually did nothing of the sort, Fenwick. Just as required, I have told her nothing of the trial. It is your job to explain it."

"Very well," he tutted, the exasperation in his tone almost comical if we weren't in the middle of a death-defying trial. "Your Grace, Duchess Isolde Vale Tenebris, Lady of Shadowmere, Light Bringer, Curse Breaker, Grand Luxa of Tarrasca, this trial—as King Idris stated—is an assessment of your connection to the Ashbourne line. Specifically, your mental connection to the dragon known as Rune. To complete this test, you must call him to you as you walk."

"Already above you, my Queen. But dawn comes soon. I won't be able to hide in the clouds much longer." His voice in my head nearly had me wilting in relief, but I straightened my spine.

"And?" I knew the rest, but his instructions seemed a little circumspect for someone so keen on the details. Hell, the man had been almost apoplectic at the thought of completing his Tenebris scroll…

Oh. Oh, shit.

We'd been expecting Dorian to be the interloper. He'd been practically salivating at being in the carriage with us, making sure the trial was done to his standards and no one told me about my task beforehand. But according to Freya, no one liked Dorian—not the king, not the mages or Fae. He had limited connections except in the vampire community where he was revered, and he wouldn't have the first clue about the sovereign name business.

But Fenwick with his scrolls and mage connections…

Fenwick would .

"You must not take off your blindfold or stop walking. To complete this task, you must allow the dragon known as Rune to either stop you from walking over the falls or catch you once you do."

Pursing my lips, I ripped off my blindfold, and stared him right in his pale, watery eyes. "And that sounds like slow suicide."

The ancient councilmember leaned heavily on his cane, his beloved scroll held tight in his fist. His expression was colored in surprise, but it was so false, I knew my math was right.

"What are you doing?" Dorian sputtered. "The trial is supposed to be completed blindfolded. Those are the rules."

Rules? "And how many women have died blindly following your rules?" My gaze landed on the mage, those eyes taking a milky quality I knew well. "What was your plan exactly?" I asked, tilting my head to the side as I drew the dagger at my thigh. "Break my neck while my back was turned? Stab me in the back? Or just hope I couldn't talk to Rune and walk right over the edge?"

"I-I don't know what you're talking about." He moved backward, his shocked mask slipping just a bit as his gaze darted to Freya and Dorian. "What is she talking about?"

"So far, I've been stabbed, thrown through a glass door, and nearly poisoned while I've been here, and I'll have to admit, you covered your tracks pretty well. You shouldn't have tipped your hand with the sovereign name, Fen."

Freya stared at Fenwick like he was a specimen on a slab, her blue eyes bleeding to red as scarlet veins raced up her neck, her nails blackening as talons lengthened to vicious points. "What have you done?"

Dorian shook his head, not in denial, but in disbelief as he stared at Fenwick and his tightly clutched scroll. "You have interpreted the scrolls for two hundred years. No one has touched them but you."

I knew the vampire was smarter than he looked.

"Arden was always your favorite," Freya murmured. "Your pupil. How long have you been a spy for him?"

Inky-black power seemed to burst from his very pores as the scent of death and decay filled my nostrils.

Freya and Dorian stood as my guards as Fenwick raised his hands to the sky, before bringing them down in a tidal wave of magic, knocking us all off our feet. The ground all around us split into a perfect circle as bodies crawled from the earth, each in various stages of decay. By their dresses, they were all women, and by the golden lights at their middles, I had a feeling I knew who and what they were.

It was bad enough I was stuck on top of a fucking cliff. Now I had to deal with this?

"Freya, how many Luxa have died on this mountain?"

She shot me a worried glance before whipping her head back to the full coven of reanimated witches. "Thirteen."

Yep, this was exactly what I wanted to hear.

Fenwick was just on the outside of the death, his milky eyes and blackened swirls of magic sucking at their light. He was gathering power—stealing it—his dark chuckle chilling me to the bone.

"Two hundred years, and you never suspected?" He tutted again, the formerly grandfatherly gesture now malevolent. "Not one Luxa survived the trials? Surely not all of them could be morons willingly jumping off of cliffs to their doom. And yet, no one batted an eye. You really did make it too easy for me." He waved the scroll in the air. "All because you didn't want to read a slip of paper."

But over the course of his little monologue, Fenwick's voice changed, deepened, no longer masked by his deception, morphing into a voice that haunted me in my dreams.

You will die like all the witches before you, and when your sister comes of age, we'll kill her, too.

He sounded like the assassin who had tried to end me and nearly succeeded. But more, he sounded like Arden. Like the guild leader was speaking from his very mouth. And as I realized exactly who he sounded like, I was temporarily blinded as my vision left the top of the mountain.

As if I was seeing through Kian's eyes, I watched as members of the council pressed Lumentium daggers to his throat, the sizzling metal biting into his skin. Wrists in chains, he fought them, but it was a losing battle.

The scene changed, then it was Xavier with his face in the dirt, a spear of that same magic-stealing metal poised at the base of his spine.

And then it was Idris watching his two closest friends being detained as he stood with a dagger poised right at his heart, the burning tip of the blade piercing his skin through his leathers. And all of them were surrounded by the same inky-black magic flowing from Fenwick's fingertips.

This wasn't a trial for me. This was a full-on coup.

"Rune," I screeched in my mind. "They need you."

My vision returned as fire streaked across the sky, the red dragon circling closer. "You need me more, my Queen."

And then the witches moved toward us, tightening the circle we were trapped in as Fenwick let out a gleeful laugh.

"Do you like their distress, Vale? Do you like seeing their pain through their eyes? Your mates are just as trapped as you are, except when they die, you'll feel every second of it. Gods, I do love a good mate bond. Too bad yours will be your undoing."

Blackness nearly blotted out the coming dawn as Fenwick's power poured into the sky. "Consider this my formal resignation. It's time to crown a new king."

Freya glanced over her shoulder at the edge of the cliff, putting Fenwick's words together just as I had. We needed out of this circle, we needed to get down to the bottom of the mountain, and we needed to put an end to this bullshit council once and for all.

Freya gripped her blade tight in her fist as she tossed her twin one to Dorian. The vampire seemed shocked she'd give him a weapon, given the coup he'd unwittingly landed in the middle of. "Don't make me regret this."

With a tandem nod, they targeted the witches surrounding us. Freya slashed first, aiming for the golden light at the Luxa's center, her deteriorating ribcage bleeding the power like a war wound. As soon as the blade touched it, magic exploded from the long-dead witch in a dome of retribution, black tainted gold knocking into Freya like a giant's fist.

Freya flew back, landing flat on her back in the dirt, her skin mottled and burned from the sizzling power. Leathers singed, skin red and raw, the vampire sucked in a startled breath, blinking up at the sky.

This wasn't just a circle of witches—this was a prison.

Dorian hadn't even noticed Freya's instant defeat. He was too busy chopping at the legs of the least decayed of the coven, his slashes doing little except whittling her down to a more manageable size. It was the Luxa's magic that had burnt Freya, not the witches themselves.

And maybe I could fight fire with fire.

"Get back, Dorian," I yelled even as the dragon in my brain roared for me to stop.

Allowing the power to rise within me, it shot from my chest in a dome of golden light, enveloping Freya and Dorian as it shoved against the barrier of the witches.

As soon as the power hit them, it was as if lightning had struck me right in the chest. My body burnt, smoldered, scorched from the inside out as I screamed. It was pain, yes, but it was more than that. It was the darkness of it, too, like a bladed weapon, it tore at me as it drowned me in agony.

"Stop, my Queen. This is not the way. You'll burn up. You're already burning."

And he was right. All that pain and I hadn't moved them an inch. No, instead, they stepped closer, nearly bringing me to my knees.

"I can't just stand here, and the council is hurting them."

"They can take care of themselves. Worry about you and get out of that circle."

"I'm trying."

Fenwick's milky irises met mine through the haze of it all, his gaze flicking from milky, to black, to Arden's gold, the guild leader shining from the old mage's eyes.

"I told you that you would burn. It's not how I wanted it, but I have to say it is much sweeter than watching you tied to a stake."

"And I. Told you. That you'd go. Down. W-with. Me."

Instantly, I dropped the dome, going for a more targeted approach. Bolts had worked for me before, right? In all my lessons with Xavier, we never managed to get me to draw power from myself, only from the rage I harnessed inside of me.

Sucking in a breath, I ignored the witches moving closer. Ignored the pain, the burning, the way my skin steamed in the cold air. Ignored everything except for forming a single strong bolt of magic as I imagined Nyrah's face perfectly in my mind. The image changed and I saw Xavier on the ground with a spear pointed right at his spine, Kian with a blade at his throat, and Idris bleeding from the tip of a poisoned dagger pushing into his chest.

Rage banked the flames of pain, turning them into power, and I formed a bolt of perfect magic, not aiming for the witches or the barrier but for Fenwick himself, the ancient mage a mere puppet for Arden's machinations.

And when that bolt cut through the barrier like a hot knife through butter, I relished the moment it hit Fenwick right in the shoulder. Shock slammed into his expression just before he flew back, knocking him into the jagged rocks of the shore.

But the witches around us did not fall, their circle broken, they began to move, reaching for us as if they were defending their master. Freya drove a blade into the neck of one taking her head as she moved to the next. The first witch fell into a pile of bones and decaying flesh.

I felt a ray of hope for a shining second before rotting hands ripped me off my feet, slamming me into the ground with enough force to nearly knock me out. My ears buzzed as putrid flesh reached for my chest, but before she could make contact, Dorian's sword cut through the top of her head.

The vampire yanked me to my feet, tucking me behind his back as he put himself between me and another Luxa. "If you plan on calling that dragon, Your Grace, now would be the time."

"I'm out of the damn circle."

"Oh, I know," he growled. "On your right."

I barely had time to turn my head before red scales zoomed over the top of the mountain. Talons extended, he snatched up two dead Luxa in his claws and crushed them to a pulp.

Swallowing a startled laugh, I set my sights on Arden's puppet. Cane gone, he crawled to the scroll he'd once clutched so tightly, his blackened blood pouring from the wound in his shoulder. He looked back at me, and golden eyes glowed with power as he set his sights on the scroll again.

Malignant magic flew from his fingertips, and the scroll burst into flames as he started laughing in between wet coughs that stained his lips black with his blood. The dark maniacal chuckle grew as the paper withered in the inky fire. "Good luck figuring out how to break the curse now."

Dread pooled in my belly as that voice took on the voices of so many, Arden's power flaring as Fenwick's body began to die. "You think we haven't been here this whole time? You think the unrest is just a fluke, that we haven't engineered it brick by brick? Magic isn't just dying—we're killing it one Luxa at a time. War is coming, little girl. Sooner than you think. And that incomplete mate bond won't save any of you. Especially not your little sister."

Then he reached in his cloak and removed a pulsing orb of purple magic. "If my little puppet has to die here, he'll at least do me the favor of taking you with him. He'd served his purpose, anyway."

The orb pulsed faster, a faint ticking coming from the glass as if it were a clock.

Whipping around, I shot out a wave of magic, knocking Freya and Dorian into the rushing falls, hoping they would land safely in the water at the bottom.

"Rune, I hope you're ready to catch me because I'm about to do something really fucking stupid."

The ticking got louder, faster, time racing away from me faster than I could catch up. I took off at a dead run racing for the edge I hoped I'd never have to see again.

"My Queen. Wait!"

But it was too late. I didn't have any more time.

My feet reached the edge long before I was ready, and I prayed that if Orrus was kind, he'd make my death quick.

For the second time in less than a day, I flew over the edge of a cliff, only this time I didn't know if anyone would catch me.