Chapter 31

Huddled in front of the fire in Bexley's laboratory—the doors closed tight against the howling, wet wind that blew unchecked through the palace—I finished recounting what happened.

"So…just to make sure I have this right, the Oracle now knows all about the knife?" Tristan asked, color flooding his cheeks. "Including how the weapon was made? That can't be good. Why did she speak to Ophelia and Gideon…"

"Who?" Tavion barked.

"The two witches we faced at Mysthaven," Tristan explained. "Why stop in that village three weeks ago if she didn't know the knife even existed? That's too big of a coincidence. She had to know it was there."

"I don't know." I chewed my lip. "Maybe she sensed the weapon's existence but the witches' magic hid it from her sight? There are so many plots inside her twisted head, I can't keep track of them all. Maybe this whole knife thing is some sort of misdirection." I held my hands closer to the fire, trying to bend my stiff fingers. "But one thing remains. The witch warned me using the knife has a cost which appears to be death."

I looked them all square in the eye. "Maybe the Oracle figures the knife will lead to my eventual end and take care of her problem."

"Bex, what's your opinion?" Raz asked. "You're our resident expert on magical witch shite."

"What I find more worrisome is she knows how the weapon was forged. And by whom." Bex's voice was barely a whisper as he gazed at the box lying on the table. "That day…only the High Priestess of the conclave was present. There were no witnesses, no firsthand accounts, only whispered rumors of how the great weapon was created. But using the knife won't kill you, Anaria."

"Tavion would beg to differ," I muttered.

"Tavion doesn't have witch blood," Bexley countered.

"What you saw was the cost of forging the blade which was the High Priestess's life. The very essence of her life force—the ultimate blood magic, to bond metal and magic together."

I stared into the flames as Tristan's arm went around my shoulders. He had on a too small shirt and a pair of fraying breeches which were all we could find.

"From your reaction, you…saw what happened to the High Priestess?" Bex asked gently.

"I saw every minute, Bexley, and so did the Oracle. I watched her make the weapon, and I watched her die. And I know I descend from her bloodline. I know she looked exactly like me." Or what I would look like, providing I survived another twenty years.

"Who was she?"

The flames blurred together into a smudge of light, Tristan tugging me against him. I'd used more magic today than I was used to, leaving my muscles strung out and fragile, though that deep well at my center waited quietly.

For what, I didn't know.

"Tell us everything you know, Bex." Cold and exhaustion turned my voice raspy. "The time of keeping secrets is over."

"You're right." His shoulders slumped. "Secrets are nothing but a weight around my neck at this point. And you, of all people, deserve to know the truth." Bex set down his armful of books and moved closer to the fire, regret written all over his thin face.

"Once, every so often, someone special is born. Sylvaria was one of those people. Like the Fae's ancestral power, witch magic comes from the earth, and she…when she was born, she got every last drop. She became our mother, our goddess. But she never lived long enough to become our crone." Silence ruled the room except for the crackling of the fire.

"But her magic—fearsome though it was—wasn't what defined her. Sylvaria was tired of living like a slave, serving the beings who held this world prisoner. She made it her mission to resist, recruiting anyone with magical abilities and willing to fight to her side. She built an army to fight the Old Gods, calling them the Vanguard Conclave, and for thousands of years, they battled the Mystara, forcing them out of this realm, keeping them cordoned off in the Pale."

My brain slowly, methodically processed each new piece of information, slotting them into all the blank spots of my knowledge.

"After the conclave fought the gods for eons, when Sylvi was intimately acquainted with how their wicked magic worked, mithirium was discovered in the mountains west of the Pale. A miracle, they said. A metal that would bind to magic, and Sylvi knew she could finally forge a weapon to kill them." Beside me, Tristan cleared his throat and tightened his arms around me.

"The blade itself was forged by a skilled smith on Darkhold, in a forge of dragonfire. Mithirium is the most conducive material for conducting magic, besides gold which is far too soft for a weapon. No one knew how Sylvaria meant to infuse magic into the blade, and had the council discovered her plan, they would have stopped her."

I held in my laugh. "Really? You think they could have stopped her?"

Because I'd seen her face, and I knew that look.

Nobody could have stopped Sylvaria from saving her people. I hoped if I ever had to make that choice, I had half her resolve and dedication.

Bex half smiled. "No, probably not. But they would have tried. By the time they found Sylvi, she was gone and the blade filled with her power. The conclave put together a hunting party. They were carrying the knife north to the Hammer, intending to finish our war for good, but before they reached the Pale, the Fae swarmed our shores and the realm descended into chaos. The war against the Old Gods was put aside for the survival of our kind."

"That was the beginning of another cycle?"

Bexley nodded. "We believed so, yes. A battle to end all battles. Witches and humans against the Fae. Blood flowed on battlefields from the Foundering Sea to the Gulf of Kaerius. The only good thing to come out of that two-hundred-year-long war was the Fae managed to kill five of the gods—you five—in the mountains."

"The Fae did not possess enough power to collapse a mountain," Raz said quietly. "But Corvus and Gelvira did."

"We were killed by our own kind, not the Fae army," I explained to a shocked Bexley. "But what I don't understand is, how did the skulls end up down in the tunnels? I know the tunnels once led to the city of Etherium, but I don't understand why you would go to all the trouble to preserve the skulls?"

Bexley shifted his feet looking…guilty, and I watch him closer.

"Well, you know how witches can be." He licked his lips. "Our motto is never waste anything, always wondering if we can…build a better mousetrap, so to speak."

"We have no idea what you're going on about, Bexley, and we're not here to judge you for what was done in the past. Fuck, we've all made mistakes." Raz banged his fist against the mantle hard enough to rattle the paintings hanging crooked on the wall. "Just tell Anaria why the skulls are down there."

"We hid them so we could necromance them back to life." He winced.

We all did.

"Not the brightest idea, but at the time our High Priestess was dead, her magic stored in a weapon we didn't even know would work. The conclave was scattered, broken apart by the Fae invaders, and well…back then our magic was new and necromancy was all the rage."

Tavion was already on his feet. "Let me get this straight. You planned to necromance five gods—your sworn enemies—back to life…for what?"

"To use them as soldiers against the others." Tristan was gazing up at Bexley with a mix of awe and revulsion. "The conclave really believed they could control them?"

"You act like I was alive back then. I only know what I read," Bex snapped, bristling as he fiddled with his ring. "We never even tried to bring them back, that's all I know for sure."

"Gods." I rubbed my face. "If the knife was never used, does the weapon even work?"

Because the last thing I wanted to do was go face-to-face with Corvus with a silver toothpick in my hand that didn't do a thing.

Bexley's face glowed with the fervor of a true believer. "That blade was forged with the life's blood of our first High Priestess. The weapon will kill a god, I am sure of it."

"Whether or not that's true, we still need the other piece." I shook off the fog of exhaustion, sharpening my senses enough to finish this conversation. "She and I made a bargain. I mean to keep my word." Tristan pulled me against him, and gods, it was tempting to disappear into the heat radiating from his muscled chest.

"You're not seriously thinking of giving her back the magic, Anaria?" Tavion angled his head in that wolf-like way. "You know once you do, she'll let this world burn."

"Maybe. Probably." I inhaled woodsmoke. Male sweat. My sweat. My nose wrinkled.

"But I've bought us a little more time. Our next stop has to be Varitus. With luck, I'd only need a day to drop the ward and unite the magic."

Raz's eyes met mine. "When you do, you know what will happen next."

My stomach constricted, something like hopelessness swallowing me up, but I made myself shove the fear down, down, down to where worthless things belonged. "The blight will sweep into Varitus and destroy everything there."

"Do we have a plan for this?" Raz asked, crouching down beside us to peer into my face. "Do we even know where we're going?"

I gazed blankly over Tavion's head at what remained of Bexley's ruined experiments, the mage methodically arranging books and parchments, wiping them clean and carefully restacking them.

"A plan? Not exactly."

I'd bought us time, but without the other piece of the weapon, we were carting around a worthless blade, and we couldn't be in two places at once, so Blackcastle would have to wait.

But Zor knew we needed that pendant.

He'd been the one to figure out the secret in the first place.

All I could hope for right now was he'd gone back to Blackcastle for exactly that purpose.

"As far as where we're headed…"

I took a deep breath, my stomach tangled into knots. "Ravenshade Castle sits on the eastern-most edge of Bloodwood Forest, close to the northern portal. We can…get our bearings there and decide how to best drop the wall with minimum casualties."

The words came out in a staccato rush of cold, clear facts, while I ignored the emotions tangling up inside me. Messy, ugly emotions I didn't want any of these males to see.

"Fuck, Anaria." Tavion's eyes cleared enough for him to gaze up at me in concern. "You don't want to go back there."

No, I didn't, but Ravenshade was the only place in Varitus I was familiar enough with to choose as a starting point. "It's fine."

"That entire realm is in chaos," Raziel pointed out. "The refugees flooded through the wall then crossed to the western shores weeks ago. By now, they might be off this continent altogether. Gods knows the chaos they left behind."

"Actually, that would be a blessing." I blew out a long breath. "But we're usually not that lucky."

No, scratch that. We were never that lucky.

But no refugees meant less casualties, and while I didn't give a good godsdamn about the Descendants, there were innocent slaves on every single royal estate who didn't deserve to be caught up in the chaos I'd unleash.

We had to come up with a way to mitigate the damage before I dropped the wall.

"Tristan, could you fly Bex and me there if Raz carried Tavion?"

My dear, sweet husband grumbled something wickedly foul. "You can't walk there, Tavion. Flying is the only way. Would you rather have Tristan fly you there?"

"Fuck no." He looked faintly nauseous at the prospect.

"Then stop wasting time." Tristan lifted me to my feet, my legs cramping as I straightened. "So could you? Fly that far? I know you've used all your magic, but every hour we waste is an hour less Blackcastle has left."

"Well…maybe if I had something in my stomach." Tristan glanced hopefully at Bexley, who rolled his eyes and mumbled something about us all being a bunch of helpless brutes and him not being a godsdamned galley cook.

The next minute, the table overflowed with a literal banquet.

"Where, exactly, did you transport this in from?" Tavion suspiciously sniffed a loaf of bread. "And don't tell me Tempeste or I'm tossing every last scrap down the ravine."

"This is my secret stash I hid in an upstairs bedroom when you all descended upon me like a bunch of lawless scavengers."

Bexley ran his hand lovingly over the food. "But, I suppose, given the fact we're all about to die, I can share."