Chapter 52

Cloistered in the duke's library, I fidgeted with the edge of the fine linen shirt that hung to my knees, half listening to the debate happening around me.

Where to go from here.

Whether to assemble the weapon now or wait.

What the easiest route to Corvus's cave was and how to get inside without him knowing.

We'd eaten our fill of the food Tavion and Tristan had scavenged from the Descendant estates. We still had enough for breakfast tomorrow and to fill our fine, well-tailored pockets for a day at most.

The downside was everyone was dressed in the duke's clothes.

Even me.

Everywhere I looked reminded me of him, of servitude and cruelty. The Mistress's abuses. Of a few stolen, happy moments with Ember. There was no escaping those memories, not here. And this wing of the castle, deemed the safest by Zorander and Raz, would be our refuge until we left.

Outside, the ash had stopped falling before dark, blown east on a cold wind that smelled faintly of flowers.

"Jasmine," Tavion had muttered on his way back inside, discarding his cloak into the room now crawling with blight, tendrils snaking up to the ceiling. "The wind smells like jasmine and amber."

Everyone had traded these pointed, meaningful looks, leaving me sighing because I had no idea what they meant. I spent most of tonight staring at the long, engraved box on the table between us, the weapon waiting inside, ready to be reunited with the pendant hanging between my breasts.

The smaller boxes with the keystones had been retrieved and were separated into opposite corners of the library, but every time I stepped into this room, my teeth vibrated from the stones…talking to each other.

Except for the one in my pocket which was worrisomely inert.

I wondered if I'd…broken the stone somehow.

"What about Stormfall?" Zorander suggested, reaching around to scratch his back. He'd been fidgeting for hours, and even though I knew from experience how badly newly healed skin itched, I'd never seen Zor act so…twitchy.

"Too far to travel in a single jump." Raz looked closely at his friend, his tone kind. "You and I would both have to carry someone, and you won't be back to full strength for a couple of days."

"Back to the Wynter Palace, then," Tavion muttered, his lips curling.

Since Tavion obviously had as many bad memories of that place as I did Ravenswood, I shook my head. "There has to be another option. We can't only have one choice, and a bad one at that."

"The wind's carrying the blight into Caladrius. Chances are the rot reaches all the way to Meridian Bay by now." Raziel swallowed. "We have fewer options than we did when we arrived. I second the Wynter Palace, though fuck knows what we'll find once we get there."

"I'll fly Finnian and Kael west at dawn, dropping you as far outside the blighted area as I can manage." Tristan set a bag of coin in front of them with an impressively heavy clunk. "This will get you on a boat. My advice? Head across the Marianus Sea and never look back."

"Any hope for our friends we left in the forest?"

Zorander met his worried gaze steadily then shook his head. "They had a choice and they stayed where they were. I expect by now they're either trapped or overcome completely. We can't risk going into the forest to search for them, Finnian. I'm sorry."

Kael picked up the coin and disappeared the bag into his pocket. "You always said you wanted to sail across the sea, Fin," he murmured. "Maybe life can be better over there."

I closed my eyes.

That's what I was supposed to do.

Make everything better. Free the slaves and make everyone equal and turn the three realms into a utopia. I wanted to vomit when I realized the truth. I destroyed everything. As thoroughly and completely as Corvus had.

I might as well be known as Anaria, destructor of worlds.

"We're off to bed, then." Finnian climbed clumsily to his feet. "These old bones took a beating today, and while your healing magic was impressive, there's nothing like a good night's sleep."

"Never slept in a fancy Descendant castle," Kael mumbled on the way out. "Do you think the pillows are softer?"

"Now tell us what really happened." Tavion leaned forward, elbows braced on a small reading table. "You and Cosimo went back in time to the night of the riot in Southwell? How is that even possible?"

"Coz invented a device, small enough to hang around your neck but imbued with enough magic to take us back in time. The Fae King had commissioned him to…" He scanned our faces. "Never mind, that's not important. We went back to that night, yes. We found the pendant hidden in a pitcher of water."

Some dark shadow passed over his face, and I wondered what the rest of the story was. But…

"We should find out if this thing even works." I nudged the box to the center of the table. "Before we start making plans."

Tristan checked the hall then closed the door before I lifted the pendant off my neck.

I laid the amulet beside the box and flipped open the lid, Tavion reeling back. "Godsdamned thing nearly killed me last time," he muttered, face pale. "Better safe than sorry."

"Only you can touch the blade, Anaria." Bexley examined the weapon, from a safe distance, of course, hands clasped behind him. "I've been doing research. Something to do with possessing witch blood, I presume."

I lifted the blade from the box to a chorus of quick, inhaled breaths, laying it beside the pendant, then fit the amulet into the end of the pommel.

Nothing happened. There were no grooves, no discernible means to attach the two together. No magic that miraculously joined the two pieces. Upon closer examination, the amulet didn't even seem to be the right size.

"Could there be two of them?" Raz asked. "Do we have the wrong one?"

"No, this is the correct artifact," Bexley said with not a shred of doubt. "In all the renderings I've ever seen, that amulet is an exact copy. I doubt there are two." He caught my eye. "Witches didn't make duplicates. They prided themselves on their originality, and being that it is part of a weapon meant to kill a god, Sylvi would have made only one due to the sheer amount of magic required to forge such a powerful relic."

"This doesn't have any magic left," I told him, rubbing my finger over the stone, a beautiful, deep red but lacking the glowing inner light of our keystones.

"Let me see." Tristan held up his hand, and before I thought about what a bad idea this was, I shucked the amulet across the room. He snatched it deftly from midair.

"Shite," he swore, wiping his hand on his breeches. "The godsdamned thing cut me." Blood coated his hand, soaking into the engraved setting as he held out the offending item.

The knife vibrated against the tabletop, dancing toward Tristan across the wooden surface, then the amulet flew across the room and, with a metallic click, attached itself to the end of the pommel, the stone glowing brightly enough to suffuse the entire room with a red glow.

"Well, that's new," Bexley murmured in a rare show of confusion, his eyes wide. "You never told us you had witch blood, DeVayne."

Tristan looked like he was going to be sick. "I don't. Not a fucking drop."

"That knife would say otherwise." Bex nodded to the united weapon, the stone glowing, the blade rattling softly against the wood. "Only witch blood could bind the two pieces together. That is the only logical explanation."

The mage toyed with the ring on his finger. "Perhaps a distant relative, or a bastard in the family?" Tristan's jaw flexed at the insult, but Bexley was too preoccupied to notice. "But no matter," Bex said brightly. "The weapon is complete and can now be wielded."

"There are no DeVayne bastards, and I despise those foul creatures." Tristan's face fell. "Present company excluded, of course. There isn't a drop of witch blood in the DeVayne line, not a single fucking drop."

"Hmmm. If you say so," Bexley murmured, focused wholly on the weapon. "Try to lift it, Anaria."

My fingers flexed.

I'd dreamed of having a weapon capable of killing Corvus for months now. My blood sang at the very idea of wielding such a thing. But everything cost me something dear.

Trapping the Oracle had unleashed Corvus.

Dropping that wall had cost us both Varitus and Caladrius.

Wielding this weapon…Would this knife be Corvus's destruction? Or our own?

"They say magic has a cost, and I've never been afraid to pay that price," I said quietly, everyone staring at the weapon with the same kind of dread. "But I never pay the price. You do. This world pays. Innocents pay. The price is never mine, it's always someone else's." I stepped closer, letting my magic rally.

"That's all I ask. If there is a price for using this, for stopping Corvus, let me be the only one to?—"

"No," Tavion and Raziel shouted together.

"…suffer the cost," I finished.

"I'm tired," I told them. "Tired of making everything worse when I try to make things better. Tired of causing harm when I only want to help. If the magic is truly a sentient thing, then I ask it to honor my wishes."

I wrapped my fingers around the pommel.

It was frightening how well the handle fit into my hand, how perfectly the cool metal melded to my flesh as if this blade had been made for me. Thunder rocked through me, my bones quaking as power rattled and roared like a call to arms.

My magic rallied, stars and shadow, cold and darkness, and the impact when the two powers collided turned my vision into a blaze of starlight.

A sign, if there ever was one, and I lifted the blade over my head, both in triumph and as a plea to anyone listening to hear my words.

Please don't force any of my friends to bear the price for what I was about to do.