Chapter 77

Three days later, Blackcastle was organized chaos, refugees slowly streaming back from the Havens, Torin and Cosimo taking care of their resettlement while we recovered.

A very grumpy Tavion was still on the mend, much to his dismay and Tristan's eternal delight.

Just as Bella reported, the blight stopped to our north, a clear line of delineation that expanded every day, thanks to Zeph and Cosimo burning away the oozing rot that smothered what had been tumbled, rocky inclines and a lush pine forest. Later today, if Tavion was able, we'd see the destruction for ourselves.

I still felt like a hollowed-out shell.

As if everything had happened to someone else. Or I'd been watching from the sidelines. But…I stopped rubbed my aching thigh, well aware Raziel watched from across the library, cataloguing every move.

Counting how often my fingers paused over the lightning mark, which now wrapped long, black fingers all the way around my leg. At this rate, we'd be monsters by the end of the year.

"I'm fine," I muttered. Not that he'd believe me, the worry wart.

"You should be in bed." I rolled my eyes and Raz's lips tightened, and off we went until a million little micro aggressions later he spun on his boot heel and stalked out of the room.

"That was productive." Tristan uncurled himself from his chair. "He's not wrong, Anaria. We should talk about what happening to us."

"Talking doesn't fix anything," I pointed out, noting how his own hand drifted up to absently rub at his chest. "Raz knows that as well as the rest of us. We'd be better served making ourselves useful and getting this city back to normal."

Tristan stood his ground. "And yet Torin has us sequestered in the Keep until our health and magic is restored."

"She has no right to lock us up."

"You gave her that right when you appointed her steward in your stead." He never wavered from that irritatingly placid serenity, and my hands curled into fists, rage bleeding through me unchecked.

"And before you explode, let me remind you Tavion was half dead when she hauled us off that mountain. If they hadn't reached us when they did, we'd all be buried beneath the rubble. So I think, princess, you might want to tone your anger down a notch."

Yes, the entire mountain had collapsed not a minute after we'd all loaded onto Zephryn's back.

Yes, the namesake rock formation had tumbled into the valley below, crushing everything in its path—which would have been us, if Zeph hadn't lifted off in time, or Tristan hadn't taken off a few seconds later.

But Sylvi was buried beneath tons of rubble and rock.

And we'd just…left her there.

I swallowed around the lump in my throat.

"I'm just…" I lowered my head to my chest. "I'm just…Nothing feels real. None of it. Like I made everything up in my head and eventually I'll wake up from a bad dream."

I rubbed the mark again, the thick, pronounced veins throbbing. Their marks were even worse and I felt their pain through the bond like a dull, thudding heartbeat.

We'd lost Nightcairn. Caladrius.

The entire north. We had lost everything.

Tristan snapped the book closed and unfolded his lean body from the worn leather chair as gracefully as his wyvern unwound his sinuous coils.

"This is real. We're alive. Corvus and Gelvira are dead. And yes, we will always bear these marks, but maybe…" He dipped his head to take a deep breath. "Maybe these are reminders that we survived. Nothing more and nothing less."

"Maybe," I agreed, but couldn't summon the resolve to mean it. That didn't keep me from leaning into him, letting his arms tighten around me, basking in this feeling of protection when I knew how fleeting safety was.

"The kings are gone. The gods are gone. This world…" Another of those long, indrawn breaths that seemed shakier then the one before.

"In all my years, I have never felt such a sense of possibility before. Like finally, I can start living. Like we can have that future we've all dreamed of."

I closed my eyes. How I wished I felt the same.

Up close,Corvus's devastation was sobering.

It was one thing to be surrounded by dying trees.

Or see tendrils spreading across the far-off lands we flew over.

From here the ruination loomed larger than life, the ring of once-beautiful mountains now solid black, even the snowcaps stained a dark dirty gray. As if the life had been sucked from the marrow of this world.

"This is all we've cleared so far." Cosimo waved at the ashy ground, the scant mile he and Zephryn had uncovered after a week of burning off rot, a patrol of sweating soldiers working behind them with pickaxes and shovels, making sure they eradicated every last speck.

"The soldiers have been working every day." Lyrae volunteered, her pale blue eyes narrowed on the piles of ash, the daunting swath of black that seemed to stretch forever. "In shifts of twenty. I rotate them every few hours so the work doesn't lag."

"At this rate, we'll reclaim the mountains in about a thousand fucking years," Zephryn growled.

Zeph's dark hair was pulled back, both he and Cosimo dressed in the same black, utilitarian clothing as Lyrae and the soldiers working at our backs.

Tavion crossed his arms over his chest, his expression grim."Won't this eventually die off? Now that they're gone?"

I'd wondered the same. Why wasn't this world healing itself?

What was it waiting for?

"I've run tests, investigated every lead, spent hours in the Keep's pitiful library, but I don't know what happened to the Fae magic," Cosimo muttered, every face swiveling to him. Lyrae made a choking sound and Tavion chuckled.

I doubted the astrologer ever admitted ignorance, especially about something so…momentous.

"Whether the magic disappeared or became trapped in that cave, the power that the world would have used to heal itself…doesn't exist anymore."

"Then we keep going." I swiped at the sweat trickling in an aggravatingly slow line down my neck. "We save what we can, a little at a time."

But the sheer magnitude of those ruined mountains was sobering. And there were so many people relying on us at the Keep and Blackcastle. Caladrius would never be restored at this rate unless we figured how to reverse the damage.

"Food will be tight." Zor pointed out in a low voice. "We have the Havens, but Caladrius and most of Varitus are worthless for growing so much as a blade of grass. Everything to the west will become a wasteland, probably for as long as any of us are alive."

"If the wild magic still existed, wouldn't the world just…repair itself?"

Cosimo shrugged. "Nature has a habit of correcting our mistakes. In time, yes, this would be undone, but something's preventing that from happening. It's like…the world is waiting for something."

"Remember when you pushed the blight back with your magic?" Tavion asked softly, waggling his eyebrows. "Care to do a repeat performance?"

"Or how you convinced the forest in Caladrius to help you? Could you do that again?" Zor glared at him, as if to say, this is not the time for jokes, arsehole.

"That was…before."

I hadn't felt a trace of the Fae magic, not since Gelvira took everything back. Witch magic, yes, but that power didn't nurture and restore. That kind of magic devoured.

"You could try." Tristan cocked his head. "See what happens."

I scuffed my boot through the desiccated, sandy dirt. "I don't think I can," I said, unable to look any of them in the eye. "I don't have the right sort of magic. Not anymore."

"Just try," Tristan urged, his hand twining with mine, but only to press something warm and smooth against my palm.

Power rocketed through me—through us—light filling our eyes, hands glowing as they each gripped their stones. For a second, I had to remind myself how to breathe, those ruined mountains fading in and out before I got my act together.

"Holy gods." Lyrae muttered, taking a healthy step back. The soldiers stopped working altogether, mouths hanging open.

Magic roared through our bond, fire and ice and thunder, rippling across the deep, still pool at my center like a stone skimmed across a pond.

A chill swept down my spine, the hair on my arms rising.

Zorander sauntered closer and tipped my chin up, forcing me to stare into his eyes. "You told me once you wanted to save this world. And I thought to myself…she's so godsdamned naive. A dreamer. She hasn't seen enough of life, doesn't know the evil this world is capable of, to have such thoughts. Because if you did, you would know this world wasn't worth the effort."

I clamped my lips together to stop the not-so-nice retort waiting on the end of my tongue.

"But then you did something I never thought possible." He brushed his knuckles down my cheek.

"You convinced even this old, jaded general this fucked-up world was worth saving. That despite everything I'd seen, after all the ugly things I'd done for monsters like Serpens and the Oracle, this world deserved a chance."

"Even you?" I repeated. "Well, that must have been some speech."

"Oh, it was." His eyes danced with seldom-seen humor. "We're all in this together, princess, and we have places to be. So get on with it, then. Start saving."

"It's not that easy." I pulled away so he couldn't see my eyes watering. "I don't have that kind of magic anymore." I gestured to the drab landscape. "Only Fae magic can heal that damage. I have witch magic, which is more like desolation and doom."

"Are you sure?" Cosimo asked quietly. "Because when I was healing you, I sensed some dormant power. Buried deep, like it was…waiting."

I shook my head. "I don't know what happened to the Fae magic, but Gelvira took everything. When she died, the magic just…faded away. If that power still exists, it's buried beneath an entire mountain." I gestured around us. "You'd heal these lands faster than the time it would take for you to dig out that cave."

"Just try, Anaria," Zorander urged. "What do you have to lose?"

I clenched my hands into fists and looked around us.

Nothing. I had nothing to lose.

Everyone watched me with such expectation on their faces. How many times had I asked for their trust? And now that I had it, I wanted to run and hide so I didn't fail again.

Cosimo and Zeph looked exhausted, and so did Lyrae. At this rate, we'd never carve out enough land for our people, much less save Caladrius. And freeing this world only to abandon it wasn't an option.

I knelt, gripped the keystone in one hand, letting that glowing warmth fill me up, then plunged my other hand into the void of dry, sandy soil, the tiny, rough grains working themselves beneath my fingernails as I wiggled my fingers deeper and deeper.

Please. I'm sorry I failed you. I'm sorry Corvus poisoned your trees and your rivers. I want to undo his damage, but I don't know how. Please show me how to fix this.

Nothing.

Not a single green shoot rose from the desiccation.

I lifted a handful of soil, letting it sift through my fingers. The gritty dirt sounded like rain beating gently on a window as it quietly fell back to earth.

There was no promise here.

No whisper of power, nothing stirring beneath this ruined ground.

Only death.

I dropped the stone into my pocket and pushed up, unable to say a word, my cheeks burning with shame. Raz's hand immediately settled on my lower back, Tavion, Tristan, and Zor scanning our surroundings as the haze of power faded.

They'd—we'd—been talking about what came next.

About new worlds across the sea where we could start over. Become whomever we chose to be. Build new lives from the ground up.

But how could we leave our old world like this?

I hadn't agreed to anything, because I could never outrun my failure.

No matter how far I went.

This ruined land was my doing. I was the driving force behind Corvus and the blight, all three realms dying, and untold loss of life, and no matter where I traveled, this would always be my legacy.

"Let's go," Cosimo finally said, his voice thick with disappointment. "We can try again tomorrow."

Loose stone crunched beneath our feet as we descended, turning the steep path treacherous. The soldiers parted way to let us through, some tipping their hats to Zephryn and Cosimo, looking at us curiously.

"I'll stay." Lyrae's voice rang loudly off the rocks. "Until the end of shift. See how much progress we can make before dark."

"Thank you." I told her, taking in the deep lines around her mouth, the dark circles beneath her eyes. "For staying. For helping Torin. For everything."

Lyrae rolled her eyes, but that was an actual smile on her face. "Well, I suppose that's progress over calling me a horse thief. You didn't think I would stay?"

"I don't know what I thought." I admitted, suddenly ashamed of how hard everyone else had been working, while I was giving up so easily.

"I'll come back tomorrow. Try again." I owed this world—my people—that, at least. "And I'll keep trying, until we find something that works."

"No one would blame you," Lyrae's eyes gleamed. "If you put all of this behind you."

"Hey," one of the soldiers squinted behind us. "What's that?"

A haze of stars hung in the air above where I'd crouched, so faint only the Face soldier's sharp eyes had seen them, lost in the harsh rays of sun cutting across the blighted wastes.

"A trick of the light," I muttered, because what did stars matter when the world was dead?

The ground rumbled beneath our feet, the gravel vibrating like an avalanche was hurtling towards us. A sob caught in my throat as those vibrations traveled through the soles of my feet, up my legs, sending more ripples across the still lake of cold power at my center.

Not a stone skimming over the surface.

But some mighty leviathan rising.

"Holy gods. Look at that."

The entire side of the hill shook, rock and gravel tumbling as pines shot out of the earth like spears. Crack, crack, crack.

Then all around us small, delicate plants unfurled from the barren ground. Ferns and flowers, tiny plants I would have called weeds just months ago…I wanted to scoop them up and plant them in fancy window boxes they were so beautifully green.

So wonderfully alive.

The stone in my pocket, pressed against my hip burned, sent pulses of pure power down along that black lightning strike.

Like I was…a conduit.

I dropped to my knees and plunged both hands into the ground, working my fingers between sharp rock and tumbled sand.

That leviathan kept spearing toward the surface and I braced myself, every muscle tensed for that inevitable collision. Magic—exploding stars and darkness and the frozen cold between—roared through me, down my arms, and into the ground.

Take the magic back, I thought, barely about to breathe beneath the onslaught. Everything that is yours and always has been. We had no right to thieve your power away. Take this magic and heal yourself.

Rivers of power flowed through me, cold and warm, ancient and brand new. I was nothing but a channel, funneling the magic back into the earth where the magic had been harvested from.

My blood turned to steam in my veins, coating my mouth, but I didn't break the circuit. I wanted every last drop of stolen power ripped out of me.

I didn't know how long I remained like that.

Time ceased to have meaning. There was only the magic and the earth and the keystone and me.

A constant roaring loop of rebirth, ice and fire flooding through my veins. Pain and joy and utter ecstasy, my heart pounding so hard I wondered if this might kill me.

But I did not break the connection.

The rotten air came alive; blight-blackened stone warmed with hints of green beneath the shade of a new pine forest. Rocks no longer cut into my knees, but soft, loose soil cushioned them, like the ground around my wrists.

Then the dry, desiccated soil between my fingers became rich, dark loam.

Hands tugged at me, harder and harder, then disappeared.

Voices muttered from somewhere far away.

Turned to panicked shouts.

And still, the roaring never stopped.

Until everything went black.

I woketo that same blackness, as impenetrable as Corvus's cave, and fear shuddered through me, swift as a cold river current.

"You are safe," Tavion murmured, pulling me against his soft shirt. He smelled clean, like sunshine. "You're in the Keep. You've been here for three days, recovering."

I burst up and he held me down with a dark chuckle. "Slow down, mate. You burned yourself out. None of us could break whatever…bullshite cycle you were trapped inside until your body gave out. You sit up too fast, wife, and Raziel will add another week of bedrest. Not that I'd mind a bit."

Never one to miss an opportunity, he nibbled at my throat.

"You scared the fucking shite out of me, Anaria. I swear to the gods, if you ever do that again…"

"What happened?" I felt like I was made out of air. Like my bones were hollow and if Tavion let me go, I'd float away.

"You jump started the entire fucking world, that's what happened. Tristan just returned from his last recon flight over Caladrius and the forest is resprouting, or whatever the fuck you want to call this. So far, the green reaches all the way to Tempeste and as far south as that bumfuck little witch village…Mysthaven or whatever it's called."

I felt his shudder all the way to my soul. "Everything you said you'd do…You kept your word, Anaria. And maybe this isn't the time, but…fuck, I'm proud to be yours."

I let the words sink in, letting them tether me to the now.

"Really? You're not just telling me this to make me feel better?"

"Come and look for yourself." Tavion's words, his expression, were so tender, I blinked. And this time he let me sit up—slowly—helped me to the window and pulled the heavy drapes apart.

I blinked against the blazing light, let my eyes recover, and then…

Beneath a brilliant cerulean sky, pure white snow dazzled on those high peaks, steep slopes dropping into swathes of dark pine forests edging pale green meadows dancing with blues and pinks and yellows.

A brand-new, perfect world.

"All of this is you, Anaria," Tavion's voice was thick. "Everything is alive because of you. In a few days, Coz expects the blight will be gone completely. There won't be a single trace Corvus or Gelvira ever existed."

I gripped the windowsill, willing myself not to sink to my knees.

After all the plotting and lying, bluffing and wicked, wicked things we'd done to get to this point…After all the mistakes, I couldn't believe we'd succeeded.

Couldn't believe we were all still alive.

Magic pulsed inside me like a heartbeat, as if I was soul bound to this world.

I tasted power in the air, thrumming through me like the blood in my veins. When I closed my eyes, I felt the trees growing, tasted every wind current, sensed the warmth on the south facing mountain slopes like the sun on my shoulders.

I sucked in a guttering breath, tears pricking at my eyes.

"How dark are our marks now?" I didn't have the courage to reach down, to check how twisted mine was. Nor could I stand to see Tavion's.

Because that was the cost.

That had always been the cost.

And even thought I'd fought and schemed to avoid paying that steep price, in the end, there had been no other choice.

With a soft smile, Tavion pulled his shirt back and everything inside my head went silent.

I reached out and ran my fingertips over the pale, faint mark on his chest, not a single hint of black.

"You didn't only heal the world, princess. You healed us."

He dropped to his knees and lifted the bottom of my shirt, pressing his lips to my hip, shaking hands gripping me tightly like he couldn't bear to let me go. "Yours is the same. A mark, but no trace of black."

His green eyes shone as he gazed up at me. "They're gone. Every trace of the twins is wiped away. Soon, they'll be gone forever." He shuddered against me, his shoulders shaking. "I thought…Gods, Anaria, I never thought we'd end up here. Alive."

That's when the truth finally hit me.

We'd survived.

I couldn't stop the tears as I fell to my knees, dragging him against me, hope rising like a tide. "We'll have that future after all, Tavion. All of it. Everything we've ever dreamed of."

"It doesn't seem possible," he whispered against my throat. "That we get something at the end. I never…" His voice broke and I gripped him tighter. "I never thought I deserved this, you know."

His beautiful face, always so full of brash arrogance, was filled with quiet pain.

"After all the bad I've done." He pressed tighter into my shoulder, and I felt his tears soak into my shirt. "Especially to you, Anaria. I don't deserve to be happy. I don't deserve your forgiveness, I never have."

"You're wrong. You deserve it all." I pulled back and threaded my fingers through his hair, my heart breaking as I searched his eyes and found nothing but grief staring back at me. "We'll find the happiness we deserve. Somewhere beyond all these regrets, it's there. Waiting for us. Healing will take time."

"And we have all the time in the world now." Raz lounged in the doorway, eyes trailing over me, cataloging everything—the tears, Tavion's shaking shoulders.

"You're not supposed to be out of bed." Raz's mouth tightened as he swung his furious gaze over to Tavion. "She's not supposed to be out of bed."

"Fuck off arsehole. I had to show her." Tavion rose, bringing me with him, warm, fragrant air blowing through the window behind us. "What she's done."

"What we've done," I corrected, still feeling like none of this was real.

"No," Raz said softly, his eyes shining. "What you did. You're the one who never gave up. You're the one who convinced us, time and time again, to believe in your mad plans."

"Well. First of all, my plans aren't mad, they are brilliant." My lips curled up. "And secondly, you are a bunch of stubborn arseholes sometimes."

I brushed my fingers over Tavion's cheek, wiping away the tears. "But you're my stubborn arseholes, so I can live with that."