I’m here. I’m with you.
She met his eyes. It was all she could do.
An explosion punctuated the war cries in a sharp burst—cannons, all firing in rapid, deliberate succession from the Winter side of the valley. Dozens, at least. Had Angra’s soldiers brought that many? Ceridwen moaned, braced for a cannon to come tearing through their group at any moment.
Lekan frowned, confused, and sprang to his feet to join Caspar, who stood on an overturned crate and peered down into the valley.
The explosions continued, eliciting mangled bellows of pain. Still Ceridwen waited. This many cannons meant one would surely rip through their ranks. . . .
The darkness in her roiled with fury. I will not end this way. I have strength now.
But beyond that, the small, clear part of her shrank, silent and tired and . . . ready.
“Soldiers,” Caspar told Lekan, but his words carried all around, to every waiting, exhausted fighter hiding in this cluster. “Under Yakim’s banner.”
Only a handful of Yakimians remained with them, but they instantly cheered, waving their fists and hooting into the sky.
“They’re firing weapons,” Caspar continued. “Like Angra’s cannons, only smaller.”
“Angra’s cannons?” Lekan’s face contorted. “Are they fighting alongside his soldiers?”
But Caspar smiled. “No. Leave it to the Yakimians to figure out a way to re-create Angra’s own weapon and use it against him.”
The area this group occupied was cramped with soldiers, but space had been made around Caspar, enough to allow movement to see the field. In this clearing a great ripple of maroon light fractured the empty air, bending and contracting until a man appeared.
A man appeared.
Even the magic in Ceridwen didn’t react to it, her shock too potent.
It wasn’t Angra. Soldiers instantly whirled on him, weapons upright, but the man didn’t seem the least bit concerned. His dark skin stretched as he smiled, a scar through the right side of his face coaxing a memory into Ceridwen’s beaten mind.
She had seen this man before, in Putnam. He was the servant who had escorted them to the university and showed her and Meira around the library.
Rares.
He looked straight at her. “You did a brave thing,” he said, and encompassed the soldiers. “You all have. But the Winter queen has reached the chasm. The end is drawing near, and we have come to help usher it onward.”
We?
Ceridwen stood again, her bound arms against her spine. As she rose, she saw more of that refracted maroon light throughout the battlefield. Nearby, within their soldiers; far off, near the approaching army, who marched into the battle alongside small wheeled cannons. Everything Meira had told Ceridwen filtered through her mind like sunlight through a dirty window.
Paisly. The Order of the Lustrate.
Rares drew a blade from his belt, the long, heavy sleeves of his robe swaying as he lifted it into the air. “Those who still wish to fight, do so knowing this war will soon end,” he shouted.
At Ceridwen, Rares leveled a single determined look.
“Hold on,” he said before he dove away, toward Angra’s soldiers. He met them with even greater speed than they showed, blocking their attacks with invisible bursts that sent them flying through the air. From somewhere down the valley, a crack of thunder erupted over the continuing explosions of the Yakimian weapons, and lightning plummeted out of the sky in a sizzling bolt that shattered one of the cannons.
The Paislians were fighting Angra’s soldiers with magic. The Yakimians had come to help too—Giselle must have had a change of heart.
Ceridwen wavered as the voices around her rose from the murmurings of soldiers in the throes of defeat to the cheers of people given hope. This was what they needed—something to even the battle. An advantage to keep the fight going long enough to help Meira.
But Angra had gone after her.
Ceridwen took Rares’s words, repeating them over and over to combat the tide of hatred and need that still filled her.
“Hold on,” she said, a plea that rose until she was screaming, begging Meira to hear it and keep fighting. It was all she could do now. They had all come together to fight for this world, to fight for Meira, and, burn it all, she would succeed.
“Hold on,” Ceridwen begged. “Hold on.”
37
Meira
ANGRA IS HERE. And I’m still alive.
But I didn’t come this far to live.
I pull myself to my feet and reach for my chakram, letting it soar at him before the new wounds scattered over my body sing out a resounding chorus of pain. One of my ribs aches; a slice in my thigh burns; blood trickles into my eye, but I swipe it away as my chakram cuts through the air at Angra.
It won’t hit him. He knows I’ll use it, but it will distract him, just for a beat—so before it has time to reach him, I run. The edge of the cliff is only a few paces from the wall of the chasm, but it stretches before me as each footfall draws me closer yet still too far. I pull at the coldness in me, intending to hurl myself magically to the edge—
But a wave of Decay comes at me again. The cord of shadow wraps around my body, straining taut as it snatches me back. Angra deflects my chakram as the Decay yanks me away, and my blade drops out of the air, clanks against the cliff face—and falls over the edge.
I see my chakram fall as if in a dream. The ball of magic spikes with the electric, crackling destruction of an object falling into it.
My chakram is gone.
Pain screams up my arm as I drop like a sack of coal on the rock. Something popped, but I’m too desperate and blind to know where. This isn’t how it was supposed to happen. I’m ready to end this—I need to end this—
“You will not defeat me!” Angra’s bellow crashes through the chasm. Wrath emanates from each word, and when I roll to my feet, left arm pinned to my side, I face a madman.
His eyes sit crazed in his blotchy face as he rocks toward me. Mather hurls himself in front of me.
Angra chortles.
“So sweet,” he rumbles. “But I’ve brought someone to take care of that.”
I grab Mather’s shoulder with my one good arm and try to tug him behind me—of the two of us, I’m better suited to fight Angra—but a shadow moves in the exit tunnel, one that makes both Mather and me stiffen instinctively.
The shadow hobbles into the chasm with just as much delirium as Angra. He’s being fed Angra’s emotions, I realize—every spark of anger, every flurry of rage. Angra pumps all of it into Theron, who doesn’t waste a heartbeat.
He plunges down the cliff, both his fists wrapped around a blade. Mather shoves me back, but it isn’t me Theron swings at.
He propels his blade straight at Mather. I stumble to the ground, screaming as Mather ducks, drops, and flips away to put space between him and Theron. A knife appears in Mather’s hand, glinting off the magic chasm.
“I won’t lose her to you,” Theron snarls, and launches forward.
I scramble for my short sword, finally get it in my grip, but the choice to help Mather is taken away when the Decay snakes around me. Magic loops over my arm, wrenching the sword from my hand. My broken arm grates and I cry out as the Decay drags me over the uneven ground toward Angra.
My own magic responds with a surge of ice that shrivels the darkness, and I leap up. Angra stands not four paces away, between the edge of the cliff and me. My eyes scan the ground to look for my sword, and it’s there, waiting behind a stalagmite—
I reach out toward the sword, magic bursting in an icy column from my fingers, but Angra sends a blast to match me. His reaches my sword first, a smoky shadow looping around the blade like vines eating up a tree, and with a harsh jerk of his arm, the sword flies behind him to drop off the edge of the cliff just like my chakram.
“Oh, no, Highness,” Angra taunts. “I’ve seen all your tricks. I’ve survived everything you’ve ever thrown at me. There is no ending
where I don’t emerge victorious.”
I don’t acknowledge him. I run, aiming to dart around him, racing on nothing but primal drive for the ball of magic. Nothing else is in me anymore, no pain or love or feeling at all. All I am is all I’m meant to be—a void from which anything could sprout. Goodness or evil, purity or darkness—whatever happens after this, it will be the world’s glorious, unaffected choice.
Angra whips the shadow back and the line of magic barrels at me, blocking my path to the chasm. I scream—no, no, NO—and drop to my knees. The dense, humid particles of air that hang in the chasm fly to me, lengthening into a solid wall of ice that slams up in time to block me from the burst of Angra’s magic.
He cackles, sends another whip that chips away at my ice barrier. “I told you, Highness—I know your tricks.”
I grunt, arms up to keep the ice barrier reinforced with my magic. Nothing he says matters. I will end this.
“Every defense you have, every pathetic plan you made,” Angra continues. Another knot of Decay slams into my barrier. “Nothing you do can stop me. Even your ally, the Summerian princess? She’s mine now. Mine. And all the world will follow her, one by one, until it is as it was meant to be: controlled by me.”
Ceridwen fell to Angra? I choke on it. His words make me glance to the side, where my shield ends. Mather and Theron fight still, back and forth across the cliff.
The last time they fought, months ago, lifetimes ago, they were matched skill for skill in Bithai’s training yard. But now Theron has Angra’s Decay fueling him, and he moves faster than any normal human could—slashing around Mather so quickly, I can barely keep track of him. And if I’m having trouble watching him, Mather has to be even more frenzied.
I swivel to Mather, ready to launch one invigorating burst of strength and energy to help him. But before the magic leaves my body, Mather turns, and Theron swipes his blade through the air, both of them arching toward each other. All breath leaves me, my throat closing in horror that Mather won’t be able to duck Theron’s blow.
But Theron’s blade doesn’t plunge into Mather as it should.
I blink, and Mather catches Theron’s sword.
How did it—there was no way Mather could have moved that fast—
A glow of yellow emanates from Mather’s other fist, one of the many rocks here imbued with the source’s power over the years. Just like the original conduits that used to run rampant through the world, giving single jolts of magic that people eventually used for the evil acts that created the Decay. Compared to the Royal Conduits, individual conduits are laughably small and temporary, good only for quick influxes of power.
But quick influxes of power are just what Mather needs.
The stone in his hand dims to a muted shine and he tosses it, spins under Theron’s next swing, and grabs a glowing blue stone that helps him catch Theron’s jab. He’s using the magic only to defend, not attack.
Snow above. He figured out on his own what Rares and Oana had to teach me through violent lightning strikes.
A split shakes my ears and I look up in time to see a crack in the top of my ice shield, plummeting down, straight for me. Angra’s magic—he’s breaking the ice barrier. I have no weapons left, nothing I could use to attack him.
Except the ice.
Angra gives me no further time to think. I launch back as my barrier explodes, slivers of ice cutting through the air and scraping my face in small frozen blades. One large shard whirls after me, and I catch it before it shatters on the stone.
“No,” I snarl, at him, at myself, at this whole awful war, and it’s the only thing I can say as I stand there, the skin on my palm breaking open as I grip the ice shard.
Angra stands, triumphant among the ruins of my ice barrier. “Go ahead and try, Winter queen. Spring will always win.”
My useless broken arm stays clamped to my body, but the rest of me moves to fight without any prodding, knees bending, waist shifting, good arm coiling as I throw the ice shard at Angra. He slams one arm up, a shield of Decay incinerating the shard before it touches him. But I let another fly, scrambling through the debris around me to hurl any and all pieces I can find. A particularly large chunk drops into my palm, and my magic flares with recognition, wanting to break free, so I let it—but only to creep down my left arm and heal the break. No other magic use. I can’t risk magic in what could be an attack on Angra, a negative action that could feed the Decay.
I’m too close to lose.
Ice shard after ice shard, and each one lets me take another step closer to Angra, to the edge. Closer and closer, my arm a repetition of grab, bend, throw—grab, bend, throw—ice flying toward Angra only to dissolve as he wrenches up barrier after barrier against my relentless attacks. His face bends with vehemence, brows caving over his eyes in a glare that matches the growl he unleashes.
A few more steps, just a few more—
One ice shard flies, smaller, and instead of dissolving in Angra’s barrier, it hits him, only because he lets his defense fall to fling his arms straight out at me. The ice leaves a thin red line along his cheek, blood welling in beaded trickles as his magic flings me back, high into the wall, but instead of crashing to the ground again, I’m held there, pinned to the stone.
Angra pants, one hand lifted to keep me defenseless against the rock.
“If you kill me now,” I say, “all of Winter will become just like me. Conduits. There will always be someone to fight you.”
“You think they can stop me?” Angra lowers his hand and I grind down the wall, serrated rocks cutting into my back. A sharp scream bursts from my lips before I can bite it away, and the noise makes Mather pause in his fight.
He turns toward me. Just a flinch.
Theron rakes his blade across Mather’s stomach.
I feel the cut as if it happened to me, a hot sear that empties my body of rational thought.
“Winter welcomed me,” Angra continues, unmoved by anything happening outside us. “Your kingdom opened its doors to me once I told them the truth of our power. Conduits or no, they worship me. The world worships me, Winter queen, and you cannot defeat me.”
Mather crumples, one hand around his gut.
Theron circles him, grinning, his sword tinged red.
Watching Mather scramble for another conduit, his wound leaking scarlet blood down his thighs and Theron readying behind him, blade rising, all I can see is death.
Sir, and Nessa, and Garrigan, Alysson, Noam, Finn, myself—everyone I couldn’t save.
Angra thinks this is his war, and maybe it once was. But it has become something far greater, something that makes him inconsequential by comparison.
This has nothing to do with him. This has nothing to do with his magic.
This is about all the people I couldn’t save and all the people still out there now. This is about a future, a true future, the one that died when I was a child who had weapons instead of toys. The future that died when Mather had to grow up thinking he was the king of a lost kingdom, when Theron’s father forced him to live a life by Cordell’s rules, when Rares and Oana couldn’t have a child, when Ceridwen had to bow to her brother’s tyranny.
The future even Angra should have had. One that may have been worse than the one he lived, yes, but it could have been far better. And even if it was worse, it would have been by his own doing. It would have been fair and true and human, a future free of magic, a life formed apart from darkness or light.
This has brought me nothing but death.
But from it, there will be life.
I scream and all the magic in me rushes outward, shattering the Decay’s hold on me. I drop, catching myself on the ground before more injuries can reverberate through me, and the moment I’m down I reach out to Mather, filling him with healing waves of pure ice. He bolts upright, the magic swarming him, his eyes on mine.
My attention snaps past him, to Theron, swinging his blade at Mather’s neck.
Mather darts to the left. The c
ut on his stomach is just a smear of bloodied cloth now, the skin healed and the muscles new as he lands on his elbows, bends, and misses Theron’s sword by a breath. The blade lances across the bag strapped to Mather’s back, so when he spins to kick Theron’s legs out from under him, items fly in a gust of rope and packets of food and—
A dagger, the hilt softly glowing purple. Cordell’s conduit?
I don’t have time to think about it. The particles of air shift around me, tingling along my arms in waves of warning. The magic here is the opposite of Angra’s—pure and untouched. And now, awoken, unleashed, with that same magic threading through my veins, I can feel the changes, when Angra’s Decay barrels at me.
So I move before he strikes me, and the blast of shadow he sends smashes into the wall. Chunks of rock scatter, but I whirl, punching a hand at Angra in a swift snap of defense, the one glorious loophole that lets me fight him, that let Oana fling bolts of lightning at me without feeding the Decay.
The source of magic hanging just beyond snaps and pops in response to my call, and it isn’t snow or ice I punch at Angra. It’s magic in its most basic form, a coiling strand that I redirect from the chaotic, striking path it had been on to explode the ground at Angra’s feet. He stumbles back, shouting in pain.
A grunt pulls my attention to Mather and Theron. Theron drops, his sword launching from his hand when his arm smacks into the ground. Mather leaps on him, one solid blow knocking Theron’s head back into a rock and sending him bobbing in a dizzy swirl.
“You cannot take my power,” Angra declares, balling his hand, the Decay building around his fist in what will be a deathblow. “No one can take my power. This world is free, finally, from people like you who seek to stifle it.”
He thrusts forward. Shadow fills the air, rotating strands of it that break apart into dozens of cloudy, dark fingers, all spiraling for me, all bent on destruction.
“I couldn’t have said it better myself,” I mutter.
All I feel as Angra’s magic dives for me is adrenaline, the resounding, delirious joy of this being over.