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Trapped. She was trapped. She was locked up. In a cage. Again. She was helpless as she watched them. She looked at Callan, eyes wide in disbelief. Sloan looked murderous as he struggled against his bonds. Finn was taking everything in, calculating. She looked at Eliza and Rayner. She looked to Cyrus, fighting with all he had not to get to Sorin but to get toher.His eyes were fierce as he locked them onto her own. “Fight!” he bellowed at her. “The stars are worth it!”
She turned and saw Sorin struggling. Sorin, who had not left her, who had come for her every single time. Sorin, who had come down into the pits of hell for her, coming back every time she slipped and slid back in. Sorin, her light in the darkness. She flashed back to laying on a cold stone floor. She flashed back to another wicked grin of victory, of eyes delighting in her misery and suffering. Not again.
Not again.
Not again.
The stars are always worth fighting for.
Flames, white as starlight, erupted all around her. The whirlwind blew apart. Talwyn screamed as she was blasted across the courtyard, the thick tree roots holding the Inner Court slackened. Scarlett landed on her feet, floating to the ground on her shadows. She needed a damn blade. She ran across the rocky ground of the courtyard, desperate to get to Sorin. She wasn’t even halfway to him, and Talwyn was already getting to her feet, shock and fury mixing on her features.
“Eliza! She needs a sword!” Sorin shouted.
Eliza cried out words in the Old Language. She was scrambling to her own feet, all of the Inner Court were, but none of them were moving fast enough to get to Scarlett before Talwyn.
Flames appeared before Scarlett, and when they were gone, a sword lay before her. The blade was the black metal that Sorin’s weapons were made of, but the hilt shone as white as the flames that had erupted from her moments earlier.
“No!” Talwyn screamed.
Scarlett had the sword in her hand before Talwyn could take another step. As soon as her fingers touched the hilt, the same white flames encompassed the blade. As she held that blade before her, she felt all the rage and fury and hurt and pain and loss that she’d experienced these last years come crashing into her. She had finally found a place she belonged. She had found someone who came for her. She had found people who did not fear her darkness but understood it. People who wouldn’t leave her alone. She had found home.
To hell with whoever tried to take that from her again.
She felt Sorin and the others racing up behind her, and she felt Talwyn rally her power to blast them back. She knew what to do in her bones. Her power was yanking at the leash, straining to take over.
So she let it.
She placed the tip of the blade to the ground, and a wall of that same white flame erupted between them and Talwyn, shooting towards the sky. Talwyn’s power could not cross it.
“How did you come across that sword?” Talwyn seethed, not at her or Sorin, but at Eliza.
“There’s that underestimating again, your Majesty,” she answered with a derisive grin. Scarlett could feel the hatred emanate off of Talwyn. She brought that whip of lightning up again, and this time when she brought it down, Scarlett met it with her own blade, stepping through her fire.
“Stay behind the flames,” she heard Sorin command his Inner Court.
“I know who she is, Sorin,” Talwyn crooned. Her voice had become lilting and calm again.
“Enough,” Scarlett said. Her voice rang out, pure and commanding. Talwyn’s eyes snapped to her own.
“You do not give orders here,” Talwyn replied, a thin smile forming on her lips.
“I think you will find everyone here would disagree with you,” Scarlett replied, matching Talwyn’s icy tone.
“Have you finally come to claim your throne at last?” Talwyn asked, as a ball of the same lightning energy of her whip appeared in her hand.
“Scarlett!” Sorin cried, his voice full of warning. She felt him step beyond her wall of flame, and, as if in slow motion, she saw Talwyn send that ball of energy hurtling towards him. She had no idea what she was doing or how she did it, but a ball of her white flames met Talwyn’s orb of energy in the air, and the impact of those two powers meeting sent a blast through the courtyard that sent every one of them flying into the high walls surrounding them.
Scarlett stifled a scream at the cracking of bones in her forearmas she slammed into the stone wall. Sorin was at her side in an instant, a shield of flame surrounding them both. Rayner appeared out of smoke and ashes beside them, holding the sword that Eliza had summoned for her. He added his own shield to Sorin’s and a few moments later, Cyrus and Eliza had joined them, reinforcing with their own shields. Sorin helped Scarlett to her feet, and she choked down a scream at the stabbing pain in her abdomen. She knew that pain. Her ribs were bruised at best, broken at worst. As Talwyn approached them, Scarlett pushed past that agony, adding a layer of white flames to their shields.
“This is a family matter,” Talwyn hissed, her face white with rage.
“Thisis my family,” Scarlett replied. The pain in her arm was sharp, and her vision was blurring as she tried to breathe around the pain in her ribs, but her voice did not waiver. Her knees did not buckle.
“There is so much you do not know,” Talwyn answered, and Scarlett could have sworn there was a hint of panic in her voice.
“I know enough,” Scarlett replied, and frost began creeping up the walls of the courtyard.
Talwyn’s attention turned to Sorin, hatred filling her eyes. “You have failed yet again, Prince.”
