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Shadows crawled up her form as Sira claimed her. Aurelia yanked at her throat. Another way into the Vale. Another hint to guide Rosalina home. She let the moonstone necklace drop to the ground. No time nor distance nor magic can break my love for you.

Then Sira’s shadows swallowed her.

The dark came like a tide. The world turned black. The wind tore through her screams as the forest devoured her. Blackness dragged her under, into a silence so absolute it rang in her bones.

When she woke, she was on her knees in a cage of green crystal. Every surface pulsed with a sickly glow, humming with magic that was not her own.

Not of this world.

Her hands trembled. Her magic sparked weakly, then vanished. She could feel it—feel it—being drained. Sap bleeding from a wounded tree.

And a long way off, deep in the roots of her soul, she sensed Castletree shudder.

The heart of her realm.

It was wilting. Withering. Dying.

George.

“S-Sira,” she gasped, throat dry.

Through the translucent wall of green, two figures wavered.

Sira stood in a black gown, her face serene, like this was all inevitable. Beside her, taller, colder, was Caspian. He looked not at all like the boy who’d been weeping in his room.

He looked like his mother, and he regarded Aurelia with the same expression.

Aurelia’s chest tightened.

Her curse on the princes. The blood-soaked roses. The withering of her own magic.

It was all unraveling.

Castletree was too weak.

Sira’s voice echoed into the crystal cage, cruel and honeyed. “With the princes cursed and you bleeding power, now is the perfect time to take Castletree.”

Caspian stepped forward, his eyes lit with something wild. “Let me do it, Mother. I’ve been dying to finish Keldarion off.”

Aurelia’s cry tore from her throat. “Caspian, no!”

But the crystal drank the sound.

She pressed her hands to the walls, fingers splayed. Aurelia sank to the floor, heart breaking, magic flickering like the last breath of a candle.

She watched as dark purple thorns rose from the ground and dragged the Prince of the Below away. Aurelia opened her mouth to call his name, but the sound turned to a scream as another wave of this otherworldly magic hit her.

Time slipped from her.

Aurelia faded in and out of consciousness, the green crystal cage pressing colder every moment. Sira stood and watched her, as if she left Aurelia, she may disappear.

Her magic was a whisper now. Shadows moved beyond the wall, voices rising and falling. She barely heard them.

Then—

The crystal pulsed, as if welcoming someone home.

Caspian returned.