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What next? I suppose I could get Valina to rebuild my shields. But what if they break again, the next time I’m angry, the next time I’m in danger?
I only have one long-term option.
I need to cross into the immortal realms where I belong, where I can’t hurt people.
The barrier between our two parts of the world was crafted so that no god could pass through, but I survived it once, as a newborn. Here’s to hoping for another stroke of luck.
Tomorrow.
I’ll do it tomorrow.
CHAPTERTWENTY-NINE
THE THORNS
I’ve never had to struggle between what’s right and what I want. I’ve always wanted my crown more than anything else. I’m not power hungry, I’m realistic. I can either rise to become the king Anderkan deserves, or I can die.
My father has had most of his descendants murdered before they could become a threat to his rule. And he’s succeeded, because my older brothers and sisters failed to understand what true power is.
I’ve spent my life snaking through kingdom to kingdom, forming alliances high and low. If there’s so much of a breeze rising against me, I know it, and am able to stop it. I have contracts with every transport, every messenger, and well-placed ears in every army. I made a deal with the youngest Wicked, ensuring that no Dorathian assassin would ever accept a contract against me. Though if she dies in Magnapolis, I suppose that deal will be null and void. I need to find Daria, when the dust settles.
I’ve always focused on my survival, my rule, my kingdom. What’s right for me is to drive my hovercraft right back to Anderkan and assess the damage. Check on my poor little sister.
Instead, here I stand at the edge of the old grove, now a forest of baleful thorns.
“You won’t get through,” Marline warns me.
I glare at her. She’s part of the problem. Instead of talking things out with Alis, she just ordered an attack. And at the time, I might have voted in favor—it sounded like a good idea after being buried alive—but the moment they’d started razing the line of commons without any effort, I understood we were about to start a new era, marked in blood and iron. An era where the demi won’t just be considered privileged: we’d be enemies.
And with billions of them for a million of us? The commons might win.
“Look.” Mar takes a pebble from the ground and flings it at the grove. The thorns twist at the speed of light and slither around the stone, crushing it.
Fuck.
“What’s the plan then?” one of her cousins asks. “And where are we supposed to sleep?”
Mar wrinkles her nose. “I called Valina, but she’s busy in Vanemir. There were wounded in their fight. I don’t know when she can join us.”
Not good enough. I start to walk toward the thorns.
“Don’t do that!” the boy screams, just as I reach the border of woods.
The thorns vibrate, almost hissing, but they don’t attack me.
Alis and her stupid notion that she can’t control herself, when she would have destroyed the world a thousand times over if she couldn’t.
“I’ll be damned,” Mar whispers. “Go, then. Maybe you can make her see reason. Or at least get me my toothbrush.”
The boy at her side dips his finger on a wound at his arm, and pulls a dark, twisted blade out of nowhere. “This might be able to help. Alis’s magic is pure light. It’s a star shard. They’re basically made of the same element. It might help.”He tosses it out to me, and I catch the blade at the smooth hilt, finding it light in my hand. “Thanks. You can sleep in my dorm. There should be room for everyone.”
Night is falling in the distance, an explosion of colors, but under the canopy of thorns, I barely see any light. I’m actually unsure of the direction: the bushes are too thick to see much in the distance.
Talon screams overhead. I smile, and follow his direction.
He’s been so helpful since I got him. I should thank Valina for the generous present. Right after I scream at her for not warning me that the woman I was pursuing, believing she was the one non-magic user in her clan, is the strongest entity this side of the barrier.
The magik she absorbed should have killed her. I watched in terror, believing it would. And she shrugged it off.
