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Smooth metal was cold to the touch under her fingers. The tall curving gates felt like ice compared to her body that was sweating under what little armor she had worn. Long strands of hair had come loose from her braid and strung themselves over her cheeks in the passing wind. She looked up, Shelby sucking in a deep breath as he clung to the gate.
“How do you suppose we take down four queens at once?” Fighting one queen at a time had been hard enough.
“Well, we could give it a good try, and if that doesn’t work…” his throat bobbed, “then I have another plan.”
Something wet and warm splattered against the back of Ace’s neck. Rehan shouted his apologies in passing and she cringed at the blood now dripping under her shirt.
“What is your other plan?”
Ramdon’s laughter echoed inside of her. This was either going to be really, really good or really, really bad.
“Do you remember how we met?” Shelby reached behind him.
“Uh, I was stealing from you?” The metal gate rattled as she turned and slammed herself back into it to avoid the swipe of an axe. The arm that had lurched for her was severed by Rehan a second later before his second blade found the man’s heart.
“You were trying to steal my personal notebook. A spell I’d worked on for literal years.” A crumpled paper was held between them. Red smeared from his fingertips over the back of the page as he offered it to her. “You’ll have to speak it, and with your blood, we can connect all of them, but I think,” his hazel eyes darted away as he spoke to the ground, “I think, I’m strong enough to survive it now.”
“You weren’t going to survive it before?” She took the paper, trying to smooth the wrinkles as he shook his head. “You were…” Ace read the paper, not daring to speak the words out loud, but the image reflected in her mind as if the words themselves were a prayer. “The spell links your life to theirs. That’s—that’s suicide.”
“It was. At the time it was the only way I could think of to defeat them and give the warlocks and witches their chance at freedom.”
“Shelby, this is dark magic. Very dark magic.”
The kind that could corrupt a man’s soul.
His throat bobbed. “Yes, which is why it was so easy to say yes to helping you instead. But now…now we don’t even know if I can die. I can’t speak the words myself, it isn’t the kind of spell I can perform on my own. It needs someone to direct it.”
The thudding of her heart resounded inside her own ears. Thud-unk. Thud-unk.
What if this went wrong? What if he could die? What if?
“I’m sure we can find another way.”
He nodded slowly. “We could but not without more deaths.”
Lantern lights flickered on, lit throughout the castle and its courtyard as the sun fell toward the horizon.Flames burned behind them, lit by Fae or Witch they weren’t sure. Ace felt her pulse race just a little faster.
She shook her head at Shelby. “I don’t know that I’m even willing to try.”
She looked him over from head to toe, trying to remember every little detail about him she had become so fond of. He looked almost as he had the day they met, but with no tunic and the long purple sash that marked him as a warlock the queens claimed was long gone. His eyebrows were pulled down low over his hazel eyes slashed with one streak of orange. She refused to imagine her life without him.
“No,” she said more firmly. “We will find another way. We are in this together.”
If she stared up at him for too long her neck would tire, though she found that she had almost gotten used to it. She tried to tell herself that this wasn’t going to be the last time she ever saw him, but who was she to know? Inhaling she pressed her palms into the gate. When it didn’t give she felt the glow of holy fire settle upon her so fiercely that her hair lifted away from her face and her braid came off her back. The power she’d been reborn with made her body light as she cut through the lock.
The doors swung in with an unearthly force slamming them wide open. Her foot hardly left the ground before the same wind that had wrenched the doors open wrapped itself tightly around her body and pulled her through the gravel. Heels digging in, she held tight to her sword and Shelby’s spell that was still in her left hand. A yelp of surprise parted her lips. Shelby lurched to grab her and his fingers narrowly missed before Ace was pulled. Too quickly. Vomit began to rise up her throat.
The steps leading up to the castle doors waited for her. Her family stood in silence, watching her where she was forced to stop just before them. Idalia prowled down the steps, her staff tapping like the heels on her feet. The flames within had died down.What did that mean?
“Well, well, well, if it isn’t our wayward sister. I’ve offered you a happy reunion with your family and a life filled with peace and luxury and you turned it down. Perhaps you’ll change your mind if I ask once more?”
Ace’s mother and father jogged down the stairs. Sorrow took the place of her angry frustrations and the sword in her hand dissolved. The wind and invisible fingers slipped away from her as they collided. A tremble coursed through her. Her limbs were heavy and light all at once as she returned her parents’ hugs. Neither of them cared that she was covered in blood, or scarred, or had eyes like a monster. Her mother pressed a kiss at her temple, her lips brushing just against her hairline.
“We do not care for our lives, but I’m so glad that I was able to see you one more time.”
“We love you, Aylee,” her father hummed, his chin propped on top of her head.
Half of her wanted to give everything just to stand here a while longer and pretend as if war wasn’t being waged across the city. The other half couldn’t avoid what she had come here to do. Sniffling and trying to wipe some of the blood off of her face, Ace shrugged out of her parents’ arms and looked up at the four queens of Pasia.
