Page 68 of Enthralled

“You always drove yourself to beat him. You thought if you could make yourself stronger, better, bigger, then he couldn’t hurt you anymore.”

The wraith shudders, howls, slavers . . . and becomes a child, beaten black and blue. A child with no recourse against a terrifying father save to become that which he feared most. Which is what he did. Following in the hated footsteps of his worst nightmare, destroying himself every step of the way. Failing to rise above, failing to defeat, only to become.

Hopelessness throbs in the heart of this little boy. Hollowness, an empty void that could never be filled, not by the love of a brutal father nor the love of a weak mother. Not even the love of a desperate, clinging, stubborn sister. Nothing. Nothing could fill that void. Because it was never meant to be filled.

“Oscar,” I whisper. “Oscar, you’ve already won. You won long ago. Don’t you understand?”

The Noswraith draws back, peering up at me from its dark, twisted, shadow-writhing mask. But behind the shadows and the hollow eyes, I can just discern my brother.

“Edgar is gone,” I say. “He died, and everything he was died with him. He is unmourned and unloved. But you?” I cup his awful face in my hands, feel the soft round cheeks beneath the hard ridges. “I will love you until my dying day. And love like that never ends. It lives on through eternity, long after we are dust. When our names, our faces, our deeds are forgotten, still that love endures.” I lean forward, press my lips to his savage brow, then rest my forehead against his. “You defeated Edgar long ago. For I will mourn you, dearest brother, as he was never mourned. And I will hold my love for you forever in my heart.”

When I look again, Oscar’s large brown eyes gaze back at me. “Clara?” he whispers.

“Give him up, Oscar,” I whisper. “Let him go.”

For an instant I glimpse twin points of light in the depths of his pupils, the flame of genius which always burned there, feeding on hatred, passion, and fear. That light flares again, bright torches in the depths. But even as I watch, it transforms into a white, shining radiance.

Oscar closes his eyes, tilts his head back. The apparition in my arms dissolves into little points of light, floating away into the air. I kneel in this space outside reality, kneel in the street of my family home, watching him drift into the distant night sky. I press my hands to my heart, holding the warmth in its center.

“Let him go,” I whisper.

And finally . . . I do.

The power inside me is of such destructive force, one wrong move, and I will bring this whole palace crumbling to dust.

A distant part of me is aware of the mayhem all around—of Noswraiths and battle and blood and death. But I cannot turn my attention to it. If I do, I will look for Clara. In that moment, I will be done for. I’m not strong enough to resist throwing myself completely to her defense or rescue.

No, I must trust her to fight her own battles. After all I cannot save her from everything—particularly not the monsters which haunt her soul. If she does not choose to save herself, there’s nothing I can do. I learned that lesson seven long years ago.

So I concentrate on the gate and the spell of unmaking. I’m not as strong as I would be if I stood on the other side of that portal, in the realm of my kingship. Some of that raw, Aurelian power funnels through realities to reach me, but if anything, that makes it harder to reverse the spell, to break the gate, to cut myself off from that great wellspring of magic. But I won’t risk Ivor escaping into the worlds beyond.

The gate crumbles. The vastness of too many realities opening at once ripple, surge, and spurt out magic in bursts. The doorway cracks, stone falling in a showering stream. Then, with a last expulsion of energy, the portal collapses.

The blast strikes me straight on, sends me hurtling against the wall. I fall to the floor, momentarily stunned. Shaking my head to clear the pulsing magic still moving in my brain, I look up. Before me stands the doorway to my office. The frame is cracked, but otherwise all looks as it was. No gaping void, no churning vortex. Just a simple doorway opening into a chamber crammed with books and shelves and a too-large desk.

I let out a short breath. It’s done then. Vespre is truly sundered from the worlds.

As though doors and windows are suddenly flung open, I become aware of the noise all around me. Blinking away the last of the daze, I take in the sights. My gaze lands first on Mixael, gasping for breath as he lies in a pool of blood, his hands pressed to a gash in his side. Anj grapples with Ivor, the two of them intent on carving each other to ribbons with their swords. Anj is so great and terrible, and Ivor such a small, wretched thing, yet he does not give ground. His madness has made him ferocious, and even the powerful troll warrior falters beneath his blows.

As though my gaze alerts him, Ivor turns abruptly and fixes his mad, rolling eye on me. Then he looks beyond me to the gate. Broken, empty. His face seems almost to rip in half as his jaw opens in a horrible roar. With a last vicious twist, he knocks Anj’s sword spinning from his grasp. It lands with a clang, but rather than run the troll through, Ivor pivots on heel and flees the library.

I’m on my feet in an instant, snatching up the big troll sword as I go. Some instinct tells me that even now, with the gates closed and his plan foiled, I dare not let Ivor out of my sight. I rush from the library to the top of the stair and look over the rail to see Ivor descending at lunatic speed. At first I think he merely flees me. Then I spy a figure kneeling on the floor below: Clara. Cradling a broken body in her arms.

Ivor comes to a halt, staggers, and grips the newel for support. His ravaged voice chokes out a single word: “Oscar?”

Clara startles and looks up. When she sees Ivor standing above her, sword in hand, she does not react. She merely presses her brother’s corpse closer, her expression filled with raw pain and yet, simultaneously, a strange serenity.

Ivor utters a wordless roar. Then he points that long blade directly at her face. “You never understood him,” he snarls. “You never believed in him, never saw what he could be.”

Clara does not answer. She looks Ivor in the eye, along the line of that blade.

“This is your fault!” Ivor continues. “You stubborn, willful bitch. Everything would have come about right, everything would have been made what it should be. I would be king! Ruler of a united Eledria! I would have risen to my destiny, acclaimed by all.”

Clara shakes her head slowly. “You are so small, Ivor. Small and mean and . . . in the end . . . nothing.”

Ivor stares at her, his sword arm trembling. For a moment he cannot speak, cannot move, struck utterly immobile by her disdain. Then he roars, draws back his arm, his blade angled to take off her head.

But I’m already there. Plunging over the banister, I fall to the floor, land lightly, and bring the troll sword down hard and block that blow. Fae steel rings against the troll crystal blade. Ivor whirls about, shocked. When he sees me, hellfire blazes to light in his one remaining eye. All the hatred that exists between us ignites an inferno in the atmosphere as he hurtles toward me, blade flashing. I receive his blows, parry, lunge, deflect.

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