Page 102 of A Legacy of Wrath and Reckoning

Holt’s concern danced along her skin.

I’m alright, she reassured him.

The two blacksmiths sat in separate cages in the throne room, largely unaffected by the vanquicite, but still locked behind bars. Curious. She moved closer, to the passageway behind the throne she and Holt had escaped through. Ranon and Aurelia weren’t in the palace, but where Aurelia might have evanesced them to Zylah couldn’t be certain.

She needed to focus. To block everything else out if she was going to nullify the vanquicite. Whatever happened after this, the ability to have eyes and ears within the palace would be paramount to helping them gather as much information on Ranon’s intentions as possible, information they sorely lacked.

The vanquicite was scattered throughout the palace. In the throne room beside her. The inner courtyard below. Weapons in the armoury, Zylah’s threads flitting over every piece. A dull ache pressed at the base of her skull as her threads coiled around all of it, sinking themselves into the stone and sifting through its properties, seeking out the magic. Just like pulling down wards, she told herself.

The ache bloomed into a sharp pain as her threads began to tug and she leaned back against the wall in the darkness to steady herself, but she didn’t stop. The vanquicite had a signature, just like the signature she’d come to recognise in her friends, in Holt, in anything that contained magic. And all she had to do was snag the piece she needed to begin unravelling it. The difficulty was the quantity. This wasn’t a single ward, or an individual’s magic; there were countless pieces of vanquicite around her.

She pulled again, a sharp pain pressing at her temples and a silent gasp causing her breath to stutter.

Zylah, stop.Holt’s plea skittered down her spine.

She pulled back from the vanquicite for a moment, enough to check in on him and her friends. There were so many vampires and thralls surrounding them, Zylah could barely count them all.

We’re handling it, Holt told her.Forget the vanquicite, just get the blacksmiths and get out of there.

But she was so close. She pulled at the material again and again and again, and on her fifth attempt she felt some of the magic shatter, but not entirely. Only this time her breath stuttered for an entirely different reason. Thallan. Her threads detected him inside the palace.

Zylah abandoned her checks of the vanquicite to evanesce into the throne room, blinking at the onslaught of light and cursing under her breath as she realised her other sight had been affected from overstretching herself.

Shadows obscured her vision, but she could still see the two blacksmiths staring back at her, neutral expressions on their faces as they studied her carefully. Vaguely, she registered the deceits settling over their features, but there wasn’t time to dwell on that. She needed to stall Thallan, to finish her work on the vanquicite. No sooner had she finished the thought than the doors to the throne room slammed open and Thallan strode in, mercifully alone.

Zylah.The urgency in Holt’s tone had her sending a flare of reassurance in response.

“I let you slip away once, don’t think my bleeding heart will extend that offer to a second time,” the vampire said quietly as he stalked towards her.

“You tortured him for months, you think I want to walk away from this?”

Outside, Holt and the others fought ruthlessly, a clash of magic and steel and fangs and the vicious, monstrous blows of the thralls, her mate’s concern palpable.

She felt Thallan trying to break his way in, a blinding pain behind her eyes that almost brought her to her knees, but her threads wove a protective barrier around her mind, an impenetrable shield that he couldn’t shatter.

The vampire laughed mirthlessly. “All walls break.”

Zylah didn’t let her surprise show on her face. She pulled at her magic, summoning roots and vines to restrain him, shadows to swarm him and cloak him in darkness.

Thallan only laughed again. “Parlour tricks.” This time his mental attack brought her to her knees.

In the gardens, Zylah felt the way Holt grappled with a vampire, holding onto his most powerful magic, channelling it to her instead. She sucked in a breath, picturing Rose as she had seen her the day before, the shadows under her eyes, the jut of her collarbone, and opened the tiniest crack in her mental defences.

Thallan stilled. “Rose,” he breathed.

Zylah hadn’t realised he’d moved to stand before her, but as his onslaught receded and he cradled the memory of Rose in her thoughts like a delicate flower, the details of the room came back to her. It gave her the seconds she needed to yank her threads across the vanquicite one final time. To shatter the magic within it until it became nothing more than black, polished stone, every piece of it inert where it lay scattered throughout the palace. Shadows swam in her eyes again, the pain so acute it was as if it were splitting her skull in two. Her hands pressed into the plush carpet to steady herself, her breaths coming out in ragged gasps.

Holt’s blast of magic rippled over her skin from the gardens, and Thallan muttered under his breath, fingers curled into her shirt as he dragged her to her feet, clicking his tongue.

“Your power has grown. I’ll give you that,” he seethed.

Zylah didn’t get a chance to reply. Another wave of Holt’s magic rolled over her skin, ripping Thallan away from her and sending him tumbling across the throne room in a rush of flames. She sagged back, strong arms catching her and banding around her waist, Holt’s healing magic already seeping into her bones.

The next few moments were a blur. Kej and Daizin muttered instructions to the blacksmiths, the six of them evanescing away to a rooftop on the other side of Virian.

“Call for a scout,” Holt snapped at Daizin. “Now.”

Chapter Fifty-One

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