Page 97 of A Legacy of Wrath and Reckoning

“She may have lived, if she’s strong. We gave her seventy-two hours to get us answers, but it would have taken another half a day for the alcane to kill her.” The truth, but Mae had been weak when they’d left her. And Zylah hadn’t felt any remorse over that since they’d left. “She thinks Ranon is trying to get home,” she added, her attention on Nye again, perhaps the only one of them that knew the details of how the original nine made it into their world. “It adds up, Nye. The power he’s holding in that orb.”

“Then I say let the fucker go,” Kej muttered, taking a swig from yet another bottle. “We’re all better off without him.”

This time it was Daizin who snatched the bottle from his hands. “And just let him become someone else’s problem? Would you truly be okay with that?” Disappointment shone in his eyes and Kej shifted on his stool as if he’d caught it, too.

“Fine then. Call the orb to you.” He waved, a flourish of his hand Zylah suspected was an imitation of summoning magic. “Smash it to pieces.”

“You think I haven’t tried?” Holt asked. “Two Yzdrit blacksmiths supposedly made their way here ahead of us, but they may have gone to Virian.”Care for a little scouting mission?he asked Zylah silently. “They might possess arrenium, but the vanquicite will still affect them, and we don’t know what their intentions are yet. Maelissa could have been lying.”

Where you go, I go, Zylah shot back.

“We haven’t been able to remain in the palace grounds for more than a few minutes with all the vanquicite,” Arlan admitted.

“We’ll go. Get a closer look,” Holt told them.

Zack looked as if he might protest, but whatever he’d been about to say, Nye cut him off. “You’re… healed?” she asked, the slightest hint of disbelief audible in her tone.

Zylah turned to her mate and met his gaze, his beautiful eyes every shade of a winter forest as they swept over her face. Holt swallowed and dipped his chin. In acknowledgement, in reverence, in awe, all of it dancing over Zylah’s skin and swirling in her blood.

“We voted against the vanquicite testing in your absence,” Zack cut in.

That was enough to pull Zylah’s attention back to the table. “You did?”

“You’ve been through enough,” Zack said. “Both of you. Sacrificed enough.”

The table fell quiet at that, but Zylah’s mind was working through possibilities, turning over ideas as the others discussed Okwata’s experiments.

You want to try to nullify the vanquicite?Holt asked her.

It would take a great deal of magic, but… maybe. I can experiment when we search for the blacksmiths.She thought back to the mine attack, to the vanquicite cells in the palace.All I’ve ever really managed is to withstand it up until now, but I want to try and strip away the part of it that affects us. Affects Fae.

The conversation around them turned to their deadline, to the approaching blood moon.

“The night of the winter solstice,” Saphi told them, all eyes shifting to the Fae. “I was one of Sira’s priestesses. Though half of them think they belong to Pallia now.”

Holt hid his surprise, his face schooled to neutrality, but Zylah felt it. Saphi had suspected witches, he had told her, not long after he’d found her in Varda months ago. But their friend had concealed her past, her connections, and Zylah knew Saphi well enough to understand it would not have been without good reason.

“They tried many times to release Ranon. Many different methods.” Her gaze shifted to Zylah. “My scar,” the Fae said, a hand tugging at her tunic to reveal the jagged lines down the centre of her chest. “From a ceremony, designed to draw power from a willing sacrifice.”

“Who did that to you?”Zylah had asked when Saphi had been tending to Zylah’s wounds when the bounty hunter had whipped her.“I did,”the Fae had replied.

Zylah pressed a hand to her stomach as Saphi went on. “But halfway through the ritual, I heard her. Sira. Begging me to stop. So I did. And I ran for a very long time.”

“I know what it is to run,”she’d told Zylah once. Rose wrapped a hand over Saphi’s, resting her head against the Fae’s shoulder.

And Sira had saved her life, if her story was to be believed.

“Why?” Rin asked at the other end of the table, Arlan at her side.

Saphi shrugged. “I don’t know. But not a day goes by that I don’t offer Sira my thanks.”

A bold admission, and Zylah understood why her friend had kept it such a well-guarded secret, even from Holt. To admit any kind of devotion to Sira, even with such a story behind it, was undoubtedly difficult for most Fae to grasp. But Zylah had spent most of her life as a human, and most of her life since running because she wasn’t. No one would offer up such a story willingly, unless it was necessary to tell it; if it truly was Sira that Saphi had heard, that changed things.

She wondered, not for the first time, if Arioch knew of all Sira had been accused of, or if it had been as a result of his imprisonment. And a ceremony designed to draw power from a willing sacrifice… The citizens of Astaria had suffered enough, both humans and Fae; if the vampires and thralls continued to populate, both humans and Fae were at risk, would never know true freedom if they had to live in constant fear of being prey. And they only had until the blood moon to put a stop to Ranon’s plans.

They talked long into the night, Holt slipping back into his role like the last four months hadn’t happened, all of them deferring to him. A plan formed for an attack on Virian, for Ranon and Aurelia, a little of Zylah’s exhaustion from earlier giving way to unyielding determination and a renewed sense of hope.

Chapter Forty-Nine

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