Page 26 of The Princesses of Ruin
The black magic of Ashai reaches for me like icy tendrils of death. I rebuff them with swiftly drawn shields, but I sense her pushing through. The marks she made on my arms are so cold they burn, and blackness seeps into me.
I scream, flinging myself from the cave mouth into Alastair’s grasp. I slam into him and he immediately flips, diving for the water. Alastair pumps his wings, and I watch over his shoulder as Ashai pursues. The darkness chases after us like a wind bewitched, twisting and turning to gain the edge against us.
“She’s coming,” I cry, my heart thundering in my chest.
Alastair banks around the cliffs and catches a frigid wind off the sea, propelling us up the plateau.Tinksof steel on steel and shouts of combat reach me instantly. I turn and look over my shoulder to see the entire Upper Kingdom in disarray.
It was supposed to be a stealth mission. Thirty Spiders from the south, thirty from the north. They would rescue the captives in thepalace in the night, and I would blow up the Dark Room. Ashai would be destroyed.
How foolish of us to think it could be so easy against the goddess of pure evil.
The crystal hums at my back and I worry for the containment. Smaller gems can hold for up to a week, but this is a prototype, our very first success with a larger crystal.
“We need to drop this,” I say against Alastair’s cheek.
“I’m going to fly over the palace,” he says.
We both know it’s a huge risk, but dropping the crystal anywhere else will be an incredible waste. Some damage is something.
But the casualties…
“They have been warned.”Alyse’s voice whispers through my mind, an ever-present watchdog. Her tone sends a shiver down my spine. She’s just not the same girl I knew before school and…she scares me, if I’m being honest. Her time without me, the things she experienced, they changed her.
Kazimir changed her.
“She’s been spotted. Northeast quadrant.”
“Northeast,” I say, certain that Alastair heard the same message from Alyse that I had.
He turns against the wind, and I see the golden spires of the place I once called home. The lion on the door blazes bright as we drop close the courtyard, causing the guards to scramble. Alastair pulls out of the dive over the entertainment hall and around the tower of the royal quarters, then swoops into the field north of the archives.
Alyse loved the archives. It was her favorite place. The centuries of records and tomes of stories—
“Will be replaced. What cannot be replaced is ourpeople, our kingdom.”
I swallow hard, shifting the pack to one of my shoulders as we clear the last building and the battlefield is revealed. Streams of black magic spear into the soldiers on the front lines, turning the weaker to her side and killing the resolute.
“Drop it,”Alyse commands.
I hesitate, my throat dry and tight as my eyes burn.
These are our people. All of them. Lumi, and the other rebels pinned down inside. Our home…
“Now, Liliana!”
I shuck the pack from my shoulder and throw it onto the battlefield, praying that Ashai is among them as it’s been reported. The bomb disappears into the night, but I feel it thud to the ground in my chest. My magic is tied to it, and I think Reina felt it, too.
I pull Kazimir’s detonator from my side satchel and hold it close to my chest.
Tell our Spiders to retreat.
“If they run, she’ll know.”
A cold tear carves down my cheek. Are we truly winning like this? Killing our own?
“Sacrifices are essential.”
Sense leaves me as I press the button on the detonator. I can’t hear the din of battle, or feel the cold wind on my face. All I know is the culmination of Reina’s magic bursting free of my containment runes at my own behest…
