Total pages in book: 140
Estimated words: 132625 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 663(@200wpm)___ 531(@250wpm)___ 442(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 132625 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 663(@200wpm)___ 531(@250wpm)___ 442(@300wpm)
I don’t know any other way to do this. “You know what I have to do,” I tell the males. They exchange worried glances, unsure.
Before they can stop me, I walk to the closest raging fire and right into the flames.
Chapter Forty-Five
Felicity
Misha, Pretha, and the silencers are on the top of the north tower, just where Remme said I would find them. Misha and Pretha are holding hands and facing the lawn from the back of the rooftop terrace, focusing intently. The three silencers stand in a triangular formation. They’re in the uniform of Konner’s men and are glistening with sweat, a sickly greenish pallor to their skin, as if blocking out the magic in the whole palace is taking everything out of them.
“You have to drop the silencers!” I shout. “We need the magic!”
The silencers look at me, then at each other, but do nothing.
I turn to Misha. “Tell them to let magic back into the palace.”
Misha’s eyes flicker open and he gives a delirious half smile at the sight of me.
“Listen to me!” I shout. “Drop the silencers now! Hale is dying. We need magic to win this!”
Misha blinks several times. “Too dangerous.”
“Erith is dead. He can’t reopen the portals.”
He gives a slow nod, as if it’s taking his mind much longer than usual to process this information. “You can stop,” he tells the others.
The female of the trio looks to him, her head rolling to the side as if she lacks the strength to hold it up. “You’re sure?” Her voice is barely a whisper.
“Yes,” Misha says.
The trio lets go of each other and collapses to the ground. They’re all dragging in big, ragged gulps of air like they just kicked their way to the surface after being trapped underwater.
In the next moment, I feel it—the ripple of power and magic and life returning to the palace.
“Junius!” Pretha calls, and the sentinel on the stairs turns. “Bring Goliad and hold these wards for a while.”
I run to the tower’s edge to scan the yard below and lose my breath. The queen is being strung up on the palace gates, and—
“That’s Jasalyn,” Pretha says from beside me. Misha moves to stand at the edge with me.
I follow her gaze as the clock clangs once, signaling we’re mere seconds from midnight—from the return of Mordeus—and we all spot the princess just as she steps into the flames of the raging bonfire.
Pretha grabs my arm and squeezes hard. “What is she doing?” she asks, her voice barely audible. We all know what Jas is doing even before her blood-curdling screams echo through the night. Through the capital. Through the whole world.
Everything seems to fall away but that single point in the distance where Jasalyn walked into the fire. This doesn’t feel real. It’s all too much like a horrible dream. “Can it work like that?” I ask Pretha. “Can she burn from a fire that isn’t her own? Can she rise again this way?”
“I don’t know,” Pretha says. “If she can command the flame, we know she can wield the phoenix, but if the flame isn’t hers . . . I just don’t know.”
We watch. All I see are raging flames. All we hear is the sound of horrific cries tapering off into the night. My gaze scans the horizon and my breath catches.
“Is that what I think it is?” Misha asks.
He sees it too. A mass of bodies marching toward the palace gates.
“How many of them are there?” I ask.
Panic fills Pretha’s eyes. “We’ve lost too many men to survive numbers like that.”
But then something strange happens. The insurgents who are filling the palace lawn begin running out to attack the new forces.
Mordeus’s soldiers begin falling. One after another.
“Who?” Pretha whispers.
I press my fingers to my lips. “Crissa. The Eloran queen. She brought her battalion to help us fight.”
Chapter Forty-Six
Jasalyn
Pain surrounds me. Consumes me. Becomes me.
There were no blades in Mordeus’s dungeons that hurt like this. There were no moments when my hope for tomorrow was this bleak.
My mind tells me not to fight. Begs me to surrender. My body has nothing left to fight with. I am agony and flame and despair, and I don’t know how to rise.
“Wake up, little human. Open your eyes and look at me.”
I recognize that voice from my memories—from my nightmares.
The room spins, and even with my eyes closed I know it’s dark. Even without obeying that horrifically familiar voice, I know that the only light here will be from the unnatural glow of his silver eyes.
“Come, little pet. Wake up so we can play.”
The stone floor is ice cold beneath my cheek, and I focus on the sensation as I try to pull myself from the heavy grip of sleep. Wake up.
Darkness. Stone floor. The whimpering of the woman down the hall.