The Mirror didn't shatter.
Instead, the glass flowed upward, silver wrapping around the Thorn's length like molten moonlight, fusing with the gold until the two were gleaming, nearly indistinguishable.
The force of the binding threw me backward, but I steadied myself, still gripping the now-unified relics, my numb hands wrapped around the hilt so tightly I couldn’t let go. The Thorn and Mirror had become one—a staff of gold shot through with silver veins, pulsing with contained power that sang through my palms and sank deep into my bones.
The Crown warmed against my head, burning my temples.
Growing hotter by the second, like it was fusing itself onto my skull.
The pain was excruciating, but I had to withstand the agony. The suffering was the final piece, the seal that would lock everything together, the price of the gift, how my worthiness would be judged by all those who came before me.
I was on my knees now, the silvery Thorn held before me, not that I could let go. I sensed the magic of generations thrumming through me, centuries of Rooke power waiting to be unleashed. My body shook, flesh and bone trembling in the iron-clad grip of the ritual, ready to be sundered apart, then sewn back together, and I wondered if this was when most of my kin died, at the very end, when they’d thought victory was in their grasp.
I had to keep going, I had to…
Through the pain, I managed the next part of the spell?—
"By Crown and Thorn and Mirror's face,
I bind all three to time and place,
My blood the lock, my will the key,
As I decree, so this shall be."
I pressed my still-bleeding palm against the Crown, leaving a crimson handprint on the ancient gold. Then, following the grimoire's final instruction, I brought the staff up to touch the Crown's highest spire, the largest bloodstone crystal.
The connection was instantaneous.
Power exploded—not my own magic rushing out, but my ancestors' magic rushing in. A hundred voices screamed inside my mind, each one a Rooke who had deposited their excess power into the relics over the last…twenty millennia. I felt my great-grandfather's rage, my grandfather’s sorrow, some long lost uncle's cruel, blind ambition.
I felt them all, throwing my head back, an unholy sound ringing off the throne room's vaulted ceiling. The blood circle flared bright, the stains igniting like crimson embers, burning the symbols into the stone floor.
The silver shackles broke, falling off my wrists in small, glittering pieces as that glorious wave of dark power washed through me, cold and brilliant, tasting like moonlight and frost.
The Crown melted into me.
I clawed at my scalp, burning hot gold running like water down my temples, over my cheekbones. I screamed again. At least, I thought I screamed…
Maybe the sound was only inside my head.
It burned.
The Crown wasn’t on my head anymore—it was inside me, molten gold searing through bone, etching old laws I’d never agreed to across the soft parts of my memories. The Thorn bit into my palms, drinking deep, and every drop of my lifeforce it stole pulled me one step away from this world.
Away from Lyrae.
Memories slammed through me in jagged flashes:wars I’d never fought, lovers I’d never touched, thrones I’d never bled for.For one terrifying heartbeat, I felt myself slip—losing my hold on reality, swallowed by the very power that should have been mine.
No. No. I couldn’t fail.
Lyrae needed me…I had to…I had to…
Somewhere, outside of the storm consuming me, I managed a shuddering breath. Another.
I opened my eyes. Braced one foot on the floor and shoved up, knees trembling, thighs shaking, arms aching asI lifted the Thorn, lifted my head beneath the crushing weight of the Crown.
I was a fucking Rooke.
