“We got them.” Varian doubled over, chest heaving, looking like death warmed over. “We found the room, bypassed the wards, had to fight three of those fucking guards, but…we have the Triune.”
“Two of them, anyway…” Ryland, who had been stalking toward us, stopped. “What the fuck happened? Are you hurt? There’s blood…everywhere.All over you.”
“I’m…surprisingly unhurt. Gravelock happened. His magic happened.” I waved my hand over the absolute mess of Rooke and his shredded clothing. “The fucker nearly killed Rooke out of spite, while his soldiers tore the castle apart, looking for us.”
Indeed, Frostveil was a mess. Besides the copious amounts of blood, furniture was overturned, tapestries shredded, glass broken. Scorch marks scarred the stone walls; some of the tapestries were smoldering piles of ash.
“But you’re okay? You’re sure?” Ryland grasped my hand and dragged me to my feet, his fingers smoothing over my cheek, even the tips coming away red. For one second, fear blazed in his eyes—fresh and hot and primal—then his breathing went wonky.
“Whoa, steady there.” I cupped his face, forced him to look at me as he swayed. “None of this is mine, it’s all Rooke’s.”
Ryland didn’t look convinced, his gaze flipping between the two of us, a quiet anger brewing on his face. Anger that changed to guilt when Rooke weakly asked, “You truly have them?”
“Well, two of them, at least. May I present…the Thorn.” Varian produced a thin, wicked-looking dagger, not like anyweapon I’d ever seen. Made from pure gold, it emitted some of that dark, pulsing power that echoed inside my chest.
The feeling was awful, suffocating, and I had no idea how Varian actually held onto the weapon without dying.
“And this.” Ryland produced what could only be the Mirror, no bigger than my palm, but like the Thorn, the thing pulsed with some innate rhythm, as if the relic was a living, breathing organism. Where the glass would be, the artifact had a smooth, shimmering plane that rippled like water, shifting with a myriad of colors.
“Holy shit.”
“Uh,” Varian set the Thorn down on the table—very, very carefully, I noticed—to come stand over an unmoving Rooke. “He’s not…dead, is he?”
“Fuck.” I dropped to my knees, fingers fumbling over cool, slick skin before I found Kaden’s pulse, breathing out a silent sigh of relief.
Thready, but there.Barely.
Then my fingers slipped, accidentally brushing against the thin silver cuff on his wrist and a bolt of lightning shot through me, a jolt of energy that had me seeing spots. My lungs froze, muscles turned watery, pain flashed, sudden and violent.
I yanked my hand away and the pain slowly ebbed away, leaving the ends of my fingers stinging.
What the fuck was that?
“He’s not dead, is he?” Varian crouched beside me, worry in his golden eyes. “That’s a lot of blood, Ly.” I reached out and dabbed at a fresh dribble, staying clear of those silver cuffs, feeling more helpless than I had in a long time.
“Not yet, but he has so many injuries…that Bloodsinger magic is…” I shuddered, rubbing my hand on my leg, feeling like I’d just been burned. “I’ve seen a lot of shit, but what Gravelock did was terrifying. We can’t ever let him get control of the Triune. He would slaughter his way to Tempeste, then kill everyone there.”
“We need to get him upstairs,” Varian eyed the staircase. “Let him heal, as much as he’s able. Sleep helps. I don’t want to unbind any of those wounds, since you already stopped the worst of the bleeding, but in the morning, I’ll use the rest of my salve to help speed up the healing.”
That silver cuff…I looked from my still-tingling fingers to the gleaming metal, now glowing like it was…lit from inside.
Was this how Kaden was imprisoned?
Were those cuffs more than just…decoration?
Yes, they had to be.Parts of this castle were marked with that same magic, I noticed—silvery ward-glyphs cut into every lintel and threshold, a web of bindings that kept him inside the walls and leashed his magic to the pale stone.
I pursed my lips, then looked between them, noting their expressions of guilt, the blood on Ryland’s side, a scrape down Varian’s cheek that on closer inspection looked like it could be a burn.
“Where, dare I ask, is the Crown?”
A dark look—and another twinge of that burning guilt—passed between them.
“Once we get him to bed,” Varian jerked his head at a still-unconscious Rooke, “we’ll tell you what happened. Including howRylandlost the Crown.”
28
LYRAE
