Nova
Istepped into the circular meeting chamber, my head held high, the train of my dress flaring out like ribbons of fire behind me.
Nine leaders had joined us for this particular gathering. They sat stiffly across from my brother, Thalia, and our most trusted advisors and guards, separated by a table piled high with food and drink that looked as though it hadn’t been touched.
Our visitors represented varying levels of authority: lords and ladies; messengers and emissaries; even kings and queens in their own right. Most were descendants of rulers who had once controlled neighboring kingdoms. Large portions of those kingdoms were little more than wastelands now, yet the power these visitors exuded was palpable.
In the five hundred and something years that had passed since Noctaris had been cut off from the source of magic in Midna, various powerful bloodlines had been huddled away in what we calledsanctuary cities. Protected within them, given the bulk of whatever extra magic the Rivenholt Palace andits capital city could spare—which wasn’t much. It had been a desperate attempt to keep lineage and leadership intact; these chosen few were the only ones who had lived, aged, and reproduced relatively normally within their respective safe zones.
Their subjects within those so-called sanctuary cities had also been given magic to protect them from death, but only enough to allow them to continue existing in a kind of suspended state.Wraiths, some called them. Like ghosts, but slightly more solid and sentient. And they could all eventually be revived—we hoped—and returned to their disrupted lives.
The differences between the sanctuary cities barely clinging to existence and the palace we presently stood in were…stark.
Which was one reason for the tension hanging over the room like a storm cloud poised to break.
Unlike the world outside, we had never experienced any unnatural death or decay here, nor in the nearby capital city of Tarnath. Calista, the last Shadow Vaelora before I came along, had made certain of that, casting a spell of protection that had made this entire area a glittering island within a sea of ruin and misery.
I had often wondered how she’d chosen this spot. What set it apart? Why save the ones here, while so many outside of our protected circle suffered?
So many questions and so few answers.
Hopefully, the ones we’d gathered here would help us navigate a clearer path forward.
My appearance caused mixed reactions among them. Some looked upon me with shock—and maybe a touch of reverence—as though I was some manifestation of prophecy. Others watched with narrowed eyes, as if waiting for my mask to slip and reveal something dangerous. Something monstrous. Only one smiled a greeting at me—Lady Zara Virelle, whom I’d meta few times before. She was the sovereign of the sanctuary city known as Durnhelm, which was the capital of the once enormously wealthy Kingdom of Kaedren.
The dark-haired man next to her, who I didn’t recognize, was the first to speak. “So, this is the Shadow Vaelora who failed to fully turn the stone’s power in our favor.”
“But who at least gave us a glimmer of hope,” said Zara, and—to my relief—several of the ones seated around her motioned or murmured in agreement.
“Hope will not bring the dead back to life,” the man said with a scowl.
“Maybe not hope alone, my Lord Renvar. But it plays a role.”
I took my seat, maintaining my composure even though it felt like I was lowering myself into a pit filled with venomous snakes.
Renvar’s gaze followed me as I moved, his dark-silver eyes calculating, as if trying to decide the sharpest words—the best weapon—to wield against me.
He started to speak, but stopped short as a man stepped from the shadows with commanding grace, his perfectly-polished armor flashing in the low light.
I relaxed the tiniest bit as my gaze fell over this man—Captain Darien Voss, leader of the most elite regiment of Rivenholt’s army.
When Aleksander and I had first started to understand and test the limits of our combined powers, we’d managed to revive Voss, along with more of the undead soldiers who had been existing in stasis in the Rivenholt fortress known as Graykeep. Voss had soon after charged with us into the battle with Lorien in Midna, and he was also the one who had carried me away when that battle had descended into chaos, ensuring my safety that day—and every day since.
“Mind your tongue,” the captain warned.
Renvar shrank slightly underneath his withering glare, but the man seated to my brother’s right scoffed and said, “If she is truly one of the Vaelora, then why are we treating her so delicately?”
I tilted my head in the direction of the speaker, a lean, hawk-nosed man with a voice like cold steel—measured, deliberate, meant to cut. This man, I knew. He was Marius Thentros, the King of Drynland, which bordered Rivenholt to the south. Very little of the magic that flowed out from our protected circle had reached his lands—lands that had apparently once been the cradle of most of the Noctarisan Empire’s agriculture.
He had wisdom and connections that would be instrumental in the revival of our realm’s food stores, and the trade centered around it, among other things. My brother had stressed this more than once; that was why he’d been invited to the palace, even though he was a known agitator.
I held in my retort as King Marius fixed his unimpressed gaze on me.
“Mystralith. World-shaper,” he sneered. “That’s the name my kingdom once called her kind. So let her take her supposedly powerful hands and keep shaping.”
Eamon, who until this point had been watching the conversation unfold with his usual bright, intrigued awareness, sat up straighter and said, “Her progress with her magic over these past weeks has been impressive. She continues to expand and hone her abilities, as well as monitor the Aetherstone and all that surrounds it in Midna. Even if it takes more time to put a true guiding hand on all these things, she’s alreadyshapedmore than enough to give us hope for the future.”
“She could stand to do a lot more,” Marius countered.
