The screams stopped. I spared a quick glance to see Rissa and Lark on their backs, sweat dripping from their foreheads, but alive. Broken and battered, but breathing.
At my feet, something slithered across the dark floor. One small tendril of silver light, as thin as a snake, glided from Gayl’s form.
And then came another.
And another.
Andhundreds.
My breath picked up speed as little silver snakes wormed their way from his body and—and towardme.
An instant later, heavy footsteps landed on the ground behind Rissa and Lark.
A weight lifted from my chest. “Leo.”
Rissa’s cry of shock was drowned out by the pounding of my feet on the wood floor as I flung myself into his outstretched arms.
“Are you alright?” he asked frenziedly, scanning my body while his hands roamed my head and neck. His eyes fell to his sister behind me, and alarm like I’d never seen passed over his features. “What happened? What’s going on?” He tried to lurch toward her and Lark, but then saw the writhing mass of silver light still following me. “What isthat?”
As he asked, the first sliver slipped over my feet and sunk into my skin. It was cool and smooth at first, then searing. I gasped as blinding power tore through me like a savage storm.
But this wasn’t natural power. This wasn’tmypower.
There is always a price.
I pushed away from Leo.
“I—I did it, Leo. I used the spell. I took away his magic,” I stammered, holding my arms out as the silvery beams surrounded me. My hair stood on its end, every muscle in my body quaking. “Allof it. And I think this is my price.”
At once, the remaining strands dove into my flesh, and I let the darkness take me.
76
Leo
The palace infirmary was white-washed and cold. A long chamber of bleakness, where the shuffling of feet, clinking of glass vials, and potent scent of ointments made my head pound and vision swim.
It had been three days since I came through the portal. Three days since I’d been stuck behind that magical barrier, only to be thrust into chaos.
My best friend, a dagger speared through his skull.
My twin and Lark, bodies broken and skin torn, bones gleaming in the firelight.
The emperor, dead.
The woman I loved…taken. I’d held her in my arms for a mere moment before the magic she’d unearthed had claimed her mind.
She still hadn’t come back to me.
I knelt at her bedside, rubbing my thumb against the back of her icy hand. She almost looked as if she were under the Somnivae curse, with her lifeless body and pale features, save for the terrified creases that would mark her forehead every few minutes. The twitch of her fingers, the rapid fluttering of her eyes beneath lids.
My hand balled into a fist at my side. She was suffering—she was being tortured, somewhere deep in her mind, by magic wecouldn’t see. And there wasnothingI could do. When those shimmering trails of light had vanished into her three days ago, it was unlike anything I’d ever seen. Cataclysmic power. Her entire body was set alight, silver rays issuing from every surface, her beautiful hair thrown back and wild. She had looked almost…euphoric, for a split second. Her face split into a brilliant beam and her eyes rolled back into her head as if in the throes of passion.
And then she had screamed. A shriek so loud, so powerful it rattled the walls. When she crumpled to the ground, I swear my heart left my body. I thought she was dead. I thought her sacrifice was the price she’d paid to rid the world of Gayl’s magic.
But she was still alive. Lying in this infirmary, battling some inner demon or curse or consequence for that siphon spell. The onewe’dfound. One I hadn’t been sure would work.
“How is she, brother?” Rissa asked behind me, the tap of her wooden cane following. It was temporary, the Alchemist healer had said. She was fortunate to even be alive. Ninety-eight broken bones. That was what Gayl had done to her. I wished I could bring him back to life, just to shatter every bone inhisbody. Rip every limb from its socket.
