“A bit late for a stroll, boys,” I said, letting the wind carry my words.
The four of them spun. The hood of the Shadow Wielder fell and revealed a tall woman with striking silver hair. Shadows collected at her feet as she sneered.
My eyebrow raised. “I stand corrected. My apologies.”
Before they could attack, I slammed my hands together, vibrations shooting up my arm from the rings I wore on my middle fingers. The charm held in the special henbane and amaranth infused rings thickened the air, and I embraced the familiar tightening in my chest as the incantation flowed from my tongue and burst from my hands.
In an instant, all four were on their knees, clutching at their throats as the oxygen left their lungs.
With a gasping breath, the Alchemist reached for his pocket.
“No, you don’t,” I growled, my body reacting instinctively. A long, dark brown tail wrapped around his wrist, yanking it to the ground with asnap. He recoiled and gave a half scream, half choke as my tail retracted and slunk back into the darkness behind me.
“You’re—one of them—” one of the Shifters said through pained breaths.
“So you’ve heard of me.” I flashed a smile from beneath my hood. “Good.”
7
Rose
“The head architect will see you now,” a middle-aged woman with hair pulled into a bun said as she peeked her head out the opening of the grand wooden door.
I kneaded my forehead with my knuckles then pinched my cheeks, hoping to prick some life into my deadened features.
I was exhausted. It took longer and longer for me to come back from using so much magic, and I still hadn’t fully processed what had happened with the Shifter attack. I couldn’t believe my uncle was another victim of the Somnivae curse. It didn’t feel real.
After I found him, I vaguely remembered telling Morgana to come out of the carriage. My voice had been low and monotone, void of the emotions I’d managed to stifle and shove away in those precious seconds after the mysterious man had left. When my aunt saw Ragnar, she screamed for Beau, whose face went pale and gaunt. While they froze in their distress, I couldn’t seem to stop moving. Acting. Going through the motions like a puppet on a string, handling things in the only way I knew how.
Emotionless. Controlled. Hollow.
I wouldn’t have been able to function otherwise.
I used a levitation spell to lift Ragnar’s body into the carriage,ignoring Morgana’s sobs, then climbed into the driver’s box with that mutilated corpse at my side and followed the path until we hit a brick road. The gilded spires of the palace had come into view as we approached the entrance gates, but I was far too distant to take in the sight. I demanded the guards summon a stablehand to take the horse and carriage, a healer to take the dead body and my uncle, and a servant to take me to the Decemvirate’s head architect: Larken Everest. The one in charge of designing and implementing the tournament.
Action. Purpose. Movement.
Morgana wouldn’t leave Ragnar’s side, and Beau wouldn’t leave his mother’s. The two of them were so distraught, they didn’t even notice when I failed to follow them to the healer’s wing of the palace. As much as I didn’t want to be separated, neither of them were in the headspace to deal with the aftermath. Someone had to figure out what to do next.
I’d been waiting to speak with the head architect for hours. And with the waiting came the despair I’d forced aside, the panic I’d strangled in the face of necessity. It was all creeping back in, like spiders crawling beneath my skin.
This was going wrong. So horribly wrong. Nobody had woken from the Somnivae curse intwenty-seven years—the empire had all but lost hope the victims would ever be revived.
My uncle…he was as good as gone.
My mind swirled with endless, unanswerable questions. How would Morgana and Beau get through this? What would happen now that Feywood’s sole challenger could no longer compete? How could we go back home with the weight of our province’s magic on the shoulders of a lifeless heap of flesh?
Flowing beneath each worry was a single thought, like an undercurrent of darkness that seemed to follow me with every step I took.
Once again, someone had been taken from me. And once again, I hadn’t been able to stop it.
“Dear? Are you ready?” the woman asked again, breaking me from my spiral. I cleared my throat and nodded, rising from the wingback chair I’d been sitting in overnight and following her inside the chamber.
With everything going on, I hadn’t been able to fully appreciate the splendor of the palace. The dark mahogany floor, rich emerald rugs, and sparkling candelabras in the open room before me felt muted by a blanket of gray. I just needed to get through this. Tell Larken Everest what had happened and figure out how we could get another challenger from Feywood to the capital as quickly as possible.
In the center wall of the large chamber stood a desk with two upholstered chairs sitting before it. A pair of bookshelves was on either side of the desk, filled with leather bound tomes, framed maps, and other trinkets. Seated behind the desk, to my surprise, was a woman—probably only ten years older than myself, if that. Her long, black hair was plaited down her broad shoulder as she hunched over an open ledger. Eyes so dark they were almost black met mine when she looked up, a tight but not unkind smile breaking out across her deep brown face.
“Ah, Miss Wolff. I’m sorry you had to wait for so long. Please, have a seat,” she said, her voice strong as she motioned to the chairs in front of her desk.
