The Harbingers stilled, exchanging a look.
Alora recoiled, drawing the thorns back into the soil. She stood and moved away for the pond, wrapping her arms around herself. For a long moment, she said nothing. Shadows shifted restlessly at her fingertips, reflecting her unease.
“It didn’t fight for me,” she murmured. “When Eldrik siphoned it, the light magic... let him. It slipped away like it was never mine to begin with. But the darkness—” Her voicefaltered, breath hitching. “The darkness clung to me and fought. It stayed.”
She laughed, but it was a hollow, broken sound.
“Why should I reclaim what abandoned me so easily?”
Her vision blurred as she thought of Rune walking away.
“Light magic is supposed to be strength and purity. The one power stronger than the dark. But at that moment, it was nothing.” Her tears fell. “I wasnothing. And maybe… that’s all I will ever be.”
The Harbingers fell silent, but their presence wrapped around her in quiet understanding of her pain. There had been so much of it that night. More than magic had been stolen from her.
“And maybe...” Alora’s fingers curled into the grass. “Maybe I’m afraid of what I will remember if I reclaim the magic again. Afraid of what parts of me are buried inside it.”
The crisp wind fluttered through the manor’s courtyard, leaves drifting gently around the glowing jar. It cast a soft light over their faces.
“When I look at that jar,” Alora muttered. “I see the gifts my godmothers gave me. Grace. Song. Beauty.” She grimaced with disdain. “They feel like charms from someone else’s story. Those gifts didn’t save me from Eldrik. They didn’t protect me from abandonment or loss—” She broke off, chest rising with a bitter breath. “They kept me weak.”
A dust of purple magic swept out as Calla rose to full form. “Then it’s time we rewrite what those gifts mean.” Calla delicately rested a clawed fingered on her neck. “Your voice is not a lullaby—it’s aweapon.” She leaned in, her lips curving like a secret. “Song is seduction, subversion, and lure wrapped in silk. It can topple empires if you let it.”
Alora shivered as a tickle of dark magic rushed down her throat. And she realized, it was ablessing.
“Grace isn’t how well you curtsy in silk.” Deimos rose in a swirl of blue shimmer, Shades hovering at his shoulders. “Grace is precision. It’s knowing how to move before your enemy does.” He took her hand, inspecting it like a master appraising the tool. “And knowing exactly where to cut.”
His thumb swiped over her palm and the current of a dark blessing fell over her like a veil.
It fit her like a second skin.
Hadeon stepped forward last, his massive frame casting a shadow across hers.
“Beauty,” he declared in that deep yet reassuring tone. “Is more than splendor and vanity.” He circled her slowly, appraising not her form, the way she stood, the cut of her jaw, the glint surfacing in her eyes. “In truth, it is a distraction. It draws the gaze, so no one sees the moment you strike.”
He lunged, then halted when Alora instantly had her Nightstone dagger at his throat.
“So, make use of it.” Hadeon smirked, lightly tapping her nose. “Then that beauty becomesterrifying.”
His blessing settled into her bones, steady as iron. Behind Hadeon, Calla watched with a faint smile, and Alora knew where he learned the danger of beauty.
“You were never meant to be a fairytale,” Calla said softly. “You were meant to be a myth.”
Alora looked down at Theia’s letter in her hand.
“A queen must be more than a symbol. She must be the sword that defends her people. The shield that does not yield. You are not here to mingle in the woods. But to learn what it means to reign.”
But who were her people now?
The lords of Argyle, who plotted in secret to use her brother like a pawn? The Dominions, who bowed because Rune forced them?
Perhaps both.
Magic swept over the atmosphere as the Harbingers summoned their weapons, and Alora did the same.
Calla attacked like the sudden gust of a tempest. She was a flash of lilac hair in the moonlight and steel as her chakram sliced for Alora’s throat.
Alora stepped inside the arc.
