“She’s unraveling already. In your mind. You’ll keep pieces, like things you gave her, but the rest will fade. Her voice. Her face. The way she looked when she laughed. The spell’s tied to your memory, and without it…”
“No,” I said. “She deserves to be remembered.”
But even as I spoke, dismay filled my chest. I couldn’t remember what color ribbon she wore in her hair that day I sent her to the kitchen for something I didn’t need but so she could visit with Dulvade.
I turned back to Moira’s body. Her skin had cracked further, pieces flaking away like old plaster. Soon, she’d be nothing but dust.
Maybe I would forget her, but for now, I held tight to her humming.
And the way she’d danced under the stars.
Chapter 41
Lore
Iturned away from Moira's crumbling remains, her false memory scattered across the cold stone. Reyla's hand found mine. The corridor stretched ahead of us, lights flickering across the walls.
We rounded the corner toward the main hall and came to a stop.
Queen Naveer waited in the center of the corridor, but she’d transformed into something terrible. Her skin held the sheen of polished marble, her eyes blazed with inner fire. The stolen life force of dozens rippled beneath her flesh, making her appear decades younger than the woman who’d lorded her magic over the deadly games. Power radiated from her in waves, distorting the air until reality seemed to bend.
“Leaving so soon?” Her voice bloomed with newfound energy, each word thrumming through the stone beneath our feet. “Without saying goodbye?”
Dorion stepped closer to us, flames already gathering around his fingertips. The air shimmered withheat.
“Did you enjoy Prager's little gift?” Naveer's smile carved shadows across her eerily youthful features. “Moira was one of her finest creations. So convincing. So perfectly calibrated to break your heart at just the right moment. How unfortunate you discovered her ruse and killed her. I would’ve liked to see how she devoured you in the end.”
“Shut the fuck up.” Rage blazed in my chest. “How many died to feed your hunger?”
“Every contestant who chose their fate willingly.” She lifted her hands, and power crackled between her fingers. “Their energy flows through me now. Death called to them, and I answered.”
The attack came without warning. Bones erupted from the walls, ancient mortar cracking as skeletal remains pulled free from their resting places. The castle itself became her weapon, ribs and femurs weaving together into spears that hurtled toward us. The sound of grinding bone and splintering stone filled the air.
I drew power and called earth from the foundation stones. A barrier of granite rose between us and the bone spears, the impact sending tremors through my arms. Beside me, Reyla's shadows writhed outward, seeking purchase on Naveer's mind while her other hand crackled with building electricity.
“She's trying to influence our choices,” Reyla warned, her voice strained. Sweat beaded on her forehead as she fought against invisible tendrils of persuasion. “I can feel her pressing at the edges of my thoughts, whispering that we should kneel.”
Dorion's flames roared to life, melting the bone constructs into smoking char. The scent of something burning filled the air. I reshaped my earthen wall into stone spears, launching them at Naveer while she reformed her grotesque weapons from the ancient remains embedded in the castle walls.
The queen moved with inhuman grace, her stolen vitality making her faster. She danced between my attacks, her laughterechoing off the high ceiling. Each gesture brought new horrors. Skulls materialized from thin air, their empty sockets glowing with malevolent energy as they snapped at our ankles. Finger bones sought our throats with grasping motions.
“Your coordination is admirable,” she called, deflecting Dorion's fire with a shield of interwoven ribcages. “But you fight against years of accumulated death. Each soul I've consumed makes me stronger, and I have feasted very well these past months.”
I felt the weight of her words in my bones. This was no ordinary opponent drunk on stolen magic. She’d become something beyond mortal comprehension, a creature that fed on willing sacrifice and grew more powerful with each life claimed. The realization sent ice through my veins even as I called wind to scatter her next volley of bone projectiles.
Naveer raised both hands, and the very air around us began to tighten. Her willbinding pressed against my mind, urging me to lower my defenses, to accept that resistance was useless. The sensation was like drowning in horig, sweet and suffocating at once. My stone spears wavered as doubt crept through me.
But Reyla's nullification magic slammed into Naveer, shattering the psychic assault.
“Not today,” my wife snarled, lightning arcing between her fingers as she prepared another strike.
The queen's perfect features twisted with frustration. She gestured sharply, and the bones scattered across the floor began to reassemble themselves into larger, more terrible forms. Skeletal warriors pulled themselves upright, their empty eyes burning with fire. They lumbered forward, surrounding us while Naveer floated above the fray, her stolen power allowing her to defy gravity.
I drove spikes of iron up through the stone floor, impalingtwo of the bone soldiers, but they reformed around the metal, incorporating my own weapons into their grotesque frames. Dorion's flames washed over another group, but they emerged still burning, their frames now wreathed in supernatural fire that didn't consume them.
“She's using the death energy to animate them,” I said, dodging a swipe from claws made of sharpened ribs. “They won't stay down while she has power to fuel them.”
Reyla's shadows coiled around the skeletal warriors, binding their joints and slowing their movements, but it was like trying to hold back the tide. For every one we destroyed, Naveer pulled more bones from the castle's ancient foundations. The walls began to show gaps where skulls and ribcages had been extracted from, leaving the structure diseased and hollow.
