The painful shadows of her past swirled along her features, almost distorting the face of the loving mother I knew. She slowly walked to the chair nearest to her, seeming weakened by the memories her words stirred. I moved towards her immediately, but Kingston reached her before I could, helping her sit down. He sat next to her, bringing his chair closer to make sure she was well.
At the same time, I crouched before her. “Are you okay, Mom?”
She gripped Kingston’s hand, offering me a small smile as reassurance. “I am, Son. Don’t worry about me.”
Yeah, well. That was easier said than done.
“What is theCrystal of Souls?” I asked, translating the Latin term Mom had used.
“It’s a rare stone gifted to the Devenish by theSky Godsonce we were chosen as the ruling family,” Mom began. “It was imbued with a sliver of theSky Gods’magic and bestowed upon the very first king. The same magic—”
“That turned us into Wizards,” I finished for her knowingly, and she nodded.
“With the years, it became a tradition for each retiring monarch to infuse a bit of his magic into the crystal, passing it down to his oldest son along with the Dragon Crown.”
“It seems like a beautiful tradition, Mom.”
Her glistening eyes searched mine, longing spreading inside them. “It was… until my father tainted it.”
“Wait, imbuing magic into a crystal. Why does that sound familiar?”
“Because I told you about it when I first told you the story of our world, and of your parents.” Sadness spread over Evie’s face.
Confusion struck me briefly until the confession from Mom’s letter and Evie’s story came together in my mind, fitting like puzzle pieces and revealing the awful truth.
“Raithian killed my entire family. He syphoned their legacy magic one by one, even my mother’s…”
“He killed the senior wizards, channeling their magic into a rare stone that had been in their family for generations…”
“He killed our family and trapped their magic insidetheCelestials’crystal?” Pure rage spread through me after saying it out loud.
“Not just their magic, Son,” Mom whispered, her gaze falling to the floor, defeated. “When you rob a Devenish Wizard of his legacy magic, you are ripping away his very soul because that’s where theSky Gods’infused their power. Into their soul. That’s why your magic is like no other… Every family member my father killed is trapped inside it.”
“No,” I blurted, standing while shock and disgust turned my veins into sizzling threads of fire. “That fucking psychopath!” I growled. The rage I felt transformed into sorrow and anguish, singeing my every cell. “All of them?” I asked softly, crouching before her again and watching the tears fall from her eyes when she regarded me.
She nodded. “For years on end, he used their combined power to intensify his own, making entire kingdoms submit to him, bringing hell to Caelisium and obliterating everything we held dear.”
“Until it was lost during the Uprising,” Evie added.
My mother’s gaze suddenly sharpened, snapping towards her with renewed tenacity. “Until I ripped it away from his shaking hands and escaped the Hollow with Khayden.”
“You took it?!” we all gasped in unison.
“I believed it to be lost or destroyed,” Kingston exclaimed, taken aback by my mother’s bravado.
“And we needed everyone to think that,” she confessed. “I took it from him while he writhed in pain on the floor of the throne room, his face melting with Dragon fire.” A heavy sigh sank her chest, as though she could still see it clearly. “That’s what he is looking for, Brax. What he needs to stabilize his abilities. The crystal contains not only the power and souls of those he killed, but the legacy magic of every king before him.”
Fuck.
“Even my mother…” she added in despair. “Her soul was tied to our family when she had me, so once her gift was stripped away, she, too, became trapped.”
There were no words.
No words could describe how much I loathed Raithian in that moment.
No words for the storm raging inside me. So, I didn’t even try.
“Princess Keira, where is theCrystalof Soulsnow?” Evie asked gently, a hand soothingly caressing my mom’s arm.
