Lysa
Istumbled from the throat of the tunnel and had to shield my eyes against the glare. The floor was a jagged crater of slate and quartz, split down the middle. From the fissure, blinding silver magic erupted coating the walls, the ceiling, the air itself. In the center of the room hung Fenrik. He was held upright by his own curse turned inside out. Massive, calcified tendrils of shadow had erupted from his chest cavity. They writhed, curling backward to wrap around his torso, his throat, his upper arms, pinning him in a horrific embrace. He was a marionette strung up by his own ribs. His head lolled forward, chin on his chest, his skin grey and translucent. Every time the ley-line pulsed beneath him, the bone-shadows tightened, squeezing a fresh wave of silver agony from his core to feed the fissure.
Beyond him, untouched by the splatter of raw magic, stood Lady Kelda. Of course she was pristine. Her robes didn’t beara speck of dust. Her hands moved in graceful, conducting arcs, directing the flow of silver sludge. She looked terrifyingly capable, a high mage in her element, while I was a hedge witch covered in tunnel filth with a dying wyrmling at my heels. However, there seemed to be something off about the way Kelda carried herself, too composed, too distant, as if smoothing other people’s minds had flattened her own. Or maybe I was just imagining it.
“Fenrik!” I shouted.
Kelda flicked a finger of her left hand and the ground seemed to lurch beneath me, dispelling the reality of the cavern. The stone walls dissolved into a swirling grey mist, and then, I wasn’t alone.
Figures materialized from the fog: hollow-eyed, gaunt, their clothes unfamiliar and dated. Dozens of angry villagers. They were looking past me, pointing at a looming shadow that wore the Stormgarde crest.
“We gave you our harvest!” a woman shrieked. Her face melted as she spoke, skin sloughing off to reveal raw muscle. “We gave you our coin! Why must you take our sons?”
The mist swirled, and I saw a reenactment of a buried catastrophe that looked like the Collapse, but instead of an accident, the illusion painted a ritual of slaughter. I saw a younger and terrified Fenrik, or was he ecstatic, standing beside his parents. In this twisted memory, they weren’t holding the magic back. They were shoving people into it.
“To keep the manor bright!” the illusion-crowd roared in a chorus. “To keep the power flowing!”
I watched, paralyzed, as a spectral version of Fenrik’s father grabbed a child and threw him into a fissure of light. The scream that tore through the chamber was very real human terror.
And there was Fenrik watching the slaughter. Kelda’s magic warped his expression, twisting shock into a cold, arrogant sneer. He looked like a monster, accepting the sacrifice of the weak to fuel his own legacy.
“Do you see, little healer?” The whisper came from everywhere and nowhere, sliding into my ear like oil. “This is the blood that flows in him. You think you can cure this? You think your little parlor tricks can fix a soul bred for consumption?”
The illusion shifted again. The villagers turned their melting faces toward me. Their eyes were empty sockets, weeping silver.
“He will eat you,” they chanted, their voices overlapping into a dissonant drone. “Just as he ate us. Just as he ate his parents.”
I scrambled backward, my boots slipping. It was a lie, I knew it had to be a lie, but the magic was so seamless, so overwhelmingly powerful. I could smell the burning flesh. I could feel the heat of the sacrifice. Kelda was rewriting history in front of my eyes, weaving a tapestry of horror so complete that my own memories of Fenrik—his hesitation, his gentleness with the music, the fear in his eyes—felt like the illusion. She was a titan of the Veil. I was a girl with a diagnostic trick.
“Run,” the melting woman gargled, lunging at me with skeletal hands. “Run before you become fuel.”
I flinched, throwing my hands up to protect my face, and backed right into the physical reality of the wall. I reached into my bag for the black powder Maren had prepared. My hands were shaking; I dropped the whole bag, and the powder spilled everywhere. I could only hope it worked on my eyes as well, since it was getting into them, and none of it into Kelda’s.
The illusion flickered but didn’t break. Through the ghostly, screaming faces of the dead, I saw the real Fenrik twitch in his bone-cage. His eyes cracked open, leaking silver light.
Kelda finally looked at me, her smile serene and pitying through the haze of the nightmare. “Oh, Lysa. You really have no idea what you’ve walked into, do you?”
I ripped my gaze away from the screaming phantoms and focused on the woman conducting them. She wanted me to be terrified. I truly was, but I was even angrier than scared. I didn’t need to understand the complex weaving of her Veil magic; I needed to stop the noise.
“Enough!” I roared, and I shoved my hands forward. I didn’t reach for calming threads or soothing melodies. I grabbed the chaotic snarl of her magic andyanked.
I tried to coax that energy into the golden warmth that had healed Fenrik and the house before, but I felt her immense magic threads and I panicked. The magic solidified in my grip, turning from heat to ice. A jagged flare of silver light erupted from my palms, freezing my bones. For a heartbeat, the illusion of the villagers shattered into drifting smoke.
Kelda tilted her head, and smiled at me. She made a sharp, cutting gesture with her left hand, and the smoke coalesced.
“You want the truth, little nurse?” Her voice was a purr that vibrated in my teeth. “Then look at what you’re trying to steal.”
The cavern floor dissolved into the plush darkness of a bedroom,hisbedroom. I stood paralyzed again as the scene formed. It was a memory, or a twisted version of one, from thirteen years ago. A younger Fenrik, devastated and shaking, collapsed onto a bed. Kelda was there, younger too, her face a mask of tenderness as she gathered him into her arms.
“I have him, I have your dragon,” she whispered to the sobbing boy. “I am the only one who can hold you together.”
The scene flickered, time jumping forward, and the grief turned into something carnal. I tried to close my eyes, but the illusion pried them open, forcing me to bear witness.
Fenrik was above her now, stripped bare, his body lean muscle. He drove into her with a rhythm that made my own breath hitch, a guttural sound tearing from his throat. I watched as his hands gripped her hips, anchoring himself to her as if she were the only solid thing in the world. He moved with a hunger I had never seen, never imagined he was capable of.
“ deeper,” the illusion-Fenrik groaned. “Kelda, please...”
He buried his face in her neck, his hips snapping forward with a force that shook the bedframe, finding his release with a ragged shout that echoed in the silence of the cavern.
