Tears formed in Louka’s eyes. His heart broke, but for the life of him, he found he could not refuse. His hand moved of its own volition, writing the very words he was told to write. He watched, powerless, as Cornelius sealed the letter. “That’s a good lad,” he said.
“Please,” Louka managed. “I beg you.”
“Begging will not help you, I’m afraid.” Cornelius tilted his head. “Though there may be something you can help me with…”
Louka was in a strange, damp grotto with a glowing pool in its center surrounded by stony thrones. Death clung to the air. He knew he would die here.
Cornelius instructed him to step into the pool. “I’ve yet to test the experiment on a blank canvas,” he said, talking to Louka in a conversational manner, “someone without magic. If you can survive it and emerge a Tidecaller, perhaps Delia might too.”
Louka tasted salt on his tongue from the tears falling in earnest down his face, the only thing he still had control of after being told not to speak or move without Cornelius saying so. When his head was shoved underwater, he did not kick, he did not scream, he did not fight back.
He only thought of his darling Cordelia, and hoped she would sail far from this place and the monster she called brother.
63EMORY
THE LANDSCAPE AROUND THEM CHANGEDas suddenly as the weather.
Gone was the beauty of the desert they’d traveled through, the red sandstone arches and spindly trees and ridges that overlooked miles and miles of curiously striated rock. Here was a scorched land, charcoal rocks where nothing grew, sharp as a beast’s gnashing teeth. A large volcano emerged from the soot-stained land, and Emory knew it had to be the Sunforge. She only hoped it wouldn’t decide to unleash the sea of fire within its belly while they were here.
The sky had lost its dim sun and washed-out blues. A storm brewed, electricity forming in the depths of angry dark clouds.
“Are you certain you’re ready for this?” Sidraeus asked.
They stood shoulder to shoulder on a ridge, their backs to the Sunforge. Emory twisted her neck to look up at him. There was that appreciative glimmer in his ecliptic eyes again, twisting herstomach into knots. She swallowed thickly, returning her gaze to the horizon. “I am.”
The ley line crackled with anticipation under her feet, begging her to unleash her magic. But she managed to hold off, imagining the ley line powering her up the longer she waited.
At last they appeared on the horizon, specks of gold armor and gold swords and gold wings. The Knight Commander and her company.
Emory and Sidraeus had raced to get ahead of them so they could stop them before they reached the Sunforge. They’d gotten here not a moment too soon. At last Emory called on the Darkbearer magic she’d been waiting to use, opening herself up to the ley line’s power to make a grand spectacle out of it. Darkness fell all around her, pitch as night, spreading across the barren plain between the Sunforge at her back and the knights moving toward her.
She wondered what they must look like: she and the Night Bringer, standing on a ridge together as darkness bloomed around them. Judging from the glint of swords being drawn as the approaching draconics got into formation, they must look terrifying enough.
Emory faltered slightly as power rushed from the ley line through her. Sidraeus’s hand on her elbow steadied her. She realized no ghosts had been called by her magic, thanks to him. She shook away the thoughts drawn up by his touch and focused on the task at hand.
The Knight Commander came to stand before them, hand on her sword. Hovering close behind her were three knights, as well as the sage Master Bayns, and his page Caius. Caius’s eyes were wide with fear as he looked at Emory.
“Night Bringer,” the Knight Commander said. “Did you receive my message?”
“I did,” Sidraeus said evenly. “You’ll be displeased to know the eldritch lived.”
“You won’t be so lucky.” The Knight Commander motioned to her knights. “Seize them.”
Emory studied Caius. He looked haunted—ashamed even—at the mention of the eldritch. She wondered if his love of all beasts had opened his eyes to the cruelty of his masters, after what they did to the eldritch in the canyon pass. Pointedly, she looked up at the darkened skies above them, where something moved in the clouds. Caius frowned as he caught the motion.
Emory could only hope the young boy understood as Sidraeus said to the Knight Commander, “It’s you and your knights who are out of luck, I’m afraid.”
Gwenhael emerged from the dark clouds above on silent wings, jaws open wide to reveal gold-white flames at the back of its throat. The Knight Commander barely had time to jump out of the way before dragon flame shot down toward her, lethal and precise in its trajectory.
The company of knights descended into chaos as they ran for cover they wouldn’t find. Gwenhael’s flames razed the barren rock, and Emory desperately tried to spot Caius, hoping he’d made it out safely. The sky above Gwenhael split open as a dozen armed draconics appeared bearing the crest of the Golden Helm.
Ivayne led these draconics with a fierce smile as they descended upon the Fellowship of the Light. With the dragon on their side, the Knight Commander’s company would be no match.
Emory turned to Sidraeus. He surveyed the chaos with grim satisfaction, and she knew what he must be thinking. That they’d gotten retribution for the eldritch. That the knights deserved to burn.
“You were right about the eldritch I healed,” she said in a conversational tone, drawing his attention away from the battle. She moved closer to him, pulling him into her orbit. “It did tell me something else. A truth it shared with me as a thank-you.”
She might have imagined the way his gaze flicked to her mouth. “And what truth was that?”
