Seconds later, Cassius is dead. His body rolls, leaving him face down in the soft grass.
When Claudia looks up, Odette is standing above her, and Triche is still charging through the lake. He’s getting closer.
But that’s not who Claudia wants to kill anymore.
Now she has another target, and her world is tinted red. Leaping up, she tackles Odette to the ground and wraps her hands around her neck.
“I’m… sorry,” she chokes out. “I… had to… for… Marcherie.” Claudia squeezes harder until something pops. Odette gags. “It was… the only… way.” She tugs at Claudia’s hair, pushes against her shoulders. It’s no use. Claudia is strengthened by rage, drunk on vengeance.
Alistair comes between them and throws Claudia onto her back. Now free, Odette finishes the stellinguistic spell by shouting, “IN THE FERVENT DREAMS OF THOSE WHO REFUSED TO DIE.”
The spell in her hand glitters and glows and bursts into flames. Tendrils unfurl from Odette’s hands and lash out, reaching all the way to the High Sage while he closes in on the lake’s edge. Wrapped in magic, he’s held tightly in place, but because he’s not submerged, he’s not drowning.
Yet.
“I can’t hold him for long,” Odette shouts, her whole bodytrembling. “Claudia, you have to destroy Dracoemagyl and free Sidarphion or it’ll all be for nothing.”
“Do it, Claud. I’ll help Cassius,” Alistair says.
Claudia knows there’s no point to Alistair’s help. Cassius is already gone. She felt the change in the air when the last of his blood spilled out, when his soul slipped out of his body.
He’s dead. There’s no saving him. It’s already too late.
But if they don’t kill Triche, the High Sage will kill all of them.
Sidarphion is their only hope, and now only a few fading stars stand between the god and his freedom.
Without Cassius’s life to feed it, the constellation of Dracoemagyl is weak. Using it just once will be enough to burn it out.
Claudia can’t find the needle, so she uses her fingernail to claw the constellation into her skin.
Twenty-three cuts for twenty-three stars. Breath skating across her new wounds, she whimpers, “Dracoemagyl. Burn.”
“STOP,” Triche yells, but it’s too late for him to stop anything. All of them look up at the sky as the constellation flickers.
Once. Twice.
Then, it falls away.
When the constellation’s light rains down, it pours into Claudia’s wounds. She can taste it on her tongue. It tastes like Cassius, and it breaks her heart. She closes her eyes tightly as strange, violent visions play across her mind.
She sees Dorian Ship cutting down the man who could’ve been Dracoemagyl. She sees him become Sidarphion—body morphing from man to god; wings sprouting from his shoulders; magic burning in his eyes. She watches him complete his first act of godhood—placing Dracoemagyl’s curse of silence in the sky.
She sees the High Sage when he was young. She watches Triche turn the cursed stars into a trap, tastes his magic tangling with the constellation. Then, she sees him ambush Sidarphion, sees the celestial walls rising and the night lowering onto the god’s shoulders. She sees Sidarphion’s eyes fill with terror just before they close, not to be opened for the next hundred years.
She then sees him awaken. She hears Odette’s scream that stirred him. She sees their bargain.
Then, she sees herself.
She sees herself through Sidarphion’s glowing green eyes.
She sees Auridolace.
When she opens her eyes, she looks up and the sky cracks in two. A single bright white star falls from the fault line and crashes directly into Starlake. The fire sizzles as the water drinks it all down. The ground beneath them shakes when the remains of the star sink to the bottom of the lake with a heavy thud. Little bubbles rise to the surface of the lake. The water ripples.
Alistair comes to her side, Angel following close with Marcherie limp in his arms. Odette stands at the end of the line. Cassius lies dead behind them.
The five of them stare at the center of the lake, waiting, watching. Triche trembles in his trap.
