My breaths were too short, my vision darkening.
She couldn’t die.
She was too young. Too pure. Tooimportant.
She may be my queen, but she was my baby sister first, and it was still my job to protect her, to shelter her from harm.
“Don’t even think about usingyourarmy. She’ll be dead before they can take a step.”
The king’s words were far away with my gaze zeroed in on the danger to my sister. The blade at her throat, the blood still dripping from the point it met skin.
I shook uncontrollably from my place in the dirt, pulling the lamp from my pocket along with the small knife.
Eleanor would never forgive me, but it wouldn’t matter because she would be alive.
“Don’t, Lia!” she called when I raised the knife to my hand, slicing my skin open. I ignored her pleas, our mother’s words pounding in my head and drowning her out.
Protect her. Protect her. Protect her.
I could hardly see through the tears coating my lashes, but I didn’t move my gaze from the knife at her throat when I palmed the warm metal of the vibrating lamp. Smoke immediately emanated from the spout, his familiar scent unable to break through the torture on my mind.
Not this time.
I’d failed.
My mother. Eleanor. I’d failed us all.
A familiar scarred hand rested on my shoulder, squeezing lightly. “Adelia?” Shade’s voice was so quiet, only I could hear him, but I didn’t respond.
I couldn’t.
There were no words for what I felt. For what had happened. For how terribly I had failed.
“Kill the Mortremon army,” Terym demanded, his voice laced with triumph. Shade tensed beside me, his grip on my shoulder tightening, and I felt, more than I saw, his head snap toward the king.
I couldn’t look at him. At either of them. At anyone but my sister.
Her hazel eyes were pleading, her mouth forming words I couldn’t hear. Terym had hit me at my weakest point, at my love and need to protecther.
There was no way out of this. No alliance with Mortremon was worth her life. No one’s life was worth more than hers. Not even mine.
Sheneededto live.
My stomach churned with the knowledge of what I was about to do. The words that would haunt me forever. I closed my eyes, taking a deep breath to try and steady the full body shakes consuming me, the metallic scent of her spilled blood filling my lungs and spurring me forward.
“I wish to kill the Mortremon army across the field.” It was barely a whisper, but Shade would hear. He was as attuned to me as I was to him.
The least I could do was watch when I destroyed so many souls, my own included, so I opened my eyes to stare at the border line.
No.
There were so many more Mortremon soldiers than before. Thousands of them lined up in perfect golden formation, ready to descend upon Terym’s forces.
Nothing would forgive this heinous act, and even if I could take back my words, I knew I wouldn’t.
Dark smoke billowed from beside me. From Shade. Darker than I had ever seen it. The black cloud spanned the distance between us and the Mortremon soldiers with inhuman speed and swallowed the swarm of shining gold.
A suffocating weight settled on my chest, just as it had the first time I’d made a wish. I could see nothing through the thick fog, hear nothing but the high-pitched ring of magic.
