There was no way to get him through this.
“She knew,” Amara breathed out to Emmerick as if feeling his pain too—a mother, even though estranged, able to read the horror in her child’s eyes. “She knew she was going to die—she told me.” She squeezed his hand firmly.
Emmerick finally looked at Darvanda, who still kneeled with a hand on Amara’s shoulder.
“She isn’t dead, Amara,” Darvanda said plainly. “Not yet.”
Amara looked over her shoulder. “Krait…you can’t bring her back, can you?”
He smiled with a softness seemingly reserved for only her.How do they know each other?The Enchantress of the South Tower had friends in high places. They were both ancient, so it wouldn’t be surprising for their paths to have crossed.
“No—I can’t raise the dead. That is a rumor. Only the Death Origin was capable of that. But your loved one isn’t gone yet. I can’t find her among the shadows here.”
Amara was upright at once.
“Someone, please explain.” The words burst from my mouth, and all three of them stared at me.
Amara ordered, “Queen Sybilla, go get me salt, bones—any type—and a blade made of silver.”
I momentarily braced at the commands—not used to beingorderedabout.But these moments could count for my prospective friend’s life, for Emmerick’ssister.Without argument, I took to the stone staircase of the Keep at a run.
* * *
Minutes later,everything requested had been retrieved. I’d barked at no less than a dozen guards to help me gather turkey bones and salt from the kitchen before ransacking the royal armory for a blade made of silver.
When I returned, Emmerick still would not look at me, and King Darvanda was helping him position Asterie in the middle of the courtyard facing up toward the night sky.
Amara circled Asterie in salt and placed the bones in her hands. Then Amara sliced a cut in each of her own palms with the silver blade and passed it to me to do the same. When each of our palms ran warm with blood, she set the blade at Asterie’s feet and extended one hand to me and one hand to Emmerick.
I tried to explain. “I don’t have magic, I can’t—”
“You do. Now isn’t the time to hide it,” Emmerick snapped at my reflex to deny it.
“And apparently, I might too.”His thought slammed into me like he’d shouted it. I flinched. He’d be angry, but he’d get over it.He had to get over it.
I took Amara’s slender hand in mine as she began speaking to Asterie.
“The night you were reborn, my dear…I called upon the Stars to save you. We plead with them again tonight. Let them answer. Let them bring you back to us—”
Amara’s voice filled the air as cannon blasts and war cries grew further away. Darvanda took my other hand. His hand was massive compared to mine but warm and oddly comforting.
“Everyone, please close your eyes and relax,” Amara calmly instructed. “Let me in. I’ll be siphoning from you all to make my plea to the Source Origins of the Sun and Stars.”
My magic was different than theirs. I wasn’t sure how the Source magic would respond to me. My nerves skyrocketed, and my arms trembled, but I closed my eyes and tried to relax.
It wasn’t working.My mental barriers were coming down—everything outside was flooding in. It made it impossible to relax.
Darvanda’s finger began to trace quick circles on my palm with his thumb. The sensation centered me, like a tether to reality. There was no way to pick the lock of his mind.Was it an act to comfort me or a show of impatience?Likely the latter, with how much disdain he showed for me.
A charge filled the air like the feeling before lightning striking the ground. The hairs on my head began to rise, but my eyes stayed tightly closed. Those barriers started coming down again. My throat closed; my heart raced.
“Breathe.”Darvanda’s voice was gruff, but his cadence was gentle.
Comforting.He was trying to comfort me.The King of the Wastelands was cruel, unforgiving and infuriatingly cocky. Yet he wanted this to work—he wanted to save a friend of my Corridor. One he had never even met.
I wondered what the price would be for this.
My body slackened and became a vessel for use—opening myself for Amara to pull whatever magic she needed from my veins.
