She thrashes beneath Ravin, clawing and biting. His grin widens in stomach-churning delight at the sight of her panic. My gaze swings back to the king, whose eyes gleam with nothing but satisfaction, golden cards still in his possession. Naethor moves back to the statue.
Once more, fate presents me with a choice.
Once more, I choose my family. As I will every time, in every world.
“Did you really think you could best me, little girl?” Ravin almost coos, shoving both of her wrists into the stone. She thrashes more violently. “After all we’ve been through? I made you who you are. I’ll put you back in my little playpen.”
I get to Ravin a second before Kaelis and drive my knee into his ribs, dragging him off Arina. He rolls and tries to spring up, but I bring my foot into his face as hard as I can. Blood explodes from his nose, and I collapse onto him.
Fuck magic. Fuck the cards. I want to feel his bones crunch under my fists. I want to feel his blood splattering on my face as I pulverize him like the beasts he’s turned my sister and me into.
“You think you can kill me?” He laughs, more like rasps, licking blood from his lips. “I am Death.”
“And I’m more powerful than death. I am fate.” The Ten of Wands crushes down upon him even as I still have him pinned with my knees. We’re illuminated in the Ten’s fiery glow as I begin to pummel him, over and over. Every blow I strike is for my sister. One for every day she was alone and subject to his torture. He tries to claw at me, and I let him. My body means nothing.
“Clara!” Arina catches my hand as I rear back. Her eyes are wild, burning. “He’s mine,and you have other things to focus on.”
That’s when I notice the magic beginning to shimmer elsewhere in the room. Kaelis and Naethor are going toe-to-toe. Even with Kaelis’s reversed magic, Naethor is able to fend him off. Naethor doesn’t need to win, he just needs to stall. The king has placed nearly every Major in its slot.
“Fucking die, Kaelis Revisan,” Ravin wheezes, more like pleads, as he looks toward his father and brother. I glance down to see Death disappearing.
I move away from Ravin’s bruised and broken form as Arina summons a shortsword.
She doesn’t speak, nor gloat. The only sounds I hear are the blade sinking into his chest followed by a wet gurgle. Silence, and then a whisper of laughter, thin and crazed, from her lips.
My attention is already back on Naethor, just in time to see the ghostly outline of a skeleton. But it isn’t Naethor it’s looming over. It’s Kaelis.
“No!” I scream. I cast as many cards as I can think of. I don’t even consider what they are. It doesn’t matter.
In a second, I see everything I could’ve had. Everything we could’ve been. It all hangs in the curve of the scythe the skeleton wields.
I’m running, as fast as I can.
And the scythe swings straight through Kaelis.
He falls.
My feet pound against the stone, and I skid to him. My whole body explodes with pain, as if I were the one who was struck. I grab his jacket with both fists and shake him. Screaming, “Wake up.Wake up.”
Just like Gregor, he’s so still. Tears fall over my cheeks, splattering across my hands and his chest. Everything else is falling through my fingers. Not this, too…
“Don’t you dare do this. You were my rock. My stability. My everything.”
Without warning, a gasp. His eyes jolt open, pupils ringed in the same violet power that burned away Cael’s hold on us, and his chest heaves. “Wh—” I can’t even form the word. My eyes dart to Judgment. He hasn’t moved.
“Clara?” Kaelis whispers.
“Clara!” Arina shouts.
“It’s so potent now,” Naethor barely murmurs, staring down at us. “No. It doesn’t matter…My son, it will all be over soon. I will save you, and our world.” He draws all our eyes as he places the final golden Major into its slot.
The power of the twenty cards hums in unison. Golden magicsurges, and we’re all blown backward. The room illuminates as it collects into the figure holding the world expectantly.
I don’t think; I act. I cast the King of Swords, summoning a maelstrom that howls so violently, all our ears pop. The golden cards are fixed in place, as if fused with the stone. But the vessel Naethor was lifting aloft is ripped from his fingers.
All our eyes turn to the vessel at once as it dances in the wind. We move, trying to follow it. Magic and blows are traded.
Then it lands.
