“How ominously specific,” Seren bites out. “What of Zavriel?”
Midnight lowers his hand. “Poor Zavriel died long ago.”
Oh. Seren hadn’t expected that to hurt. Another dead stranger. An imaginary brother, never to be made real.
“Did you kill him?” Seren asks, distant.
Another smile cuts Midnight’s face. “Blame not the sword for the hand that wields it. Yet can you blame the desperate hand for grasping in the dark?”
“More bullshit.” Seren jerks back. He doesn’t know what Midnight wants, but it can’t be good. “I’m not going with you.”
“You should reconsider, Prince Calithel,” Midnight says politely. “If you value that creature’s life.”
He turns, as if Seren isn’t a threat at all. Twenty feet away, Nevander shoves to one knee. His sword braces against the earth. Blood drips from the seams of his armor.
“Stay in the circle,” Nevander snarls, bright eyes fixed on Seren. “No matter what.”
“He’s a smart man,” Midnight remarks. “Haelwen would sacrifice a pawn to protect herself without even thinking. For herself, or the good of the realm—what was the difference?”
The play is obvious. Midnight’s goading Seren into doing something different than his mother. Tugging the strings of his human-raised morality. The distress Seren isn’t even trying to hide.
Midnight snaps his fingers. The surviving augray prowls towards Nevander’s shaky form.
“I can still call her off,” Midnight says.
Sudden anger burns away Seren’s fear, leaving new clarity. Midnight is negotiating. That means Seren has power. “You’re wrong about one thing,” Seren says, shields unraveling. He reaches not for the ravenous augray, nor for Midnight’s muted chaos. Nor for Nevander, who even in his pain still locks his emotions tight. “My name isn’t Calithel. It’s Seren. I don’t know what Haelwen would have done, but I won’t surrender anything without a fight.”
Seren’s magic spills, like opening a vein. As his magic gushes out, more floods in. Like connecting to Harmony or the honeysuckles, except unfocused. Indiscriminate. Seren reaches for anyone, anything, that can help. Rippling grasses. Ancient trees. Singing birds shocked into silence. Burrowing snakes pausing in their mazes, and a nearby herd of creatures Seren can’t even identify, besides knowing they’re absolutely nothing like deer.
The wind trembles with awareness. The earth groans beneath Seren’s feet.
Child of Haelwen, calls a voice. Many voices. No voices at all.What do you ask?
Seren whispers, “Power.”
Midnight’s eyes narrow. “What are you doing?”
Seren barely hears him. The voice and voices answer in a singular chorus.
What do you offer?
Midnight steps back, blades jumping to his hands. A shape stalks behind him, then disappears. The meadow wavers in a haze of magic.
“What do you want?” Seren asks.
Summer answers,Everything.
Helplessness rocks through Seren. The price is more than Seren can afford: complete surrender. He cannot tell a lie, and he cannot promise that. Not for himself. Not even for Nevander.
But he doesn’t need to. He’s stalled for long enough. A glamour breaks, and Nevander appears at Midnight’s back. His sword hooks towards Midnight’s throat.
“You will not take him,” Nevander growls.
Midnight’s fear gives way to shivering delight. “Well played, Seren Calithel.”
Then he and the augray vanish.
Seren stumbles past the mushroom circle as Nevander staggers. Emptiness gnaws his bones, yet too much burns his edges. No wonder everyone says he needs a crown for this much magic. Pure necessity keeps him on his feet.
