This was how my end was to be. Hidden by a maze at the Court of Winter, while everyone else celebrated the next era of succession.
“Answer me!” Vorl slammed my head against the ice wall, and I blacked out for the briefest moment, but then his grip loosened just enough for me to suck in a whisper of air.
“Let. Go!” I choked on the words and clawed relentlessly at his hands, but his face darkened with rage, and his grip remained.
“I think not.” He wrapped his other hand around my throat, and in that moment, I knew his intention.
He was going to kill me.
He was going to murder me.
I would never see Cailis again.
The sheer terror that evoked brought a new round of panic into me. I clawed frantically. Hit. Kicked. Thrashed. I took every ounce of fight left in me as I tried to tear from his limbs and break free.
And just when my vision threatened to swim black again, a crack opened within me. A giant fissure. It pried my chest in two as a barrel of power shot out of me.
Vorl roared in pain just as footsteps came running from around the maze’s corner.
“Ilara!” Nuwin called.
I fell to the ground as Vorl flew off me. Erupting magic poured from me as fire and wind flew in a tornadoing spiral around my frame, and then I was stumbling to a stand as the prince’s illusion magic cracked all around me.
A cataclysmic explosion of power engulfed my body. And then the prince was there. The king. The court. They were all watching as my village’s archon staggered to his feet.
Vorl pointed at me accusingly, his face twisted in pain. “She tried to kill me! She’s a murderer!”
But when Vorl tried to cast an illusion over my throat, my magic ripped through it, and that was when I felt the prince’s power rise.
“You dared to touch her? To hurt her again?” the prince roared as a snarl of absolute fury split his lips. And then he was at my side, traveling to me on a gust of air.
“Lara,” he whispered. His gaze traveled over my face, down my throat, oscillating between fury and fear.
“I’m okay,” I managed to croak.
Gasps and cries came from the court as the fireworks continued. Explosions felt as though they came from everywhere.
“I’m sorry,” the prince whispered. His face twisted in pain before that mind-numbing rage coated it again. “I should have protected you.”
Power still spiraled around me as shocked whispers and shouts came from the crowd. I was out of control. I didn’t know what was happening, but fire and wind still swirled around me, bathing me in light and air that the prince seemed immune to. Or maybe it was purposefully cushioning him. I didn’t know.
“Nuwin, hold her,” the prince said, his expression savage as he handed me off to his brother.
Nuwin supported my weight as the prince flew to Vorl on the same beat. Rage contorted the crown prince’s features as he grabbed Vorl by his shirt and lifted him up. Prince Norivun’s affinity rose with a vengeance as a look of sheer terror covered my archon’s face.
“You dared hurt her?” The deadly calmness of Norivun’s words sent shivers down my spine, and the quietness of his question was more terrifying than any anger that could pour from his lips. “She’s mine, and you touched her?”
“I didn’t! I would never—”
The prince slammed his head into Vorl, nearly knocking the archon out, and then his affinity was like death on wings. Vorl let out a torturous bellow as an answering throb of power came from my gut when Vorl’s head lolled back. The archon’s body seized. His eyes rolled white.
Something wispy rose from his body. Translucent and sheer.
Vorl’s body slackened in the prince’s grip as that shimmering shadow rose higher and higher.
Dying.
The archon was dying.
Prince Norivun was sucking his soul, his face cold, the deadly intent in his expression clear.
“No,” I whispered. My affinity shot out of me and latched onto that floating shadow, as though I’d somehow commanded it to do so. Vorl’s soul stopped. It hovered mid-air, and my conscience tugged between death and life.
I could let him go.
I could let the prince finish what he’d started.
But despite all that Vorl had done to me, despite all of his tormenting, bullying, and vindictive rage, this wasn’t the answer. Punishment, yes, but not death. There had been too much death.
“No, my prince,” I croaked quietly as my throat ached.
The prince whipped toward me, just as my magic fully wrapped around Vorl’s soul. Phantom hands enclosed his departing spirit as an instinct awakened within me. It was the same sensation I’d sensed in High Liss when the prince had killed the shapeshifter and then when the guard had nearly died at my arrival to the castle.
This. This was what I could do. My affinity didn’t create orem. It created life. The prince was slightly wrong about my power. Only the gods could create natural orem, but my life-giving affinity was able to replenish our land’s natural orem while also giving life to plants and souls that were being taken to the divine realms. My affinity was the opposite of the prince’s momentous power.
I grabbed Vorl’s spirit and wrenched it from the air before slamming it back into the archon.
Vorl’s eyes opened wide as his mouth gaped in a sudden inhale. Shocked screams and muffled cries came from the crowd as the prince’s eyes widened in shock.
I staggered under the depth of magic that had just been pulled from me, but Nuwin supported me, holding me up.
The prince dropped Vorl as though he’d been burned. He stared at his hands, disbelief lining his features as the crowd erupted in a flurry of shouts and hissed comments.
“What is she?”
“What did she do?”
Their comments drifted toward me, but I barely heard them.
I swayed away from the maze, toward Vorl as he sat on the ground, breathing but unconscious. When I reached his side, the prince shifted closer to me.
“Ilara?” he said quietly, a tremor to his tone.
But then the magnitude of what I’d done stole all of the energy from me. It felt as though a veil descended over my eyes, and then the ground was rushing up to greet me.
A scream came from the crowd as a crescendo of fireworks exploded in the court’s finale.
The last thing I remembered was someone catching me before my head cracked onto the ice.
And then I remembered nothing at all.
CHAPTER 27
I awoke to the feel of soft hands dabbing a cool cloth over my face. Sweet scents of juniper blossoms tickled my nose as a strum of immense magic pulsed around me.
“She’s awakening.” Daiseeum’s sweet voice cut through the fog in my mind.
“Thank the Mother! Ilara? Can you hear me? I’m here.” My sister’s frantic words grew stronger and sharper with every breath she took.
“Cailis?” I croaked.
Another hand patted mine, then a male said, “She shall be all right. It’s not as serious as you’d feared, my prince.”
I briefly recognized Murl, the castle healer, and then warm hands were closing over mine as my sister and Daiseeum let go.
Strong, hard, unyielding hands. Those hands could only belong to one fairy.
I opened my eyes to see Prince Norivun hovering above me as he held my hands in his own.