But I can’t.
More sounds clatter. The clink of armor, men shouting.
I force my eyes open. Black veins of decay slither across the ground, leaking from my fingertips.
“Y-your Highness?”
I look up. Standing at the edge of the grove is a cluster of Spring Soldiers.
They’re staring at me.
Witnessing me.
My helmet … Where is it? No, no, no.
“No!” I howl, and the decay shoots out further, leaching into the lake. A black ooze like oil slicks over the surface.
Rosalina runs up beside me and moves as if to touch my shoulder but pulls back.
“That cannot be the High Prince,” one of the guards says. “Prince Kairyn said he may be here. But it cannot be.”
“The fae woman said his name,” another says urgently. “And there, on the ground! His helm!”
Rosalina holds her arms up to them. “Please, you have to get help. You must send word to Castletree at once—”
“The High Prince has broken his creed,” the guard interrupts. “He’s using his Blessing to destroy our sacred grove.”
Another raises his spear high in the air. “Arrest him!”
I … I have broken my creed.
The thought tears all the energy from me. But the decay doesn’t stop. Black lines run up the willow tree. The catkins turn to ash, blowing toward us as charcoal petals.
Suddenly, a glowing white light appears before me. A bonfire. But it’s a person. Rosalina’s skin flickers with flame, her hair blowing in bursts of embers. She stands in front of me, blocking the soldiers’ path. “Touch him and die,” she snarls.
The guards balk. But one steps forward, raising his bow. “The High Prince has broken our most sacred creed. Step out of the way or I will do what I must.”
“You will leave this place,” Rosalina says, her voice like a thunderclap, “and tell no one of what you saw. I am the Golden Rose. I will crack your bones with fire if you so much as move against him.”
Rosalina doesn’t understand. To the people of Spring, the creed is as sacred as life itself. There is no other way.
“Run!” I cry and move to leap in front of her. But I can’t—my hands are stuck into the dirt, the decay no longer just lines but great waves spreading all over the shore, the treeline, the lake. “Run, Rosalina!”
It’s too late. The archer looses his arrow.
Rosalina’s fire flickers once, twice, before she falls to the ground, a shaft sticking out of her shoulder.
I implode.
The sound that escapes me is more than a man or a beast, but a monstrous roar. I tear my hands free from the earth and jerk them toward the guards. I have been a healer, a maker of storms, a shepherd of growing things.
Now, I am a taker. I leach the life and power from everything in my path. It funnels up into my chest, mixing with my own storming magic, strengthening me. The grass shifts to brown. The willow tree turns into a bone-white husk, branches swaying like skeletal fingers. Fish float to the surface of the lake, bloated and rotten.
I have stopped the curse from breaking, stopped that onslaught of power. This is different. This is my own magic that I’ve always kept caged away. But now, there’s no stopping it. My heart rages with hatred. They hurt her. I don’t need new magic to destroy them all.
I smile as I suck the life from the guards. Their faces pucker, their skin becoming tight around them, their eyeballs drying up to reveal empty husks.
“Help me,” one of the guards whimpers as he collapses to the earth before all the water in his body is sucked out.
Power shivers through my bloodstream as I stare at the corpses before me. They hurt her.
I obliterated them.
And I would do it again, do anything, to keep her safe.
I turn to look at Rosalina.
She’s lying on the ground, writhing. The arrow shaft still sticks out of her shoulder. But it’s her skin … sunken, ashen, her eyes bulging from their sockets.
“Ezryn,” she whimpers, reaching for me.
I haven’t saved Rosalina.
I’m killing her.
81
Dayton
My breath runs ragged as I explode out of the Castletree’s door into Keep Hammergarden’s throne room. Keldarion and Farron are right in front of me, their eyes filled with matching terror.
It had happened so suddenly. One moment, the three of us were in separate wings of Castletree. The next, both Farron and Kel were sprinting for the magic mirror in the entrance hall, yelling at the top of their lungs.
At first, I’d thought it was a goblin attack. If only it had been so.