I picked myself up, and so did Zach. I dared not look behind me, but I prayed Brom wasn’t there, that our charge had not been in vain and Brom had been allowed to get into position.
Slowly, she sat up, her black tresses falling across her face like a curtain. “Curse this body,” she growled. “You have no idea how painful it was, listening to my host encouraging you to not use the Royal’s Kiss, but I admit, controlling her mage magic was difficult enough.
“And yet…” She sighed, her shoulders rolling back in satisfaction as the Illye circle crackled overhead. “It was so easy to enter her heart.”
I closed my eyes briefly. Oh, Millennia. You were heartbroken at losing Tarren. It’s not your fault. Sadly, it would’ve been too easy for the Evil Queen to take hold of a devastated, angry girl who hated Royals.
The Illye shield surged with energy, purple lightning arcing over the dome and striking the cavern’s wall, sending large pieces of stone to the floor.
“Don’t do this, Myriana. You don’t understand what you’re doing,” I said, my knees trembling from the Sense, from the fear—from both.
Her violet eyes flashed to a color so dark it looked almost entirely black. “I don’t understand?” Her red lips twisted down into a grimace of pure loathing. “I don’t want to hear that from you.” She raised her hand and stroked the language of the dwarves carved into the side of the altar. The symbols pulsed purple under her hands, glowing like amethysts under firelight, and the Illye circle fizzed with power. She was gaining strength from the altar—the egg—the very air laden with darkness.
“You,” she snarled, “a princess who denounces emotions. Who denounces Love.”
At her last word, Love, dripping with disdain, I realized that the creature that stood before me wasn’t just all the darkness in Myriana’s heart. It was her love as well. Though it had been twisted by all the other dark emotions—the hatred, rage, jealousy—they had turned her love into something poisonous.
And suddenly I did understand. I understood everything.
“That’s why Myriana established the Legion. Because she’d literally cut out all her emotion,” I said, “she cut out you. She had nothing but logic and reason left—”
“I’ll KILL you!” she screamed. Myriana twisted her hand and the Illye shield dropped as a tendril of darkness suddenly burst forth from the egg’s shell, reminding me of how the enchanted water in the well had lashed out and dragged me into its depths. The tendril hit a spot just to the left of Zach and me like a whip, cracking the cave floor open.
Instinctively, I searched for Brom before I remembered where he was supposed to be. Just find a good spot, Brom, and be patient. I imagined him hiding behind a rock, crossbow poised, just like when he shot the mountain elk.
“Myriana!” I yelled, before she raised another hand, ready to strike again. “Please stop! Listen to me—”
My words were lost on her.
Zach and I pushed away from each other as the tendrils struck the ground where we’d been standing. We landed hard on our backs, the wave of residual darkness sweeping over us like a sandstorm, driving more evil into our noses and throats. I turned over and vomited black liquid as thick as ink. Zach was choking on it, too.
“Stop calling me that!” she screeched, “I am not that weakling who couldn’t kill Saevalla. The sister who betrayed her. I was so close to smothering her with a pillow—the same pillow my beloved slept on when he was with her.”
Her voice was hysterical—shrieking—the words of a heart tortured by centuries of hatred and anguish.
“I’ll kill them all, though—I swear this to you, princess. My son will burn this world to the ground, and I will create a new world. One without magic Kisses. And Royals. And fools believing that a new race of mortals walked among them.”
The members of the town who had pushed Raed to produce heirs with Saevalla. She wasn’t just extracting her revenge on Royals. She wanted everyone to pay.
“My real children will survive. And no one will ever have to suffer the pain of knowing love and loss. They will find peace in the afterlife…as I never could. As you will.”
Myriana flexed her wrist, and another tendril of darkness lashed out, the Illye shield dropping once more. This time it would’ve hit us, but Zach was too fast. He picked me up and leaped out of the way, the darkness hitting the stone floor with the force of a black lightning strike.
We dropped to our knees, my heart pounding, and watched in horror as Myriana wiggled her fingers at us. “So close. What a fast prince you are.”
Then she raised both arms, and before another strike of energy could be unleashed from the Illye circle, I screamed the words I’d been practicing in my head for an entire day.
The only spell I knew to stop her.
“You’ll hurt the baby!”
Myriana froze. Her violet eyes wide with shock and…fear?
“What?” Her voice was hoarse from her screams.
I cradled my stomach. “Please, Myriana,” I begged. “My child. Please spare my child,” I sobbed. At this point, it wasn’t hard to cry.
Zach pulled me into him protectively, shielding me, like the perfect father would.
Myriana stared at the two of us, darting from my face to Zach’s then back again. Her arms trembled above her head, ready to unleash another deadly strike that neither Zach nor I would be able to survive.
But our bluff had worked.
It was the one weakness we could exploit. Make her hesitate. She was willing to burn down the whole world, but she couldn’t kill a baby—the one thing she’d loved with all her heart.
Burn down the whole world, but save one pregnant woman? It didn’t make sense.
But then, Love didn’t make sense.
Her face twisted into a mixture of worry, anguish, and rage as she lost her focus, and the Illye shield dispersed in a final crackle of energy. “You’re lying—”
Her words were cut off by the sharp release of an arrow and her own scream of pain. An arrow had lodged itself in her shoulder, a hair’s breadth from her neck.
Pride blooming in my chest, I followed the arrow’s trajectory to where Bromley stood on top of a fallen piece of stone, aiming his crossbow down at the Evil Queen.
“Rest in peace, you witch,” he said.
Chapter
Thirty-Four
Possession
The idea had come from our fight against the griffin, only this time Zach and I had been the bait while Brom had lain in wait for the perfect moment when both the shield and her guard were down.
Millennia convulsed, her body shaking like she was having a seizure, and she fumbled to pull the silver-tipped arrow’s shaft from deep in her shoulder. Wrenching it out, she threw it on the ground, the arrow clattering on the stone floor, blood dripping everywhere.
She glared at Brom and then mounted the stone altar, thrusting her hands onto the egg.
Darkness rolled over the open wound on her shoulder, already beginning to heal. Then the darkness flowed into the egg, pooling at her hands, swirling and growing like the Queen’s and the dragon’s powers were converging somehow.
“Brom, get down!” I screamed just before the effect hit me—as if someone twisted a blade buried in my chest. I coughed up more thick black liquid and stumbled, trying to stay up. Zach reached for me, but as his hand grazed my wrist, the mountain shook.
Darkness came from every corner and crack and seeped into the stone altar. Inky black tendrils like vines crawled along the egg’s shell.
I couldn’t scream. I could barely even breathe. The darkness was sucking the oxygen out of the air.
The mountain shook again, and the stalactites trembled. I cried out as Brom dropped from the rock and rolled onto the floor. He didn’t move—I prayed he was only knocked unconscious and nothing worse.