The audience backed toward the door while both Eldorian and Nerezethite guards joined forces and moved forward, dousing the holocaust with the water brought in by the apparitions. The searing crackle and roar only grew louder, brighter, hotter—muffling the panicked curses and shouts of the guards.
The stags brayed, hedging toward Lyra and her group where the fire hadn’t yet sparked. Their safe spot was shrinking. Lyra held tight to her king, squinting against the brilliant glow. Griselda’s hem was dangerously close to the dais’s blazing ledge; a part of Lyra wanted her to erupt into flame, yet another part knew it would never be justice enough.
Luce appeared overhead in his ethereal form. “These flames are enchanted . . . made of sunlight. Only the purest strand of moonlight will squelch them!”
Upon that revelation, Queen Nova pressed close to Lyra and her son, her lilac eyes bright with fear. “Your stags, my son. You must bleed them of their moonlight magic. It’s our only hope!”
Vesper’s firelit face paled. He looked sick at the thought, twisted up with dread to consider the logic behind her words. If only Dyadia hadn’t left for Eldoria, they could call upon her for help. But it was up to them alone.
Vesper looked at his family and Lyra. While withdrawing a knife from his belt, he called a stag to his side. It came willingly, lowering its prong tips. Lyra knew he’d do what he must as king, though it would kill him to do it.
Wait . . . she stopped him just as he caught the stag’s antler and held his blade to the base that glimmered like silvery-blue diamonds. Their blood isn’t pure moonlight. She blinked. You once said my lashes are slivers of the moon. What could be purer than that?
Vesper studied her blankly, as though shuffling through his memories as Scorch. Perception crossed his face and he sheathed his knife, cupping her chin with his hand. Together? His silent question passed to her.
She nodded. The flames were almost to their thrones now, close enough Lyra’s toes burned within her slippers at the oncoming heat. Still, she looked nowhere but Vesper, reading the apology in his gaze as he plucked one long eyelash free. It surprised her, that the stinging pain lasted only an instant this time, though it appeared to cut her king much deeper. Grimacing, he dropped the lash over the leg of fire creeping closest to them. The glistening hair caught an updraft and fluttered toward the ceiling. Within the space of a breath, it transformed to sheets of glowing liquid that sluiced across their heads and the dais in a cooling deluge. Lyra lifted her face, relishing the saturation of her clothes and hair as she stood beneath her first rainstorm. The flames snuffed out on contact, leaving the platform in a sooty, wet haze.
The first to arrive on the dais were Luce alongside Dregs’ apparitions. Their half-light forms coalesced to a black, spongy cloud that absorbed all the wetness, leaving everything and everyone dry. Griselda’s cursed daughters converged on her last. She shooed away their shadowy forms and slumped forward, soggy and defeated.
Once Lyra and Vesper saw that all—from his family to Prime Minister Albous and the brumal stags—were unharmed, they stepped forward to survey the losses as the audience trickled in again. The edges of the dais bore the brunt of damage, black and smudged. Griselda’s ribbon decorations resembled curls of charcoal, crisp and crumbling to ash where the flowers once hung.
“Is he . . . ?” Vesper’s voice cracked upon the question as he looked down at the guard who’d tried to stop the orb with his foot. Cyprian and several of the man’s comrades knelt beside him. Cyprian nodded, and a deep sadness scalded Lyra’s chest, as if the fire burned anew inside her.
Vesper turned on Griselda, whose face remained buried against the dais. “Lord Tyron had a wife in the infirmary,” he growled. “And a baby on the way.” Vesper picked up the guard’s fallen sword and held it over Griselda’s neck. “You should die by his blade.” He tensed to take the fatal swing.
Lyra caught his shoulders to soothe the muscles coiled beneath his robes. Together, we’ll tell his wife of his heroism. But let me finish this. I’ll see that she pays with what she holds most dear.
Struggling for control, Vesper dropped the sword with a clang. He took a seat on his charred throne, his expression as hard and formidable as the points of his iron crown. The audience went so still, Lyra could hear the breaths of everyone who stood upon the platform. She exchanged a meaningful glance with her prime minister. He stepped forward, his intelligent green gaze bloodshot from smoke, and together they delivered Griselda’s verdict.
“Aunt Griselda, you once said all the magic in my body was no match for your lifetime of wisdom. Yet I defeated you with naught but an eyelash. You are powerless against me and my king. The two kingdoms you murdered for, lied for, and plotted to steal are no longer your concern. Vesper and I have them well in hand. We will produce heirs to rule after us, forever keeping my father’s bloodline on the throne. And for this final deadly act”—Lyra paused, redirecting her busy hands toward those who carried out the burned guard—“I will blot the word ‘Griselda’ from Eldoria’s history, along with all record of your part in the prophecy’s fruition. In its absence, only Glistenda will remain. The proper little princess, whose skin bruised at the touch of a feather. Voiceless—with no glory and no story. Forgotten and faded away. That is your just reward, and my gift to you.”
Prime Minister Albous smiled upon the last few sentences of his interpretation.
Griselda looked up then, her face contorted in rage. Her answering screams vowed revenge as Lyra commanded the guards to carry her writhing form away. The audience sent the regent off with hisses and hoots which evolved to relieved hails and accolades in Lyra’s direction as she stepped to her throne and took a seat.
Vesper caught her hand in his, the severity of his frown softening. “Thank you,” he whispered.
Lacing their fingers, Lyra put the past and all its ugliness behind her and looked instead to the future, and the promise of a wedding that glimmered like stars behind her king’s dark eyes.
32
A Skyful of Stars and Sunlight
Some hours later, the courts of Eldoria and Nerezeth followed the wedding procession through the moonlit, snowy terrain and into Neverdark’s warmth to witness the blink of dawn and the exchanging of vows that would heal the realms. In the selfsame moment, Griselda awoke in a pitch-black box to the revolting sensation of creeping legs and flapping wings befouling her half-naked flesh.
Not even a crack of light shone in, leaving her unable to view her attackers. The unknowing wrenched her stomach, dried her tongue, and tightened her throat. A hundred spindly legs clambered across her bald scalp, and she writhed to shake them off. The movement scraped her antlers across the panels surrounding—causing a sharp pain to shoot through her prongs. She gagged, having forgotten her mutation.
She howled behind closed lips, terrified to open her mouth for fear of swallowing a spider, a cricket, or a moth—whatever loathsome creatures shared her tomb.
Tomb. That’s what her miserable niece had called it. That ghastly ghost-faced girl had somehow managed to win. Griselda had been so close to taking everyone down with her . . . lacing the ribbons with the incendiary before leaving Eldoria as a final recourse in case anything went wrong, hiding the fire orb inside her bodice while Vesper’s guards searched her for weapons before imprisoning her. And then tucking it in her fisted hands before they returned to the cell to join her wrists at her back for the sentencing. It would’ve been the perfect plan, had she not been thwarted by . . . a hair.
Her blood brewed hot with rage, remembering the horrid fate of her daughters, imprisoned to a goblin’s will and forced to aid in her downfall. She couldn’t let this be the end.
She pounded on the lid. The creepers along her arms fell like patters of rain to the wood beneath her, then scrambled across her midriff and legs, biting and stinging through the scant chemise that clung to her body.
Pinpricks of heat bloomed beneath the needling sensations, making her bones ache and her joints catch.
Scraping bugs from her face, she cupped her mouth to scream, “Let me out! I want out!” Then she pounded the lid again.
There was a shuffle outside. She drew a tight breath. Footsteps . . . which meant a human, not a shroud. They were heavier, like a man’s. It must be a thief or a murderer. The ravine was home to nothing but society’s sewage. It was why she’d sent Lyra’s dead body here.
The witch must’ve made a trade of some sort . . . gave up her immortality for the child—all to put a crimp in Griselda’s plans.
Griselda fisted her hands.