A burdened breath burned my lungs as I looked at Evie once more.
“With all of you falling through the sky, Braxton orders Venom to take us away, bending to my will so he can try to save you all. With him doing what I want, I pull my magic from the Sky Legion and focus on controlling Venom while he takes us away. He won’t be able to attack me as I, once again, manipulate and bend Braxton to my will.”
Anger and hate all battled inside me, followed by a new determination.
“Raithian is not all-powerful,” I declared.
“It’s all just an intricate and masterfully conducted symphony of horror,” my mother finished. “He’s always been a brilliant man. No one can deny that. It’s how he turned on our kingdom, stealing the throne right from under our noses.” Resentment engulfed her admission, distorting her soft features with shadows of her painful past.
“The right moves at the right time and he seems unstoppable. Keeping us all fearful and using that to his advantage,” Evie considered. “Making us fight smaller battles because we don’t want to lose anyone else, and we thought we knew what he was capable of.”
“He still controls Azazel,” Kingston interjected. “Even without the illusion of absolute power, Raithian’s might is far greater than anything we can defeat on our own. We have no true weapon against him.”
“Yes, we do,” Imogen countered, a certain pride and proclamation guiding her words when she looked at me.
Right. I was the weapon.
“So why has he been wasting all these years playing games with us?” Evie’s question triggered something in me.
“Because he still wants to be all powerful. He’s looking for something that will increase his strength and control like the Dragons once did.” My pulse raced, mind whirling again with the possibilities. “That has to be it. Raithian didn’t need to juggle his abilities when he was connected to the Dragons, right? He had the Celestial’s blessing and the power that came with it, so he was basically invincible.”
“He was, but everything changed after the Uprising,” Imogen countered. “Without that connection, he became weaker, which drove him to start feeding on people’s life force and use that energy to fuel himself.”
Walking to my side, Evanna’s gaze became sharp with understanding.
“That is why he’s kept us at bay all these years, recusing himself to the Crimson Fortress. Controling Azazel must take everything he has, so he is looking for something powerful enough to stabilize his magic again. But what could be so formidable to replace his lost connection to the Drag—?”
Dread made her words lodge in her throat, and she swallowed.
“You. He senses the power inside you and wants it to stabilize his own. That is why he wants you, Braxton. It is why he has become obsessed with you. He wants to drain you like he did his own father.”
“The Anima Crystallum!” Mom’s loud gasp reverberated through the house, her eyes widening in both realization and dread. “He must have been looking for it all these years…” she added, more to herself than anything else since everyone around her seemed as confused as I was. “Evie is right. If my father gets his hands on you, he will drain you like he did with everyone I loved. Yet, that won’t retore the kind of power he lost.”
The painful shadows of her past swirled along her features, almost distorting the face of the loving mother I knew. She slowly walked to the chair nearest to her, seeming weakened by the memories her words stirred. I moved towards her immediately, but Kingston reached her before I could, helping her sit down. He sat next to her, bringing his chair closer to make sure she was well.
At the same time, I crouched before her. “Are you okay, Mom?”
She gripped Kingston’s hand, offering me a small smile as reassurance. “I am, Son. Don’t worry about me.”
Yeah, well. That was easier said than done.
“What is the Crystal of Souls?” I asked, translating the Latin term Mom had used.
“It’s a rare stone gifted to the Devenish by the Sky Gods once we were chosen as the ruling family,” Mom began. “It was imbued with a sliver of the Sky Gods’ magic and bestowed upon the very first king. The same magic—”
“That turned us into Wizards,” I finished for her knowingly, and she nodded.
“With the years, it became a tradition for each retiring monarch to infuse a bit of his magic into the crystal, passing it down to his oldest son along with the Dragon Crown.”
“It seems like a beautiful tradition, Mom.”
Her glistening eyes searched mine, longing spreading inside them. “It was… until my father tainted it.”
“Wait, imbuing magic into a crystal. Why does that sound familiar?”
“Because I told you about it when I first told you the story of our world, and of your parents.” Sadness spread over Evie’s face.
Confusion struck me briefly until the confession from Mom’s letter and Evie’s story came together in my mind, fitting like puzzle pieces and revealing the awful truth.
“Raithian killed my entire family. He syphoned their legacy magic one by one, even my mother’s…”
“He killed the senior wizards, channeling their magic into a rare stone that had been in their family for generations…”
“He killed our family and trapped their magic inside the Celestials’ crystal?” Pure rage spread through me after saying it out loud.
“Not just their magic, Son,” Mom whispered, her gaze falling to the floor, defeated. “When you rob a Devenish Wizard of his legacy magic, you are ripping away his very soul because that’s where the Sky Gods’ infused their power. Into their soul. That’s why your magic is like no other… Every family member my father killed is trapped inside it.”
“No,” I blurted, standing while shock and disgust turned my veins into sizzling threads of fire. “That fucking psychopath!” I growled. The rage I felt transformed into sorrow and anguish, singeing my every cell. “All of them?” I asked softly, crouching before her again and watching the tears fall from her eyes when she regarded me.
She nodded. “For years on end, he used their combined power to intensify his own, making entire kingdoms submit to him, bringing hell to Caelisium and obliterating everything we held dear.”
“Until it was lost during the Uprising,” Evie added.
My mother’s gaze suddenly sharpened, snapping towards her with renewed tenacity. “Until I ripped it away from his shaking hands and escaped the Hollow with Khayden.”
“You took it?!” we all gasped in unison.
“I believed it to be lost or destroyed,” Kingston exclaimed, taken aback by my mother’s bravado.
“And we needed everyone to think that,” she confessed. “I took it from him while he writhed in pain on the floor of the throne room, his face melting with Dragon fire.” A heavy sigh sank her chest, as though she could still see it clearly. “That’s what he is looking for, Brax. What he needs to stabilize his abilities. The crystal contains not only the power and souls of those he killed, but the legacy magic of every king before him.”
Fuck.
“Even my mother…” she added in despair. “Her soul was tied to our family when she had me, so once her gift was stripped away, she, too, became trapped.”