The Daireds’ guards had fled or fallen, and Anjey made short work of Alastair’s bonds. He threw his arms around me as Anjey freed Edmund and Julienna. “Khera,” he gasped in my ear. “Run!”
“NO,” the Elementar boomed. “There will be no running.”
Alastair pushed me behind him as the pillar of shadow loomed over us.
“Now I have all my strength. Now, Princess, you will take your vengeance, and I—”
The darkness twisted in on itself as if suddenly confused. Its eyes burned sulfur yellow as it shrank back to Ellia’s human shape, and it looked with puzzlement at the sword protruding through the chink in its breastplate. Wydrick clutched the dragon-twined hilt, his face deathly white. A black thread coiled around his neck, writhing like a snake trying to escape its charmer, but something pulled it back each time. His eyes flashed green, then yellow, then green again.
Next to me, Alastair reached for the fallen guard’s sword.
“What is this treachery?” the Elementar demanded. “Ghethel, I have called you. Take your human and come back to me!”
“I cannot,” Wydrick’s ghast wheezed. “Oh, master, you underestimated him.”
“Wydrick?”
“Not . . . Wydrick,” he said, his voice loud and terrible and very much his own. “My name is Tristan Daired, son of Merranda and Erran, and my father was no coward. I have done terrible things, unforgivable things in your service, but I will not go to him unworthy of his name.”
The Elementar’s eyes blazed and the black thread tightened around Wydrick’s throat. He screamed.
Alastair lunged, driving his sword deep into the shadow’s heart.
The black thread loosened and Wydrick gasped. Darkness pooled around Ellia’s feet and licked at the edge of the dais, but it could climb no farther. A stain spread across her chest, pouring from the heart transfixed by the brothers’ blades. She bowed her head. Black tears streamed down her withered cheeks.
“Marten said he loved me,” she said in an undertone, and raised her head. “I remember it now.” Her clouded eyes fell on me. “Is that enough?”
I met that gaze and saw, not the princess, nor the saint, nor the Silent King, nor the monster she had become, but a woman, not much older than I was, scared and scarred and heartbroken, and I did the only thing I could. I told her the truth.
“It’s enough.”
The darkness gathered around her, rose once, twice—and scattered with a scream that shattered every window in the throne room. Glass fell in diamond showers from the high panes. A black mist gathered above us like the shadows of carrion birds, darkened, and dispelled, rushing out the open windows into the lightening sky. Ellia’s body collapsed at the foot of the throne. It held its shape for a moment, lips turned up in a faint smile, before it too crumbled to dust.
The dragon-hilt sword clattered to the stone next to Alastair’s as Wydrick slumped against the dais, the black thread twisting into nothingness. His head lolled to one side, eyes open, staring, and a clear, piercing green. He did not move again.
There was perfect silence.
Alastair pulled me close as we watched the morning light filter through the broken windows. Somewhere in the distance, a bird began to sing. Bells tolled, welcoming the dawn as the sun rose on Saint Ellia’s Day.
Chapter 27
The Guardians of Arle
My vision swam. My knees buckled and I gave way, almost folding in half as Alastair picked me up. “It’s all right, khera, it’s all right,” he murmured in my ear. Louder he said, “Edmund, Julienna, arm yourselves. We don’t know—”
The door to the throne room burst open with a bang. “Let them go! Let them go, you ghnash-hleben-ghak!”
I opened blurry eyes to see the last thing I expected: a flood of garden-folk, led by Tobble and Teo, all brandishing various weapons and shrieking battle cries in Low Gnomic and Garhadi. They skidded to a halt when they saw we were the only ones moving in the room.
“Master Teo!” Julienna cried. “But you— How did you escape?”
Teo sheathed his knives and pressed a hand to his shoulder, where part of a crossbow bolt still stuck out from his blood-soaked jerkin. He swayed a little on his feet. “Your friends—came and found me. There were ghastradi, but then there was a great howling sound and their ghasts left them. What happened?”
“We won.” Edmund glanced toward his aunt’s body and quickly looked away. “We paid the price, but we won.”
The garden-folk lowered their weapons as they followed his gaze. One or two removed their little caps. Alastair started; a moment later Tobble scrambled up onto his shoulder. “Oh, Aliza,” he murmured, and put a cool hand against my cheek.
A grave stream of garden-folk waded in among the dead, and I watched over Alastair’s shoulder as they moved through the bodies. They closed the eyes of the Arlean guards and folded their hands over their unmoving chests. The smoldering corpses of the forge-wights and Lord Camron’s body they left alone. When they came to Lady Catriona they paused, and a ripple of debate ran through their ranks before a consensus was reached. Dozens of tiny hands gently lifted her body from the ground as a pair of half-goblins retrieved her head. One of them hummed the first notes of a Gnomic lament, and the others soon took it up as they marched solemnly toward us.
Anjey bent down to the nearest hobgoblin and whispered something in her ear. The hobgoblin gave her a stricken look and touched her hand before signaling the remaining garden-folk to follow her. Anjey straightened and watched them go. Tears streamed down her cheeks.
“What did you tell them?” I asked, realizing as I did how near the end of my strength I really was. My voice came out in a croaking whisper.
“They’re bringing Cedric’s body.”
I felt shock rolling through Alastair like a wave, taut and painful, but he said nothing, only held me closer and started after the garden-folk. I curled up against his chest and closed my eyes, listening to his heartbeat as darkness took me.
I woke to the blur of bright sunlight. Everything ached. It took several attempts to keep my eyes open, crusted as they were with sleep and the salty residue of dried tears. A vaulted roof rose overhead. I lay on clean sheets, crisp and snowy white and smelling faintly of launderer’s soap. Puzzled, I tried to sit up, only to abandon the attempt as my head spun and the room shifted around me. Instead I contented myself with squinting at the ceiling, wondering fuzzily where I was, what had happened, and why the roof was mottled with black streaks. And smoke? Was that smoke? I sniffed. The smell of smoke hung in the air, not strong but noticeable enough to put me on edge, though at the moment I couldn’t remember why. I groaned. Was there a fire?
“Sweet Alyssum?” My uncle’s face swam into view.
“Uncle Gregory? Where—?”
“Hush, hush. Here. Drink this,” he said, and lifted a cup to my mouth. I tasted lukewarm water and mint, and drank greedily. Uncle Gregory eased my head back onto the pillow when I finished.
“Where’s Alastair?” I asked.
“He’s all right. So are Julienna and Captain Edmund and Tobble and all the rest. You needn’t worry.”
“Where . . . where am I?”