The Crown of Stones: Magic-Price (55 page)

Anxiety pulled my muscles tight. “You’re giving me the crown?”

“I don’t need it.” He tossed the circlet. Catching it, as my skin made contact, I cringed; anticipating an explosion of power that didn’t come.

Puzzled, I turned the piece over and examined it. Heavy and not quite perfectly symmetrical, the tops of the individual stones were uneven and riddled with flaws. The sides and bottoms were smooth, magically fused, so that each color flowed seamlessly into the other. Where the stone’s edges blended was murky and dingy colored and unpleasant to look at. Just like my father’s skin.

I glanced at him. Then back at the crown.

The stones in my hand were dim and cold. The glowing sparks, the auras, I remembered jumping inside of them, were gone. The Crown of Stones was nothing but an empty husk. Its power was in him now.

“You’re right, L’tarian,” he said boldly, “I did make a choice all those years ago when I killed V’loria. I made the only choice I could. Now, it’s your turn. Will you go, take Neela and run? Or stay and be named Prince of the Shinree? Revel in the blood in your veins. Be the champion of your own people.”

“Go. Stay.” Hopeless anger darkened my laugh. “You make it sound so simple.”

“It is simple. You belong with me.”

“I’m not going. And I’m not staying. There’s a third choice.” I stepped back and put a hand on my sword.

“Is this why you came here?” he laughed. “To fight me?”

“I came,
goddamn it
, hoping I wouldn’t have to. I came hoping there might be something to salvage. That I might see a hint of the man my mother loved. To find out if in some, small way you were capable of caring for your own son. But, whatever you were is gone. You’re a shell of the man that made me. You’re empty. Broken. Just like the Crown of Stones.”

Reth stared at me, perfectly still. His eyes were full of ire, and a little disillusionment. Like he actually thought I might choose him. “You have no idea what I am, son. But you will.” Eerily calm, my father raised his voice and said sharply, “Bring her!”

FIFTY ONE

I
couldn’t look down. If I looked at the ground in front of me, where Neela Arcana was naked, bound and bloody, it would undo me. Instead, focusing on something I could handle (the Langorian that put her there), I tightened my grip on the Crown of Stones and belted the grinning, bearded bastard across the face with it. Then I threw down the circlet and started beating him.

He struggled, but I was in no mood.

Sidestepping his frantic attempt to block me, I seized one of his beefy arms in mid-swing and snapped it over my knee. The scream he let out as the limb twisted and broke was like oil on a fire. I wanted to hear more.

Driving him back into the cave wall with an eager growl, I gripped his big head in both hands and bounced it off the rock until blood splattered out the back.

“L’tarian,” my father said tiredly. “Let him go.”

“Why?” I shoved an arm under the folds of the man’s neck. “Give me one reason why I shouldn’t stand right here,” pressing in, I cut off his air, “and watch him die.”

“Because he didn’t hurt her,” Reth replied. “I did.”

I dropped my arm. The soldier slid from my grip. He landed in a breathless lump on the cave floor, and I backed away.

“Go,” Reth ordered him crossly. “Spread the word to make ready for an attack. The Rellans believe they have an advantage,” Reth’s smug, colored
eyes shifted to me, “now that a proper distraction has arrived.” He looked back at the soldier. “Bring the Queen with you and lock her up. Some place dark and dirty, perhaps?”

Features twisted in pain, the Langorian put a hand to the back of his dented head. He couldn’t move his other arm. It hung, curved at an unnatural angle as he inched unsteadily up the wall to his feet and took a shaky step toward Neela.

Before he could take another, my blade was out and buried in his gut.

Reth groaned as the body fell. “Oh, son, you really are painfully efficient.”

Ignoring him, I booted the Langorian off my sword. I stomped on him a few times just for fun. Then I put my weapon away and turned to face Neela.

I didn’t want to—she looked that breakable. Bare shoulders hunched, knees drawn up to her chin, she was sitting with her arms wrapped around her legs and her head dropped forward on her knees. It was unnervingly similar to the position I found her sleeping in at Broc’s house. Only now, finger-like bruises tarnished the smooth skin of her arms and legs. Rope burns ringed her ankles. The red, wet sores were likely left by the same style of heavy binding that was still tying her wrists together.

I squatted down. She seemed not to notice me. I tried making eye contact, but her braids had come undone and too much tangled hair was in the way.

She wasn’t moving, wasn’t talking.

I glared up at Reth. I had two words for him. “Did you?”

“A small sampling,” he confessed. “I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. And, I have to say…it was a bit of a letdown. There is simply no fire in the girl.”

Closing my eyes, I breathed.
He wants this. He wants me to lose control.

And I was going to. There was no way around it. Seeing Neela beaten and used in the dreams was bad enough. Every time I listened to her scream, every time she placed the blame on me, it tore me apart. But I was accustomed to it. I expected it. The real Neela’s silent suffering, how she sat, withdrawn, unresponsive, and frighteningly calm, was agonizing in a completely different way.

“Neela?” I said softly. “Neela, can you hear me?” My tender tone getting no response, I got short with her. “Look at me,” I said, and her body uncurled.

Head lifting, she peered at me through a fall of knotted, dark hair. “Troy?”

“I’m here.”

Dazed and shivering, she nodded. Quiet tears fell from her red, swollen eyes. The drops ran over the cuts on her cheeks, across her trembling lips, and down the bruises darkening her jaw. A few slid past the scrapes on her neck and in between the lash marks on her breasts. None made it as far as the burns on her stomach, hips, and thighs.

My father had been thorough. Yet, I’d seen far worse, far too many times. I knew how to disconnect myself from such appalling atrocities. I’d been trained to get past the outrage, the sympathy, and the anger, and deal with it when the work was done.

I couldn’t get past this. I didn’t even waste time trying.

“Hold still.” Pulling the dagger from my boot, I sawed at the ropes on her wrists.

“I’m sorry,” she whimpered. “I’ve made things worse.”

My grip on the weapon tightened. “This is his fault, Neela. Not yours.”

“I tried to run, to fight him, but…”

“It’s all right. I won’t let him hurt you anymore.”

From across the cave Reth let out a grumble of impatience. “The stone, L’tarian. Hand it over or she will endure far worse than my attentions.”

Choking back a reply, as I kept at the rope, I wondered if my father had any idea the mistake he’d made.
He
put Neela in my head.
He
made my desire to defend and avenge her exist outside of the dream, in hopes of manipulating and unbalancing me.

Well, it worked. I was definitely unbalanced. Just not in the way he thought. I wasn’t crumbling. I wasn’t going to fall at his feet and meet his demands. This wasn’t a dream where I was tied and helpless. I was in the room with the cause of her suffering and he was real and mortal, and near enough that I could tear a hole in his throat and smile as the blood drained out of it.

The rope broke. Carefully, I lifted it away from the lesions underneath and tossed it aside. “Stay down,” I told her. I slid the dagger away and got up. Putting myself in front of Neela, I looked at Reth. “This changes nothing.”

“Are you sure? Between Sienn’s teachings and the crown, I can heal her. I can take away the memory of her ordeal…if you give me the obsidian.”

“You want the stone? Then you’ll have to kill me. You’ll have to stare into my eyes as you cast and watch the life you gave me fade away. Can you do that…father?”

“If you insist. But you might ask her first.” His gaze swung to Neela. “Ask her if she wants to die like her mother.”

“No. If we do this, Neela leaves.”

“Neela stays. She moves an inch and I will kill her, and every Rellan child under the age of ten. I will boil the blood right in their tiny, little veins.”

“You wouldn’t.”

He gave me an ominous grin. “Go ahead, son, ask her. Unless, you’re afraid? Afraid that you’ll kill her even if she begs you not to.”

“Shut up.”

“Do you hate me more than you want her? That’s really what it comes down to.”

“I said, shut up.”

“This time would be no accident. It would be outright murder. Because you know you have no real chance against me. You’re weak. Your spells are inferior. Neela will die, I will win, and you will be left with nothing—again.”

“Stop! Just fucking stop!” Shoving my hands in my hair, I started pacing, trying to come up with a solution that wasn’t there. I had no doubt that if I tried to get her out, my father would make good on his murderous threat. The only way to avoid it was to give him what he wanted, to put my desires and her wellbeing above an entire kingdom.

That is what the dream intended for me all along.

Yet, while everything (my own life and the lives of everyone I swore to defend) paled where Neela was concerned, my need to retaliate for her pain didn’t.

I knelt back down. Neela had stopped crying. Her stare was composed and resolved. It reflected the answer to the question I wasn’t brave enough to ask.

I wasn’t brave enough to hear it yet either. So I kissed her.

She tasted of tears and blood. I almost stopped. I didn’t want to hurt her. But Neela’s mouth moved on mine as if nothing terrible stood between
us. Her hands clutched at me like she needed a moment of pleasure to mask the pain.

Her last moment,
I thought, and drew back. “I can’t. Not again.”

“You have to, Ian. Rella must go on, even if I don’t.”

“What if he’s too strong? If you die for this and I fail…”

“You won’t fail.” Finding my hands, she squeezed them. “You have abilities Reth only dreams of.”

“I don’t—”

“You do. There isn’t time to explain. Just know that he cannot be allowed to live. There is too much risk. And I am not that important.”

I brushed the hair back from her face. “If only that were true.”

Neela smiled a little and I kissed her again. I soaked up every second, every sensation. Then I left her. I walked over to where my father was standing near the fire. Churning filaments of magic were worming up out of his body, dancing and hovering over his mottled skin like a dark, vaporous rainbow.

The sight of him was as frightening as it was beautiful. Even his eyes, a swirling, muddy hue, were radiating massive amounts of power. Power he was about to aim at me.

Readying myself, I woke the obsidian. I envisioned it as a thick, black shield, shiny and slick; reflective enough to turn aside any direct magical strike. It would only last a couple of hits. It was better than nothing though, so I sacrificed a portion and made one for Neela.

Next, I roused the stones in the wristlet. Inhibiting the flow to a thin stream, like I practiced, I braced for his attack. Yet apart from Reth beaming at me, nothing happened.

He’s letting me strike first,
I thought. And I knew why. Meeting my spells head on, taking whatever beating I gave him, would prove my incompetence. It would confirm that he was backed by the might of the crown’s power, and I was on my own.

Only, I wasn’t. Not today.
Not anymore.

Splitting the emerald off, I directed it at the cave wall. I nudged it up, inside the layers of rock, all the way to the ceiling, and then over. Invading, infiltrating every split and fissure I could find, I pushed the aura, spreading it like veins through the dense structure.

I drilled in deeper. Disturbing the mass, shifting it, minutely at first, I increased and intensified my incursion. I broadened the spell to penetrate the entire area above Reth’s position. Then I gave it one final, mind-jarring thrust. I drove it in hard and a loud, splintering
snap
ricocheted through the cavern.

My father looked up for the source. Right as it crashed down on his head.

The fall was long and deafening. Dirt and rock rained nonstop. It rose back up in dark, billowing clouds that bulged and bloated to swallow the firelight, and foul the air.

I couldn’t see. Dust filled my lungs. It swept into my nose and mouth. The grit felt like boulders in my eyes. I couldn’t keep it out. Even the shield I’d conjured was useless, as the cave-in wasn’t a magical attack. It was a product of my lack of experience with elemental spells, and a pure lack of forethought.

Cursing my own stupidity, I threw myself against the wall and felt my way along it, back to the exit. Blind and choking, stumbling like the town drunk through the corridor, I finally tumbled out onto the slab and collapsed. I was hoping the night air would provide relief. But, lost in the thick, grainy cloud that followed me, I was still wheezing. I still couldn’t see.

Feeling rain hit the top of my head, I lay back. I opened my mouth gratefully. It was a light shower, little more than a drizzle, but bit-by-bit, the sheath of dirt rinsed off my skin and washed out of my eyes. Gradually, the breeze dispersed the brown fog and the air started to clear. I stopped coughing and hacking, and it was suddenly very quiet.

Too quiet,
I thought. There was no way he was dead.

Hauling myself up with a groan, I went back in. The air in the passage tasted like mud. Up ahead, I could make out traces of Reth’s conjured fire glowing again. It led me through the remaining stir of dust to a mass of rubble in the center of the cave.

I turned, side to side, looking for Neela. She was still where I left her, on the ground, her naked body covered in sand. She stirred, and I released the breath I didn’t even realize I was holding. Her eyes opened. For just a moment, there was clear encouragement in her gaze. Then it went blank and her eyes closed again.