“Lysa,” Benetta gasped, taking a step closer.
“Their mistake was paid for in blood. All of their blood.” She reached down and retrieved the head at her foot. She callously threw it to Benetta. “Return this to your village as a reminder of what will happen to men when they seek to take advantage.”
“Oh, Lysa, I’m so sorry.” She took another step forward. “Please let me help you. Let me wash you and clean your clothes. I’ll…I’ll take care of you.”
Malysa grinned then. That old, familiar darkness winking into existence. The black edges coating her fingertips. “No. I think not. I think…this is just the beginning.”
And then Malysa turned around and walked into the cabin.
Cyrene looked at Vera. “Did you go after her?”
A tear trickled down Vera’s face. The vision wavered with her emotions and the drain on her magic. “I tried to reach her many times, but she was lost to me. Some would say that I should have stopped her then. With all those men at my feet. But I did not disagree with her then, nor do I now. She was my sister, and she was hurting. Though I wish I could have fixed what came later.”
The vision reassembled on a battlefield. The castle of Byern was in the background. Not quite as magnificent as it was today, as it had still been under construction. But, clearly, much time had passed. Enough time that the Doma court had begun, evidenced by the variety of colored dress of the magical users on the battlefield.
“Malysa and I spent three hundred years circling each other. While I was creating the academy Malysa and I always dreamed back home and helping generations of my family run the country, my sister was creating her own dark world. Corrupting a branch of my family to make the cursed Nokkin, creating the Indres, awakening her assassins—the Braj—and making dark artifacts. We fought many battles. But it all came to a close here.” Vera winced. “Or so I thought.”
Benetta’s lithe figure and mass of curly brown hair appeared then, stalking off of the battlefield. She still seemed to be no older than Cyrene. Possibly younger. Though Cyrene knew she was several hundred years old at this point.
Cyrene and Vera followed her away from the war and up into the mountains.
A few moments later, Malysa appeared.
“You called, sister?” Malysa asked.
Her madness had only intensified. She’d lost weight. Her eyes were all black, dark circles hanging heavy underneath, and black was running up from her fingers over her wrists and to her elbows.
“Let us finish this once and for all.”
Malysa laughed without mirth. “You think you are a challenge for me, little sister? You command nothing. And you were always weaker than me.”
“Yes,” Benetta agreed easily.
She shucked off the cloak she had been wearing and removed a book that Cyrene had seen many times. The book that Basille Selby had given to her sister, Elea, on the day of Cyrene’s Presenting. The book that Elea had given to Cyrene as a birthday present. The book that had started everything.
Vera reached out and clasped her hand. Her skin was clammy, and her body turned from solid to a wisp. Cyrene could hardly hold on to her.
“Soon now.” Vera’s voice was carried on the breeze.
“Oh, a book.” Malysa cackled. “You always were the scholar, weren’t you?”
“Once, you wished to become that.”
“No, I was the politician, dear sister. I wanted the knowledge to rule. No more. Once, I wanted you to be the academic at my back. But, no, you had to choose them.”
“I didn’t choose them, Malysa. I would be happy in a world where we could all live in harmony.”
“I made the mistake of believing that was possible once, too. But never again. I have my own children now.”
“If that is what you call your abominations.”
Vera shook and gasped as the vision wavered. Her magic running dry. “Just…a little more.”
“Are you sure?”
Vera didn’t answer. She just concentrated.
Malysa and Benetta fought then. A magical fight like nothing Cyrene had ever seen. True light and dark clashing together. A battle that would be replayed in history over and over. Replaying this civil war, this family feud, that shook the heavens.
Then, Benetta removed something from her pocket. A diamond. The diamond. Malysa’s eyes went wide with shock and greed. But Benetta channeled her energy into the diamond, she said a phrase from the book, and bright light cascaded from the talisman. She directed it at Malysa.
Cyrene shielded her eyes from the blinding light, and when she looked once more, Malysa had been split in two. A body lay on the floor, and a dark spirit hung in the space before it. Severed.
Benetta clutched her chest, gasping for breath. Blood ran from her nose and out of her ears. Her body shuddered with exhaustion. She slowly rose to her feet, but something was different about her. It was as if her glow had diminished…even though she had dampened it for so long.
Tears fell down Vera’s face. They watched Benetta try and fail to open a portal with the coin a half-dozen times before she regained enough energy to force it to open. She took the dark spirit high into the Haeven Mountains and trapped her sister away forever.
Vera’s hand suddenly disappeared from Cyrene’s. She reached for Vera, but she was gone. The wisp disintegrating, wafting away into nothing.
Cyrene pushed her hand against the wall to walk out of Vera’s memories and nightmares. But the liquid she normally encountered had solidified. There was no escape.
She swallowed and tried to release the sudden spike of anxiety. She could get out of here. She wasn’t trapped just because Vera was gone.
She pressed against the wall again, but nothing happened. Then, the vision disassembled and was replaced by the tallest, darkest snow-capped mountains she’d ever seen. The Haeven Mountains in the high north frozen tundra.
A laugh echoed behind her.
Cyrene whipped around, and to her horror, she found a figure standing at an entrance to the mountains. Malysa. Her heart froze. She looked so like Matilde. She was Matilde. The dark spirit reunited with the body. Her curls were wild. The black had returned, climbing up her arms. She smiled wickedly at Cyrene.
“How was your walk down memory lane?” Malysa asked pleasantly.
Cyrene stilled. “You can’t be here.”
“And yet, I am.”
“What do you want?”
Malysa smiled. “I told you what I want.”
“Me?”
“I did, but now, I think annihilation to any who won’t submit to me would be nice.”
“You’re not going to win,” Cyrene said with a false sense of confidence.
“You couldn’t keep me out of your dreams when I was but a sliver of my true power. How do you expect to stop me now? Wouldn’t it be easier if you just submitted to me?”
“No,” she spat.
Malysa grinned, and it was pure wickedness. “That’s not what your friend said.”
Cyrene glared. “Let. Ahlvie. Go.”
“I would if he wanted to leave.”
“He does.”
Malysa winked at her. “I just don’t understand why you evade me, Cyrene. My sister has been a bad, bad girl. She’s lied to you. Everyone has lied to you. Why give your allegiance to those who are faithless?”