Mercurial Naomi Hughes (suggested reading txt) 📖

But in the middle of her pronouncement, Tal stood up suddenly and spun to face her. His gaze locked with hers and then, without warning, he staggered forward a step as if someone had struck him from behind.

She cut off her pronouncement, startled. She raised a hesitant hand. “Tal?” she asked, her voice too high, too questioning, potentially ruining all her hard work at appearing dispassionate and reasonable. But there was something sad and final in his eyes that frightened her beyond caring.

The audience started screaming. People leapt over each other, running for the exits. Guards and soldiers were shoving through them to get either away or to the stage. Someone, another soldier perhaps, grabbed her arm and tried to pull her backwards. She put her palm out and blasted a hole through his chest. No one else laid hands on her after that.

“Tal?” she asked again, her voice loud and panicked in her own ears. She didn’t move. She couldn’t make herself move. She had so much practice in reading Tal even when he tried to hide his emotions from her, but now they were playing across his face like shadows from the windblown trees, flitting too quickly to make out fully.

All at once, the emotions vanished, leaving his eyes dark and lifeless.

He exhaled. He dropped to his knees. He fell forward, revealing the arrow lodged in his back.

And the Destroyer exploded.

All around Nyx, the crowd was screaming, lunging, knocking over benches and each other to get away. The Destroyer’s wreath of fire had expanded explosively outward, encompassing most of the stage, burning at least three lords of the high courts to ash instantly and landing several others with fatal wounds. Nyx heard an unearthly wail, one that was underlaid with the roar of a forest fire. The Destroyer was walking to Tal, who was the only person on the stage untouched by the fire. She was kneeling at his side. She was weeping.

Nyx dropped the crossbow. She stared at her brother’s body. She tried to understand what had happened. She tried to understand what she had done.

She could not.

A movement at the edge of the stage caught her attention. Albinus was backing away, face tight in a rictus of fury. He was turning to the soldiers beside him, snapping orders. One of them began to hand him a weapon.

Albinus. He had engineered this. He was going to try to kill the Destroyer now, while she wept over Tal’s body.

A sudden clarity descended on Nyx. She welcomed it, even though she knew it was powered by adrenaline and not necessarily by logic. She leapt onto the toppled bench in front of her. She kicked a woman out of the way. She launched herself at the stage. Heat blistered her as she sprinted past the edge of the veil of flames, catching a dozen tiny fires on her clothing, but she didn’t even feel the spots of pain. There would be a much greater pain waiting for her later.

Albinus spotted her too late. She threw herself through the air and tackled him to the ground. She snatched his weapon—a throwing dagger, which he likely couldn’t wield with any degree of skill anyway. He must have been desperate to bend this swiftly-dissolving situation to his advantage. She would not let him do it. It was her fault that her brother was lying dead twenty feet away, but it was his, too. She would not let him walk away from that.

The Destroyer pulled the arrow from Tal’s back. It wasn’t lodged deeply enough to do much more than superficial damage, but some sort of violet substance—undeniably a deadly toxin of some sort—dripped from its head. She tightened her hand around the shaft. It disintegrated into smoke instantly and the poisoned arrowhead clinked to the ground.

She turned Tal over. She pulled him into her lap. Fire raged everywhere, without and within.

His eyes were closed. His heartbeat had gone still. He was not breathing.

She remembered how he had breathed for her after she had drowned in the icy lake. She bowed over him, bent her head to his, and gave him all of the breath in her body.

She would give him anything. Anything. Her life. Her empire. Her crown.

…her crown.

The memory of her sister whispered: The copper magic would have been enough to instantly heal everyone on the train.

Your fire—if you were using all your fire—is probably the only power strong enough to break it.

She laughed wildly, and it came out a sob. Of course, this would be it. Of course she was finally going to have to make this choice. She could keep her crown and the power in her veins—or she could use up all of her magic to destroy the crown for good, and in so doing perhaps save the life of the boy she loved.

Earlier, she had thought she might be torn apart by the pieces of herself that scraped through her like broken glass. Now that feeling intensified. Her magic surged protectively, hardening the shield of fire around her as she struggled with herself. If she gave her magic up, she would be vulnerable. Helpless. Weak. Tal had said she was made to withstand such things. But how could he know that? She didn’t know it, not at all.

If she did this, maybe she could force Albinus to replace the mercury in her blood again afterward. But she didn’t know the formula for her treatments as Sarai had, and Albinus could just as easily poison her as re-infuse her. But then, he wouldn’t need to poison her, would he? The mercury was the poison.

The pieces of herself grew sharper. The Destroyer clung to her power. Elodie fought fiercely to save Tal’s life. The battle held her immobile, and with every second that passed, Tal’s body grew colder.

How long had she been drowned before he’d saved her? How long could a body