Mercurial Naomi Hughes (suggested reading txt) 📖

them. “Nyx,” she said then, with her gaze turned away and her voice dangerously even, “am I right in assuming it was you who did this?”

Nyx debated, but ultimately—“Yes.”

“You could not have thought you would leave here alive.”

Nyx wasn’t sure if it was a threat or an observation. “Revive my brother,” she said at last. “We can debate who’s going to kill who later.”

The curtains of fire answered Elodie’s call. They spun ash from the ground and fed it into the wind that had been churned up by so much heat, and soon the flames spinning around her were soot black. They eclipsed the sun. They shaded the mountains on the horizon. They blocked out what was left of the fleeing peasants and the shouting soldiers, the bowing trees, the scorched irises and charred oleander. Only a few moments ago, the garden had been a riot of color and life. Now it was ruined, because her fire was capable of nothing else.

The Destroyer. That was the name her sister’s subjects had given her when she performed her first public execution at eight years old. They had looked at her with awe in their eyes, and fear, and she’d found that nothing had ever pleased her more—except perhaps the warm and proud weight of Sarai’s hand on her shoulder. She would never feel that weight again, now. Neither would she sustain the mercury and magic that had been her sister’s first—and then final—gift. There would be nothing left within her except herself.

She wasn’t sure if she could bear it.

She pulled power from the fires around her, and from the magic that was blazing through her veins. She fed it into the crown. It began to warm beneath her hands.

Once, she was afraid. Still, she was afraid. But: we were made to withstand such things, whispered the voice of the boy she loved. He was a boy of ill-placed faith, a boy whose belief in both her and his god was relentless, without mercy. He wanted nothing from her except the impossible. Somehow, he had made her want it too.

The crown grew hotter and began to glow. The flames surged into it and through it. They too were relentless, and she would make herself so as well.

At her side, Albinus tensed and then reached out a hand to Tal’s body. The magic within the crown was nearly to the breaking point and he was preparing to channel it.

The fire was tearing through her, each fingertip a jet of flame, each artery and vein and capillary a raging torrent of sparks. She had lost control. Her power was following only itself, like a waterfall crashing down inevitably from the heights. She began to grow faint. She heard screaming, something feral and furious, and realized that it was both her and the fire.

The crown melted.

Nyx shouted. Albinus cried out in pain as he drew magic into himself, his veins glowing a bright copper that shone even through his skin. His hand on Tal’s shoulder spasmed into a claw. Tal’s body seized, his spine arching.

The waterfall of Elodie’s power stopped all at once. There was a sharp pain in her eyes. Something wet curved down her cheek and spattered onto Tal’s shirt: a single bead of red blood.

The flames that had been wailing in a cyclone around them stopped suddenly. They hung in the air, fire and sparks and suspended ash, and then, like an imploding star, they rushed inward.

The last of the crown dissipated into steam, releasing a torrent of raw magic just as the curtains of fire collapsed around it. The two forces roared into each other with a thunderous crack that spider-webbed the stone stage with fault lines. A mighty wind rushed out from the spot where the crown had been and sent all of them flying, tearing branches from the trees and flattening bushes on its way.

After that came a great silence.

The garden slowly settled. The trees stopped thrashing. The multitude of small fires that had caught in the grass sputtered out, unable to chew through the green and well-watered plants without the fuel of magic. Four figures splayed across the stage like points on a compass: Tal, Elodie, Nyx, and Albinus, who was slowly sitting up.

Copper burned through his veins still, more power than he had ever felt before. He flexed his fingers and watched the fascinating glow of it through his skin. His spies had found out the truth of the Iron Crown’s enchantment years ago, but he had never guessed the sheer magnitude of magic within it. He had planned to wear it, but wielding it would do just as well.

Blinking, he surveyed the damage around him. The soldiers and the few peasants who hadn’t fled were now either unconscious or dead. He didn’t trouble himself to check. He didn’t need them for what he knew he had to do next.

He had always been clever, a quick planner, excelling at both spinning and revising schemes. His old plan to have the Destroyer assassinated wouldn’t work now but there was still a way to salvage the situation nicely. He just had to do it before any of his enemies woke up.

The young would-be assassin—Nyx had been her name, he recalled—lay prone on the eastern end of the stage, her chest moving steadily up and down with her breaths. He staggered over to her and then knelt, searching for the throwing dagger she’d taken from him. He would need to kill her first, since she’d seemed to have both the greatest desire to see him dead and the actual ability to do the deed. After that he’d move on to Tal—his would be the most truncated resurrection in history, if Albinus had in fact succeeded in reviving him—and last of all, the newly powerless Destroyer, who was now as helpless as any babe without her fearsome magic.

He found the dagger wedged under Nyx’s shoulder. He tugged it free and then pondered for