Page 140 of Merciless Is My Crown

“What if we left things as they are?” I asked quietly, already knowing the answer, because those consequences had also been discussed.

Maybe I needed to hear someone say it out loud one more time.

“The Oracle will come.” Absolute conviction thrummed in Tavion’s voice. “She will bring her Reapers and she will decimate this realm and these people will become collateral. If you want to save them, we have to see this through. We’ll save as many as we can, Anaria. But we can’t save them all.”

I balled up my fists. “That is not good enough. Not fucking good enough.”

It hadn’t been good enough before, and maybe I’d counted on Cosimo coming up with some brilliant solution, but…Zorander and Raziel stalked toward us, a grinning Lyrae in tow. Raz sported a black eye, Zor was favoring his right leg, while Lyrae looked like she was having the time of her life.

“How did it go with the guards?” Tavion called because he had to be an arsehole. And maybe, just a little, because he sensed my growing dread and wanted to lighten the mood.

“I see the power transfer went as smoothly as expected.”

“Fuck you, wolf,” Zor growled good-naturedly, spitting out a mouthful of blood.

“Good work. Your entrance was as awe-inspiring as we’d imagined.” Zor clasped hands with Zephryn. “Word’s already spread through the entire castle we have a dragon on our side. That will make our enemies think twice.”

Zor’s keen eyes drifted over us, his frown deepening. “Where is Tristan?”

I, like everyone, stared out across the sprawling army, a thousand fires blackening the air with soot. Tristan should have been back by now.

Injured or not, he’d set off the explosion, but that was hours ago. Dread crawled slowly through me, worthless and unhelpful, but locating him would take hours.

Days.

“Still out there somewhere.” Tavion’s face was troubled. “Now that you two are here, I’m going to look for him.” He slipped his hand from mine and squeezed my arm.

“Don’t worry, I’ll find him, Anaria,” he murmured with a steady calm that dulled the ragged edge of my panic into something manageable.

“No.” Zor shook his head. “We stay together. Especially now when the magic’s about to be released. Tristan knows to regroup at the Keep. He’ll be here. He must have been delayed.” But Zor’s face tightened with the same worry that tied my stomach into knots.

“We’re ready to bring down the wall, then?” Simon pulled on a dusty black jacket, a Solarys soldier’s from the looks of it.

I swallowed. “We’re only taking stock of the situation,” I cautioned. “Not to open the portal or anything else. Not until everyone has time to find shelter.”

“Then let’s get moving, princess.” Raziel’s grin was dazzling as he swept his arm around my waist. “We don’t want to be late.”

I was reaching up to touch his bruised eye when the world blurred.

58

ANARIA

The magic from the ward hummed inside my bones like a never-ending melody I couldn’t stop.

A long time ago, before I’d known what such awful power could do, I’d coveted this magic like it was the rarest, most precious thing in the world. Now…I feared it.

I swallowed, scanning the faces of my friends. My allies.

None of them shared my hesitation, this sense of impending doom. None of them wanted to consider another option, anything to prevent this cataclysmic rise of power that would transform this realm forever.

Cosimo gestured to the freshly churned-up ground around us, the same light brown as any other patch of dirt in Solarys, but here…power rumbled beneath my feet as if this realm trembled at the storm that was coming.

“We used an extraction spell to separate the iron from viable soil, which took a few hours, and we were only able to cleanse this small section before my friends expended their magic.”

“How did the king do this in the first place, and why?” Zor asked, squatting down and running his fingers through the dirt.

“A magicless population is easier to control,” Cosimo mused. “In my lifetime, Solarys was never known for its magic, only for their military might, which means the nullification of magic goes further back than I’ve been alive. If magic existed in Solarys when Serpens was first banished here, there could have been magic wielders powerful enough to cast a spell to cover this land in a layer of iron.”

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