Page 105 of Kingdom of Locks

It was over.

Chapter Twenty-Five

“Aurelia.” Mama Imelda’s whisper was so full of emotion, it brought tears to Aurelia’s eyes. “I’m so proud of you. We’re free, my darling. Truly free.”

Aurelia nodded wearily, returning her mother’s embrace before swiveling to face the other person who still had an arm loosely around her.

“Do you know what happened?” she asked Amell.

“Not at all,” he admitted. “But I think I just got a glimpse of what it feels like to be an enchanter. Except I had no control whatsoever. It was just like…somethingwas activated inside me. I could feel it fighting back against Cyfrin somehow.”

Aurelia nodded slowly, piecing it together. It seemed that the magic she’d unwittingly given Amell had woken and come to their aid. She drew a shaky breath. So that was how the power Cyfrin had idolized for seventeen long years had been broken. It had fought with itself, one half pitted against the other, and the magic that Amell couldn’t wield, but nevertheless carried in his body, had prevailed.

“You saved us, Amell,” she said, smiling softly at him. “When you threw yourself in front of us, you saved us with the power in you.”

“I can’t take credit,” Amell contradicted. “The power might be in me, but it didn’t come from me.” He ran his thumb gently along her cheek, but there was a bemused frown on his face, as his mind clearly struggled to catch up. “I still don’t understand it, really.”

“Neither do I,” interjected another voice. Bartholomew had struggled to his feet, color already returning to his face. “But I would like to. What I can say for sure is that was the most incredible, the most fascinating display of magic I’ve ever witnessed.”

“Yes, well,” said Mama Imelda, not sounding entirely impressed. “If you conduct years’ worth of illegal experiments, without a care for the potentially fatal impact on those subjected to them, I suppose you’re bound to get some fascinating results.”

“Naturally I do not condone Cyfrin’s actions,” Bartholomew said quickly. “But I would still like to understand them.” He frowned at Amell. “The power you told me about earlier, the magic released into you when Princess Aurelia unlocked it from her core. I wish you had the magic in your blood to have been able tofullysense it as it battled with the magic Cyfrin was pulling from that hair. It was truly a spectacle to behold.”

“So that is what happened?” Amell asked. “I don’t know why the magic on me did that. I didn’t direct it to.”

“You couldn’t direct it at all,” Bartholomew agreed. “It would have operated only on the course set by the enchanter who first molded it from his own core. In this case, Cyfrin.”

“He set it on a course to defeat himself?” Mama Imelda asked skeptically.

Bartholomew gave a low chuckle. “I doubt it.”

Aurelia frowned. “He told me once that the purpose of the power he’d stored in me was to overwhelm and overpower all other enchanters. He wanted to show them that he was the greatest one.”

“How interesting,” Bartholomew breathed. He looked Amell over, noticing the way his shoulder was bleeding. “Your Highness! You’ve reopened your wound.”

“I’m afraid so,” Amell said cheerfully. “It hurts like dragon’s flame, but it’s the least of my concerns right now. I want to understand what just happened.”

Clucking his tongue, Bartholomew pulled a wad of bandage from an inside pocket of his robe, redressing Amell’s wound as he continued speaking. “What I was about to say was that we can be thankful that once the magic passed into you, it recognized you as its source, not Cyfrin. To be honest, I wouldn’t have expected that. I can only speculate that it was the result of Princess Aurelia willingly giving it to you. Perhaps it changed ownership, in a manner of speaking. I doubt even Cyfrin could have predicted that outcome. In any event, it seems the magic considered him to be one of the enchanters it was designed to overcome.”

Amell made a noise of comprehension. “So it wasn’t protecting me from anything and everything. It was specifically overcoming any magic that was thrown at me. That explains why the arrow was able to hurt me, whereas Cyfrin couldn’t kill me.” He grinned boyishly. “If he’d picked me up and thrown me out the window the old-fashioned way instead of trying to blast me out with power, it probably would have worked.”

Aurelia shuddered, finding no humor in the joke. “So when Cyfrin attacked us just now, the magic in Amell fought back of its own accord?”

“Indeed,” Bartholomew nodded. “And overcame, from which we can deduce that it was stronger.”

“Of course it was,” smiled Aurelia, her gaze passing to Amell. “It was given freely rather than forcibly taken.”

“Not to mention,” Amell added, returning her smile, “love is stronger than any destructive force.” His forehead creased again, and he looked back at the enchanter. “It wasn’t able to overcome the blindness completely, though. I mean, it got me my sight back, but I still couldn’t see Aurelia.”

“Sorry…what?” Bartholomew looked totally lost, and Aurelia listened in belated dismay to Amell’s account of his fight with Cyfrin in the tower.

“Then he just sort of tapped my head, and everything went dark,” Amell finished. “He told me I was doomed to blindness, although the magic later fought that off. Then he said that I should know he took great delight from the fact that I’d never see Aurelia again.”

“That little worm,” said Mama Imelda, disgusted.

Bartholomew was looking thoughtfully between Amell and Aurelia. “And how did you lift that final aspect of the blindness, Princess Aurelia?”

She flushed slightly, not used to the title. “Well, I didn’t do it on purpose,” she said. “I was just weeping over his wound, wishing I could save his life by crying, like I did when…well, it’s an old story. The point is, I thought he was going to die because of trying to protect me, and I couldn’t bear to see him in pain.”

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