Page 119 of The Crown of Moonlight
My heart roars in my ears.Drawing my dagger, I pull magic to shape the sword, and I run forward to help in the only way I can.But the Grey sees me coming.
Shifting her stance, she pushes out another wave of red mist.This time, it’s aimed at me.
I do what Chyr did.I burn the air before it can reach me.Except my magic doesn’t stop.
The crown flares on my brow, and heat rips through my chest.An inferno pours out from my palm—wildfire that races along the slick of red vapour and flashes across every Grey and soldier and Rider in its path.Flame licks wet steel and blazes through crimson uniforms, burning across Daire’s back and Niall’s right shoulder.
Daire jerks back with a curse.Niall’s hands are quicker, and a pop of air puts the fire out.
I gape uselessly for a moment, too horrified to move.When I reach for Daire, he flinches away from me.The smell of singed leather and hair makes my stomach pitch.But I shake myself and push forward, beyond Niall and Daire and all the Riders still wading through the soldiers to reach the Greys.Niall won’t meet my eyes.
The Greys are damaged, their faces blackened and burned.I push out another wave of fire, pour it out of me.Push it at them until they scream and writhe.
Chyr catches my arm.“Flora, stop.Pull back.We can do the rest.”
In another ten minutes, there is silence.The stench of burned flesh assaults me.
There’s another group down the loch, so we can’t feel relief too soon.But I don’t sense anyone moving.Water laps at the banks, shushing through the reeds, and peat breathes up its sour-sweet rot beneath our feet.Moonlight turns the black water into a mirror.
“We’re running out of time,” Chyr says.“The moon will set soon.”
Striding to a spot at the end of the Altar, Chyr stops near where the river runs out towards the sea.I see nothing that marks the spot, but they say that doorways between worlds are made in thebetweenswhere the Veil is thinnest.
The place where Chyr stands is between loch and river, between blanket bog and valley fen, between flat and brae, between moor and ring dyke rock on the cusp between spring and summer.He thrusts the Sword of the Anvar’thaine into the air.
I hold my breath, expecting something that looks like the veil in Lannraig’s story to appear, for the air to split with threads of magic that dance like the Tirnaeve’s pale gold magic in the Veilstone rings.
Nothing happens.
Chyr tries again, though I can see the defeat in the slump of his shoulders and the tension that runs through the other Riders as they gather around him.My stomach hollows, and my chest aches.I know what it means, even before he fails again.
The gate won’t open.Vheara must have remembered it and sealed it, after all.Which makes sense given the ambush she prepared for us.
We are alone.The nine of us will have to fight Vheara on our own, and there will be no help coming.Not from Tirnaeve, at least.
I am not a general.My power is not Siorai, and it never was.I don’t know how to fight her.
I’ve seen the strength of the runes the Riders wear and the fire rune on the amulet the soldier used to light the signal beacon.Chyr once said that Vheara was one of the most powerful runesmiths Tirnaeve has ever known.The magic that fuels her power may have changed, but she will still have all that knowledge.I don’t know how to counter that, not the way the Riders can.
I’d be pointless on a battlefield.A danger to both sides.
While Chyr and the Riders are all still occupied with the doorway, I step around the Cailleach’s Altar and the Hallow Keepers who stand at the corners, and I remove the scarf that hides my crown.The flames reflect in the thin puddle of water that coats the stone, and it’s the first time that I have seen the crown.
The first time it’s felt real.
The light stone of the Altar of the Moon stands out against the dark mountains behind it, a long plank with the crescent moon etched along its centre and a bowl ground into the slab near each corner.
The ancient stories tell us that back in the time of the true queens, there would have been four people here to make the sacrifice: the old queen and her consort, and the Maiden and the Rider she had chosen.The Maiden and the Rider would have vowed to be true to each other, to the Great Mother, and to Alba Scoria, and they would have sworn to sacrifice their lives when the gods and the land chose for their time to end.
There would have been blood spilled four times in that moment: the Maiden and her Rider would have cut their palms and filled their bowls with blood, and the old Cailleach Queen and her Consort would have cut their wrists to make way for the new Queen to reign, their bowls filling while their lives bled away.Agreeing to give up their lives would have been part of the sacrifice the old queen and her Rider consort had made before she received the Crown of Moonlight.The Maiden and her Rider had to make the same promise before she was crowned as the new Cailleach Queen.
The Great Mother watches me now—I can feel her attention.The air falls completely still as I draw my dagger and prepare to make the sacrifice in the only way that I can.
“We sealed the doorway as part of the trap, but we weren’t expecting to catch the Maiden.Vheara will be so pleased,” a male voice says somewhere nearby.
I whip around, searching for whoever spoke, but Shade and Shadow growl at the same time from somewhere else.I can’t find any of them.
Pressure slams between my shoulders, snatching my breath.The pain comes later—a sharp pain like the fiery knives that come with emptying my magic.I look down at my chest, and the tip of a sword has pierced it through.
