Page 137 of The Curse of Golden Blood
Eight hundred against our five hundred. The mathematics of annihilation.
"And Miralyte?"
Narietta's face went pale, wings trembling with whatever she was seeing. "She's walking the old roads. The paths that exist between mirrors and memory. Where the ancient magic still remembers what it was before the courts divided it."
"Can she find her way back?"
"She won't need to find her way back." Narietta shook her head, tears glittering in the corner of her eyes. "This is her journey, Zy. It always has been."
Thunder rolled overhead, answering my rage. The vessels stood ready, their borrowed magic crackling beneath mortal skin, but they were kindling against the inferno Ylvena was bringing.
"The crown," I said, the words scraping out like broken glass. "Bring me the war crown."
Vex moved without hesitation, disappearing into the armory. The crown she returned with was nothing like the ceremonial circlet I wore in court. This was older, crueler. Black iron forged in the heart of dying storms, each spike carved from the bones of ancient enemies. Lightning lived within the metal, trapped there since before the courts divided, when storm and thunder were one savage force that tore reality apart for sport.
The weight of it settled on my brow like judgment. Three centuries since I'd last worn this crown, when I'd carved a kingdom from the corpses of those who thought Thunder Court would kneel. The metal was cold against my skin, but power flooded through me immediately.
"They're here," Narietta whispered.
Through the shattered windows came the sound of wings. Thousands of them, beating in perfect synchronization. The morning light disappeared behind bodies that blocked out the sun itself. Gold and crimson armor caught what little light remained, turning the sky into a bleeding wound.
I stepped onto the highest balcony.
The air itself changed.
Pressure dropped so fast that several of the enemy faltered mid-flight, their ears popping, equilibrium destroyed. The temperature plummeted twenty degrees in the space of a heartbeat. Moisture in the air crystallized, turning to ice thathung suspended like diamonds before gravity remembered its purpose.
This was how storms were born. Not with grand gestures or shouted commands, but with physics bent to breaking.
I raised one hand, and the sky answered.
Lightning erupted upward from the earth itself, pillars of white-hot plasma that turned sand to glass and stone to molten rivers. A hundred bolts simultaneously, each one finding a body in golden armor. The metal they wore, so pretty in sunlight, became their crematorium.
The smell hit immediately. Charred meat and melted gold, ozone sharp enough to burn lungs. Bodies fell like rain, some still twitching as electricity coursed through nervous systems that couldn't understand they were already dead.
But I was just beginning.
The crown whispered ancient words, languages that predated the courts, when storms were worshipped as gods because they were. I spoke them without thought, my mouth shaping syllables that human throats were never meant to form.
The clouds above turned absolute black that devoured light. They began to rotate, slow at first, then faster. A vortex forming directly above the palace, its eye perfectly centered on where I stood.
Wind hit Ylvena's forces like a wall of invisible knives. Three hundred miles per hour, strong enough to strip flesh from bone, to turn armor into shrapnel. Fae warriors tried to maintain formation but found themselves pulled into the rotating mass, bodies colliding with crushing force. Wings snapped like twigs. Bones shattered against each other as the vortex compressed them together.
Then the Sun Court struck back.
Fire magic hit the palace walls like liquid death. Not ordinary flames but solar fire, the kind that existed in the hearts of stars. Stone didn't just melt, it vaporized. Three vessels who'd been manning the eastern tower simply ceased to exist, their borrowed magic no match for that kind of heat.
My lightning met their fire mid-air, and the collision sent shockwaves through both armies. The sound was beyond thunder, a roar that shattered every window in the palace. My ears rang, blood trickling from ruptured drums that would take hours to heal.
A Sun Court captain dove through the chaos, twin blades wreathed in golden flame. I barely got my storm shield up before she struck. The impact drove me back three steps.
Her second strike came faster. My lightning caught her blade but the fire magic still scorched through, burning through my armor to the flesh beneath.
Pain. Real pain that the crown's power couldn't simply wash away.
"Die, usurper," she snarled, pressing her advantage.
I caught her throat with one hand, channeling raw electricity directly into her nervous system. She convulsed once before going limp. But in that moment of focus, I'd left myself open.
