I stare at Jesse, waiting, hoping Raelyn was wrong. His conduit wasn’t broken in defense of his kingdom, because he hangs there, not reacting at all, but maybe the magic still sought him out . . .
He looks from his conduit’s broken spires up to Raelyn, blood dripping in ruby tendrils from his mouth. This is a man who wasn’t defending anything, caring about anything, when his conduit broke. No emotion to spur the magic on.
What happens to magic when a conduit is broken carelessly? When the conduit-wielder has no emotion in his eyes, no act of selflessness or sacrifice in the way he stares up at his wife, his eyes glazed with aching defeat?
The magic is all about choice. And if Jesse chose not to care, maybe the magic is just . . . gone.
My body sags in Theron’s hands.
Angra’s control is widening.
A crack slithers up my mind, letting a single question slip through.
Why?
Why now? If Angra has been planning this takeover since he fell in Abril, why wait so long to enact it? Why not just sweep through the world immediately?
Angra steps off the stage, smiling at me like a long-separated friend. “Why now, indeed, Highness?” he taunts, and I jerk with disbelief, slamming into Theron.
Angra heard me. He heard my thoughts. We possess—weare—the same type of magic now, though, so maybe we’re connected? The thought is too disturbing to consider.
He leans closer to me. “You have such flimsy control of that magic, don’t you? I expected more from you after the chaos you unleashed in Abril. But no matter.”
“Meira!” Mather’s pained shout comes from the ranks of the soldiers who have him and the rest of the Winterians. A clanking of armor follows as he thrashes to break free.
“You have a plan now, don’t you, Winter queen?” Angra purrs. He reaches up, running one finger down my cheek, and I brace for an onslaught of visions—
But nothing comes.
He grins. “Yes, such lofty plans.”
Angra saw something, but I didn’t?
He . . . blocked me.
I tremble, every muscle in my body an earthquake of horror.
He can control his magic more than I can.
This—the carnage of death at my feet, the victorious smirk of Angra before me—is everything I’ve feared my entire life.
And I can’t move, can’t fight him, every nerve limp with the knowledge that despite everything I’ve done, everything we’ve endured, we still failed.
I still failed Winter.
“I’ve always been more powerful than you,” Angra spits. Theron adjusts his grip on my arms, fingers tight. “But you think you have a way to defeat me—by getting yourself killed, hmm? No, Highness. I’ll make sure you stay alive for a long, long time, enough to watch me kill everyone else in your kingdom. Once everyone in Winter is dead, once I own every flake of snow in that miserable land—” He pauses, reaches into my pocket, and yanks out the key, wrapped in the square of cloth. He keeps his eyes on me as he reaches into Theron’s coat pocket and takes out the onehe had, holding them triumphantly before my face. “I will make you watch me destroy your mines once and for all. I will bring those mountains crumbling down.”
My mouth pops open, a flicker of clarity pushing through my throbbing dismay. Our mines?
Angra’s green eyes tighten on mine and all the questions break around the one answer I’ve been wanting for years.
When Spring overtook Winter, Angra never used our mines. He boarded them up and let them rot despite the riches they held.
Any time another kingdom tried to take the mines from Angra—whether by force, as Yakim and Ventralli attempted, or by treaty, as Noam did—he retaliated. Violent, destructive retaliation, slaughtering the armies that invaded or marching into the kingdom that dared negotiate with him.
Angra seized the one person in the world who wanted to give pure magic to everyone—Theron, who in turn killed the one other person who wanted to open the chasm—Noam.
The mines. The magic chasm.
