City of Spells (Into the Crooked Place #2) - Alexandra Christo Page 0,39

uncertain breath. Maybe all of her stolen magic could sense the power that Zekia had and maybe it was running scared, leaving its heartless leader to fight alone.

“Now, now,” Ashwood said.

Zekia felt his hand on her shoulder, warm and cold at the same time, his shadows squirming loudly by her ears.

Zekia tried not to wince at them. She held her breath so as not to smell the burnt magic they were soaked in. She didn’t want Ashwood to know that she was thinking bad things about him.

“My little warrior,” Ashwood said. He squeezed her shoulder tightly. “Destined for so much greatness. How proud you make me.”

Zekia smiled at that, though she couldn’t help but feel it wasn’t earned.

That destiny he spoke about was never hers. It was given to her, like a consolation, or a gift meant to soothe her broken heart as Zekia tried her best to live without a mother or a big brother to guide her. Other people got tearful sympathies and tender words. They inherited traits or fancy jewels from their dead parents.

Zekia had inherited an entire people.

She had inherited a fate and suddenly there were grown-ups so much wiser than she was, looking to her for wisdom, pressing the weight of her brother’s destiny against her tiny heart.

There would be no more children in the Rishiyat Kin until she fulfilled the role of Liege.

There would be a curse upon them all until she accepted the spirit of her dead brother’s magic.

But they didn’t understand how hard it was and how loud the voices in her head were when Ashwood wasn’t there to quell them. They didn’t know what it was like to live in the shadow of a brother born with staves, prophesied to lead them to greatness.

Zekia tried so hard to perfect her magic and quiet its screams, but all it did was lead her straight into the head of a boy just as desperate to prove himself as she was.

Stumbling into Wesley’s mind was like a sign, flashing a thousand possibilities across her vision. It sent her Intuitcrafter magic into even more of a tailspin and in every maddening prediction Zekia saw, she also felt with absolute certainty that everything would be okay if Wesley was there.

It was why she’d traveled to Creije to meet him.

And then Dante Ashwood found her.

He opened her eyes to a new way.

He made Zekia realize that there was so much evil ready to swallow the world.

This is what becomes of us.

“You will live to regret waging a war against your Doyen,” Aurelia said. “It will be the end of you and perhaps even the end of us.”

Zekia shook her head.

Aurelia had it backward. Without this war the realms would burn, but with Ashwood to lead them, they would create a world of light. Zekia and Wesley could help unite people under a time of magic.

Just a little blood, to keep the streets clean of death.

Zekia could save everyone else.

And so wasn’t it worth it?

Wasn’t she good?

Wasn’t she deserving of her brother’s destiny?

“Is that your final word?” Ashwood asked.

Aurelia looked at him, her chin high enough to hide her uncertain eyes and draw attention from the shaking hands she kept tucked away in the pockets of her dress.

“The underrealm of Volo will never support your claim as Doyen of Uskhanya,” Aurelia said. “And I will never gather my buskers and underbosses to help prop up your armies.”

Dante Ashwood nodded solemnly. “Then so be it,” he said.

Zekia’s heart pounded.

He turned to her.

“Little warrior.”

She felt him smile.

“Time to fight.”

Zekia bowed her head, like the good soldier that she was now.

This is what becomes of us.

Ashwood had whispered it in her ear when they first met, and then in her mind as an ugly, bloody future churned inside of her like a sickness. A vision of how the realms could turn out if they didn’t do something to stop it.

It was all she could see and taste and smell, even now, years on. The burnt bodies and slickness of Crafter blood on the ground, the skies raining red and the mad, mad humans— the magic-haters who were so scared of them—smiling as everything crumbled to ash and darkness.

It was all Zekia saw when she closed her eyes, or when she looked into the shadows that surrounded Dante Ashwood.

Dark and ash.

Dark and ash.

Zekia wasn’t mad. It was the rest of the realms who had lost their minds. They were mad for not being scared and for not dropping to their knees and