Lanthe’s daze burned away. She scrambled to her feet, shrieking, “Ai-bee?” She ran for her sister, kneeling beside her. “No, no, no, Ai-bee, don’t die, don’t die, don’t die!” Lanthe’s own sorcery was manifesting itself. The air grew warm, as electric as the lightning surrounding them.
Sabine is leaving me. Because of Thronos and these men. My entire family taken from me in one night. A clarity such as she’d never known swept over her.
My family dies; the Vrekeners pay.
No longer would she hesitate to use her power. No mercy—for any of them.
She commanded the soldiers, “Do not move! You stab yourself! Fight each other—to the death!”
The room was thick with whorls of sorcery, and the abbey quaked all around them, the ancient rock walls groaning. A fracture forked along one of the stained-glass windows. In an earsplitting rush, it shattered.
She turned to her betrayer, the boy she’d thought she loved. The boy who’d led these fiends straight to her home.
He was wending his way around bodies to reach her, now that the adult who’d guarded him was dead.
Voice breaking, she sobbed, “I trusted you. Sabine was everything to me.” Then, louder, she commanded him: “Jump through the window”—the one hundreds of feet above the valley floor—“and do not use your wings on the way down!”
His silver eyes pleaded for her not to do this thing, so she turned back to her sister’s body, refusing to watch.
He never made a sound all the way down.
“Live, Ai-bee!” Lanthe screamed, but Sabine’s glassy gaze was sightless, her chest still of breath. “HEAL!” she commanded, using all the power she possessed. The room quaked harder, jostling furniture. Mother’s head hit the floor and rolled, Father’s right behind hers. “Don’t leave me! LIVE!”
More sorcery, more, more, MORE . . .
Sabine’s eyes fluttered open—they were bright, lucid. “Wh-what happened?”
While Lanthe was utterly emptied of sorcery, Sabine bounded to her feet, appearing rested.
I brought her back. She’s all I have now.
They fled from the abbey into the night. Yet in the valley, Lanthe trailed behind Sabine. She looked back over her shoulder, saw Thronos on the ground, clinging to life.
His body lay broken, limbs and wings twisted, skin flayed.
Somehow he raised his hand off the ground to reach for her with yearning in his eyes. . . .
Now, hundreds of years later, Thronos raised his hand off the ground to reach for her once more.
Just as she’d done that night, Lanthe turned from him and ran.
EIGHT
Hoping to find Carrow and her crew, Lanthe headed for low ground. In the steady rain, she sprinted over uneven terrain. Though her lungs began to burn, she kept up a punishing pace, slowing only to hide when she sensed other immortals.
All the while, she tried not to think about Thronos. So why did she keep seeing his scars, his misery?
She refused to feel guilt about leaving him behind earlier, much less for making him jump as a boy.
If Thronos hadn’t betrayed her, then that Vrekener leader—who was his father, the king—wouldn’t have murdered her parents. Over the years, Sabine wouldn’t have needed so much of Lanthe’s sorcery to repeatedly cheat death.
Lanthe could be one of the most feared Sorceri alive—instead of a power-on-the-fritz punch line. Hell, even Thronos had ridiculed her!
To be the Queen of Persuasion was to be the queen of nothing.
And in the Lore, perceived weakness was considered an invitation for enemy species to attack.
Sabine had recently voiced a new theory about Lanthe’s persuasion: since Vrekeners tracked Sorceri by their power outlays, perhaps she feared drawing them down on her, and her fear was causing performance issues. Maybe her ability was intact, but her anxiety over the winged menace undermined it—even in Rothkalina, where they were sure no Vrekeners would ever come.