Spellcasters

Chapter 25

The rain stopped. Most of the soldiers had fallen or fled but Blaise still fought on, beads of sweat and blood dripping from his dark matted hair. As he cut down the final man in his path, he took a minute to look around himself, at the bodies on the waterlogged ground. Exhausted, he dropped his sword and fell to his knees. With a pained roar he focused his dwindling energy into electrifying the ground to make sure that the dead stayed dead. As the last sparks faded, he noticed amber lights flickering from inside the castle. Blaise spat blood. He had come so far but his enemies still stood in his way. He imagined himself in command, sitting on the throne, the people cowering at his feet. No. They would be thankful. He pictured witch hunters burning alive as he watched from his tower. Never again would he allow himself to be hunted or pushed aside.

A slight rustled drew his attention. Blaise raised his sword but lowered it as he saw who it was emerging into the clearing.

"What are you doing here?" he asked.

Queen Aurora limped closer. "Where's the spell book?"

"How do you know about the-?" Aurora lifted her veil. Blaise staggered backwards. He had never seen the Queen of Slayhold without her covering and the face before him was the last one he had expected to see.

"Maylis? How is this possible?" He cleared his throat. How could it be? That Queen Aurora had been Maylis all along. Or was it a trick? Was Maylis masquerading as the Queen? He moved closer, noticing how pale she looked in the moonlight. There were lines on her face that weren't there before. "What happened to you?"

"My mother wrote a spell that would take me back through time," she said.

"And you're not thinking of sending me back in time too?" Blaise raised his sword.

Maylis smirked. "A nice idea, but no. You're our problem. I'm not setting you loose to create havoc in the past. We met, you know. Before all of this."

"Oh?"

"You were a young man, setting off on a journey to find Arcan with my mother and Dragin."

"I don't remember," said Blaise. "Can't have left much of an impression."

"I was the one who asked my mother not to take on Arcan's curse."

"You planted the seeds of doubt?"

"She didn't need much convincing. Perhaps she was already having doubts from the start. She was smarter than you."

"And she ended up dead."

"You were different back then. My mother seemed to care about you."

"She never cared," he shouted. "As soon as I enhanced my powers, she left me. Refused to return to Slayhold."

"My mother must've known what you planned to do. You destroyed half of Slayhold, just to get the throne."

"That was Dragin," said Blaise. "The idiot. When he saw what he'd done, he refused to help me overthrow our sister. He left. Immortia was gone. I was on my own and it's all because of your mother. Your cowardly, disloyal-" They were nose to nose. Blaise reached for Aurora's belt and snatched the dagger.

"You still carry this," he sneered. "And I bet it's never been used for its purpose." He pointed it towards her neck. "If I kill you, I can just turn you into one of my soldiers. Why should I keep you alive?"

She slipped a hand into his jacket.

"Because you're a better man than that," she whispered. "Deep down. You despise this whole mess. You don't want all these deaths on your conscience."