Her Cinder Throne (Completed)

Chapter 24

She sat for a few more minutes in the cellar, staring the gate and the darkness beyond it, before she finally decided to head back to the dorms. If she couldn't get into the dungeons, she'd have to continue with the original plan. She would have to get close to Prince Bastian and make sure she was there on the day of his ball.

She headed up the stairs and back into the kitchen, where she stole a hunk of bread and angrily chewed on it while sitting on a bench. She liked the rare time alone, and wondered if she'd regret it too much if she just stayed awake in the cooling kitchen until the cooks came in at dawn.

She was just deciding to get a glass of water and head back to the dorms when the smell of wildflowers filled the room. The hairs on her arms rose as her head whipped around to try and see where it was coming from. But all she saw was the shadows of familiar objects around her. Yet, the room built with smell until she could have sworn she was standing in a field of dirt and grass and flowers. She even felt the sunshine on her skin and the breeze in her hair. It was this that made her realize what was happening.

Tanwyn.

He appeared a moment later, a few feet away, his black hair swaying in the false breeze and his aqua eyes almost seeming to glow in the night. He smirked when he saw her, his silk robes swirling around him as he approached.

She always forgot just how beautiful he was every time he left her. And each time he appeared out of nowhere, barreling into her life yet again, she was reminded of the sharp smile that made her chest hurt and the eyes that looked too round and sad for such an mischievous face.

"Let me guess, you haven't been practicing your magic," he said, his voice so magical and strange in the empty kitchen.

Cole opened her mouth to retort, but realized that he was actually right. She snapped her lips back closed, and instead just glared at him.

"Oh my," he said. "Someone's a bit more feisty than normal."

"What do you want?" she asked, sharply. With her attempt at seeing her mother so cruelly thwarted just moments earlier, she wasn't in the mood to see Tanwyn. He wasn't much better than the prince she was supposed to be murdering. He held her captured mother as bait, instead of offering to rescue her immediately. And not only that, he threatened to send Cole back to her stepfamily, and a life of drudgery and almost certain death in the Sparkstone mines. Why she was being forced to kill Bastian and not Tanwyn, she didn't know. But she did know that the only reason she was going to do what Tanwyn said was because she wasn't sure how to save her mother without his help.

"There's been disturbing news from my aunt's spies. The war with King Thijs seems like it is going to be more than we bargained for, and so we want to derail him as soon as possible."

"So?" Cole asked grumpily, hating that she sounded like a child who had been told no.

"So, I wanted to make sure you knew your magic before I sent you in to take care of our little job," he said. "We'll have to speed up the process. I'm going to leave this ring with you, and I want you to practice using it whenever you know no one else is around. A time like now is ideal."

"Are you going to show me how to use it again?" she asked, both wanting him to stay and help her, and also wanting him to leave before she felt like punching him in his perfect face.

"No, I unfortunately have something pressing in Avallen," he said. "You will do fine, as long as you remember that the magic is only an energy like everything else in your world. You need to pull it from your ring, through your own self, and send it back out into the world. It's just a piece of you, like your voice."