The Northern King

𝕍𝕀

Chapter Six

          EVERYTHING ERUPTED AS SOON AS MY WORLD WENT DARK.

I'd frozen in time whilst everyone buzzed around me, frantically. I heard Lord Nox shout orders at General Midas. I heard Grandclain argue with one of the Elders. I heard the others rush to their sister, yelling at one another. I heard the silence droning near me, closing in until it swallowed me with Bryla's prophecy. The temperature kept on declining until I couldn't feel my fingertips.

It was like I was plunging into a void and I just kept falling. There was no end. Something curled around my ankles, whispers and shadows of the prophecy twisted around my body like vines and I remained a statue, trying to catch a breath, and yet everything was spinning. The darkness of the room jeered as I tried to find a source of light. Almost as if they relished in my suffering, in my fear of the dark. Bryla was unconscious but her words remained alive. They hissed and laughed mockingly against my ears, and I knew I was the only one who could hear it.

I was wretched back to that night when my family were killed before my very eyes. When I was hidden in a passageway unbeknownst to our intruders. When the darkness welcomed me into their glacial arms as I watched in horror whilst my family's bodies were torn apart. Their bloodstains were difficult to remove from the library; stains I could still see to this day even with my eyes opened, even after they spent months cleaning every nook and cranny. I could see it.

Lost in my thoughts, something yanked me to my coronation night. Something flickered in the darkness of the room. Something silvery, something that looked like Bryla's Eanasyr. Aether. I saw it glint but no one else did. My mind gravitated towards it and there I was once again, standing before the Northern King in all his glory. My crown glistened as he circled me like a vulture. His wicked smile, a ghost of a movement, scared my daunting past away.

Everyone but me moved. I felt my magic sting my flesh as it thawed the iciness of the omen. Warmth began singing throughout my veins and repelled the words that kept me captive. But there was a shift. I felt it. In my heart. With my soul. Silver eyes broke me out of my spell as the lights switched on, and the room was no longer pitch black.

Grandclain hurried over, his eyes crazed as he checked whether I was harmed, saying words but I wasn't registering anything. My gaze slowly moved to Bryla's motionless frame. Her head lay on Rosemary's lap, whose concern made her age hundreds of years.

"Mikayla," someone said and I blinked, looking at Lord Nox. He frowned. "Mikayla, are you harmed?"

I shook my head, words failing me.

Midas inched closer, fury tugging his facial expressions. "This is a grave offence. You could have endangered the Queen."

"We have done no such thing," Winter snapped, her flirty expression contorting to a mixture of wrath and worry as she bent beside Bryla. "My sister meant no harm. Her prophecies come at unwelcomed times but she never means any harm."