here had been a moment of silence, a couple of seconds that stretched into a lifetime. And that silence was cold, biting at our bones harder than what the Rimelian freezing winds had done as we journeyed through the continent's snow-wrapped and ice-coated mountains.

That coldness seemed to seep to every corner of the room: to the guards, to Yenes and the men at his disposal. To Lysithea, who did not shift in her throne. But her aura was naked to my eyes, revealing just how a new sort of horror licked her soul, how it rampaged up her spine and pierced into every muscle.

And despite the muteness and coldness that devoured the hall, the castle, the world, Blake—Dearcious—was a crackling, hissing fire trapped within confines of flesh and skin.

But I had become used to play with fire. Relished its burning hotness. Its deadly heat. So I maintained my posture as I said, my voice loud and clear and alone in the vastness, "Your spies already told you all there is to know."

Not truly a lie, but not the truth either. And I knew he would not stop at it, knew he would have me singing the answers he wanted like a nightingale in one way or another.

Something swept through Blake, something wicked that made my blood boil as he smirked. He'd repeated his order, but it had been whispered in a tongue that existed far ago, far when the war first erupted.

The Old Tongue. And the realization that he could understand it, speak it, as easily—and if not more—as us, it made me wary. So damn wary. Every murmur, every breath spoken in that tongue was as clear to him as it was to us. And we needed to be so, so careful around the prince so we could keep our covers intact. The other realization that made my guts churn—it was something I'd known before more than a realization, truly, but admitting it, allowing it to materialize clearly in my thoughts…it made me steal a steadying breath as silently as I could.

Dearcious was a Windreaper himself, the very first one created from Apocalys's very darkness and breathes as he rendered his ardorian body to cinders. And the body that was hosting him, that was capable of supporting all the powers brewing for centuries now, it was nowhere being defeatable. Not in the mortal ways we knew.

"Use the common tongue.'' Lysithea's order had been a mercy and a salvation, perhaps for her own self as much as for us. Because we all turned to stare at her, then time seemed to trickle lighter in the universe's hand, the coldness receding until what was left was only the nippiness post the storming weather.

Tightening Elayda's mask, I seeped power that was dark and cold and feral and unlike all this world had seen before, until the darkness was nothing but a swirling emptiness behind me, licking at my skin, folding like a shield.

A rumble evaded my throat. Many actually, some of it at the spears the encircling guards raised, the rest at the queen.

"Tongue-less and wingless, such a shame for the crown you are claiming."

Lysithea raged, her powers sweeping up before she even did, standing from her throne like a snake ready to attack.

Tongue-less, all of them were, lacking the power to understand the Old Tongue. But the wingless part, it had struck a cord, a deep and dangerous one. One that was unknown to the world, even to my father and Court Leader—to us, before I read her all, magic and strength and capabilities.

It was the Seventh male, whose sword was uselessly pointing at me that hissed, his slit tongue licking his fangs, "False accusations to the crown is punished by death."

I laughed this time.

"Not so false, male. Not at all.'' I lightly nodded my chin toward them, the guards and the thrones. ''Your first did not last instants under my Second's powers. Be wary, for I doubt you would last a heartbeat longer."

The cloud of darkness behind me materialized, forging a throne that gleamed as though it was night kissed by thousands upon thousands of stars. All the shadows that stretched afterwards held not even a flicker of light. A darkness darker than Yenes's magic. A power bread and tailored by five gods to my very disposal.

I sat on the throne, and it became a queen to a prince and his mother. A matter solely between Armedeses. The crown that sewed itself atop of my head—a twin to Aedis's—had Lysithea snarling even more as she still stood, magic burning beneath her skin to be released.

The spears enclosed us more, and I stared with little amusement at how ridiculous it was, all that steel pointed at us. The way the guards stared at me, the way the prince and queen held their head high, it told me enough just how badly this throne had seeped beneath their skin and core, clawing at the mightiness they wore like skin. The mightiness of a King and of a Queen that had never been disobeyed nor challenged, and that now faced crumbling at the hands of a Cohar who would not bend, would not play by their rules.

So I reached one of the spears pointed at my face, clutched it hard. And the metal snapped.

Only the rattling of the tip as it hit the marble echoed around us.

The rest of the spears disappeared in a puff of smoke just like the manacles had done, and the hand I held, it made the guards' auras shake. All of them, the Fifteen, the ones at Yenes's command, the ones guarding the doors.

There had been not even a single smear of blood.

The guards stood rigid, and I knew right then I had full control over them, not by magic, not by spirit. But by fear. And it was delicious, that horror spreading in the air, gnawing at them as they beheld the throne, the powers, the crown, the very hardness of my muscles and bones. The queen who sat back and could not do a thing against me than use her tongue as a sole weapon.

It was wicked delight that laced my face when I turned back to stare at Blake, Cohars locking eyes—because he'd been one before, in many lifetimes ago, a king born Windreaper.

"Elayda of the Windreapers. Cohar.''

"I know."

His eyes darkened several shades at once. And that smile he gave as he finished studying me whole, as he finished falling for the lie Sorcha had inked on me, was enough to bring worlds down to nothingness.

He'd found his weapon.

"Blake Armedes. King."

And Dearcious reincarnated. But there was no need to add it. It was obvious in every single way I could almost see Dearcious. Like a shadow overlaying Blake's body. And I truly did not understand, right then, just how reincarnation worked, as it clashed with all we believed.

I smiled, a mirror to his one. A smile that lasted long after his faltered. "No king, but a prince.''

His hands gripped the armrests of his throne so hard the bones cracked, fissures spreading to the very bottom of it. And before delight could actually reach Lysithea, I added, "And a princess, not a queen."

I eyed them both, the utter rage flickering within them. Blake had known, and so did his mother, just what words were going to come up—and perhaps it was the only reason that they had not yet placed my head on a spike.

"I will be the one to crown the rightful ruler."

Another silence swallowed the room. And I'd never imagined, not with all the nights onboard of the ship, all the sleepless, restless hours I'd lived before coming here, that this was how this confrontation would go. So many silences. So much heaviness.

But I enjoyed it in a way, when my voice was the only one to fill the hall, when it was the order and the retort and power. I enjoyed being Elayda, being the face that couldn't much grow in the castle.

"What are your ranks?"

Blake had known, too, just how much I enjoyed it. I only begged he didn't see deeper than that, didn't know I was trying and trying to read his mind without stirring his magic. And only the Gods knew how horrific was what I learned from him, how deadly.

I raised a hand, and felt my court shift into position. Aedis remained at my left, shoulders squared, eyes sharp—a warrior assessing everything. I did not look back, even though I knew Sédil was behind my right, Leyath another step behind her. And Dier and Veidor positioned themselves respectively behind my supposed mate. One by one, they voiced their position, their link to my reign.

Aedis and I remain silent, and it made Blake recline in his throne. It was clear, from the crown, from him standing abreast, who he was. The Kyel.

"You're kind," started the queen as her son still fixed his eyes on my mate and me, ''was mostly butchered during the assault on the Shimderian Forest. The rest, captured by the witch herself, was killed not so long after. The head of the previous Cohar—supposedly your mother—was sent back in an iron box.''

She did not breathe the question sitting at the edge of her tongue; because she was queen. And Queens in Eziara did not ask, they ordered answers. Yet it gleamed in her eyes: How? Perhaps that very gleam relayed in proving us wrong, in having our heads thrown in the Beheaded and down with.

So I repeated the same lie I had told Ûzan that day she questioned our position, and watched as both the Armedeses opposite me assessed every word, how confident they rolled of my tongue. No stuttering, no wondering, no uneven voice.

A perfect lie.

Once, back in a time that felt like another lifetime—as though an eternity stood between this moment and my days at the Norm—I had felt guilt. Once, I had emerged from Blake's room after saving me from the attack at the Fire Festival with a suffocating guilt devouring me because I'd lied to him about who I was, because I'd worn the face of Ramos's protégée instead of the queen I was. I'd so stupidly believed I had done him wrong, faking a life that did not belong to me as he told me about his, barred himself for me.

We were both liars. Only at the time, he was far more experienced than I was. And he'd known, too, that it was all a cover. Not a truth.

The tables had turned now.

"Our parents were locked indeed, and remained so for many years. Prisoners to the witch in white, to her king and his old vizier. They studied them, tortured them, used them for breading—"

"Which led to your birth.'' It was Blake who finished the sentence for me. "They created the very weapon that will bring them down." He rubbed at his jaws again, weighing, calculating, remembering. His eyes darkened further more.

"Indeed. The first succeeded, forging Dier, so they kept going for more, thinking that they could erase our darkness at birth. Thinking they could make us like them.''

Laughter exploded in the hall. His voice boomed from one wall to the other again and again and again, each echo going colder, darker. And when I'd locked eyes with the prince, when I beheld him in his sardonic laugh, his irises were nothing but black nothingness. It was not the sort of black adorning a witchling's eyes. It was the sort that glowered with rage, with evil. The sort that was forged in another world, another lifetime, from a god that did not create us.

It disappeared a heartbeat later.

"Fools, such ridiculous fools."

"They were fools, but they knew how to make use of us afterwards."

The room fell silent again.

"They killed them, the Windreapers you know''—a glance at Lysithea—''and kept us, because we were younger. A study from the very start, mice to their experiment. Prisoners to their torturing.''

"Your age.'' Lysithea turned to Dier, fingers gently tapping her armrest, her nails clicking against the bones forging her throne.

Click click click.

"Twenty-three.''

It fitted.

Her eyes turned to me, her face so familiar, the sharp eyes, twins to mines and her son's. The round face, slightly arched eyebrows. So many features that were forged like mine, the kernel of our blood the very same. "And you."

Click. Click. Cli—

"Physically or spiritually?"

Click.

"Both."

Click.

"My flesh was forged twenty years ago, my blood fed by the seven bloods the woman who carried me was shot at birth. As for my soul, you might as well ask your son, for he knows me well."

Heads turned back to the thrones, guards and Windreapers and a queen. The words had sliced by their own, a bit of information merged with what Sorcha had told me, and what I'd glimpsed in Blake's mind.

Blake was smiling up on his dais, not smirking, not snarling. Smiling so wickedly as I saw what memories flashed at the edges of his aura. A life perhaps forged when the first war erupted, Dearcious and the woman who had been Elayda back then fighting alongside. She'd been real, more real than any of the legends I'd read before leaving the castle. But she was dead, so long ago, in an era where the ruler of Eziara was free of Dearcious's chains. Perhaps a couple thousand years after that memory, after the scenes that showed me falling mountains and wrecked seas and blood.

"It took you so damn long to come back."

"I know."

The clicking of Lysithea's nails stopped. And wouldn't have it been for all the training, for all the lies, my court might as well have looked at me the way the queen looked at the prince, they way the entire room looked at him. At us.

I once more reflected his smile. "It hadn't been my deepest pleasure being reborn in a cage for twenty years. But we broke out, and now the future of the world is at the twist of our fingers."

Our. Blake and I's. And perhaps it truly was, even if not in the sense I was convoying right here, right now.

"Do you believe their claim, my King?" Yenes had asked, his first words for the past hour. His voice was attempting, for a fitter word.

They'd asked so little. Studied so little. But I knew he'd fallen for it, even when there remained one last test. One that unfurled in the prince's thoughts. One that made my heart skip a beat.

"There is one thing that can prove how true their claim is, one that stands mightier than all they can say." The prince's face was unreadable as it stared at me. He knew I understood his words, knew the half sigh was directed at him, that the feeble tapping of my claws on my throne meant displeasure.

But I'd seen and known that there was no other way around. Should it have been another world, where it was us on the dais and him across the hall, I would have taken the same choice.

My voice was bored, displeased even, as I breathed, "I take it you are still bitter you had to endure it twice.'' I met his darkened blood-colored eyes. "While I always seemed to escape it."

"Perhaps."

He descended the dais. And my world caved on him the way it had done when he'd first appeared. I eyed every shift of his muscles, every step, listened to his every breath as he passed his guards that parted like a curtain forced open. As he kept coming closer, closer, closer, until he was three steps in front of me.

"Tell me one thing,'' he whispered as he looked down at my throne, at my runes, at me, ''only one about what we'd known in the past, and I might as well show you the kernel of mercy I was never offered."

I barely arched an eyebrow, my powers seeping in and out of his consciousness, so light, so fast they could not be sensed. And when I found exactly what the aura of the woman Dearcious had known looked like, I forged it into my own, quickly conveying a texture and a color fit for our lie.

It was only when I knew the spell had worked, when I felt his magic brushing mine like a whisper, that I said, my voice not even a notch higher than what his had been. "There are many things I know, Prince. Some that cannot be spoken here, so publicly.''

I didn't have the time to register his movement, didn't grasp how fast he moved until I found both his hands gripping the armrests of my thrones, skin almost touching mine. His face was so close, his breath blowing against my nose, my mouth. It smelled like kavaer. And blood.

"You know exactly what I want."

I did. But the way he breathed those words, how he growled ever so slightly at the end, I couldn't push him more than that. Couldn't tease him unless willing to engage in a battle. It was still too early for all that blood.

So I tilted my head up slightly, an indication to my court to step back, to shrink the claws that had surged to protect their leader. To keep Aedis from doing something he would deeply regret.

"The sparrow's beak tipped red,

In the shield deeply you must embed.

And only when crimson seeps from the head,

Should the sacrifices to the fire be fed.

A drip of Death shall come rattling the world,

The eighth's drop ringing right where the mountains fold.

Only then the Rising Breath will stir—''

"The heartbeat of the Known merging to a whir.

The winds will rise, the earth will scorch,

And within the ashes fallen lies the very first torch."

He'd finished it, the next step needed to awaken Apocalys. The one Téors had whispered to my mind at the edge of the port, when he'd slipped the information about the crone being dead. The bit of information I didn't even think about, feeling it could stir a magic that should remain unbothered.

It was what Blake desperately looked for, relentlessly trying to remember the words Apocalys himself had left when he'd fallen. The words Dearcious and the real Elayda had found hidden in a past life, eons ago.

Blake didn't pull back from my throne but went as far as lowering his head furthermore, his forehead pressing against mine. Hard. His eyes were closed and the grip on my throne tightened noticeably, the darkness almost quivering beneath his touch. He was remembering.

His aura spiked at the edges, magic tingling in my veins right where his skin touched mine. And I waited for the unholy rage to burn within my core, for the crushing desire to snap his neck that had been eating me for weeks. Waited for the uncontrollable powers that sought no one and nothing more than killing him.

They never came.

That made me scared. To the bones—perhaps even deeper.

But before I could wreck myself in trying to understand just what had muffled that trashing fire, Blake moved, placing once again the three steps between us. And this time, there was victory etched on his features. A look that was terrifying and worlds-wrecking.

He'd gained one more step in how to awaken his god. To destroy us.

"Chose your tormentor," he declared as he turned back, sauntering to his throne. "That is my mercy for you."

I did not weight the possibilities, did not even consider who—of all the ones in this hall—would be the one to break me until I would hang on Death's threshold. Because that was the trial: a continuous torment, a freed hell unleashed upon my body.

And only would I prove our claim by surviving it. I just begged Sorcha's runes would last through it.