Chapter 95: The Spires [2]

The man, Theodore, stood up slowly. His hand moved toward the hilt at his waist. "You killed the Crown Prince of the realm?"

Isabella raised one gloved hand without looking at him. He stopped.

"Don’t jump to conclusions, Theodore." She stepped forward, her boots crunching softly in the ice.

"I asked a question." Her voice was almost gentle. "Did you kill him?"

Alden opened his mouth.

The dark smoke surged.

It happened fast. One moment he was about to speak, the next the abyssal darkness was coiling up through his chest and into his skull, tightening around the back of his thoughts like a fist. He slammed both hands against the sides of his head, a sharp sound forcing out between his teeth.

"Ugh—"

The smoke poured across his forearms in thick coils, constricted once, then drove back through his skin like it was pressing its way home. The pain was real and wrong and didn’t match anything in his body’s normal vocabulary.

Isabella watched this without moving. Her head tilted to one side.

"Is he possessed?" she said to Theodore, as casually as someone noting the weather.

"What do I know." Theodore stepped away from Augustus’s empty clothes, brushing snow off his perfectly clean trousers, and looked toward Alden. "Let’s start with something simple."

He walked toward Alden at a pace that had no hurry in it. "Was all of this yours?"

He gestured broadly at the field. The corpses, the craters, the burned lines through the snow from Flamestone’s threads. The empty space where the Crown Prince had just been.

"Because we were sent here expecting survivors and a vampire incursion." He stopped and crossed his arms. "It looks more like we arrived after someone already did the job."

Alden pressed the back of his hand against his temple and fought his own brain for a moment. The dark static pushed. He pushed back. Gradually, painfully, he raised his head.

"How am I supposed to know who sent you," he said. His voice came out rougher than he intended. He looked at the spot where Augustus had dissolved, then back at the two in white.

"And yes. I did this."

Theodore was quiet for a moment.

Then he said, "I see."

Isabella stepped forward, her long coat drifting in the cold wind. The silver embroidery caught the grey light from the clouds overhead. The red sash across her chest marked her with the kind of authority that didn’t need announcing.

She stopped directly in front of Alden.

"Then we have a problem," she said, and her voice was still perfectly polite. "You’ve openly admitted to ending the Crown Prince’s life. We cannot simply leave you here after that."

Alden’s muscles tensed.

"The death of a royal heir is not something the kingdom overlooks quietly," she continued. "Regardless of the circumstances, someone will have to answer for what happened on this pass." Her calm eyes settled on him. "That appears to be you."

Alden’s jaw locked. "I’m not going anywhere with you." He pressed his knuckles against his forehead, still fighting the static at the edges of his mind. "Just leave me alone."

Isabella’s polite expression didn’t move at all.

"That isn’t an option anymore, handsome."

She lifted her right hand. Emerald green condensed around her fingertips, soft and unhurried.

Then the ground came apart.

CRACK.

Massive roots tore upward from the frozen bedrock, moving fast and twisting as they rose, wrapping around Alden’s ankles before he could react. More followed, coiling around his waist, his arms, his chest, pulling tight like chains made from the mountain itself.

Alden’s eyes went wide. "What—"

The roots crushed inward, trying to lock him to the earth.

Isabella lowered her hand to her side. "We operate under direct orders from the Higher Authority." She tilted her head slightly. "We can’t accept a refusal."

The dark static in Alden’s mind hit a single hard point of clarity.

He looked down at the roots holding him.

Then looked back up at her.

"I already told you."

BOOM.

Pitch-black fire erupted from his body in every direction at once. Not the controlled version, not the careful kind he used in hunting. Raw and furious and enormous, rolling outward across the snowfield in a wave that incinerated every root in under a second, the wood turning to ash before it could finish burning.

"I’m not going anywhere."

The smoke around him exploded outward with the fire. And from his shoulder blades, with a sound like sails catching wind, two massive constructs of condensed dark energy tore outward. Not wings exactly. Something closer to wings made from condensed night, spreading wide and blocking out the grey sky behind him. The gust from their expansion threw the surrounding snow and debris back twenty yards.

Isabella’s eyes narrowed by a fraction.

That was the first crack in the serene expression. Not fear. Not alarm. Just genuine interest, the kind that comes when something behaves in a way you hadn’t accounted for.

"He broke through my restraints," she said.

Theodore looked at the smoldering ash where the roots had been. He raised one eyebrow. "Very unusual."

"Clearly no ordinary student." Isabella looked at the field again, then at the spot where Augustus had been, then back at Alden with the expression of someone who is updating their model of a situation in real time.

Dense emerald green began building around her properly now. Not the soft condensed version from before. It rose from her fingertips up her arms, bright and alive, long vines of pure concentrated energy blooming into the air behind her like living things waiting for instruction.

Theodore’s hand moved to the hilt at his waist.

"Now we know," he said.

Alden’s wings spread wider. The dark smoke churned around him. The abyssal pressure coming off his frame made the air between them feel different, the kind of weight you feel before lightning rather than after it.

Isabella took one more step forward.

"You are strong," she said softly, her green aura rising to something that pressed against the freezing mountain air with real force. Her eyes were sharp and still and completely focused on him.

"Let’s see how long that strength lasts."