“How much can he figure out just by walking back and forth?” Ember muttered.
Cheyenne shrugged.
“It’s an old habit,” Corian explained.
“Whatever.”
L’zar snarled and snapped them all back to attention. “To the deathflame then, huh? Fuck it.”
He lunged toward Bianca and grabbed her by both shoulders.
“Don’t!” Cheyenne leaped to her feet and ran toward him.
The drow thief shrieked in Bianca’s face, the purple and green light sparking and flashing all over both of them, but he held on tight, his eyes flaring as deep purple replaced the flickering gold. The spell around Cheyenne’s mom flashed brighter and brighter, and L’zar didn’t let go until his scream ran out with his willpower.
He recoiled from the woman and spun away, sinking to his knees. Smoke and crackling flashes of purple and green rose from his upturned hands, and his chest heaved as he bowed his head.
Cheyenne reached him in seconds. “What did you do? Mom? Hey!” She stepped toward her father and forced herself not to hit him while he was down. “Say something!”
“It’s all my fault.”
“What?”
L’zar looked up at his daughter, his eyes shimmering with tears. “I was focused on the wrong thing.” He swayed on his knees and lowered his gaze to the grass. His lower lip trembled as he opened his mouth and tried two more times to spit out the words. “I did this, Cheyenne. It’s my fault.”
Blinking furiously, she backed away from him and looked at her mom. Nothing about Bianca’s suspended state had changed. “What do you mean, you did this?”
L’zar’s eyelids fluttered as his palms filled with golden light. He closed his fists, and his burnt, smoking flesh healed in seconds. “I couldn’t see all the way through.”
Corian joined them, frowning at L’zar like the drow had murdered Bianca Summerlin instead of failing to help her. “L’zar.”
“My fault.”
“Get up.”
“I should have known.”
Corian hissed and shot a bright silver bolt of light at L’zar’s chest. The drow thief choked and keeled over onto the grass.
“What are you doing?” Cheyenne shouted. “You think that’s gonna help right now?”
The nightstalker blinked. “Yes.”
“What’s wrong with you?”
L’zar gasped and got quickly back to his knees. After another handful of deep breaths, he stood. “Right.” His gaze flicked to Corian, then Cheyenne before he nodded at the grass. “Now we know.”
Cheyenne felt Ember’s presence beside her before she saw her friend from the corner of her eye. They exchanged quick glances and didn’t have to say a word. She slaps me in the face, and L’zar gets a bolt of nightstalker lightning. Different strokes, I guess.
“No, L’zar.” She stepped toward him and clenched her fists. “We don’t know anything. You need to tell me what happened to my mother.”
“Of course.” His eyes twitched into narrow golden slits. “Apparently, Ba’rael’s generous curse of exile or death passed through this portal.” Long, slate-gray fingers gestured weakly at the ridge behind him. “I can’t pretend to know how that worked over distance or time, but Bianca must have been standing right here at that exact moment.”
“This happened this morning.” Cheyenne folded her arms. “Your sister cursed you three days ago.”
“Three days in Ambar’ogúl are not always three days on Earth, Cheyenne. If you didn’t know that already, you believe it now.” L’zar looked up at her, his lips pursed in concentration as he saw not his daughter but some piece of the magical puzzle only the drow Weaver could see.
“How?” Corian asked.
L’zar slowly shrugged. “Could have been the explosion of magic in Hangivol or Ba’rael’s casting of the curse. Or any number of things that happened afterward—none of which we expected, of course.”
“Hmm.”
Cheyenne glared at the nightstalker. “’Hmm?’ That’s your response?”
“Do you have a better one?”
“Yeah. How do we fix this? How do we bring her back?”
L’zar smacked his lips and slowly shook his head. “I suggest you find your replacement as Crown as quickly as possible, Cheyenne. My sister needs to either step down or be cut down. Otherwise, your mother’s state,” he said, gesturing limply at Bianca but staring at the grass, “will only get worse.”
Jesus, he sounds like he’s talking in his sleep. “Get worse, how?”
The drow thief steepled his fingers in front of his face and tapped them against each other. “Well, to start, she won’t be leaving this well-tended patch of grass.”
“Seriously?”
L’zar dipped his head, and his eyes roamed everywhere but his daughter’s face. “I’m going over there.” He pointed vaguely at a different area of the lawn and moved in that direction.
“Do we need to worry about him too?”
Corian raised an eyebrow at the halfling. “When do we not?”
“I can’t believe this.” Cheyenne smoothed her hair back from her face with both hands, realized how often she’d seen L’zar do that, and instantly lowered her arms. “We need to do something.”
“We are doing something. You’ll find the best magical to sit on the throne in your place. L’zar and I will keep working on laying out those terms for his sister to accept, whether she likes it or not.” He scratched his head as he stared at the woman frozen in front of the portal ridge. “It doesn’t look like Bianca Summerlin’s going anywhere until this two-week magical ceasefire is over.”
“That makes no sense.”
“I know.”
Cheyenne laughed in disbelief, but it quickly died in her throat. “I need you to explain this, Corian. Ba’rael has no idea who my mother is. She had no idea Bianca would be standing right here when she cast that curse. She doesn’t even know this portal leads into the fucking torture chamber in her fortress.”
“I know, Cheyenne.”
“So, how was this even possible?”
Corian raised his eyebrows and took a deep breath. His long exhale seemed to last forever. “Well, it shouldn’t be, but that's pretty much at the core of everything we’ve been trying to accomplish, isn’t it? Making the impossible possible.”
Cheyenne glanced at Ember, who shook her head and shrugged, settling her luminous violet eyes on Bianca Summerlin’s profile. The halfling closed her eyes and swallowed the anger threatening to
