There are only a handful of magic sources now though, and the Decay grew when people used magic for evil. Maybe there isn’t enough for it to spread beyond the Spring monarch, so it stays in him, leeching power from him and him alone.
I shudder. No, it’s just Angra. It’s just the man we’ve been fighting for years, an evil, sadistic monster who uses his Royal Conduit for evil. Just his Royal Conduit. Nothing more.
Angra is never just anything, though.
The wheeled cage clunks down, the steady swishing of the wheels through grass giving way to the clomp-clomp of wheels on stone. We’ve passed onto a bridge, one of the many that links the Rania Plains with Spring over the Feni River. The narrowness of this bridge tells me we’re no longer with the bulk of Spring’s army. We must have broken off to reach Abril, Spring’s capital, more quickly.
As the cage clunks into the grass on the Spring side of the river, the empty expanse of the Rania Plains gives way to blossoming trees, the kind with white-and-pink buds that cast floating petals into the air. Spring’s forest is pretty, honestly. But a marred pretty, a mask.
Herod jabs me in the back with his sword hilt again. “Sit up. We’re nearly there.”
“Sitting is easier said than done right now,” I croak, but one more jab from his sword hilt and I wiggle into a semi erect position, black dots swirling through my vision.
Abril sits in the northwestern tip of Spring, close to Winter. There are no outlying villages nearby, no signs of life outside its massive stone walls other than the occasional field of crops cutting through the forest of eternally blossoming trees. Laughably peaceful representations of a kingdom that has been anything but.
The small army of men around my cage descends from a side path onto a wide main road that cuts through the trees. Abril’s walls rise before us, casting the surrounding land in shadow, looming rows of black behind the pink-and-white trees. After a few moments of shuffling, we pass through a gate and into the city itself. I cling to the details around us, forcing my mind to stay active instead of losing myself in the dread pulsing in the pit of my stomach.
Angra’s banner, the black sun on a yellow background, dangles from four- and five-story buildings, the tall structures casting us in an eerie shadow. As we roll by, heads pop out of smudged windows, eyes peek through cracked doors, but I see no people in the streets and hear no chatter of city life. Like they’ve been choked so long under Angra’s suffocating use of his magic that they’ve forgotten how to be alive.
We cross a bridge and the buildings get a little nicer, windows cleaner, walls painted and whole. People stand around now too, smirking over another Winterian prisoner, another show of their king’s dominance.
Fear is a seed that, once planted, never stops growing.
Sir’s voice whispers that phrase in my memory, keeping the fear at bay.
A black iron gate sits at the end of one last road. Soldiers march on the wall above it and eye us from towers, a reminder that Spring is a kingdom crafted by war. When we pass through the gate, a grand green yard rolls around us, leading up to a palace of black obsidian. Even from as far back as we are I can see colored etchings in the rock, green ivy vines, butter-yellow and sunset-pink flowers—Spring in darkness. It’s both poetic and sad how well it embodies this land.
The gate thunks shut behind us, and Herod nods to the men, who near the cage. I stifle a cry as they drag me out, my bones grating, shocking bursts of pain as I collapse, helpless, hanging off two men. Dried sweat and bits of vomit cling to my skin, crunching as I move, and a few cuts along my leg burn. But I’m just here, draped between Angra’s soldiers, wholly at their disposal. Helpless and useless and alone—
The piece of lapis lazuli is still in my pocket. A piece of Winter. I straighten a little, wincing. I may be alone, the stone may not be magic, but I am not weak.
We start to move forward and something clinks to my right, a shovel banging on stone. It makes Herod flinch enough that I jerk my head toward it.
I wish I hadn’t. I wish I’d kept looking forward, let my worries about Angra suck me into a numb thoughtlessness.
Off to the right, in a garden, a group of Spring guards stand watch over a pile of gray bricks, a deepening hole, and … Winterians.
Everything about me drops away, flimsy and weightless. Three Winterians, their white hair matted with sweat and dirt, their pale faces gaunt, stand waist-deep in the dirt. It’s a wonder their bony arms can even hold a shovel, let alone dig with one—they’re so frail, so thin, they could be mistaken for ghosts.
Tension cuts off the air to my lungs. I want to cry out to them, run to them, fight off the guards, whisk them to safety. But I can’t do more than croak feebly in their direction.