When All is Lost

35.

Elissa vanishes in an explosion of fire. Flames and heat enveloping everything around us. The sheepskin rug beneath her smoulders, stinking the room out with the smell of burning fur and skin. I rush to Nate who is barely conscious on the floor covering him with my body as shadows ripple across the room.

They're not my shadows.

Inkspot is missing, the flames and smoke the only remnants of his attack. I can barely see across the room now it's covered in a black fog stinging my eyes.

"Charlie!" Will's voice calls out to me and my heart lifts. I'm not alone.

"Here!" I cry to him, turning my face to see him striding across the destroyed room, his dark coat floating in the strange breeze, the shadows swirling around him as he crouches beside us.

"Is he OK?" He asks and I nod.

"Elissa, she's an air mage. She stole his air." Nate starts to come around, staring at the smoke and the smouldering wreckage of Inkspot's attack.

Will nods his expression heavier than I've ever seen it. "I know who she is. I'm sorry it took me so long to realise it."

Of course, he knows her, he grew up in the palace. I'm so stupid.

"Charlie..." Nate says he's staring over my shoulder, forcing my attention back to the centre of the room.

"Well, that's a shame." Elissa sighs and I freeze at her voice.

How did she survive that? Tiny flames lick around her like a halo of gold before disappearing as she steals the air away from them.

Panic steals my calm as I realise just how strong she is.

She seems as frozen as I am as she stares at Will.

"Will?" She breathes his name with such recognition and feeling that I know immediately he isn't here for us.

'My husband was a shadow mage' her words echo back to me and I shift into a crouch watching him as he stands, turning to look at Elissa.

"You're her husband?" I ask, horrified.

"No." He says even as she barks, "Yes!"

"We were never married." He reaches to the purple stone that sits around his throat. "We were bound to one another."

My eyes flick to Nates, meeting his gaze as we take in that information.

"We loved each other," Elissa growls and I watch her, she's hesitating, wanting to move closer but unsure of his reaction. Will doesn't argue, perhaps there were feelings there. "I thought you were dead," She whispers, and suddenly I see the woman behind the Queen. I see her as she must have been, a girl bound to the man she loved.

"I was the last to leave Faery, Rami...she tricked me." He swallows and grief flickers over his features.

"Rami..." Elissa spits the name and I take the opportunity to stand slowly, feeling for Inkspot desperate for his support.

"Elsie, what you've done here, it can't go on," Will says taking a step towards her. "The Fae aren't your enemies,"

"They banished me, they took everyone I loved from me." She reaches to him and he lets her grip his lapel. "I thought you were dead and gone." She says again before burying her face in his coat.

He holds her as you might hold a stranger. There's no love here, not on his part. I look to Nate, he's watching them with the same awful fascination. When I look back Will is staring at me.

"What you did to those children, it was an abomination. Rami was right to exile you."

"Rami had no power over me, I was the strongest! I should have been Queen!" Elissa screams the words at him, rage filling her with a violence that sends Nate and I stepping back towards the wall.