“Erasmus!?” David shouted as his and Haydith’s horses rolled to a stop. “What the Hell are you doing!? We’re here to save the King! Get out of the way!”

  “David! Cast [Fly] now!” I shouted with all of the authority I could muster. Never before had my voice been filled with so much haste and fear.

  My tone had the desired effect. Without further comment, David jumped from his horse and cast [Fly] on himself.

  “Brother!” Haydith shouted. “I understand if you’re confused, but we’re on the same side!”

  Prince Erasmus Polaris sighed, but he did not lower his blade. As Miriam and Eadric caught up to our little entente, Erasmus said, “Despite everything, it’s good to see you again, Haydith. I just hope you can one day find it in your heart to forgive me.”

  “What?” Haydith asked.

  “Stop fucking around!” David shouted.

  “This doesn’t need to end in violence,” Erasmus said calmly, but his voice held a threatening edge. “Just stay where you are while the Yomotsan kills Theophrastus.”

  David and Haydith looked at Erasmus with horror in their eyes.

  “We were sent here to protect the King!” David shouted. “You were loyal an hour ago. Why did you betray Etronia?”

  A faint smile turned Erasmus’s mouth upward. “I think you already know the answer to that. With the Yomotsan’s help, I can take my rightful place as the sovereign of this country.”

  I had to cut the dialogue short. Every second we spent going back and forth with Erasmus, we were doing exactly what he and Alexander wanted. If I wasted too much time, it could cause millions of preventable deaths. Deciding to take action, I flicked my wand, and a gust of wind pushed me forward.

  “Stop, Thale Feldrast!” Erasmus shouted.

  “If you want me to stop, you’ll have to kill me!” I said.

  The edges of reality became stale and unkempt as Erasmus stopped time. He lunged in my direction, and I responded by aiming my staff toward him.

  “Mulciber ignis…”

  Before I could finish my incantation, a blur of motion moved past me and clashed against Erasmus. David, flying through the air of stopped time, crossed swords with the Prince of Etronia. Erasmus’s calm expression turned to one of utter wrath as he was forced to parry David’s assault.

  My half conjured orb of magma splattered to the ground as Erasmus dropped us out of stopped time.

  “David! Can you hold him off?” I asked as I continued flying toward the battle.

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  “For two minutes!” David answered through clenched teeth.

  I flew past the sword fight, and Erasmus watched me with a mixture of anger and fear in his eyes. As if reading from a script, Erasmus turned to me and shouted, “Tabitha Feldrast was killed under orders from Theophrastus!”

  When I took off toward the battle, I didn’t think there was anything in the world that could stop me. That sentence, however, caused me to stop my momentum through the air and turn toward Erasmus.

  “What did you just say? How could you…?”

  Erasmus had just put into words a suspicion that had been tormenting me for many years. Of all people who could have killed my mother, King Theophrastus was at the top of my list of suspects. My father’s reaction after the attack on Sableton was most beneficial to Theophrastus and the Kingdom of Etronia. Theophrastus was my first guess, and he would be the first guess of any rational outsider who knew everything about what had happened.

  “The Yomotsan told you to say that, didn’t he?” I asked, anger rising in my chest. The four Hellfire sparks burned brighter in a sympathetic reaction with my rising temper.

  “Yes,” Erasmus said as he deflected one of David’s attacks. “That doesn’t make it any less true. Theophrastus wanted to make the Feldrasts angry, so he…”

  “Keep him here!” I shouted, hatred and wrath ringing clear in my voice. Without any conscious input from me, the stationary Hellfire sparks blazed in a bright pillar of fire. Alexander would pay for using my dead mother’s name in his foolish attempt to manipulate me.

  I flew toward the battle, and every member of my party except for David followed. As I got closer, I could see the individual people engaged in the battle. Beltane and Kinro were fighting a creature I recognized as a Death Lord, a stronger variant of the Death Knight we faced earlier.

  “The ritual has been interrupted, I take it?” Alexander said in English as I approached. He flicked his wrist, and the rosary of relics flew toward me.

  Concerned, I summoned a Shield, and the projectile bounced off harmlessly. When I looked once more at Alexander, he reached into a small pouch hanging from his belt and withdrew a single card. In an instant, the card burst into flame like a sheet of flash paper.

  Once the card had completely disappeared, my stomach lurched as I entered freefall. I fell to the ground, scraping my elbows and knees on the hard cobblestone ground. Somehow, Alexander had ended my [Fly] spell. When I managed to raise my head, I saw that Theophrastus and Alexander had both fallen to the ground as well.

  Wielding a small dagger in one hand, Alexander approached the King. Painfully, Theophrastus began lifting himself to his feet, and he struck out at Alexander while he tried to stand. The blade would have struck Alexander in the neck, but he popped out of existence at the last possible moment. The dagger swung forward, and a small amount of blood was drawn from the King’s arm.

  “All undead, form a defensive line there,” Alexander said, drawing a line with his index finger that would cut himself off from the King and his knights.

  With the immediate action that could only be carried out by a group of unthinking thralls, the horde of undead was interposed between Theophrastus and Alexander. Kinro managed to land a deep cut on the Death Lord as it turned its back to the samurai, but that was not enough to destroy the powerful undead.

  Once the line of undead was formed, my group ended up on the side with Alexander, and everyone else ended up on the side with the King. Turning to me, Alexander drew another card from his bag, and a staff appeared in his hand once the card was done burning.

  In a malicious tone of voice, Alexander spoke in English, saying, “Unfortunately, Thale Feldrast, you just became my biggest problem. I can’t just have you walking around.”

  “Wait, hold on,” I said, taking a step back. Without the protection of King Theophrastus, I was suddenly in a much more precarious position. “If you’ve given up on killing the King, then we can talk about…”

  “Sagitta fulgur,” Alexander said quietly, pointing his staff toward me.