Chapter 180 The Iron Bell

Chapter 180 The Iron Bell
The sound of Marguerite’s staff hitting the stone floor doesn't fade...

It vibrates through the soles of my feet, a heavy, metallic resonance that turns the air in the Great Hall into something thick and impossible to breathe. At the far end of the room, the massive oak doors don't just close, they slam shut with enough force to crack the mortar in the walls.

The iron bolts slide into place with a series of synchronized, heavy thuds that sound like a firing squad.

Marguerite Vance stands in the center of the high dais, her silver hair shimmering like a halo of frost under the broken ceiling. She doesn't look at the screaming students or the faculty scrambling to their feet, she looks at the room as if it were a cage she had built years ago and was only now deciding to inhabit.

Beside her, my grandfather reaches for his fallen chair, but he doesn't sit. He looks at Marguerite with an expression I’ve never seen on a Valecrest face... raw, wide-eyed terror.

He knows. He knows what she just did to the wards.

"Nobody leaves," Marguerite repeats. Her voice isn't loud, but it cuts through the panic like a razor through silk. "The Binding Circle has waited fifty years for this alignment. And we are not losing it to the whims of a few rebellious children."

In the center of the floor, the girl who looks like me and sounds like Sera lets out a strangled, layered shriek. She is still on her knees, her hands clawing at the marble. Her face is a sickening blur of features, the aristocratic line of her nose fighting against the softer curve of mine, her eyes flickering between her cold grey and the gold-flecked brown I see in the mirror every morning.

"Grandmother!" she screams, and the word comes out in my voice, high and panicked. "It's burning! It's burning me!"

"Hold the frequency, Sera," Marguerite commands, not even looking down at the girl. "The feedback is a symptom of your weakness. If you cannot contain the shift, the ley-lines will simply consume you. Choose."

Rhydan moves before I can scream his name.

He doesn't run toward me.

He turns toward Sera, his body radiating a heat so intense the air around him shimmers. He doesn't touch her... Zael’s warning about the physical contact is still ringing in my head... but he stands over her, his Alpha aura expanding in a crushing, gold-edged wave that pushes the nearest students back toward the tables.

"Let her go, Marguerite," Rhydan snarls. His voice is a double-noted roar of wolf and dragon, vibrating the crystals in the chandeliers. "The dance is over. The Covenant is broken. Open the doors."

Marguerite finally turns her head to look at him. She studies him with the cold, detached interest of a person looking at a tool that has stopped working correctly.

"The Covenant cannot be broken once the ley-lines are open, Rhydan Valecrest," she says. "And your grandfather has already signed the authority over to me. You are no longer in control of your pack's future... I am."

Rhydan’s wolf surges. I see the dark, iridescent scales ripple up his neck, his hands curling into claws as he prepares to lung at the dais.

"Rhydan, don't!" I shout, breaking away from Petra and Cassian.

I don't wait for them to stop me. I run into the open space of the dance floor, my black velvet skirts snapping around my ankles. My heart is hammering a frantic, wild rhythm against my ribs, and the well of magic behind my navel is no longer a well... it’s a furnace.

The gold in my palms doesn't pulse...

It blazes.

The silver ring on my finger is scalding my skin, my mother's frequency screaming a warning I can feel in the very marrow of my bones.

I stop ten feet from Rhydan. The heat coming off him is staggering, but the cold coming from the dais is worse.

"She’s drawing from the room, Veyra!" Zael’s voice carries from the archway, desperate and sharp. He’s standing with his hands over his eyes, his scholar’s senses overwhelmed by the sheer violence of the frequency shift. "She isn't just locking the spell on Sera! She’s tethering every ability in this hall to the dais! She’s turning the Gala into a massive Binding working!"

I look around the room.

It’s actually happening.

Students are slumped over the tables, their faces pale, their hands clutching at their chests. I see Dara drop to one knee beside Maren. I see the faculty trying to draw their own magic, only for the sparks to be sucked toward Marguerite's staff like iron filings to a magnet.

She is draining the entire school.

"Stop it!" I scream at her.

Marguerite Vance looks at me. And for the first time, her pale eyes truly focus on me, and I see the true hunger there.

It isn't for Rhydan...

It isn't for the pack...

She wants the Resonant.

"There she is," Marguerite whispers, and the sound echoes through the hall even though her mouth barely moves. "The little flame that Corvyn tried so hard to hide. I saw your mother, Veyra. I felt the frequency in that Vermont kitchen and I just knew. But I was younger and slow, and I let Corvyn play me for a fool."

She takes a step to the edge of the dais, her staff pointed directly at my heart.

"You are not a girl," Marguerite says, her voice turning into a low, resonant hum that makes my whole body vibrate. "You are a battery. You are a source. And you have been unsealed for exactly the amount of time it took for me to prepare your new cage."

The staff blazes with a blinding, white-violet light.

A tether of raw, dark energy erupts from the silver orb at the top of the staff, lashing across the room with the speed of a whip.

Rhydan throws himself into the path of it. He doesn't think, he doesn't calculate... He just puts his broad chest between me and the strike, his arms reaching back to pull me into the shelter of his body.

The tether hits him.

It doesn't bounce off and it doesn't ground.

The moment it touches Rhydan’s skin, it sinks in. He lets out a sound that I will never forget... a high, agonizing scream that is half-human and half-beast, his whole body arching as the violet light threads itself through his veins, glowing visibly through his dark jacket.

"Rhydan!"

I grab his arms, trying to pull him back, but he’s anchored to the floor. The violet light is siphoning the gold from his eyes, pulling his dual nature out of him and toward the dais.

Beside him, Sera’s face finally locks.

The glitching stops.

She stands up slowly, her silver dress immaculate again, her breathing steady. She turns her head to look at me, and I am looking into my own eyes. My own face. My own skin.

Except the girl wearing my face is smiling with a cruelty I would never possess.

"I told you he would hand it to me himself," Sera says, and the voice is so perfectly mine it makes me want to vomit.

Marguerite twists her staff.

Rhydan’s legs give out. He collapses to his knees in front of me, his hands clawing at the marble, the violet light binding him so tightly he can't even growl.

"One choice, Veyra Calladine," Marguerite calls out, her voice cold as the grave. "Step toward the dais and give me your frequency, or I watch the ley-lines strip the life from his blood right here on the floor."

The power inside me doesn't growl... it screams.

Then the gold light from my palms erupts, filling the Great Hall with a brilliance that shatters the remaining windows in the upper gallery.

I look at Rhydan, dying on his knees. I look at Sera, wearing my face like a trophy.

And then I look at Marguerite.

"You want my frequency?" I ask, my voice dropping into a register that doesn't sound human.

I take the first step toward the dais.

"Then come and take all of it."