The corpse-Queen wasted no time: her wand flew to her hand and she threw herself upward, filled with an undying strength. A harsh, brittle, foreign incantation burst from her paled lips.
"Morsmordre!"
Avada Kedavra!
Maeve—if she could still be called that—did not so much as twitch as Violet's curse bore down on her and enveloped her. Suffused in green, she went still for the second time. But it was too late. A stream of eerie light had escaped her wand, blossoming outward like a gaseous cloud and taking the bleak form of the Dark Mark. There was an aching power to it as it loomed on high, far above yet somehow almost within reach, a shuddering, yearning call of like to like. Invitation and command, it was utterly impossible to ignore.
It was vivid. Stronger, clearer than any Dark Mark Violet had seen before, as if it evoked a fundamental truth of the spell no other casting could reveal. Maeve's eyes, dull blue in death, stared upward to the sky. The Resurrection Stone burned cold, cold, cold.
There was a crack, and Violet nearly shrieked as she was abruptly confronted by the waxen visage of Lord Voldemort.
Dread crawled in her stomach at seeing him here, in the ruined center of Satria's court—oh, Satria—looking for all the world like a triumphant conqueror. He took in his surroundings with a calm, possessed demeanor, as if he had planned this all along. For all Violet knew, he had.
"You," Voldemort intoned, red stare narrowing. His gaze flicked to Maeve's body. "She was a fool. I did not think she was this great of one."
Despite herself, Violet smiled a little. "I take it she passed on a slightly optimistic report of my death to you?"
"You would be correct, but that was not my meaning. No, this creature's greatest foolishness was believing she could ever wrest free her magic once it was in my grasp."
Violet's eyes widened. "That's what she was doing? Trying to reclaim her magic from you?"
"Indeed. Fool she was, I suppose she never considered that I might gain a greater mastery of her own magic than she could boast. Her transparent plots to betray me were pathetically amusing." Voldemort's eyes seemed to flare brighter, like coals heated by a sudden gust. "I am unsure whether I should thank you for ending this irritant or punish you for denying me the chance to do so myself."
Violet began to edge closer as they conversed. With a blade in her hand, it was in her interest to close the distance between them, and she would prefer to force Voldemort away from Maeve's corpse, where rested both the Weapon and Winter's crown. More importantly, Violet would reclaim Satria's weapon and what could, horribly, be the last of her body at any cost.
"I had a greater claim to her death than mere irritation."
"Perhaps. No matter. I came to this place for another reason, after all." Voldemort raised his wand, nearly prompting Violet to attack, but he only held it high and performed a strange curling motion. Some invisible part of the Dark Mark—its vitality, a mist of velvet smoke—slipped down, through his wand, and he shuddered. The Mark looked like a shadow of its former self, but Voldemort himself was revitalized.
"Soul," Violet breathed, the gold ring on her finger throbbing with searing cold. Deftly, she flicked the ring with her thumb, rotating it so the Stone faced toward her palm, where Voldemort would not see.
Voldemort's expression flickered with something that could almost be mistaken for fear. "She told you. Of course she did."
The Dark Lord's wand rose to point at Violet, and there was a terrible threat to it beyond anything he had shown her before. There had always been an element of curiosity to Voldemort's attitude toward her, a sense of regret, even, at the necessity of their opposition to one another. Now it was gone, and in its place was a lethal menace that spilled out of him in a red glow, eerily haloing him in the stormy night.
Though Voldemort had mistaken the cause, he knew that the secret of his Horcruxes was no longer safe. And for such a man who had at every turn clung to life with more fervor than any before, there could be nothing more unforgivable than to shake his confidence in immortality.
Maeve was doomed to die from the moment she learned his secret.
A wave of invisible magic rushed toward Violet, as silent as thestral wings. The only sign of its passing were the flakes of snow that turned perfectly still, frozen in space long after the magic had gone. Violet threw herself upward and to the side, corkscrewing through air as the Elder Wand cast back, half of its own accord. In a sudden rush she was filled with the overwhelming desire to end this, to slay Voldemort as she had Maeve . . . and perhaps Fate would conspire to bring Esrid here, too, and in the flattened ruins of Violet's old home all could be settled.
Voldemort twisted his wrist at an unnatural angle, and needles of ice screamed through the air around Violet, close enough for her to feel the hissing trails of air but never touching her. A flash of anger crossed Voldemort's face and he made no further attempt to wield Winter against her; instead came a thousand shades of darkest magic, each spell surpassing the last in its obscurity and malevolence. Violet found herself hard-pressed, unable to shield against the many spells she did not recognize for fear of an esoteric quality allowing them to pass through. Instead she wove around them where she could, striking others down with her sword, the enchanted steel beginning to shed a pale blue light as it absorbed the achingly immense power behind each spell.
A scarlet flare pierced the night, rising from Voldemort's wand to the dark sky, and the strange shadows it cast came alive, reaching with long, needle fingers to pull her from the air. Warding them off with a lash of flame and rising higher, Violet cast chill coils of magic downward as Voldemort too ascended into the air. He was eerily without movement but for the economical strokes of his wand and the flapping of the hem of his robes.
"True flight," said Voldemort flatly, his voice carrying over the howling and sparking of curses between them. "The prophet spoke well. Had I any equal, it would be you."
In his other hand was something dark and shimmery. With a chill, Violet realized it was the Weapon.
"Curious," Voldemort said, Disapparating mid-word to avoid a bolt of red lightning. "I saw her wearing this when she so erroneously informed me of your demise . . . and on several occasions since . . . There is a power to it . . . a strange one."
Violet bit back a response. Clearly Maeve had intended for Voldemort to serve as the mortal sacrifice who would kill Esrid, ridding her of both problems in one fell swoop. But as satisfying as it might be to mock Maeve's miscalculation, it would do no good for Voldemort to know just what he had claimed.
"Well, it looks like a dagger to me," said Violet, casting no more now that Voldemort seemed more interested in examining the Weapon than continuing the duel. She knew better than to hope to take him off guard. "If you plunge it into your chest, its purpose should become clear."
"I have no need of muggle toys." Voldemort pressed the tip of his wand to the Weapon, and a serpent of Fiendfyre crawled out, constricting the blade and burning with such a heat that any metal would surely melt. But the Weapon, that alien thing, was unmoved.
"Very curious indeed," he said, extinguishing the Fiendfyre. His eyes snapped up, boring into Violet. "It is important to you . . . I see that in your eyes . . . You paid a high price for this indeed, I am sure. Perhaps I will choose to learn its secrets . . . when you are gone."
With a burst of green, the duel began once more. They rose higher and higher above the ground until the illumination of their spells washed over a vast portion of the burning court, long shadows drawn into sharp relief by the briefest and harshest of light. Violet had dueled Voldemort many times before, but she could feel something had changed. Perhaps it was the ring she wore on her finger and the Death that followed her; perhaps it was that which she called Apotheosis, the rime of Winter's might dense and close around her; or perhaps it was the months that had left her by but not unchanged, bringing her nearly to her age of majority and the apogee of her power.
Whatever the case, as arcane thunder rolled and waves of liquid fire scoured the sky, Violet met her fated enemy on even ground. Curse for curse, breath for breath, without need for ploy or underhanded tactic, she could match him. Exultation ran through her, mingling with the freezing power that coursed with her blood, and with a strident cry she slashed the Elder Wand through the air, the tip seeming to drag on nothing, as if the magic surrounding her was as thick as honey. In the same moment a massive coil of distorted space unwound and struck Voldemort, hard, in the torso. He was hurled away, spinning wildly, necrotic Winter magic crawling over him, seeking purchase through a veil of shadows that wreathed him. A second later he vanished and appeared where he had just been, his dislocated left arm visible sliding back into place. But as outwardly calm as he might appear, Violet could tell that he knew something had changed too.
"No," Voldemort snarled, his voice a nearly animalistic hiss. "Abandon your hope, girl! You are nothing before me. I have gone too far, sacrificed too much to tolerate you—I have returned from death! I am eternal!" A solid white curse ricocheted off Violet's shield, leaving a lingering tone. "I had some time, while you were gone," he continued, silkily now, "to imagine how I might go about the undoing of our mutual acquaintance, the Queen, in the center of her realm and the heart of her power. And in my triumph, as the last of my foes fled in the wake of your disappearance like rats from a fire, I had naught to do but return to my oldest of practices, spellcraft . . . and in my renewed form, I found my thoughts clearer than ever before . . . and do you know what conclusion I reached? I realized that to merely kill her would not be enough, that a salt must be sown. And I had time, you see . . . time for rituals of preparation, to devise arcane formulae you could not begin to comprehend . . . all in service of a single spell. My congratulations, Violet. I call you Queen now."
Oh, would you shut up? Dissoluti Lux!
A black mist devoured Violet's light. Floating in its impenetrable gloom were Voldemort's burning eyes. And then Violet sensed a rush of power so vast that it took her breath away. Time seemed to stand still.
With an immense sound like two ships of war grinding together, a jet of red light as thick as Violet's wings were broad speared upward to the sky, its core so bright as to be nearly blinding. Heart pounding to the rhythm of the choking magic that suffused the air, Violet flew away from Voldemort as swiftly as possible, casting a volley of curses she knew would find no mark. Where his beam stabbed the sky it expanded outward into reaching tendrils, illuminating the sparse clouds as if by internal fire. The sound was beyond words: a crackling, buzzing roar she could feel in her very bones. At last the beam ceased, though the crawling magic still spread through the sky, and Violet had no more time to contemplate what her foe had wrought, for Voldemort came flying down toward her from the black cloud, Killing Curses issuing from the tip of his wand.
Violet threw herself once more into battle, ignoring the developing calamity above, ignoring the way the entire court and surrounding lands were illuminated in shades of red. She sought only to bring forth her enemy's blood, to turn his pale skin black with frost. And as the duel was rejoined yet again, each of them fighting with yet greater ferocity and little caution, it was not long before she was vindicated. A crescent of freezing, dark magic scythed through a golden shield and severed half of Voldemort's left hand in an eruption of bloody mist. Severed fingers fell into the night, along with the much larger shape of the Weapon. The victorious thrill that surged through her was followed a heartbeat later as she was faced with a choice between a jet of green light and a marginally less lethal Blood-Boiling Curse, with no time to shield and space to avoid only one. Accepting the ruby-red cure in her chest, she allowed herself to fall freely, fighting back a scream as searing fire seemed to spread inside her. She gathered her own power, Winter rising to quench the defiant heat, and a few seconds later she was left sweaty, sore, but alive.
Catching herself in her fall, Violet looked back up, searching for her enemy against a sky set aflame. A sharp, sudden pain flashed in her cheek. She put her hand to her face and pulled it away to see it was smeared with blood from a small cut. A moment later a similar pain struck her in the shoulder, and she grimaced as she realized a thin sliver of metal had buried itself in her shoulder. As she pulled it free, she realized the wound to her face was healing slowly, in the way of an injury inflicted by iron.
Violet looked back up to the sky, now nearly as bright as day, clouds bulging with unstable energy, flickers of yellow lightning flaring. Her eyes were keen; a cloud of tiny objects could be seen, like a swarm of gnats, like raindrops, falling.
"Protego," Violet breathed, feeling nothing.
Splinters of iron clattered against her shield in a constant patter, skating off and continuing their path to the ground below.Salt.One of the clouds above, swollen beyond measure, disgorged a colossal globule of sickly yellow magic to join the falling iron, and the cloud split, revealing a deeply red, abyssal rent in the sky itself, weeping more yellow tears. More clouds began to split as well, filling the sky with descending missiles of every accursed shade of light.
The first globule struck the ground, splashing upon a dome spiral of marble and coating it in yellow. A shaft of light thrust upward, and with a deep rumble audible even from Violet's perch in the air, the structure began to crumble, drawn upward into the light as white blocks were torn free, spiraling up into the dark. More bursts of light followed, mesmerizing in their destructive horror.
Instinctive precognition snapped Violet's attention back to the ongoing duel, and she wove a nested weave of ice sheets to deflect a stream of incoming curses, as Voldemort plunged down toward her. With a scream that seemed unconstrained by any need for breath, Violet drove herself toward him, as if she herself were no more than an extension of the blade in her hand. Around Voldemort the air grew cold and thick, and as he twisted to Disapparate invisible fetters tightened. All his great power was set against them. And the fetters held.
You think to fight me here, in Winter, on the longest of nights? When the very streams and stars rise against your accursed presence? When two Queens have died and their power rests, if with anyone, with me?
Violet knew not whether she thought the words or screamed them. The world had shrunk to her, Voldemort, and the distance between them. Flashes of magic streaked toward her, but the Unforgivable Curses she evaded, and all others broke apart on the power of Winter that surrounded her. Time seemed to slow as Voldemort's calculating gaze grew larger, and he ceased casting at her. Instead, Violet could sense power building—power for one last effort—and with a great lunge, she drove her sword forward, into her enemy's chest.
Moments before blood would be spilled, Voldemort's power erupted, and the fetters on him shattered. He vanished with the faintest of sounds, and Violet tumbled through where he had been, in freefall, catching herself only shortly before she would have struck the ground.
Her gaze darted across the cursed sky. Voldemort was nowhere to be seen.
Violet fell to her knees, panting. She watched through misty eyes as the already ruined court was unmade by Voldemort's great curse, every stone torn from its rest or dissolved to corrosive liquid, or simply pierced by iron. It felt like she had failed. Winter had sacrificed its consciousness for her, in trust that she would by the champion and guardian fated to avert the death of beauty. And what was this but the end of all that she had left to protect?
A few moments passed. Then Violet stood, moving to sheath her sword before remembering she had nowhere to stow it. She glanced up to the sky, scoffed, and began to plod through the snow and ash toward where Maeve had fallen.
She found Maeve where she expected to. The dead Queen's belt, charred and tattered by the flames that had consumed her lighter garments, still had Satria's sickle secured to it. Reverently, Violet removed the weapon and the severed hand that still clutched it, and she pulled both against her chest, hunching protectively over the remains of her . . . of Satria. Dear Satria.
It still felt impossible. Had she and Satria not vowed to each other to live, to endure together for the nearest thing to eternity? How could it have ended so abruptly, at the hand of petty, vindictive Maeve, who herself had lived for only hours longer?
Carefully, Violet conjured a starkly white cloth and wrapped the sickle and the hand in it. Setting them aside, she turned to practicality, and with the Elder Wand summoned the Weapon to her hand. Its hilt was red with Voldemort's blood from where she struck it from his hand, and this brought some satisfaction. Running the wand over herself, her feathered dress transformed to be cinched by a belt, from which she secured the Weapon. Perhaps Winter truly had suffered a mortal blow this night. But Violet would give her dying breath to ensure her beloved land of beauty and grace had the chance to die in its own image, not Esrid's.
Last of all, Violet took Maeve's crown.
The weighty iron felt cold in Violet's fingers. Strange light from the sky gleamed over its polished surface. Slowly, mournfully, Violet raised the crown to her own head.
And paused.
Something felt wrong. Perhaps it was the thought of donning an iron crown in the name of Winter, as Maeve in all her gauche megalomania had seen fit to. But—Violet's tongue flicked nervously over her lips—perhaps it was something else. Perhaps Winter is not ready for a new Queen.
A flash of orange fire erupted to Violet's left. She barely twitched.
"Violet?" a deep baritone intoned.
She drew a breath, not looking away from the crown, and whispered back, "Yes. I remain."
She sensed him coming to stand alongside her, felt the warmth of Summer on her skin. Setting down the crown, Violet rose and regarded him, the King of Summer who, in his radiance, was nearly a stranger to her. "He's here," she said. "Voldemort. He was working with Maeve all along—though their alliance ended in betrayal; whose first, I'm not entirely sure. I killed Maeve. And Maeve killed Satria. And Voldemort killed the court. What was left of it, anyway."
Violet's voice sounded flat, even to her. She would have liked to muster up some passion at her victory over Maeve—the possibility that Voldemort being trapped in Winter could be exploited—or even grief, for Satria, for her home. But in her heart she found only a dispassionate determination, a certainty that she would bring all of this to an end.
And then . . .
She would see. She recalled Fleur's words, just hours ago, a small consolation. Perhaps the mortal world would have a place for her, for she could scarcely imagine existing in the Wyld alone. Or, perhaps it would not. And she would see.
"No," said Sirius. "The Lady lives. The False Queen told you a false tale of woe. Indeed, she struck her a terrible blow; but before the full wickedness of her design could be, the False Queen found a royal foe in me. Her cohort I slew while away she flew. I saw the Lady to a place of safety." He held out a hand, which Violet silently took, suddenly finding herself without words. "Fear not, Violet. I have a burning torch for a heart, but I will be ash and dust before I forget my duty to you and yours."
Violet's eyes stung, and without thinking she pulled him into a hug, feeling the echo of her own racing heart against his chest. "Thank you," she whispered, blinking quickly. She finally pulled back. "Where?"
Sirius smiled, with the faintest hint of the mischievous humor he had once been inseparable from.
"The place where Summer and Winter come together . . . be it for another day, or for forever."
~#~
Violet's last impression of Satria's court was of death. It lined the streets, permeated the air, poured from the sky. Fair corpses burned and rotted beneath the same corrupt magic that cracked the earth and melted polished marble to black, corrosive sludge. Violet had seen her home in ruins before, but never like this. However Fate might favor her, even if she could defeat Esrid without sacrificing her life to the alien dagger on her belt, even if she could strike down the Dark Lord who had made himself her enemy since before she knew what an enemy was—still, the very soil beneath her home would be poisoned, a poison fueled by the vindictiveness of the Dark Lord, a weapon that hadn't even fallen on its intended target in the end.
Death.
Violet felt half the Reaper herself as she passed, silent, through the streets and then the field of battle beyond where corpses lay, sprawled out as far as the eye could see. How many had fallen by her blade? Her wand, the wand of Death?
Satria lives, Violet reminded herself, a refrain of clarity and purpose. Satria was alive, and Violet would keep it that way. Whatever the cost.
Sirius, walking alongside her, stopped. Together they stood, in the heart of the battlefield, and turned to give a final look at the court in its death throes. They could see the remnants of the forces that clashed here—of both Queens—trying to find some semblance of order in the blood-stained snow, enemies no longer. Winter had a new Queen, and her name was Satria.
More fae were still escaping from the court, illuminated as tiny specks by the eerie light of Voldemort's magic. Sirius spoke.
"They will follow. But not quickly enough."
Taking the hint, Violet nodded. She shrugged her shoulders, and with a rustle her wings unfurled. "And you're sure he's heading for the Origin?"
Sirius gave her a look. "You saw him in his own accursed land. Where do you think he will go?"
"Right." With a sound like a sigh, Violet beat her wings, rising slightly. She touched the Weapon. "We will be enough, then."
"We will."
Together they soared, one with wings the color of snow, the other held aloft by wings of living flame. They rose high, above the clouds, where it was bitterly cold. And they flew.
~#~
The broken kaleidoscope of false colors devoured the crimson door Voldemort had drawn through the air, consuming it before it could transport him out of this doomed realm, as it had on his previous attempts. He snarled into the air, standing in the sky as the sun began to rise. Maeve, the spiteful wretch, had found one last way to vex him. The secret of her doors between worlds, knowledge he pulled from her dying thoughts as he wrenched his soul free, was useless. The bitch's damnable arrogance—her daft insistence on obscuring the depths to which she had allowed her corrupted brother's poison to seep into her so-called domain—now threatened to drag Voldemort down too. Every time he called upon the magic that should have carried him free of this place, free of the endless fields of crystal that turned light itself into something foreign, free of the girl who was not dead and who knew his secret—each time, the magic failed, dissolving into colors with no name. That he knew Maeve could not have conspired his misfortune deliberately only stoked his anger.
Anger, frustration, and fury, which it had to be admitted was fueled at least in part by fear. The throbbing pain in his maimed hand—a wound which refused to heal, the lingering curse proving too difficult to unwind with the distraction of the wind and the maddening crystal—seemed to remind him of just how fragile his victory over mortality had become.
How many were left?
His Diary was gone, abandoned when he merged with himself. The cup of Hufflepuff too, likewise reclaimed from his duplicitous ally. The expenditure of those two alone posed an unacceptable risk—he should never have waited this long to replace the Diary, however refreshing he had found the experience of reuniting with his first and most important Horcrux. But what if Dumbledore or, worse, the girl had found others of his? Nagini alone he was certain of being secure, but he had been far too complacent in monitoring the others.
"Weak, Tom," Voldemort hissed, casting down a star-tipped streak of purple magic and shattering a towering crystal into a thousand, sparkling, blinding fragments. The effect was mesmerizing. A lesser mind might never escape. His was only pushed further into a seething fury.
If he had known what awaited him here, he would have left his soul fragment to rot with Maeve.
Merlin alone knew what schemes of unsurpassed foolishness his followers would hatch in his unplanned absence, all in feeble bids to win his approval. Coupled with Bella's escalating instability, he wouldn't be unduly shocked to learn they had decided to stage an invasion of the Continent.
And those concerns paled before the threat to his Horcruxes. If the girl returned before he did . . .
With a sharp nod, Voldemort made a dark streak of himself against the sky, chasing the rising sun. Perhaps he could have sought out one of this realm's petty masters and compelled them to grant him a return to the real world, but the idea of subjecting himself to the company of another creature in Maeve's image was revolting. No. He would take a more direct approach . . . and, amusingly, fulfill his pact with Maeve in the process.
The diseased magic of the bitch's mad brother stood in Voldemort's way. Esrid would not be the first and would not be the last to, too late, make one final, fatal realization:
Things that stood in Lord Voldemort's way died.
~#~
Remember who you are.
I am Sirius Black.
The internal voice, bereft of the rich tones that had altered his speech, spoke from a deep, concealed place within: a stronghold under siege, receding under the glare of a burning sun. The voice still remembered what he told himself five months ago, when the King first donned his crown.
I was the friend of James Potter and Remus Lupin and Peter Pettigrew. I am the last. I am still here for a reason.
The wind rushing over him in flight seemed to stoke the flame-wings that supported him, and the warmth that filled him was only growing stronger, suffocating the last defiance of mortality beneath a soporific blanket of comforting heat that called out to something atavistic, something forgotten, within himself—the Summer that had always run in his Black blood, quiescent until ignited, then never to be extinguished. The sun was rising. The winter solstice was done. Summer was waxing once more. And he knew well that long before it reached its apex, Sirius Black would be gone, and the King would rule forevermore.
The holdout in Sirius's heart coiled in contempt. He nodded, acknowledging the thought, and finished the practiced message he had told himself so many times before. Perhaps, this time would be the last.
I have a duty to fulfill.
Just ahead of him, Sirius could see his goddaughter: glorious and strong, utterly at peace with her nature, and so very deserving of life. His gaze fell on the dagger at her belt, and though some ancient part of him shuddered at its ghastly presence, he felt more like a man than he had in a very long time.
I have a duty.
. . .
James, I am coming.