Chapter 3 - The Ghost of the Western Spire
"Guards! Treason! Seize them both!"
Chancellor Morvath scrambled to his feet, his robes disheveled, his dignity shredded into ribbons. He pointed a shaking, jeweled finger at the prince and the child. "The boy has lost his mind! The curse has rotted his reason! Cut them down, or I swear by the High Sun every man in this garrison will hang by sunrise!"
The spell of hesitation finally broke.
Dozens of elite guards, their silver armor gleaming under the chandeliers, surged forward with levelled pikes. The polished marble floor instantly transformed from a ballroom into a killing floor. The nobles shrieked, scattering toward the arched exits like a flock of startled doves, silk skirts tearing and wine goblets crashing into the chaos.
"Hold on," Lyra muttered, her small hand suddenly feeling impossibly heavy as she yanked Cassian’s wheelchair forward.
Hiss.
The crystal array beneath the chair roared to life, not with the sluggish hum of a medical apparatus, but with the shriek of a war engine. Before the pikes could reach them, the chair surged backward with terrifying velocity, spinning a full one-eighty degrees toward the massive stained-glass windows depicting the founding of Aurelorn.
"Cassian! No!" King Alistair roared from the throne, leaping to his feet for the first time in years, his royal mantle flying behind him. "Stop the chair! By the ancestors, he’s heading for the gallery!"
Cassian didn't look back at his uncle. As the wind whipped his hair across his face, he felt an exhilarating, terrifying rush of adrenaline. For twelve years, his world had been measured in inches—from bed to chair, from chair to table, from table back to bed. But now, as the heavy steel wheels left the floor, propelled by an explosive burst of crystal kinetic energy, he was flying.
CRASH!
They smashed through the stained-glass depiction of Saint Aurelorn, showering the courtyard below in a glittering cascade of ruby, sapphire, and gold glass.
The cold mountain air hit them like a physical blow. Freezing rain lashed against their faces, soaking Cassian’s fine velvet coat and plastering Lyra’s dark hair to her neck. But instead of plunging downward into the stone courtyard, the chair seemed to catch an updraft—or rather, the strange, latent energy humming within Cassian’s blood was bending the air itself, lifting them on a cushion of kinetic force.
They landed with a heavy, rolling thud upon the stone parapet of the outer curtain wall.
"Are you insane?!" Cassian shouted over the roar of the storm, gripping the armrests until his knuckles turned white. His heart was hammering against his ribs, but beneath the terror burned an unfamiliar, electric thrill. "We were fifty feet up!"
"And now we're on the roof," Lyra retorted, not missing a beat as she grabbed the back of his chair and began hauling it along the narrow, slick stone walkway. "Unless you want to stay down there and let Morvath turn you into a royal ornament, I suggest you stop complaining and start trusting your legs."
"My legs don't work!" Cassian snapped, though the words felt hollow even as he spoke them. Ever since she had touched him, a strange, burning ache had replaced the numb void in his thighs—like pins and needles multiplied by a thousand.
"They work," Lyra said flatly, pausing by a low, rusted iron door set into the base of the western tower. "They were just put to sleep. Here. Take the key."
She thrust the jagged iron key into his palm. The moment his fingers closed around the cold metal, a shock ran up his arm. The heavy iron latch of the tower door turned with a loud, protesting groan, and the door swung inward, revealing a pitch-black spiral staircase that wound downward into the bowels of the forgotten spire.
From somewhere behind them along the wall came the distant, metallic clank of armored pursuit.
"They're coming," Lyra said, glancing back over her shoulder. "The garrison has crossbows loaded with silver bolts. If we stay out here, we're targets."
"Where does this go?" Cassian asked, staring down into the Stygian dark of the tower.
"To the truth," Lyra said simply, stepping into the gloom and pulling his wheelchair behind her. "And maybe, if we're fast enough, to your real history."
As the heavy oak door slammed shut behind them, cutting off the howling wind and the approaching shouts of the guards, the darkness swallowed them whole. But as Cassian descended into the depths of the tower, he noticed something impossible: his boots, resting uselessly on the footplates of the chair, were trembling.
May you like
Not from the cold.
From anticipation.
