Ravenna Nightshade's Arc

Chapter 6 of 6

The chanting cut off. The silence hit Ravenna harder than any noise. Torchlight still moved down the passage, but no voices came now. Something had heard the stone break, and it was coming toward her in the dark. She raised her sword and held her ground before the open gate. Footsteps scraped the stone. Two shapes stepped out from the shadow beyond the arch. They were elves, but old past any elf she knew—tall, thin, with long gray beards and robes black as the stone around them. Each wore her court's crest on his chest. They carried no weapons. They did not need to. They stood on either side of the gate like part of it, as if they had grown there over centuries of waiting. Ravenna kept her blade up. "Stay back." The elf on the right lifted his eyes. They shone pale in the torchlight. "We stopped our song because our watch is over," he said. His voice was slow, cracked from long disuse. "We have chanted the vigil since the queen fell. We waited for her blood to open the gate." "Many have come to this stone," said the other. "None could open it. The altar knows a thief from an heir." He looked at the crest on her robes, then at the sword forged for her hand. "You opened it." Ravenna's arm shook, but she did not lower the blade. "My mother said the throne was mine." "Your mother spoke true," the first guardian said. He stepped closer. Ravenna tensed. Then he knelt, slow and stiff, and pressed one hand to the floor. The second guardian knelt beside him. "Heir of the shadow court. We are the last of her guard. We give you the gate we kept." The fear drained out of Ravenna's chest. She lowered her sword. These were not enemies waiting to kill her. They were the reason the court still had a door at all. She had spent the whole road afraid the throne was taken. Instead its keepers had held it for her across a thousand years of dark. She reached down and touched the first guardian's shoulder. "Rise. Both of you." Her voice steadied. "I did not come to be guarded. I came to rule." They stood. The elder guardian's face did not soften. "Then know what you rule," he said. "The court beyond is not empty stone. It is not a prize left for the taking. Those who cast us down still hold the light above. And below, others of our blood have waited longer than we—and not all of them wished for the queen's daughter to come." Ravenna looked past them, into the dark passage where the torches burned. The gate was open. Her guard knelt at her back. But somewhere down there, in the court that was hers by blood, kin waited who did not want her on the throne.