All Chapters of One Night,One Claim: Chapter 51 - Chapter 60

Elara’s POVWe rode for the Weeping Falls before the sun was fully up.I would have ridden through the mountain itself. But Rico could not shift without the black veins surging toward his heart, and Valeria, who had arrived in a panic at dawn with four of her sisters, said that if he tried again the cold would take him whole.So we traveled slowly, on sleds and horses, the Seers and the coven and two hundred wolves, and Rico rode beside me with his jaw clenched so hard I could hear his teeth.By noon the veins had reached his collarbone.“Tell me what you feel,” I said, low, so only he could hear.“Cold.” He did not look at me. “And a voice. It’s very patient.”“What does it say?”“That you’re afraid.” He laughed, dry and humorless. “That you’re right to be.”I reached across the gap between our horses and took his hand. It was freezing, the skin gone gray at the fingertips. Through the bond I felt it: a vast, slow pressure at the base of his mind, like a glacier grinding toward a hou

Elara’s POVThe stairs went down for a very long time.Somewhere past the three hundredth step, the torches stopped working. Rico’s black frost lit our way instead, a faint, sickly glow that crawled along the walls. The air grew colder with every turn. My breath hung in front of me in white clouds, and the whispers began.At first it was only a sound, like wind in a keyhole. Then words.Elara.I knew that voice. I had known it all my life.“Mama?” I said, before I could stop myself.Elara, baby, come here. Come and sit. I made your favorite.The darkness ahead of me lit up.I stood in a small yellow kitchen. Rain on the window. A pot bubbling on the stove. A woman with black hair and a worn blue apron turned, smiling, and held out her arms.I had never seen this woman. But I had been dreaming her since I was a child.No more hiding, she said. No more running. Come home. I’ll keep

Dax’s POVI had a sword in my hand and no idea what to do with it.Rico stood in the center of the cavern with his fingers around my sister’s throat, her feet barely touching the stone. His eyes had gone pure white. Black veins crawled up his face like cracks in a mirror, and the thing wearing him smiled a smile that did not belong to him.“Don’t,” Elara rasped. “Dax. Don’t.”“He’s going to kill you.”“He’s not.” She was clawing at the black hand, her face going dark. “Not him. Not Rico.”“It is not your king,” said the Sovereign, pleasantly. “It is a vessel, nothing more. Strike if you wish. His heart is still his heart. It will stop all the same.”Kael was already at my shoulder, blades drawn, her whole body trembling. Behind us Corwin was dragging at his chains, roaring. Aislin had gone gray with horror.“Elara,” my mother said. “Child. Your blood. Use your blood.”I did not understand.

Zoe’s POVI stood at the edge of the circle and could not move.I had walked into this mountain on my own two feet. I had carried Flame out of the Queen’s tent in my arms. I had listened to a cold voice tell me my father was alive and believed it. Every step of this nightmare was mine.Now the people I had hurt were bleeding in front of me, and I was holding a knife I had no idea how to use.“Zoe!”Mama. On the far side of the chamber, her hair white as bone, her right arm gone gray with frost. She was crouched beside old Korran, who knelt with both palms flat against the floor.“The chains,” Mama gasped. “Zoe, the sisters. They’re wearing chains. Cut them!”I looked at the eleven women, rigid in their circle, knives raised. At the thin silver cords curling down the back of each neck, glittering like spider silk.Cut them.I ran.A woman lunged at me, an expressionless face, white eyes, a

Kael’s POVAn hour to the dark of the moon.I paced the cracked floor of the Heart Chamber, my blades loose in my hands, listening to the distant roar of the war outside. Elara knelt before Flame’s column of ice, her palms flat against it, whispering something I couldn’t hear. Rico stood behind her with his sword drawn and blood still seeping from his palm. Aislin and Corwin had been unchained at last, and sat wrapped in cloaks on the stairs, silent, watching their daughter with the hunger of people who had waited twenty-three years to look at her.Dax stood at my side. He had not left it once.“You’re staring,” he said, not turning his head.“Am I?”“You’ve been staring at the doorway for ten minutes.”“Something’s coming.”His hand found mine. “Then we’ll meet it.”I almost smiled. A day ago I would have pulled away. A month ago I would have drawn a knife on anyone who tried to hold my hand in fr