The Right Side of History (Schooled In Magic Book 22), Christopher Nuttall [books to read romance TXT] 📗

it lost, along with everything else she’d brought with her to the Nameless World. It looked maddeningly out of place in Whitehall. Her card, with her full name and a photograph...

“I’m sorry, Emily Sanderson,” Void said. She had the feeling he meant it. “But you leave me no choice.”

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Emily could barely think.

She’d been warned never to share her full name with anyone. It was bad enough, she’d been cautioned, that there hadn’t been anyone else called Emily when she’d arrived. No one, absolutely no one, knew her surname. Not here. And yet, it had never occurred to her that she’d left her library card with Void. She’d never even given any thought, once she’d left the tower, to the clothes she’d left behind. Or her purse and the handful of cards. She wondered, suddenly, if she’d been induced to forget. But then, none of it had been any use in the Nameless World.

She cursed her own stupidity as she tried to resist the cloud covering her mind. If she’d known, if she’d remembered, she could have cut the link between her and the photograph before it had been turned against her. The card had meant the world to her, once upon a time, but she could have rendered it harmless. And yet... she couldn’t stop him from holding her still, not now. The spell was practically part of her. She couldn’t move or speak or do anything, beyond trying to save what she could. He’d had a trap planned all along and, like a fool, she’d walked right into it.

A wave of tiredness washed over her, but she didn’t dare let herself sleep. Who knew what he’d do? Put her in a cell and keep her prisoner? Reprogram her into his ideal ruler for a global empire? Or... or what? She didn’t want to know. She tried to bite her lip, in hope the pain would help her to focus, but she couldn’t even do that. She heard him step forward and felt a surge of panic. It didn’t help.

You had this in mind all along, she thought, numbly. The sting of betrayal hurt worse than ever before. Why?

Her mind churned. Void had a point. There was no point in pretending he didn’t. The Allied Lands fought each other as much as they fought the necromancers, if not more. They hadn’t shown any ability to work together, let alone unite into a single power. She’d spent the last few weeks watching helplessly as royalists and rebels headed towards a final catastrophic showdown. There was no hope of convincing the two sides to come to terms. The most one side could offer was far less than the other could accept. And the same story was taking place right across the continent. The Allied Lands were about to destroy themselves.

Alassa will be fine, she told herself. Her people have no cause for revolt.

She felt her heart sink. Perhaps that was true, but it wouldn’t matter. Void would have other ways of dealing with Alassa and Zangaria. He might have put together an army of his own or, perhaps, simply planned to take one from a conquered kingdom. Or he could have planned to turn the rogue orcs into an army himself. There was no shortage of them wandering around after the end of the war. Void could batter them into submission and then take them for his own.

“Someday you will have to explain this to me,” Void said. He turned the library card over and over as he modified the spell. “But not today.”

He looked at her, almost sadly. “You’ll be safe,” he added. “I promise you, you’ll be safe. But I can’t let you interfere.”

Emily tried, one final time, to free herself, but it was futile. She’d loved that card. She’d invested so much of herself in the card, well before she’d known what she was doing, that it was practically a backdoor into her mind. Her name and the photograph were just the icing on the cake. She wondered if she’d be herself, when the spell was finally lifted. Or if she would be his successor in every sense of the word.

I could pretend, she thought, desperately. If he believed I’d help him...

She sighed. There was no way he’d believe her, not after everything she’d said. He’d want to take precautions, making it impossible for her to resist... she wanted to cry in frustration as it dawned on her his plan simply wouldn’t work. There was no way she’d help him willingly and no way he could make her help him, not without doing immense damage to his long-term plan. Void didn’t want power for the sake of power. He didn’t want money or women or massive collections of spellbooks or anything material. He wanted to build an empire that would reunite the continent. And yet, she knew it wouldn’t work. It just wouldn’t last. How could it?

Tears prickled in her eyes as Void held up the card. She caught sight of herself, of the person she’d been eight years ago. A scrawny little girl, her eyes dark with hopelessness... she felt hopeless now, despite everything she’d done. He would put her to sleep and keep her prisoner and... she knew there would be no escape. Void had a nexus point under his command. He could conjure up an inescapable cell or shove her in a timeless pocket dimension or... or simply reprogram her. Perhaps...

“I’m sorry,” Void said. “I...”

A blasting hex shot across the chamber and struck him in the back. He stumbled forward, crashing into Emily and knocking her to the ground. The library card fell from his hands. Emily shuddered as it struck the floor. Her body felt weird, as if she’d been numbed so thoroughly she couldn’t feel. Void glanced at her, then spun around as another hex crashed into his wards. Lady Barb was running towards him, throwing spell after spell. She’d practically come out of the nexus point.

She must have crept into the