“I command all of you to stop,” Seba shouted. Her cries were lost in the din of the brawl. She was sure things couldn’t get any worse.
Then there was a thunderous boom.
The ground shook.
Seba jerked around and saw that an entire line of buildings had erupted in an explosion in the upper district. Debris catapulted into the air and a plume of dust blanketed the sky. The shockwave from the blast hit, sending her stumbling.
Seba’s vision narrowed to one spot: she watched as the Water Tower, the invincible edifice, the place that had once been her refuge, shuddered. Smoke swirled around it, engulfing it, consuming it . . . then it collapsed, telescoping in on itself amidst spirals of furious flames.
Suddenly people were running, screaming, crying, trying to find loved ones, wanting to go back and save their houses, their furniture, their belongings.
Even in her haze of shock, Seba knew what she had to do. This was the scene from her foresight dream. It was coming true. After a lifetime of waiting, she raised trembling hands and lowered her cowl.
“Galantrians,” she cried, “I am Princess Sebaris Ishira Wavewould. Head for the Imperial Highway. Aid will come to you there!”
Miraculously, people listened to her. The anthill of frenzied motion turned into a purposeful wave of bodies surging toward the highway. She urged them on, shouting encouragement.
Behind them, the malevolent red flames flickered with tongues of pitch-black that burned with horrible dark radiance. That banished the last of Seba’s doubts about the darksalm. Ribbons of midnight ash coiled upwards from the inferno, poisoning the night.
“Don’t go back,” Seba screamed at one hysterical woman who pushed against the crowd.
“My husband—he’s sick! Our house is in the upper district—”
“The palace guards will save him!” That was a lie. Seba was sure her father had sent a response team by now, but there would be no survivors. Even if there were, no one in the Galantasa, in all of Allentria, could save them from their fate if the darksalm had touched them.
The woman was swept away by the masses and Seba assessed the chaos around her. She did have one weapon that would be effective against the fire.
It was improper for a woman of her rank to use magic. She had only wielded three other times in her life, and on each occasion she’d lost control of her threads. The fact that her power was so dangerous and volatile usually prevented her from attempting to use it, but this was an emergency.
She raced for the nearest canal. When she reached it she closed her eyes, retreated within herself, and connected with her magicsource. The feeling was intoxicating. Magic was life. It was a drug. It filled her with freedom and fear.
Brimming with energy, she mentally directed a river of threads from her source into the waterway. A wall of liquid flew upwards, responding to her thoughts. People paused to stare.
“Keep going!” she yelled, waving them on.
Sweat beaded on her brow as she focused—clear intent was crucial to any spell, and a lapse in concentration would undo her hard work. Slowly, she manipulated the water so it hovered over the city. When it was poised above the outer edge of the black-tinged blaze, Seba let it fall. The fire spat and stuttered where she doused it, but resumed its voracious appetite, devouring shops and houses alike.
“You there! Stop your wielding!”
For the third time that night, someone grabbed Seba’s shoulder. An Imperial Guard stood glowering behind her.
“Unhand me! I am Sebaris Ishi—”
“I don’t give a drop of Helkryvt’s blood who you are. You’re interacting with that fire, and for that, we must detain you,” he said, tightening his hold on her.
Seba imagined that she looked like a fish: her mouth was opening and closing, but no sound was coming out. She was furious. She was incensed! She—was being arrested? Two more guards joined the first, attempting to shackle her.
She whipped out her dagger and punched its blunt end into the stomach of the man who held her. Her blade flashed as she whirled, cutting at the remaining two. One doubled over, holding a bleeding arm. The other leapt out of her reach and wielded against her.
It pained Seba to admit it, but she was a bad wielder. Still, what she lacked in finesse she made up for in raw, unchained power. When the man shot a torrent of water at her, she poured threads from her source and channeled them into the liquid, deflecting his spell.
“Attacking a member of the Imperial Guard is illegal,” he cried.
“Attacking a member of one of the royal families of Allentria is a Class-A felony!” Seba countered, blocking another attack.
There was a dull thud and the man collapsed. Max stood behind him. He had saved her.
“Why are you still here?” she yelled over the roar of the inferno.
“I came back for Keriya.”
“Who?”
“Keriya Soulstar, the girl with the purple eyes. Did you see which way she went?”
Fresh heat boiled in Seba’s stomach. “I saw nothing,” she lied.
“Sebaris, we must find her!”
“Why? Why is she important to you?”
“She’s a dragon speaker,” he said. Seba knew Max well enough to know there was more to it than that.
He raced toward the fire, with nothing more than an air shield to block the tainted ash spiraling in the burning breeze. Biting back a groan, Seba started after him.
“Princess!”
She stopped at once. The boiling heat inside her turned to ice. Looking over her shoulder, she saw the captain of her father’s soldiers, Inido Rainsword, approaching with a group of his men.
She was in big trouble.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
“Eternity binds only those who are dead.”
~ Valerion Equilumos, Second Age
Roxanne could feel herself unraveling.
In Aeria, it had been taught that one shouldn’t wield while bleeding. She’d been inclined to think that this, like everything else she’d learned in that stagnant waste pit, was nonsense. Now she knew better.
Her magicsource flickered from the depths of her consciousness, its once-healthy glow diminished. When she pulled threads away from her core now, she felt it. More blood oozed from her wound every time she wielded, and her body was growing cold and brittle.
She needed help, but Effrax had run after some Imperials and Keriya had fled. Fletcher had stayed to fight, but he was making things worse. Where had the cowardly, whiny Fletcher gone? This new Fletcher, the one who was trying too hard to be brave, was causing problems.
“Surrender, by order of the Imperial Guard!” said a voice Roxanne recognized. Balling her hands into white-knuckled fists, she looked around to find Doru pointing his sword at her.
If she hadn’t been so exhausted—and if blood hadn’t been seeping from her wound—she might have tried to kill him. The best she could do was to get rid of him as quickly as possible. She was too badly injured to think about creation magic, so that left her with manipulation.
A fiery explosion up the street distracted Doru for the briefest of moments, and Roxanne struck. She threaded energy into the earth beneath the cobbles of the street. A pillar of dirt rose behind Doru and smacked into him. He collapsed beneath its weight and did not rise again.
After that, it was easy to dispense with the Imperial who was attacking Fletcher.
“Thanks,” Fletcher wheezed as Roxanne limped toward him. “Where’s Keriya?”
“Haven’t a bloody clue. She ran away.”
“To find Thorion, do you think?”
“No, to run away.”
“Come on, Roxanne, that’s not fair,” he said. “She doesn’t have any magic.”
“So? You barely have any magic, and you stuck around like the halfwit you are,” she retorted.
&nb
sp; His expression dropped. He bowed his head and murmured to the cobblestones, “I was just trying to help.”
Roxanne didn’t have the energy to reply. All she wanted was to lie down and forget the events of the evening. Her wound ached. The sight of the Village burning had shaken her. And her experience with those guards . . . she wanted to block that out forever. It reminded her too much of what she had suffered at her father’s hands.
Painful memories swelled within her, and Roxanne felt herself unraveling in quite a different way. She sought a distraction, but her mind refused to leave the room in the dark house. Tanthflame’s words haunted her: All we have to do is give one little push, and Allentria will crumble and fall.
Everything she knew about government and politics could fit in a thimble, but Roxanne understood that what had happened tonight had changed the world.
Necrovar’s forces had pushed, and she only had to look around to see things crumbling.
Keriya had intended to circle around and rejoin her friends, but the Imperial who’d attacked her had followed her, preventing her from doubling back. Then the explosion had hit, disorienting her. Now she was running through empty streets with a vicious fire wielder on her heels.
A flurry of flames erupted from his fingertips, and she ducked down an alley to avoid being burnt to a crisp. Ahead, a doorway hung open on broken hinges. She crashed through it and crawled to the corner of a deserted home, holding her breath until the guardsman had run past her hiding spot.
Once he was gone, she found the front door and exited onto a different street. The fire greedily consumed the Galantrian Village in the northeast, but there was destruction here, too. Shops with shattered windows and broken doors, debris from the explosion, and . . .
Keriya’s stomach turned over. There were bodies strewn across the thoroughfare next to the canal. One unlucky man who’d suffered severe burns lay motionless at the edge of a wooden quay. A smaller body lay beyond him, broken and bloody.
This is war, Keriya thought, staring at the tiny corpse. Shivnath’s descriptions and Aldelphia’s warnings paled in comparison to living it, experiencing it first-hand. Her eyes stung with tears and she closed them against the awful sight. She was rewarded with a purple glow beneath her closed lids.
“No,” she whispered, her heart sinking.
“We meet again, Drachrheenar.”
Her eyes sprang open. A reedy figure was melting out of the shadows from the building next door. It was Corporal Fireglaim—the man who had taken Thorion.
“You hurt my dragon,” she said slowly. “I should kill you for that.”
“Without any magic?” Fireglaim laughed. “You couldn’t so much as scratch me.” He pulled off his mask, revealing his face. His flesh was blacker than pitch, as were his teeth, his tongue, even his eyes.
Keriya stooped to grab a piece of rubble and hurled it at Fireglaim with all her might. It would have struck him had he not turned into a wisp of darkness and vanished before it hit. She looked around wildly to see where he had gone and spotted two more figures materializing out of thin air.
These were foes she stood no chance against, yet Keriya remained resolutely in place as Fireglaim reconstituted himself from the shadows behind her.
If this was war, then she would have to fight.
With a burst of dusky sparks, Fireglaim created a black mist and wielded against Keriya. There was nothing she could do to counter it—she didn’t even have time to run. The spell snaked around her arms and lashed against her face, seeping into her skin. Her bones weakened and she sank to the ground.
The necromagic enveloped her, sapping her of energy. The rumble of the fire vanished and her vision faded. For a moment, Keriya was sure she had died—this emptiness was so absolute, so similar to the place where she had met Shivnath. Even if she were alive, it wouldn’t matter. No one knew where she was. No one was coming to save her.
Worlds away, she felt sinewy arms lifting her body. Captured again, with no hope of escape.
Through the shroud of darkness and the fog of fear, a selfish, cowardly idea came to her. With the last of her strength, she opened her mind and concentrated on a thought.
She waited for a minute . . . an hour . . . an age. Nothing happened, and relief trickled through the emptiness inside her. She was glad he hadn’t heeded her call. At least one of them would survive.
The arms relinquished their hold on her and she fell. Her body collided with the hard stones of the street, jolting life into her. The dark spell around her seeped away. Her vision returned and she blinked, squinting at a blur of violent motion in front of her.
It was Thorion! He was locked in battle with Fireglaim, the glow of his eyes diluted by his second set of membranous, protective lids. He kicked at the shadowman’s chest with his hind legs, causing Fireglaim to shriek and flail. The drackling took advantage of an opening and struck, biting Fireglaim’s neck. The demon gave a strangled cry as he died, and his corpse turned to dust, bursting apart into a blizzard of black ash.
At once, the other men wielded defensive shadows around themselves. Thorion paid their magic no mind. He launched at the closer of the two, shattering the veil of darkness. The man hardly had time to react before the dragon’s jaws were around his throat.
The last remaining shadowman crouched as his comrade died beneath Thorion’s fangs, readying a concentrated spell of necromagic.
Desperate to do something, anything, Keriya’s fingers closed on a piece of wreckage. She heaved it with all the strength she had, and it caught the final shadowman in the shoulder.
“Leave him alone,” she croaked.
The shadowman faltered, pausing in his attack for half a heartbeat. In that moment, Thorion sprang into the air, leaving behind the crumbling body of the demon he’d just destroyed. He beat his wings and circled for another attack.
The last shadowman bared his teeth in a grimace. He completed his spell and black lightning exploded from the palm of his hand.
The bolt struck Thorion square in the chest. He let out a screech that tore at Keriya’s heart, but he valiantly weathered the lightning. He puffed himself up and a beam of pure energy blasted from his jaws. The shadowman burst into a million midnight granules the instant it hit him.
Thorion soared to a landing beside Keriya, the glow from his eyes fading now that the necro-wielders were dead. “Are you hurt?”
“Not really.” Her voice was faint, but she summoned a smile for him. “You saved me again. Why?”
Thorion hesitated. Keriya could sense his confusion—confusion about why he’d acted so unwisely in the face of danger, confusion about the emotions clouding his mind, and confusion about the sensation of feeling confused.
“Why?” he asked her right back.
“Why what?”
“Why . . . this?” Thorion motioned to his chest with his forepaw. “This feeling.”
“Oh. Worry?”
“I already know what worry feels like,” he said, shaking his head.
“Relief? Happiness that we survived?”
“No,” he growled, a crease forming between his brow ridges. Turning to gestures again, he put one claw to his chest. Then he reached out and placed that same claw over Keriya’s heart.
She couldn’t explain what he was feeling, even if she had been able to, because the fire had reached them. The building next to them ignited. Its glass windows blew out, shattering on the street. A plume of black-stained fire billowed toward them. Thorion leapt at Keriya and spread his wings, shielding her from the resulting shower of ash, sparks, and detritus.
Horror seized her, stealing the breath from her lungs and turning her blood to ice. Thor
ion . . . touched by the darksalm?
“I’m fine,” he said, sensing her thoughts. “But we must go.”
With his aid she got to her feet. A gust of dizziness made her vision blur. She reeled sideways, trying to pull herself together.
“Keriya!”
Keriya froze. She couldn’t be sure, but she thought she’d heard someone calling her name. She strained to heed her muddled senses, listening over the rumble of the fire.
“Keriya, where are you?”
“Max?” she called weakly. “Max, I’m here!”
She squinted through the miasma of acrid smoke. Her heart leapt when she saw the prince emerging through the haze. Max sprinted toward her, but slowed to a halt before he reached her.
“It can’t be,” he breathed, sinking to his knees as he gaped at Thorion. He raised a hand, almost as if sensing the drackling’s power. Thorion pressed against Keriya’s legs and a growl wormed its way out of his throat.
A crackle from the burning building startled Max out of his reverie, and he stood. Thorion tensed at his sudden movement.
“Is it safe to approach?” asked Max, warily watching the drackling.
“Of course it’s safe.” Keriya hobbled to Max’s side, and he put an arm around her shoulders as he led her away from the fire. Thorion danced underfoot, leaning against her whenever she swayed. When Max didn’t move quickly enough for the dragon’s liking, he nipped at the prince’s heels.
“Alright, alright,” said Max, recoiling from the snap of pearly teeth.
“Be nice,” she told Thorion, shaking a finger at him. He scowled at her, emulating her expression.
“You’ve bonded.” Max’s voice had a sharp edge that made Keriya’s stomach tighten. “That . . . is dangerous.”
“Why?”
“Because if you teach him to frown, he will frown. If you teach him to smile, he will smile. If you teach him to hate, he will hate. Do you see how that can be problematic?”
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