by Elise Kova
Vi pressed her eyes closed, taking shuddering breaths. She had to keep her head about her. She couldn’t give in to hope—not yet. Not when there was so much risk still and so much at stake.
“It means your darling daughter is here.” The first voice again. Vi inched forward. Her magic was building to an inferno inside her, ready to be unleashed on the whole room. It was a rage she didn’t know she’d been carrying. A rage she knew could melt the whole island into the sea.
“She thinks she can save you.” The second voice again.
Let there be only two.
She and Taavin inched forward to the mouth of what looked like a cavern. From Vi’s field of vision she could see a row of cells. Two were occupied with the husks of other unfortunate souls Adela had deemed too valuable or too lowly to give the comfort of death—people she already knew she couldn’t risk trying to save.
She was here for one thing only.
“She’s like a lamb, coming to slaughter.”
How many? Vi mouthed to Taavin silently. He held up two fingers, confirming her earlier suspicions. They could manage two.
A deep chuckle interrupted her thoughts. Its rasp echoed through the caverns and was attached to a voice richer than even Romulin’s. Even weary and worn, Vi knew the sound. She’d know it anywhere in this wide world.
“I think it’s you who will be slaughtered.” Vi felt as much as heard her father’s declaration.
“Do you think you can scare us?”
“No, and I think that will be your downfall. You should never underestimate a Solaris… least of all my daughter.”
Magic swelled on pride. It flowed out of her as sparks of fire and light, dancing on waves of power and heat that scattered off her skin. Vi pushed from the wall, swinging her hand in the same motion. Power for the glyph was already collecting under her fingers before they turned. Vi took a breath.
“Juth mariy!” One of them hissed. The glyph shattered and Vi used it like a starting gun on a line.
They’d been paying attention to the wrong hand and the wrong glyph.
“Mysst larrk,” Vi breathed between wide steps. Her right hand was held behind her, grasping the sword that bloomed from the light under her palm. She swung it wide, putting all her force behind it, both hands clasped around the grip.
It sank with a satisfying crunch into the elfin’ra’s side. Vi shredded bone and sinew, dark pride rising within her. It felt good to wield a sword again.
You should never underestimate a Solaris… least of all my daughter.
She’d prove her father’s words right as he watched in shock and awe.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The scream the elfin’ra let out was sweeter than any music she’d ever heard.
“Mysst xieh!” Taavin’s voice called out from behind her. A shield appeared at Vi’s side. Magic ricocheting off of it. “Loft dorh.” The elfin’ra at her left was frozen still.
Vi had only taken her attention off the man before her for a moment, but it was long enough for him to grip the blade of her sword with a hand, blood streaming from between his fingers as he ripped it from his side and her fingers. She moved to take a step back, but wasn’t fast enough. His hand clasped her face.
His dark blood smeared across her skin, red lightning crackling between the blood and his fingers as he pulled away.
“Narro vah’deh.” He rasped at her.
She knew what narro meant—acts of the mind. But vah’deh was a new and foreign phrase. It rumbled across her uncomfortably in a dissonance that made Vi’s teeth clench to the point of pain. There was something distinctly wrong about it. Something that made her toes curl and her head hurt instantly.
His eyes flashed a brilliant red, brighter than anything she’d ever seen. So bright, her mind went blank. The world was awash in that crimson shade. Shadows carved shapes from a bleeding reality before her, but Vi could no longer make sense of what she saw.
This is wrong, something in her screamed—a voice she knew once. It was her voice. But she couldn’t figure out how it had become so distant. She couldn’t fathom anything. Her mind wouldn’t move. Every time a thought formed it was gone, falling through her fingers like the magic that poured from them.
Another scream and Vi awoke back to the room, not as she’d left it.
The elfin’ra who had been holding her was ablaze, thrashing to try to put out the flames. The other elfin’ra had lunged for Taavin and the two tumbled on the floor. Her head was splitting in two, pain seeping out from her ears. But Vi forced her thoughts to work enough to conjure the symbol and sounds she needed.
“Juth calt.” This time, the other elfin’ra couldn’t stop her. The one assaulting Taavin crumpled as Jayme had on the beach, blood dripping from his mouth. Vi turned in place, repeating the process before the remaining man could put out the flames. “Juth calt.” As soon as the glyph was gone, Vi gripped her head, wincing in pain. “Mother above,” she hissed.
“Vi—” Taavin pushed himself from the ground, rushing to her. “Let me—halleth maph—better?”
“More or less,” Vi mumbled. He had stinted the pain, but a dull throbbing in the back of her skull promised it’d be back with a vengeance soon enough. She needed to find out what that elfin’ra had done to her. But first…
She turned to face the jail cell, and the man within.
Her father was a shade of his former self. He looked more like the man on the beach than the man in her memories—but somehow, even worse. His clothes hung limp on his emaciated frame, torn and tattered. Dark circles lined his sunken eyes and cheeks. Icy shackles Vi recognized coated his wrists.
But his eyes were alight, shining in the darkness. They were eyes Vi knew well from looking into the mirror.
“Do you know who I am?” she whispered, even though Taavin had only just said her name. She was overcome by the inexplicable fear that he might somehow deny her. So much had happened. She was so far and away from the girl he’d last met years ago when he’d managed to escape the pressures of ruling to visit her in the North.
A smile spread across his cracked lips. “I would know who you are anywhere. Not even a haircut can hide you from me, my daughter.”
“I’ve come for you.” She took a slow step forward. Her voice echoed in the cavern. Or maybe it just echoed in her ears. Vi couldn’t be certain. “I’ve sailed across the world for you. I’ve come to bring you home, father.” Vi looked to the heavy padlock on his cell, not even bothering to search for a key. “Juth calt.” It fell with a heavy clang and Vi swung the door open.
“I should scold you for this—coming to such a dangerous place.” Even as her father spoke, there was a prideful smile on his mouth. He stared up at her as though in a daze, as though Vi had become the Mother herself.
“Let’s save the scolding for when we make it out alive.” Vi knelt down, looking at Adela’s icy shackles. “Taavin?”
“It’s strange magic.” He stepped forward, looking over her shoulder.
“It stints my power.” Aldrik cursed under his breath—colorful language Vi had never heard from her father before.
“I know, I wore them once.” Vi glanced up at her father, then to Taavin. “It took a bunch of fire to get them off me.”
“Then I’d try fire,” Taavin suggested. “If Adela really is from the Dark Isle, her initial training may be closer to that of a Waterrunner than anyone on Meru—like your training with fire. But you may want to hurry.”
“Are you ready?” Vi looked to her father. Fire shouldn’t hurt a Firebearer… but her magic seemed so different from his that there was a twinge of worry she may actually harm him.
“Yes.”
Vi placed her hands on the shackles.
The ice was so cold it burned her skin. Even the initial flames Vi pushed forward were snuffed in a puff of steam. She narrowed her eyes, pushing through the barrier. More flames, more power.
“Taavin, starys,” Vi ground out through clenched teeth. Her magic was har
dly making a dent on its own.
Without hesitation, he uttered, “Juth starys.”
A glyph appeared around her hands and her father’s. It swirled slowly in orbit above the shackles. Fire blazed inward from its outer rings in a breathtaking display of power. Vi was a wildfire compared to the measured elegance that was Taavin.
Fire around her. Fire within her. Fire within her father.
Call it forth, she silently pleaded. Sweat dotted her brow. Adela’s power would be stunning if it weren’t so stubborn.
All at once, the ice shattered, dissipating into steam before it could even hit the ground as water. Taavin’s glyph vanished, but Vi’s and Aldrik’s hands were still engulfed in flame. Her father shifted his grip, taking her hands in his. Flames danced up their forearms, illuminating the grimy jail cell in bright yellows.
They slowly stood, the fire remaining on her father even after their hands dropped.
“Are you ready?” Vi asked him.
“To get out of here? More than ever.”
She nodded at her father and turned, starting for the exit. Taavin fell into step beside her, his long strides almost putting him out in front. Aldrik took a step and stumbled. The sound of his body hitting the open bars of the jail cell rang in Vi’s ears.
“Father!” She hurried back over to him. “What is it?”
“He’s weak.” Taavin assessed the obvious.
“I can’t say they were the most mindful about how much, or what, they fed me,” he said grimly. Aldrik’s eyes, full of sorrowful dread, swung to her. “I’m sorry, daughter… after you came all this way…”
Don’t consign yourself to die! She wanted to scream at him. Not after all she’d gone through. Not when the pieces of her family were finally all within reach. He was like a firefly: brilliant, blazing, and fading all too soon.
“You will not apologize to me,” she said firmly. “You will move.” Vi looked back to Taavin, a plan quickly forming in her head. “Taavin, I need you.”
“Anything,” he said hastily. Perhaps a little too hastily, judging from the sideways look her father gave her.
“Put my Father’s arm around your shoulders. Support him. Get him to the boat.”
“Vi—” She wasn’t sure which one of them said her name first in that disapproving tone. But Vi wasn’t about to let either finish.
“One hand, manage halleth—heal anything you can on him before moving, then sustain maph on the same hand to stint his pain so he can push through.” Vi knew pain was only a small factor. Exhaustion and malnutrition were the bigger ones. But she could only do so much. “With your other hand, durroe watt. Only focus on those two. Conceal yourselves and get out of the city. Don’t do sallvas.”
“Why not sallvas?” Taavin asked slowly, horror already creeping into his voice. He knew what she was planning. He knew it from his sad eyes to the slight tremor in his words.
“I’ll be making enough of a commotion that it won’t be needed.”
“You can’t do this.” He took a step toward her. Vi held out her hand, slowly walking past him with a straight arm barring him from coming too close, as though he was some wild animal.
“I can, and I will. Because you both need to get out of here alive and you and I both know you’re no fighter.”
“Vi, these pirates are deadly and well trained,” her father cautioned.
“So am I.” He’d seen what she’d done to the elfin’ra, hadn’t he? “Wait a moment, begin healing, then move. I’ll only need a minute to bring about destruction.”
A sinister grin found its way onto her lips and Vi turned before either of them could notice. They didn’t need to see her like this. She barely wanted to see herself like this, and some part of her curled up in the far back of Vi’s consciousness, remaining oblivious to the horrors she was about to unleash.
She’d entered the isle unsure. She’d been taken over by sympathies for the people here. But Taavin was right: these people were murderers. It took seeing the brutality of the elfin’ra and the state of her father to remind her of that.
Vi’s hands balled into fists at her sides.
She wouldn’t forget it again.
Banging echoed to her through the cave, dull and distant. Vi pushed her feet harder against the ground, picking up speed. With a wave of her hand and an utterance, the opening to the cave was blown wide open with an explosion of splinters. The chair she’d propped against the front door rattled with another loud bang.
Vi imagined the men on the other side, slowly rearing back. Perhaps they had a battering ram. Perhaps they were just putting their shoulder into it.
She hoped for the latter as she shouted, “Juth calt!”
The whole front of the building exploded outward. Vi leapt through it, over the bodies that had been sent tumbling by the shockwave of her magic. Her feet hit the wooden walkway bordering the city’s canals.
Vi pinwheeled her arms, preventing herself from tumbling in. She took a step and a small leap onto a nearby bridge and started running. She had no headway and no purpose other than to burn it all.
She was a blaze of fire through the dark night. Her flames licked through the permafrost of the buildings and ignited tinder as they had on the Stormfrost. But unlike the Stormfrost, Vi was at her best—she’d recovered, she’d been trained, and she’d learned how to channel the darkness within her.
A man lunged from an alleyway with a curved sword. Vi took a step back. Magic flew from her lips and hands—a shield to block, a blade of her own to plunge into the soft spot of his throat. She was moving forward again before the body even hit the ground.
Where was Adela? Adela must be here. She’d been expecting them—preparing for them. Where would she hide?
Sliding to a stop across snow and ice alike, Vi sent out a wave of fire, giving herself a moment’s reprieve. She pulled one of the earrings she’d taken from Fallor’s crew from her pocket and said, “Narro hath.”
The glyph appeared above the earring and the sensation of a communication channel being opened pulsed through her.
“Come and face me,” Vi demanded and dropped the earring, letting go of the magic.
Her challenge issued, Vi continued through the city, zig-zagging as arrows were fired from rooftops and stoking more flames. She started heading away from the port, setting buildings and boats aflame left and right, then dashed across the bridges that spanned one of the canals and looped back. Pirates came at her from all directions, but none could manage her flames. They were all too disorganized, too startled, or too under-trained.
Without warning, a crack of ice snapped across the ground and a large spear jolted upward in an attempt to impale her.
Vi spun away at the last second, flame at the ready, turning to face the pirate queen.
Neither of them said anything. For a brief moment, they were the only two people in the world. But pirates filed in around Adela, emerging like rats from every alley and doorway.
“You finally show yourself,” Vi called over. She smothered the flames around her fingers and readied her next attack. If the woman was smart—and Vi knew she was—half of the men surrounding her were Lightspinners ready to cancel her magic. All it would take was one good juth calt.
“Give it up, girl.”
Vi would grant Adela this—even in the moment she should feel most panicked, most worried about defeat as her pirate city burned around her, she remained calm and composed. The command was said as though Vi was nothing more than a child who had wandered too far from home and needed to be scolded.
“I may have lost your father, but I will not lose you.”
“Let me go, and I may let you live,” Vi threatened.
“How long have we been doing this?”
What?
“We’re alike… aren’t we? It’s how you got this far. It’s how you destroyed my ice around the crown decades ago. You have their blood, too, don’t you? Was it your mother or your father who was elfin? Who are your real parents?”
Vi took a small step backward, feigning shock; really, it was an excuse to look around and get her bearings. Let Adela yammer on about parentage in an effort to distract her—meanwhile, Vi sighted the cave she and Taavin had entered from. The snow leading to it was disturbed, but Vi couldn’t be certain if it was their footsteps from earlier, or if those were fresh tracks from Taavin and her Father.
“Let’s end this, finally. Just you and I, girl.” Adela held out her icy hand. The fingers elongated, combining into a single column, and crashed into the ground. It was as if the pirate queen was merging with the isle itself. “The elfin’ra can kiss their Dark God’s arse. This will be the night when one of us dies.”
Vi was torn.
She knew she should run for it. She should make her way to the cave tunnels by all means necessary. This didn’t matter.
Her vengeance didn’t matter.
“Mysst larrk,” Vi uttered darkly, her eyes on Adela. The satisfying weight of a sword filled her hand. She sprinted into battle, bringing the sword across her body. Adela shifted slightly, magic pulsing with the movement.
“Juth mariy.” Vi made a flick of her wrist with her right hand, stopping the shift in power. She danced over cracking ice, her feet remembering every step Sehra’s warriors had trained into her, every movement Jayme refined, each new step Arwin had drilled into her. Vi moved with the strength of each of them and with something none of them could give her—a power that had been bolstered by their teaching but was entirely her own.
Adela narrowed her eyes. There was another shift in the magic, but this time it seemed to split into several parts—none of which Vi could focus her sole attention on. The canal on the next street over came alive, a tidal wave of ice shards roaring over Vi.
She didn’t have time for a word, so she swept her hand overhead, incinerating the deadly hail before it could reach her. Her left foot slipped out. Vi spun on her right, bringing the sword to Adela’s shoulder.
The woman ripped her hand from its column of ice, fingers reforming at her magical command. The limb stopped her blade before it could strike true. Ice chipped off, but Adela was otherwise unharmed.