Toran gave a shaky laugh. “Beanie’s never gonna fight for you.”
“Tell her,” Jaime clenched his jaw, “if she doesn’t, we all die.”
Clanging corselets and the smell of rain-soaked iron raked the air.
The soldiers were drawing closer.
Jaime took Prescilla’s right arm; Toran took the other. Lightning flashed against the sky. The lady directed them into a small room behind the Assembly Hall. At her instruction, Jaime and Toran pushed aside the marble altar. A narrow tunnel groaned open. Toran’s wrists swung like weights in front of him as he skipped through.
Jaime offered a hand. “Come on, my lady.”
She breathed hard, sweat trickling down both ears. The noise of crashing flagstaffs and furniture penetrated the other side of the City Hall. Toran hissed at them to move.
“The baby is coming,” she whispered.
Jaime croaked, “No—”
Toran swore. “Empyrean hell, not now!” He took her other hand. Together, they supported her through the tunnel.
A ten-minute hike turned into a half hour of wading through darkness. Jaime’s instincts screamed at him to leave Prescilla behind; shutting out those animal voices drained his energy. The weight of his chest grew heavier. At their halfway point, Prescilla lagged, wheezed. Toran offered to squat over into a makeshift chair so she could sit down for a minute.
“Leave me,” she said huskily.
Jaime interrupted, “No. I promised Florin—”
“They are already inside the tunnels. We will never make it.”
He was grateful the darkness hid his expression. Time was slowing to a crawl. Every footstep, voice, pulse of his heart, was an explosion in his ears.
“Juno, wake up.” Toran slapped the side of his face. “We gotta get to the nearest exit. Where is it?”
Prescilla clenched her teeth, lifting herself back up. “I will show you.”
They resurfaced five minutes later. Jaime recognized the unpaved street by the dim light of the firepits—they were just a few blocks away from Chikos Pagos. His training ground was one of the few places in the city still completely dark. It would suffice as a hiding place. For now.
“Toran,” he panted, “the prisons!”
His friend saluted him and dashed into the labyrinth of the slums. Jaime helped Prescilla up the rocky hill. For two seasons, he had climbed this every day, but tonight his thighs were weak. They had to take breaks every minute. The lady shut her eyes.
“The child is coming,” she gasped. “Lord Jaypes—”
You all paid worship to Lord Jaypes and now look where it got us. I knew something like this would happen! None of you listened.
Jaime took her into his arms, practically carried her the rest of the way. The city air smelled like an overburnt pot of meat by the time they reached the top.
He laid her against a temple pillar. Her silk peplos was drenched through. Prescilla gripped her belly, holding down a cry.
Gods, gods, what do I do now?
She murmured something to him. He bent down closer, afraid to know what it was. The frescoes around them seemed to be watching and whispering.
Something hiccupped under his sandal. Jaime peered downward.
A loose panel of stone.
This was the same panel he stepped on the first day of his training. Achuros was hiding something under it. But he didn’t have time to move it over and look under it—a knife emerged from Prescilla’s peplos.
She pressed it into his hand.
“Go.”
“I can’t leave you behind.” Jaime forced the words out. “I promised Florin.”
Her eyes closed. “You made a promise both of us knew you could not keep. This is Lord Jaypes’s will, Jaime.”
He took the knife and forced himself to march away from her. Jaime stopped at the edge of Achuros’s temple, the spot where he had meditated every day during his first few months in Arcurea. It took everything to suppress the urge to hurl his medallion into the night.
I don’t care. I’m staying. I’ll fight, kill, die before I leave her behind. I won’t let more people die like Hilaris . . .
Before him, Arcurea’s flaxen expanse suffocated under sickly light.
This isn’t Lord Jaypes’s fault. They’re dying because of you. Just like Hilaris did. Just like all the people on Mount Alairus. Just like Mamá. All the boys who died under the Royal Decree—all because you couldn’t stop it.
A shadow caught the corner of his eye.
Jaime stiffened.
Achuros stood at the foot of an olive tree, peeling fingers pressed to its bark, heaving up the night air. The other hand was pressed against his beetled brows. His back was turned to Jaime.
The grip on the knife tightened.
Jaime marched to him.
They were ten steps away from each other when Achuros seemed to suddenly register the fallen branches crunching under Jaime’s sandals. The old airpriest turned around.
“Jaime . . . ”
Rainwater coated Jaime’s vision. The fires turned into watery yolks dripping against the darkness.
“I trusted you.”
Achuros pressed his back to the tree. “It’s not what it seems. If only I could explain—”
“They all trusted you.” His lip trembled, but Jaime bit down on it. “Florin, Prescilla, Sojin, the Arcureans—gods, even Commander Julias, my uncle. And my blood-mother, the Queen.”
“Jaime—”
“Why, Achuros?”
“I am not on Usheon’s side—”
“Aren’t you?” he screamed, pointing at the burning city. “Is that what you tell yourself when you betray your friends?”
His mentor opened his mouth, but a round of clapping split the coiled air.
“Thou hast found him. Very good, Achuros.”
The Archpriestess now stood between the dry fountain pools, a century of mounted soldiers cantering up behind her. Their torches spilled firelight over the courtyard.
High winds tossed thunderclouds over them, pregnant with the earsplitting shrieks of stormwinds.
Hot shivers rippled his flesh. The nightmares haunting his sleep for so long—always with her in them—paralyzed his limbs. He was that mountain boy frozen before Hilaris’s pyre all over again.
No. I won’t run this time.
He turned around and met her eyes. Her eerily blank gaze fell to the medallion around his neck.
“Bring him forth, loveth, prithee,” she lilted.
Achuros closed his eyes. When they opened again, his mentor shoved Jaime behind him.
“That I cannot do, Sia.” Achuros turned to him. “Give me the medallion,” he whispered.
“Why? You think I trust you?”
The Archpriestess tossed up her head. Broken pieces of metal chafing against each other—that was the sound that came out of her mouth.
“Of course. Thou lovest the knave. Nay, he is more than that to thee—how fitting! The most disgraced disciple of the Kingdom shouldst apprentice the Prince to himself? A frail, coughing cripple whose fate has liketh been sealed by the gods? Ah! Hallowed art thee, Achuros.”
“We crossed paths once,” Achuros murmured, “and it didn’t end well. Let us not make that same mistake tonight.”
Her laughter shut off, and her eyes became blank again. “Nay, we shalt not. Crosseth me once, and I forgive under the probity of a priest. Crosseth me twice, and thou shalt die.”
Achuros hissed, “The medallion, boy!”
“No!”
She extended her hand, unblinking. A soldier rode forward, placing a spear in her grip.
“What a pity you ever tried to love again,” she said, in plain Moderna.
Her heels dug into her horse. The palfrey galloped forward.
The Archprie
stess lowered the blade.
A scream broke through Jaime’s throat. His feet moved forward by impulse, but his mentor shoved him aside. Jaime crashed into a hedge of bindweed. Achuros didn’t move out of the way. The palfrey streamed past them towards the temple steps in a smear of white. The next time the spear’s nose lifted back up, the Archpriestess was out of range.
Achuros stayed standing, his back facing Jaime.
The seconds grew insufferably long. A second pair of heartbeats pounded in his ears.
“Achuros?” Jaime whispered.
His mentor crumpled to the ground.
A dark splotch grew from a point above Achuros’s waist. In seconds, it pooled the entire front of his robes.
“Achuros!”
A laugh crackled against the sky. The Archpriestess looped around, kicking her horse forward. The stained spear dropped again for the final kill.
Jaime squeezed the medallion. His knuckles trembled. The fires, blades, faces grew blurry.
After Hilaris’s death, Arcurea had been the last thing holding him together. Achuros was the last strand holding him together, his true family, his last family, the man he loved more than anyone else in this cursed and horrible world.
And now, the Archpriestess was taking from him again.
She was taking away everything.
Jaime threw his head up and screamed a cry. It twisted into the heart of the banestorm above him.
A sharp whinny rang in the air. Someone gasped.
Jaime opened his eyes.
The palfrey was galloping away. And the Archpriestess—she was on the ground, gripping her shaved head with her claws. Blood trickled down behind her ear.
“Jaime . . . ” Achuros’s eyes glistened against the storm.
Cool energy rushed through his veins like the icy strands of Mount Alairus’s air currents. The walls of his mind collapsed. Suddenly, his avai, the energy field of his body, felt as limitless as the skies.
Jaime gasped. “What’s happening to me?”
“You made the bond, finally.”
Despite the blood pouring out of him, Achuros’s grin stretched all the way up to his ears.
Chapter Twenty-Two
His dimension of reality cracked.
It was like the mortal world was merely a glass painting all along. As the trees, the dark skies, the limestone temple fractured like hardpan, vibrant rays of light blazed through. Jaime squinted at the otherworldly dimension behind it. Infinite vertical characters floated against a backdrop of ghostly blue. Ancient Empyrean. The language of the gods.
The Empyrean—the spirit world, skies—it’s real.
The Kingdom’s currents rushed through his matted hair in a screaming storm. Jaime glanced down at his palms. Light was bursting from his skin—the same radiant light pouring through the spirit dimension.
Holy skies, I see it now. The mortal world is an illusion. The Empyrean is real. Inside The Empyrean, anything is possible.
Jaime breathed in its infinite power, his wide eyes landing on Achuros.
The airpriest returned silent words through his gaze: Remember everything I’ve taught you.
Jaime closed his grip around the medallion, blinded by the shards of light radiating from his body. The mounted soldiers behind the Archpriestess backed away.
He turned to face the her. She stiffened. Jaime saw something in there he had never seen before: fear. Of him.
“No more,” he whispered.
The element of Air locked onto the images he drew in his mind, reproducing them almost in exact time. A current, compact and sharp as an arrow, awakened in front of him—
He discharged it at the Archpriestess.
She cried out. Lifted herself onto her feet, but she wasn’t quick enough. The current wrapped around her ankles. Tugged her backwards. Her Grace splatted flat on her face.
Achuros broke into gurgling laughter. “Ah, there’s my apprentice!”
The thrill in Jaime’s spirit welled. He threw up his hands.
“I am a Sage! Yes! Yes! YES!”
He snapped out his tattered fan, held out the medallion in the other. As he advanced, the Archpriestess crabbed backwards.
“No—no—no—”
Jaime thrust out his fan. “Hah!”
The Archpriestess stumbled onto her feet, yanked a soldier off his horse, and clambered up the saddle.
Jaime held onto the steady focus of his avai. His mind brushstroked another series of currents in his mind, the same combinations he’d studied for so many months with Achuros. A new current slithered against the ankles of the Archpriestess’s ranks.
The horses panicked and went totally amok.
Whinnies, hoof beats, crashing steel pounded the air. Smaller air currents battered them from all sides, breaking through their shields. A squat soldier hurled a throwing spear at him, but an air current bucked it aside. The soldier gasped and fled. Thunder chuckled above them. Jaime dropped a final whorl of air into the center of the squad, expanding it until the royal unit was on all fours or rolling off the edges of the hill. Once Jaime decided they had enough, he let go, and they routed back to the city streets, bawling.
His brief glimpse into The Empyrean dimension vanished. The courtyard fell dark.
Jaime’s skin vibrated with energy.
It was only when Achuros groaned that he spun around and hurried back to his mentor.
“Achuros—”
He dropped his fan, propping the priest’s head against his arms. The old man’s eyelids fluttered open.
“I’ll get you out of here.” He struggled to lift Achuros upright. “Come on! We have to go—”
But the priest laid a hand on his.
“No, Jaime. Help the Mayor.”
He shook his head. Achuros tightened his grip on his wrist.
“He needs you. Don’t worry, I’m not going anywhere.” He coughed up blood as he laughed. “Go on, my Prince.”
The sheen in their eyes reflected their rain-stained faces.
Slowly, Jaime nodded. “I’ll help him. Lady Prescilla is in the temple—she said the baby’s coming.”
“Gods help us. I will watch over her. Here, take this.” Achuros pressed his own magnificent fan into Jaime’s hand.
He ascended to his feet.
“I’ll kill you if you die,” Jaime swore.
Achuros’s bubbling laugh echoed behind him as he stormed down the hill they trained on for so many seasons, perhaps for the last time.
The bulk of the fighting had shifted to the agora. Most of its civic buildings were smoldering.
Jaime traced the surface of the writhing mayhem.
The Glaiddish were among the Arcurean forces, lugging their big swords at the royal soldiers. The enemy forced Florin back, swiping at him behind the pedestals of statues, around the trunks of cedars. Florin’s scraped knuckles held onto an ivory-hilted shortsword. Half of his toga was in ribbons. He fought with a limp. Blood spilled from a gash over his unarmored thigh.
Any second now, the royal soldiers would find an opening and kill him.
If the medallion is what the Archpriestess wants, then the medallion is what she gets.
Jaime focused on the pulsing energy of his avai. Shutting everything else out. Just the way Achuros had taught him during his meditations, and his mother on Mount Alairus: he breathed.
Breathe, Jaime.
Time vanished into the present. He found The Empyrean again. His Sage-vision shattered the world back into vivid light.
Air flushed into his lungs, light and cool.
One, two, three, four.
It was easy to breathe now, so easy.
Every blade’s edge was sharpened and clear, even at this distance. The thrusts and slashing seemed sluggish now.
The ridges of Achuros’s fan
became his sights. Jaime aimed with his mind. The soldiers chasing Florin shifted to the center of his vision. His mind painted a current slashing through them, another bunting the two at Florin’s side.
Breathe.
Air obediently materialized his sequences.
A third simultaneous current sent a cluster of soldiers tumbling off a narrow stair. Florin was free of his foes, for now. The Mayor panted hard, nodding at him in thanks.
Jaime bided a larger thundercloud of air—aimed—released energy at the eastern edge of the agora. Clay jugs, abandoned baskets of cucumbers, and loose awnings went flying.
Exclamations of surprise.
“The Prince . . . !”
“Four gods, a Sage among us—”
“An Ascaerii! Great House Ascaerii lives!”
This larger current, requiring far more of his energy, rebelled against his control. Jaime gripped it with both hands, crying out as it dragged him along the cluttered streets. The tidal wave of air bowled the royal soldiers into each other. A unit of archers lost their bowstrings and fled. Their nearest colleagues saw and panicked, following after them. This larger group absorbed more and more men until an entire section of the agora was crashing into the merchant stands, thundering towards the gates.
“Prince!”
Jaime turned his head.
“Prince Jamian!” Chori panted, pulling up close to him. Sojin’s oversized kendao sagged in his hands. His lanky body trembled. The boy pointed to the burning prison.
“My ba is still in there. Please, you have to help him!”
Jaime nodded. “Come on, let’s go.”
He led the race across the agora. Several soldiers materialized out of the sea of awnings. Threw themselves at him. A trunk of wind clobbered them into a stand of terracotta wares.
Air poured into his lungs. Jaime gasped. Adrenaline pumped them wide open.
Breathe, breathe, I can breathe again.
Jaime ducked his head as they tumbled inside the prison entrance. Sweltering air burned his throat. Chori cried out—a flaming beam crashed behind them. His eyes watered, but he forced them to search the empty cells.
No one on this level.
Jaime dashed up onto the second floor—
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