The black in his father’s eyes narrowed to slits.
“I accept.”
The Greatsporting’s herald stepped between them and raised his silver-cuffed hands.
“The Prince of Jaypes has challenged His Holiness the King to a Duel, and His Holiness accepts! All Greatsporting events are hereafter suspended for the night . . . ”
Overpowering cheers rocked the Colosseum. Royal trumpets blared through the air as staff rushed to hang impromptu banners of Old and New Jaypes over the stands.
There hadn’t been a Duel in Jaypes for centuries.
What’ve you done? Without your medallion, you won’t be able to draw a wisp of air!
The filthy airpriest now stood at the King’s side. She pointedly tucked the medallion under her robes, her face smug.
As the trumpets changed to a lower cord, the herald impatiently waved at the King’s Guard to get out of the Arena. Nothing was to stand in it besides Jaime and the King.
He tried to steady his wobbly breaths.
Breathe deep.
But it didn’t help. He stuffed his hands in his pockets. Desperately needed his breather.
While the Colosseum scrambled to settle into their seats, the herald prated off formalities.
“I want my medallion,” Jaime snapped.
The herald furrowed his brows. “I beg your pardon, Your Highness, but did you not hear? By the sworn laws of a Duel, no weapons or assets in any form are allowed—”
“Okay, forget it.”
The King’s forcible voice overrode the high trill of his herald’s. “Let us test the strength of Lord Jaypes’s prophecy. Let us see how powerful his chosen one is!”
More roars.
Jaime felt like he was standing before all of them bare.
Finally, the trumpets finished. The herald bowed and retreated into the safety of the higher tiers. Two workers in frayed exomises kept their heads bent and eyes lowered as they showed father and son to opposite sides of the arena.
As Usheon marched past him, he hissed, “Baikan. You do not know what you are getting yourself into.”
Jaime trained his eyes on the path ahead of him, limping to the sand pit on the southside. Usheon took his respective place on the pockmarked plain above the royal seating.
When Jaime finally stood in place, the plain looked like an entire Kingdom away.
The riotous cheers shook him from the inside-out. He closed his eyes.
This is a dream.
He was really back on Mount Alairus, deep in slumber. His mother was kneading honey cakes in the kitchen, and at dawn, Jaime would take her textiles to the marketplace to barter. He would do so well, he’d buy pomegranate seeds for her, a luxury—
The white flag between them rose.
Wake up, wake up . . .
Sweat washed down his brows, blinding him.
And sharply, the flag fell.
How foolish to think he was healed of his asthma.
Jaime breathed in, focusing on the present—on anything except his hunger for ephedra. But this was wasted effort.
He couldn’t even sense the spirit dimension; he had no source to pull energy from.
On the plain, Usheon tossed the magnificent sash off his shoulder.
A year ago, almost to the day, Nides Doupolous told a story of the night he saw the King’s fire obliterate Thessalona City. Jaime couldn’t remember his exact words, but he remembered the way fiery light varnished the walls of his imagination. His chest soared with thrill. His belly twisted from dread.
That is how he felt now as a missile of fire blazed down the indigo sky.
Just before it made impact with the sand pit, a few steps away, the ground trembled. A ripple of pure energy tore Jaime’s world into a sheet of blistering light.
All sound went out.
His body sailed through a sheet of smoke. Sometime later, the dirt pit was gone. Tall grasses cut against his throat.
Jaime groaned. His ears were ringing.
Above the blanket of shimmering heat waves, what felt like another Kingdom across the sea, the Colosseum cheered. Something warm trickled down his temple. He wiped it and placed his fingers in front of his wavering vision.
Blood.
He struggled to his feet, started sprinting—where, he didn’t know. Away from the open pit. Away from one stagnant spot. His calf screamed in protest. His panic screamed louder.
Lord Jaypes, where are you now!
The grasses transformed into river banks. More fire currents exploded behind him. He forced himself to jump.
Gasping.
It only went up to his nose, but the firelit waters felt like a wall of iron against his knees. Jaime shoved himself through.
Forward, keep moving forward . . .
His mind frantically sketched out air currents. Basic ones. The most advanced ones he’d studied in secret. The sequences he used against the Archpriestess in the Battle of Arcurea.
Why—why isn’t it working!
The river ended, twisting away into a shallow gorge. Jaime bent over, choking for air.
A fire current pierced through the blanket of smoke. Diving at him. Jaime panted. Leapt onto the island-wedges.
His ears trembled from the impact of the explosion. Flames lashed at him from the right. He ducked, but it singed the tip of his right ear.
Yelling out—
And another current. To his left—no, his right. More fire, until a rainshower of light barraged every patch of air.
How is he so accurate?
Jaime coughed, his lungs searing.
I can’t see anything through this smoke—
Hopped onto the next nearest wedge. He sprinted toward the arena’s northside, where Usheon was drawing him close. Forget fighting his father. His goal was only to stay alive now.
His eyes watered from the heat. A headache thrashed against the walls of his head.
Jaime raised his melting face to the sky.
The smoke had blotted out the stormclouds above him, the way they must have the night Hilaris tried to escape the stake.
Lord Jaypes, is this the end?
A stream of light materialized from the opposite side of the wedges, moving faster than an arrow from Arrys’s recurve bow. Jaime widened his eyes. His limbs seemed to drag as he took a running leap off his wedge.
But the wound on his calf made him too slow.
In mid-jump, the fire current struck his heel. Swallowed up his right leg past his knee. Jaime’s mouth opened in a soundless scream.
He was falling.
Jaime awakened deep underwater.
Unworldly silence wrapped around his avai. The surface of the pool glowed from fires that were gradually consuming the arena. Jaime drifted there for a moment, half awake. Half alive.
How did this ever happen between Father and me?
Then he broke through the surface.
Air rushed back into his lungs—
A scream ruptured the lining of his throat.
Jaime kicked himself to shore, lugged his right leg onto soil. His lip trembled as he looked down. The entire upper section of his leg was wet pink. From his knee below, black charred his skin.
The wild cypress and poplars around him started to glow from green to red.
A silhouette emerged behind him. Usheon advanced past the trunks steadily, his damp skin absent of burns.
Forward. Keep moving forward . . .
But he couldn’t. The pain in his leg blocked out all else. Moving it in the slightest triggered agony from his foot all the way to the center of his brain.
So he sat in place and bowed his head.
Don’t be afraid. You’re going to go see Hilaris, and Achuros, and your blood-mother—Sarendi. They’ll be in a place where the sun touches the ea
rth.
As shadows and light danced across the forest floor, he accepted death.
Profound beauty glazed over the world. Fear’s grip loosened over his heart. He couldn’t feel his lungs, but it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered now. How much grief, anguish, energy he’d put into every waking moment of the last year. But stripped of that, he saw the trees, the pond, the wedges—Jaypes, for what it truly was.
A larger shadow fell over him.
“You brought this upon yourself. I never wanted this.”
Jaime forced the words out of his burning throat. “No, Father. The day you declared the Royal Decree, you did.”
The silhouette circled around him.
Usheon Ottega’s eyes were glowing rings of fire. His avai vibrated with such mighty energy, it was like standing before the mouth of Empyreal hell. And perhaps Jaime was.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
The temperature in the air suddenly rose. Usheon’s body glowed a blistering red. Fire birthed between his palms. This would be the final current.
“Stop! Let him go, you have the wrong Prince!”
The voice was unfamiliar. Speech heavy, slurred.
One, two, three, four . . .
In the haze, Jaime counted. Something splashed behind them. The seed of Usheon’s hell-current vanished.
A small shape clambered onto shore, head beetled forward, arms flapping at his sides. “I am Kassios Ottega, and I demand an end to this false Duel in place of one with myself!”
Jaime’s blurry eyes widened.
Cassie, the mute from Townfold.
The King backed away from Jaime. The younger boy forced his gaze off the ground and fixed it on Usheon.
“I swear this Kingdom will see ruin if you refuse!”
The boy pounded out his scrawny wrists. A spear of flames discharged at the King. Usheon’s mouth twisted in a snarl. A larger, faster current devoured Cassie’s.
Jaime dropped his mouth.
This isn’t real . . .
As the King advanced in a stark march, Cassie yelled, “Run, Jaime!”
He stumbled backwards and threw another fire current at Usheon—but the King met it with one of his own.
The forest exploded with energy.
It slammed Jaime onto his belly.
Cassie skidded away, his back rounding into a C. He raised another desperate burst of flame. Usheon snuffed it out, his broad shoulders staying square, his fiery gaze fixed upright. A blue-tinged torrent torched the surrounding poplars.
Jaime pressed his face to the ground, cupping his head against the unbearable heat. The trees shrieked, crashed. Cassie retreated deeper into the forest, escaping the falling flames. Arms flailing at his sides. The King flitted after him. The arena rocked from Sage energy every few seconds.
Get up, Jaime.
He shut his eyes. Bit back a scream from deep within his avai as he rose to his feet. Jaime limped as far as the first row of trees—and stumbled.
Come on, get UP!
Lifted himself back up. Jaws clenched. He staggered through the forest until the trees started to spread out.
Above the blanket of smoke, the upper levels of the arena materialized. Mouths twisted open in soundless cheers, roars, exclamations. An entire world away.
The gorge ended on an upward slope. The final section of the arena awaited him: the dry plain, scattered with deep pits.
Cassie and the King were already there, pivoting around the holes, exchanging currents. Every time their fire connected, the impact threw Jaime back on his knees.
He bit down waves of pain. Kept climbing upward. Climbing—
This he could do.
Sometime in the night, he reached the top of the slope. Jaime peered into the nearest hole. Not far ahead, a New Jaypes tapestry had fallen off the arena’s rim, torn off its rod by energy waves.
As Cassie and Usheon fought, Jaime hauled it over the hole. Kept it in place by gathering rocks, placing them along its edges like paperweights. Kicking dirt and dust over it. Covering the tapestry and the pit.
High above him, Cassie released a dart of bright flames. His gray eyes darted to and fro, never able to meet the King’s.
Usheon released his final current: a twisting dragon of searing white fire that wiped out Cassie’s smaller current.
The boy disappeared into flames.
Jaime crashed flat to his chin again. The fires crackled. The smoke cleared.
The small body appeared several steps to the right of the hidden pit. Lying facedown.
He crawled over to Cassie, lifted him up. The boy’s entire face was wet from blisters—melting, bubbling, the left half spilling down his neck. His eyelids were sealed closed.
Acid rolled up his throat.
Jaime forced it down. Hands trembling, he eased Cassie onto his back. The boy’s lips gnarled into murmur.
“Jaime . . . ”
“I’m here,” he murmured.
“Please—don’t let him—I don’t want to burn . . . ”
Hilaris’s same screams for help—that night flashed back into his head. His body convulsed into fear.
But this time, instead of running away, Jaime clamped his hand around Cassie’s. “I’m here. It’s okay. I won’t leave you.”
Jaime mustered the last of his energy and dragged both of them to the south edge of the covered hole. The King’s silhouette materialized in front of them on the other side. Usheon’s flaming irises locked with his.
Jaime said, “Don’t.”
The King took one step forward.
“Please.”
And another.
The trap gave way. The King tumbled into a storm of dust and rocks, the New Jaypes tapestry swallowing him. Screams scraped against Jaime’s eardrums.
He struggled upright, peering over the edge.
His father was at the bottom, his leg twisted at an angle.
Jaime lifted one of the stones from the ground, his arm shaking from the effort. It was nearly the size of his face. All he had to do was drop it on Usheon’s head and his father’s skull would cave in. The Duel would end. The heat of the flames licked at Jaime’s tears. His arm trembled from the weight.
But he couldn’t do it.
The rock fell at his feet.
Tears spilled through his eyes. He gripped the edge of the pit, blindly feeling for footholds as he lowered himself in. Halfway down, his wounded calf buckled. He lost his grip on the rocks, crashing into the bottom. For a minute, he lied there.
Usheon would die here in this pit. Jaime had won the Duel.
This isn’t a victory.
Father and son had warred and destroyed their own House. Jaime decided. He would stay here till the Colosseum’s fires consumed them both, till all memory of Ottega wiped itself from the Kingdom of Air forever.
Jaime crawled across the pit and buried his tears against his blood-father’s chest. The fires in the Colosseum raged, its smoke twisting into Lord Jaypes’s banestorm.
Sometime in the night, the sound of wings flooded the skies. Jaime was only half-conscious. The next time he blinked past the crust in his eyes, colors flooded the Arena.
Not wings.
Banners.
Hundreds of horsemen flooded the lower circuits. Their shields and mantles were blue, stamped with white tytos. They led a charge of banners with sigils so varied, he recognized only a few from the history books he studied with Achuros.
Lord Romulus brought the Air Alliance.
Tears glistened down Jaime’s face.
But the Jaypan forces were not the only ones here. The sealed doors of the arena burst open. Two riders galloped at the front, flanked by their standard-bearers.
One banner bore the black horned dragon of the Fire Emblem. The other was pleated diagonally with cerulean and sea blue
, sealed with the gold sea-serpent of the Water Emblem.
Jaime knew these sigils well.
The Kings of The West were here.
Chapter Forty
The gold-headed Glaiddish at the front lines crashed into the arena like a tidal wave.
“Get out of the way!” they bellowed.
A deep voice awakened from the rush: “By the power of the four gods, the sanctified High Houses of the Four Kingdoms do declare this Duel suspended!”
A rope dropped into the pit. Someone helped him out. The raging fires glazed the dark-haired shape before him in light.
“Eridene,” Jaime croaked. “How . . . ?”
“Smarts.” She tapped her temple. “I’ve been in contact with my uncle since we met. Uncle told my King who you were, what was happening here. And I told him if Glaidde didn’t help you, a banestorm would wipe out the Air Kingdom.”
She glanced at the destruction around them.
“This war is bigger than you and me. I see that now, Jamian. I just didn’t expect King Gildas would actually—”
Jaime pressed his lips against hers.
The Glaiddish lady staggered backwards in surprise. But she did not push him away.
Her arms cupped his shoulders despite the blood crusting his skin. Setting Jaime alight. He brushed her hair aside, hand falling on her neck. Their tears mingled together. Like the foam of seawater, her presence washed away his wounds.
He would have stayed like that forever if not for the warriors of her court marching past them.
Jaime let her go.
“I love you,” he whispered.
She gazed into his eyes. Her fingertips gently brushed the knife wound below his right eyebrow. So only he could hear, she said, “I love you, too.”
Jaime took her hand, and they stood side-by-side, hiding their entwined fingers behind them.
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