Chapter 43

For several moments after Simon’s burst of fire disappeared into the earth, nothing happened. Ophelia rolled onto her stomach, ignoring the stabs of pain in her bones and joints as she climbed to her feet, and she stood there. Waiting. Watching as Simon’s chest heaved for breath and he went from staring into the chasm to looking at her, and back again. Still waiting. Still anticipating.

Then it happened all at once. The ground shook beneath their feet. One successive quake hit after another, each one bigger than the last until the tremor was so strong that Ophelia had to bend her knees to keep from toppling over. Pieces of damaged wall crumbled. The ground split through the middle of the courtyard, leaving a deep fissure straight through. Simon staggered a few paces backward as loose earth around the edges of the hole broke apart and plummeted into the abyss.

And still it grew. Until Ophelia knelt and set her palm against the stone to maintain her balance. Until she couldn’t tell if her vision was blurry or if everything around her was shaking that intensely. Then all the pressure from the explosion burst out the top of the chasm in one violent blow that sent any remaining loose rock around the opening blasting into the air. The stones ascended with such velocity that one crashed into the underside of a Sovereign ship’s hull and came out through main deck. It exploded so forcefully that it blasted Simon away from the entrance into the air and sent him crashing down more than thirty feet away.

It stopped as quickly as it started. Simon’s eyes were locked on her as he pushed himself off the ground, but a scream tore her gaze upward. That scream was immediately followed by another as a second of the Sovereign Summoners who’d been flying on summoned mounts plummeted out of the sky. One after the other, their mounts disappeared, and they dropped. Each of them hollering for help as they gestured outward, trying to summon something to catch them before it was too late.

But the first soldier struck the ground outside the courtyard with such a sickeningly loud thud that it was audible from beyond the walls. Then the other, and another, until every one of them had perished from the fall.

Simon’s brow was furrowed as they locked eyes again, and Ophelia knew that he was also wondering what just happened. And it wouldn’t take him long to reach the same conclusion she did. The heart had said that she was the source of their magic, and if everyone around them was losing it, then she was dead. No more magic, and no more replenishing of the antigravity minerals. Islands would sink. Ships would stop flying. Eventually, the world as they knew it would end. And Ophelia’s magic…

Without warning, Simon hurled a flame across half the courtyard at her. She didn’t know if he was testing his own magic or hers, or if she even still had any to protect herself with. So it surprised them both when she deflected it with ease, whirling it around herself to fling it back at him.

It was just them, then, wasn’t it? They were the only two left with their magic touched by a god, and as Simon’s eyes narrowed at her with a murderous glare, it was clear he intended to reduce that number to one.

He charged at her at the same time as his dragon’s thunderous footsteps picked up, and she had no choice but to run. To regroup with Carolina and figure out how they’d get out of this alive.

She took off for the courtyard exit, only making it a few paces before the shadow of a foot hovered over her. She leapt aside as the dragon’s step smashed down in her trajectory, rolling out of the way until Simon altered stone around her ankle and jolted her to a stop. He was closing the distance fast, and she removed the stone from her ankle and dodged her head away from another hurled boulder, and then shoved herself up to keep running.

Altered wind at her back carried her forward. Every time Simon threw something sideways at her, she made a desperate block with her forearms and kept going, bearing the brunt of each hit to focus on escape. Every time the dragon tried to crush her or snap at her, she dodged sideways or pulled up a thick pillar of stone behind her, giving her one extra second to get away as the dragon’s massive teeth pulverized the pillar.

She burst out of the courtyard scathed but alive and flew down the steps, crashing into Carolina at the bottom.

Carolina grabbed her by the shoulders to steady them both from the collision, her face muddy with blood and sweat as she said, “You made it!”

“Run,” Ophelia panted, and yelled at the rest of the fighters still battling Sovereign soldiers, “RUN!”

The dragon demolished the courtyard entrance as it burst out into the center of town. Ophelia grabbed Carolina’s hand as they took off, aiming to intercept a soldier who was climbing onto the back of his draken.

“Where’s Lia and Izaak?” she asked as they reached the man.

Carolina grabbed him by the shoulder and yanked him out of the saddle, slamming him to the ground. “Running,” she answered. “Lia’s magic is gone.” They both jumped onto the draken’s back, and Carolina directed it into the air just in time to avoid a swing of the dragon’s tail. “Is yours?”

In response, Ophelia hurled a ball of fire down at the dragon’s head, but it wasn’t fazed. Nor was it fazed as it ploughed through a building to chase them as they retreated away from the courtyard.

“We have to get it out of the city!” Ophelia hollered. Carolina pulled on the reins to redirect them. “Up!”

Carolina yanked upward, and their draken swooped out of the dragon’s jaws as it leapt into the air to try and catch them. The hulking creature hammered back to the ground on all fours and pivoted to make chase, but no sooner had it begun to come after them did it turn again to head a different direction. Ophelia shifted in the saddle to follow its path.

“It’s going after Lia and Izaak!” she shouted.

“But where’s Simon?” Carolina asked.

The very moment she finished that question, an entire chunk of building the dragon had smashed through came hurtling out of the air. It crashed into the side of them, knocking them both from the saddle and sending them cascading toward the ground. Ophelia breathed into her hands and summoned a mistling, and all it had time to do was catch Carolina before she hit the floor .

It didn’t have time to catch her, and she shot a burst of air at the earth just before she collided to try and cushion the fall. It did very little, and she slammed back to the ground with such violent force that her vision went black. For several seconds as she coughed and wheezed, desperate to fill her lungs with all the air that had been knocked out of them, she was blind.

“Ophelia!” Carolina screamed, and slid to the ground at her side as a small speck at the center of her vision returned. “Say something,” she pleaded.

Ophelia sucked in a deep, raspy breath as she rolled onto her back and hissed, “ OW .”

Carolina huffed a relieved laugh and grabbed one of her hands to help her sit up. “Simon will catch up any second,” she said. “We got to get you out of here.”

“We need a plan,” she huffed through a shallow pant, leaning back on one of her hands to clutch at her chest with the other.

“Summon something else,” Carolina said, gesturing at the summoned mistling that had rescued her. “A dragon, like his. You did it once before you Ascended. You can do it again.”

“I can’t.” She shook her head. “Their fighting will do too much damage to the city — there are still civilians here. And with all the Sovereign soldiers around, it’s too risky.” She froze midway through another deep inhale, and then her hand shot out to grab Carolina’s shoulder.

“What?” Carolina asked.

“Remember the night Vana snuck into your cabin?” she asked, and Carolina nodded. “She banished my energy from the nightwing I summoned.”

Carolina’s head turned with her shoulders as she searched for Simon’s dragon. A dragon he’d summoned with a bright, glowing heart. “He doesn’t know it’s possible to summon without it,” she realized. “Are you going to take control of it?”

“No,” she answered. “Because that heart is his biggest vulnerability.” Carolina’s eyebrows rose. “Do you really have a shadow purge, or were you bluffing the night you rescued me from the bounty hunters?”

Carolina’s lips split into the widest grin she’d ever seen as she reached into her bullet pouch and dug around, pulling out a bullet with glowing markings .

“The only problem is that its chest is too thick for that bullet to penetrate,” Ophelia told her. “And I can’t fight Simon and the dragon at the same time.”

Carolina tucked the bullet back into her pouch as her chin fell, and she thought about it for several seconds before her head shot up again. “The laibralt explosives Izaak has,” she said. “They should be enough to blast a hole in its chest. Enough for me to get a clean shot on its heart.”

“ Yes ,” she agreed, grabbing Carolina’s face in her hands and giving her one quick kiss. Then she gestured toward her mistling, and reclaimed her breath without dispelling it. “Go.”

But as the glowing heart in her mistling faded, Simon came bursting around the corner, skidding to a stop when he saw them and making Carolina hesitate to stand.

“ Go ,” Ophelia emphasized in a whisper. “Before he notices. I’ll keep him busy.”

“I love you,” Carolina said. “Run if you have to.”

She nodded, and Carolina turned on her heels as she stood and sprinted for the mistling. Before Simon could watch her mount and notice that Ophelia had summoned it without a heart, she growled, “ Simon ,” and pushed herself to her feet. “ You killed her .”

“Good,” he said gruffly. “And once I kill you too, I’ll be the most powerful being in the world.”

“And for what?” she demanded, grimacing and clutching her ribs as she took one challenging step forward.

“I’ll conquer empires and rebellions,” he said. “With me as the sole ruler, wars will end. People will fall in line. I’ll be the god who brought them peace.”

“If you think the indentured and the freedom fighters and the people you conquer will ever think of you as anything but a tyrant, you’re in for a world of disappointment.”

His jaw quivered with the clench of his teeth and fists as he glared at her, but he said nothing.

“Come on, then,” she dared, “show me how a god finishes fights.”

He responded to her challenge by drawing his sword from the sheath at his hip for the first time since they’d arrived. And he wielded that sword as he rushed at her blade-first. She didn’t have any weapons of her own, so she pulled a shield of stone from the ground just as he reached her, blocking his first swing. He immediately followed with another, and buffeted the stone with full-strength blows as she retreated backward, until her back hit the wall of a building and her shield cracked.

She flung the broken pieces forward before his next strike could break through it, smashing them into his face and leaving his torso open. She kicked him in the stomach to knock him away, but as he staggered backward, he melded the stone of the building behind her to trap her elbow. He lunged forward as the point of his sword plunged toward her stomach, and she pulled a brick in front of her to block it as the weapon drove that brick hard into her belly.

She buckled over and yanked her arm free of the building, grabbing his wrist as she twisted away from the point of the sword and pulled. The tip of the sword met the building behind her, giving her an opening to drive her elbow upward and slam it against his chin. She pulled the sword out of his hands while he was reeling from the blow and kicked him in the stomach again, bashing him several yards away from her.

With the sword in her grip, she gestured in front of her to make herself unseen.

Simon didn’t give her a chance to dash around behind him. He sparked a massive flame between his hands and gestured outward, blasting that fire at every angle away from himself, forcing Ophelia to stop her advance to yank up a pillar of stone and block herself from the blaze.

It revealed her location to him, and he slammed into the opposite side of her pillar just as the flame passed her by, breaking it from the ground and crashing it into her so she went flying backwards. It smashed her back into the wall again, the force of the blow knocking her out of her spell. His sword was runed to him, and he altered it to tear it from her hands and caught the grip in his own as he advanced.

Even though she was lightheaded from the hit of the pillar, she shoved herself off the wall to meet him, only for him to beat her back against it with a blast of wind as he closed the remaining distance. All she had time to do was pull one piece of brick or stone from the building after another to meet each swing as he buffeted her with another storm of strikes. She worked herself away from the wall with each blow until she wasn’t trapped against it and retreated one step at a time while he kept coming.

The sword blasted through every stone she pulled, hardly slowing down as it pulverized them so that she narrowly avoided being struck. And on Simon’s next swing, she ran out of loose stones. She leapt back, arching forward to try and curl herself over the blade as it sailed by her torso, but the point of it sliced across her ribs. She stumbled as she landed, falling backward to the ground as Simon slammed his sword down at her.

She surged up onto her knees and raised both hands to push against his forearm and stop his slash, but he immediately smashed his other fist into her face. She hit the ground and rolled away as his sword struck the street where she’d been, but the moment she stopped rolling, he was already there. She shifted to one knee as he raised his weapon, and then altered a sphere of stone from the ground to seal herself within it.

She needed a break. She needed to catch her breath and think, and Simon struck the outside of her sphere once with the sword to no avail, and she thought she had it. Thought she’d found a way to protect herself for only a few moments while she rested. But in an instant, the size of her hull collapsed in on her. It shrank as the earth tried to swallow the stone back up and take her with it.

Her hands shot outward as she ducked her head, stopping the devouring of her pod just as the rock caressed her shoulders. She could barely move. She was trapped on every side in a tomb of her own making as she strained against Simon trying to crush her, and as he strained against her.

She gritted her teeth with the effort, grunting as the structure shrank and pressed her another couple inches toward the ground. She had to get out. Had to free herself before the earth swallowed her whole. But she was tired, and hurt, and bleeding, and Simon was strong. He was so strong, and she’d already lost to him so many times. She failed to kill him. She failed to keep him from Ascending. She failed to save herself and she failed to save the heart.

But if she failed again then it wasn’t just the end of her. Simon would kill her friends. He’d kill Carolina. He’d go after her parents. He’d ruin the lives of people everywhere, and she couldn’t be the one to let that happen. She didn’t even have to beat him. She just had to keep him busy. To keep him from noticing what Carolina was doing. She just had to live . And oh, how badly she wanted to live.

She wanted to experience the empire under Izaak’s rule. She wanted to go to the salt lakes with Carolina and all their friends and family. She wanted to know Carolina’s touch again. She wanted to get married and fill her heart with their life together because that was the whole point of it all, wasn’t it? Love .

It’s why she left Sovereign. It’s why she devoted her life to helping others and doing what she thought was right, even when it was lonely. And it was the only reason she was still alive. Because Carolina loved her endlessly, and they’d saved each other time and time again. Because she’d given her compassion to the bounty hunters when she’d have rather run, and she would’ve died without Abner doing the same. Because a deity loved her kind unconditionally, even if they didn’t deserve it.

And it was the thing she had that Simon didn’t. He’d killed the only three beings on earth that might’ve still cared for him. Vana, the emperor, and the heart were all dead, and there was no one else there to help him because the Sovereign soldiers were only fighting to save themselves. There was no one looking out for him. No one pulling strings in his defense like Carolina was doing for her. No one left to save him from himself.

That was why she’d survive. Why she wouldn’t give up, and why she’d keep fighting even if it hurt. Even if she was exhausted and scared and running out of hope. Because no matter what, and no matter how strong Simon was, she had more on her side than he could ever imagine.

So she yelled, and she pushed. She strained harder than she ever had against the crushing rock at her back, and she screamed that effort from the very depths of her soul. She poured every bit of will she had left into one massive burst of energy and sent the stone around her exploding outward.

She gasped a breath of fresh night air as the blast shot Simon over a dozen feet backward into the wall with a cloud of dust and debris. He slammed into the building with a heavy thwack and dropped straight to the ground, his sword falling out of his hand as he lay amongst the rubble.

He shook the dust off his head while Ophelia stood, pushing onto his elbows and then shifting his weight to one arm as he struggled to stand too. He staggered to his feet, shoulders and chest heaving with each deep, rapid breath while he turned his dark look on Ophelia. His head was down and his brow low, his eyes narrowed as he glared through his lashes with a profound and visceral hatred.

He kept that look trained on her while he bent over to pick his sword up, but no sooner than he grabbed it and straightened did his face contort with a grimace. He dropped the weapon straight back to the ground. She’d injured him enough that he couldn’t hold it anymore, and while that brought her some small semblance of relief, it didn’t last .

All his rage escaped his lungs as he bellowed and charged. He led with a fiery fist as he reached her, raining it down from above to strike her over the head. She raised her arms to block the blow, enduring the burn to crash her knee upward into his stomach. He buckled over, and she altered wind to send her fist flying into his cheek amidst the sound of bone meeting bone. A sharp jolt cracked through her hand as her knuckles split the flesh beneath Simon’s eye, but he surged forward from his downward position, ramming his shoulder into her chest.

But he didn’t hit her and stop. He kept coming, grabbing the backs of her thighs as he sprinted to carry her forward, taking her to the next closest building to slam her back against it. She tried bringing her elbow down against his spine and punching the back of his head to get him to drop her, but then her shoulders struck brick and knocked what little breath she had out of her lungs.

He let her go and she crumbled, but even though she was coughing for air, she swung as hard as she could from her position on the ground, throwing the weight of her body behind her fist to strike the tender meat toward the inside of his thigh. He collapsed to one knee, and she grabbed the back of his head and yanked him forward as she ducked out of the way, slamming his forehead against the brick behind her.

While he collapsed forward, she scrambled away from him to try and regain her feet, but he reached out for one of her ankles and held on tight while he lay there, struggling to recover from her blows. She tried to pull out of his grip, and when that didn’t work, she kicked at his wrist with her other foot. Her boot struck his already injured arm and he roared, surging forward to grab her again. He grunted against the pain as he swatted away every kick she gave, still scrambling back to try and stay out of reach.

But he crawled to his knees and grabbed her ankle once more with his good arm while he surged to his feet. He stepped and arched sideways with her in his grip, and then spun, his strength and the momentum hauling her off the ground and swinging her through the air. He slammed her shoulder-first into the wall and let her drop straight to the ground as he staggered sideways, clutching his arm to his ribs and panting for air.

She choked on the agony shooting through her back and heart and lungs, coughing into the corner between the wall and the ground as she writhed. She wasn’t even sure if she was trying to get up or just to breathe through the excruciation, but neither of those worked. She rolled onto her back as Simon staggered toward her, and when he raised a boot to stomp it down on her, she rolled into him.

It took him down, but it put him in position to kick her instead of stomping on her, and the sole of his boot crashed into her chest. She wheezed, getting lightheaded from the lack of air as Simon climbed back to his feet. He limped over her again, and she whipped her arm as she rolled sideways, hurling a rock from the ground that crashed into the side of his skull. He staggered several steps over, grabbing at his head as he lost his balance and dropped to his knees.

For a minute afterward, they both stayed there. Recovering. Sucking air into their lungs as if it was the last air on earth. Simon was the first to stand again, and Ophelia took every extra moment she could while he trudged to his sword and picked it up with his non-dominant hand. He dragged it tiredly across the street as he carried it back to her, and only raised it above his head when he was ready to strike.

Ophelia pulled a shield of stone in front of her to block it, and it took him a couple slow seconds to find the energy to swing at her again. She lolled sideways so he missed and batted her foot upward against the outside of his arm, knocking the sword from his grip. And when he leaned over to grab it, she kicked it away and sent it sliding into the street.

He stayed doubled over for a few more seconds before letting out a growling sigh and straightening up. He turned on her, wiping the back of his hand through the blood streaming down his cheek. He was cut, his eye was bloodshot, there was a laceration on the side of his head and his forehead, and she’d nearly incapacitated one of his arms and legs. But she was just as exhausted and injured as he was, if not more so.

So when he made one wide step to the side of her, she was too slow and weak to keep him from reaching down and grabbing the collar of her shirt. He dragged her one hobbled step at a time across the road while she tried to pry away his grip, and didn’t stop until he’d deposited her in the middle of the street. Then he turned away, limping a few steps back, taking in a couple deep breaths, and then grunting as he pulled a massive sheet of stone from the road. He held it high above his head, and he turned, and then froze. His brow furrowed and his stance wavered under its weight as he hesitated, because Ophelia was smiling up at him.

Carolina took off into the air on the back of the mistling Ophelia had summoned and searched for the blackfire dragon. It wasn’t hard to miss. It had chased Izaak and Lia as they rode a draken to one of the rebel ships hovering in the air, but since they’d ascended out of its reach, it turned on the remaining fighters back at the courtyard. It would kill every Trayward guard and rebel there if she didn’t hurry, so she urged the mistling faster, until she landed on the deck of the ship after Izaak and Lia.

“Carolina!” Izaak called in surprise. “Where’s Ophelia?”

“Distracting Simon,” she told him. “I need your laibralt explosives.”

Izaak turned to one of his troops and said, “Fetch them,” and then asked her, “What’s the plan?”

“I’m going to blast a hole in that dragon,” she answered, pulling the shadow purge out of her bullet pouch, “and I’m going to shoot it with this.”

“What do you need us to do?” Lia asked.

She returned the bullet to the pouch and pointed at their draken. “Get back on and help distract it.”

Izaak whistled, calling a second mount out of the air and to the deck beside him as the rebel returned with a small satchel, which he held out to Carolina.

She opened the top to peer down at the two metal spheres with a single seam around the middle of each. “How do they work?”

“Twist one half,” Izaak answered, “it releases a compound that’ll react with the laibralt core after ten seconds.”

“Got it,” she told him. She flung the strap of the satchel crossways over her body and climbed back onto her shadow mistling, and before doing anything else, she pulled the shadow purge out one more time. She ran her thumb over the illuminated markings, kissed it for good luck, and then loaded it into her single-shot pistol and jammed the weapon back into its holster. “Let’s go.”

They burst into the air, and she made a quick swoop toward Omen to search the fighters on deck .

“Wyatt!” she hollered as he subdued one of the few remaining soldiers. He looked upward at her. “Mount up! I need your help!”

Wyatt stuck his fingers into his mouth and whistled for Maple, immediately climbing into her saddle and meeting Carolina in the air. “What do I do?” he asked.

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