79. Maren
79
Maren
F ire became my bones.
Lava became my veins.
Embers, my eyes. Ashes my lungs.
And the agony of my own fury cut straight to my bones.
The sky ripped into two. Dark clouds billowed and oozed overhead. A flash of light bolted from one side of the horizon to the other, following the fire of a screaming nerve deep within my flesh.
Kazimir didn’t even look at Kye as his sword fell from his hands. As he dropped to a knee. The Rivean thrusted a boot against Kye’s shoulder, shoving him away to reclaim the use of his blade. As though he were nothing.
There were suddenly hundreds of them. Armored uniforms of bright red, swarming the base of the summit where we stood. And I couldn’t see Kye under them anymore. They walked over the top of him as easily as a mat, welcoming themselves to our doorstep.
But I felt the snow clench its teeth under my knees. And the sky burned as it fell, stars raining like comets, each one born of my fire.
The world shuddered. The mountain shifted. Rock split.
The cordae.
It broke. It broke. It broke.
And something in me cried out his name, searching for his voice in the dark, for thoughts that I could send to him, and thoughts that could be answered. But there were none.
Arms came around me, warm bodies dropping close, words in my ears.
I couldn’t hear them.
I couldn’t hear anything but the blaze of my own soul, screaming into a void as cavernous as the ocean’s fury.
Something exploded against my back. Something I had summoned. Sharp heat and smoke swallowed me in an instant.
Hands tugged me upward, pulling me to my feet.
The world imploded, ground suddenly falling under my weight.
RUN , a voice shouted over the wind, and I couldn’t decide if it struck me inside my mind or out. But I was suddenly running, dragged by a thorny patch of arms and hands as wave after wave of pain flattened over me like the tide over the hard sand. And each one brought a blast of molten earth behind me. Another surge of liquid fire, raining over our heads and sizzling into the snow.
I was yanked along. And my feet couldn’t keep up, tripping, stumbling, falling. A hole burned into my center, scorching and growing, deeper and deeper, leaving a black and empty nothing as it devoured more and more and more.
They shoved me up again.
Oxygen crumbled into dust before my lungs pulled it in.
And I kept calling out his name in my head. But he didn’t answer.
Grab him, Nori’s voice sliced through like a knife. Through the canyon!
Selena was suddenly close, a desperate plea in my ear. “Maren, you have to stop! Maren!”
But I didn’t know how to stop. I didn’t even know how I’d started. I was lost in the eye of a storm with no beginning and no end, shrieking a name at the top of my lungs against the tempest of time, with no promise of ever receiving an answer other than the cold, hollow, empty air echoing my calls back to me.
Another blast sent heavy heat waves licking across my skin, ash tumbling through my hair.
Olinne’s face came into view, and suddenly I was shoved underwater. The crack in the earth followed us there, a bright and burning chasm opening under our feet. She hauled me to the surface, both hands around my wrist. “Swim!” she yelled. “Swim, or we’ll all be buried under the force of you.”
So I swam, even though I did not understand how. Things came into focus. Broken trees, jagged rock, shards of ice and leaves. All underwater. Was I Naiad or was I human? I couldn’t tell.
They towed me along the surface, Selena clasping my shoulders. “Stop, Maren! Maren, stop!”
I tried to.
I tried to stop.
But all I could do was scream from the pain of the burning fracture of my core.
We reached the other side, through the ash and smoke, I climbed ashore and gazed back as the Naiads called away the river they’d formed, trapping the Riveans behind us. The crimson soldiers screamed as they ran. Into the trees. Off the cliffs. Over the side of the ravine.
Desperate to escape the glow of living obsidian as it reached its hands for them. And buried them under it.
It broke.
The fire falling from the sky thinned, sparks flickering into silvery-gray flakes.
“We can’t stay here,” Selena said to Nori, who placed her hands over my shoulders.
“She’s back with us,” Nori’s voice cracked. “Give her a minute.”
Aitne found my hand. A cut marred her cheek, her eyes bright and red. I realized burns had eaten through my silk dress. The young healer wheeled me around slowly, and my gaze followed the trajectory of her turn to where they’d laid Kye in the snow.
They watched as I loosed a ragged sob, padding through the drift to sink down beside him. Golden eyes open and unseeing. A dark stain across the chest of his armor, a wound left in leather and skin. My shoulder met the cold earth, my hip as well. I curled under his arm and into his side, turning his chin with my fingers to face me. Then burrowed my face in his neck.
Mint and rain.
It broke.
Distant shouts crossed the canyon, terrified and panicked. We ignored them. The Naiads of my colony gathered tight, circling me as I grasped at the fur over his shoulders.
And wept.