Chapter 4
Though Kyrja was in the streets of Reykstoll nearly every day, she never ran through them—if ever she’d tried it since leaving her childhood years behind, her family all would have had something to say about it.
Exercise was for the gymnasium or the stadiums, depending on the sort.
City visits were for decorum and diplomacy.
But just now, with smoke belching from the palace complex and reeking of destruction and fear, she didn’t give a snowflake about decorum or diplomacy.
She couldn’t think their subjects would begrudge the lack either, given that they, too, were all either running from the plumes of smoke and continued rain of ash and splinters, or else staring, dumbstruck, at the cloud of devastation.
At first, much like the two thanes from her mother’s dome, Kyrja had thought that somehow the volcano had erupted, despite the ice-fisted control her father used on it.
Perhaps he’d been so distracted by the meeting with the Red Hands that a particularly strong surge of steam or magma had snuck through his defenses.
But as she’d called up the ice to protect them, she’d known it was something else altogether. She’d sensed nothing in the ice that her father controlled, and even with her weaker magic, she was always aware of what he was doing. What Einar and Krystiana were as well, what all the Blessed were.
This wasn’t them, neither a direct action nor a reaction to something within the volatile earth that made up Fjordlandi. Though as she ran as fast as her feet would take her, she could feel Fodur sending snow and ice onto the palace, which could only mean that it was aflame.
Footsteps pounded behind her, though whoever it was didn’t overtake her.
She dodged people and, as she drew closer to home, chunks of crystal and ice and rock that made her heart want to stop beating.
Smoke choked her. Ash and fine debris still snowed down, but she deflected it all with an ever-moving dance of snow and ice.
Then heat blasted her, drawing her up short. Flames ate at the residential wing of the palace. How, when her father was still pouring water upon it? It sizzled and snarled but fought its way still higher and higher.
Why wasn’t Einar helping? Or Krystiana? Kyrja drew in a ragged breath and pressed a hand to her forehead. It was her own panic interfering with her senses—just as Einar always cautioned her against. “If you feel too much,” he always said, “you can do too little.”
The heavy footsteps that had been dogging her stopped as well, and one of the two thanes—the one the talkative man had called Nik—heaved to a halt beside her, his wide eyes focused on the fire stretching toward the skies as well.
Focus. Kyrja closed her eyes, shut out the horror before her, ignored the wails and shouts and fury clanging in her ears, the sting of smoke in her nostrils.
She focused on the magical signature of her siblings in the places she always knew to find it—the ice prisons, where Einar’s touch could always be found; the insulating snow clouds swirling always above them, her sister’s masterpiece.
Then she traced the same notes through the snows, up through the ice, toward their sources.
Nothing.
Nothing? How could there be nothing? Perhaps they were trapped behind something she couldn’t sense them through—crystal, perhaps.
Not that there were whole chambers made of the one thing their magic couldn’t reach through, but it was used decoratively in many places.
Some could have fallen. Or perhaps they’d been knocked unconscious.
Will. She started forward again, shield of ice up and continually replenished as the blaze wanted to melt it.
If her siblings were unconscious, somewhere in that mangle of crystal and ice and obsidian that had once been home, then they needed help.
And she was not useless. She could dump snow onto fire as well as any Blessed, and she did so now, aiming for the places her father wasn’t addressing.
Act. Sweat broke out on her brow—from heat or effort?
—as she neared the mangled steps to the residential wing.
The fire still burned under her snow. She could feel the snow melting, water turning to steam, leaving the fire unhindered.
“No. That’s not right.” She’d had plenty of practice extinguishing fires—every Blessed had.
Neutralizing the heat and flame of lava flows was the primary thing they were all taught.
The obsidian walls had cracked, the crystal shattered. Heat tried to sear its way through her protective shroud, but she fought back, raising an arm too as if that could help shield her.
Them. Nik was still a half-step behind her, which she noticed only when he coughed.
She turned her head just enough to see him. “Go back. I cannot focus on keeping you safe in here.”
“You don’t need to, Your Highness. My life is in the hands of the Giver. But I will help, however I’m able.” His voice was so…full. Full of emotions she so rarely heard among her own. Determination. Courage. Self-sacrifice.
She spared it, him, only a nod before plunging into the inferno.
Everything was hot, too hot, hotter than she’d ever felt away from the lava flows. It radiated, pulsed, swept over her with a wind of its own making. She pummeled back with ice and snow, carving a channel for herself and the stranger behind her.
“Your Highness—there!”
She paused, following the line from Nik’s outstretched arm toward a particularly intense blaze, searching for whatever had struck him.
Very intense, as if the place he indicated was the heart of a volcano. It raged and roared and resisted every blanketing inundation of snow she tried to send at it.
Focus. It was the heart of the blaze, but it wasn’t from the earth, not like she was used to. It was from some other source, and it burned too hot for water to extinguish it.
What then?
Had she spoken the question out loud? Perhaps that was why Nik craned his head all around and then pointed to a fallen slab of igneous rock that had once been walls. “Smother it, perhaps? Cut it off from the air? Can you move those with your ice? Push them?”
He had to shout the words to be heard over the thundering flames, but she nodded and changed her focus, her will.
Called to the water ever-ready in the pipes and wells and springs that bubbled under every inch of the palace, pulled it up with speed enough to translate to force, used it to shove at the obsidian slabs until she’d maneuvered a particularly large piece over the burning flames.
She expected it to crack, shatter. For the flames to eat their way around them.
Instead, the fire guttered out.
Relief. Heat eased back, as did the roar—here, at least. She could still hear it nearby, still feel her father fighting it elsewhere.
But elsewhere wasn’t her concern. This corridor had once led to the apartment Einar and Freya claimed as their own. The apartment where everyone—her mother, her sister, her father, and she herself—were meant to be gathered right now for dinner.
She’d been late leaving the clinic, despite her promise to Mamma.
Then delayed still more by the excited Rafnar and his clearly-not-so-enthusiastic friend.
But she’d known her family would forgive it.
Diplomacy, welcoming visitors from the domes, was more important than talking over Blessing Day details.
But Fodur must have been late as well. He was clearly not in this wing, given where his snows were coming from.
Irrelevant. She had to find her family, the family whose magic was suspiciously absent from the firefighting endeavors. She extinguished smaller blazes as she went, these suffocated easily beneath the snow and ice and water.
Then, after a few minutes of crawling over mangled slabs so hot she had to cool them before she could touch them, she stood before what had once been her brother’s door.
It was…gone. As was the wall that had held it. Nothing but a broken spear of obsidian stood where the whole expanse should have stretched. And beyond it?
Her stomach twisted as she stepped carefully inside.
No walls with their carefully chosen artwork. No rugs, plush and warm beneath her feet. No furniture, all in neutral tones with splashes of color in accent pillows and throw blankets draped just-so over chair backs.
No laughter. No chatter. No chiding.
Nik drew even with her. “Your home?”
“My brother’s. We were…he and his wife were hosting dinner tonight. For all of us.”
The stranger muttered something she couldn’t catch. Then he started forward, shoving aside pieces of wall or ceiling with only the strength of his arms.
Hers wouldn’t accomplish much. So she used her magic here as she had back at the source of the blaze, shoving rock and crystal aside with water and ice.
She saw Krystiana’s boots first—supple leather dyed red and etched with intricate, colorful, fanciful designs, peeking out from beneath a massive slab.
Kyrja had given them to her for Yule three years ago, and it had felt like the only thing she’d ever done right when it came to her sister.
Krystiana had loved them. Wore them every day.
Please, Giver, let them be empty now. She didn’t usually take them off until she was in her own quarters, but perhaps she had this evening. This once.
Kyrja fell to her knees beside the enormous piece of rock and rested a hand on the boot.
Solid. Too solid. The kind of solid that meant a foot was still inside.
Her breath hitched, but she pushed past it. Called up more water, more ice, and pressed it against the underside of the slab until it lifted. An inch, two; a foot, two.
The breath knotted, choked her, drew up a sob.
“Krysti. No.” She crawled into the opening she’d made, though she didn’t need to press her fingers to her sister’s throat to know her heart no longer beat.
If her sister’s body had any life in it, she would have been using it to save herself. To save others.
Others.