Chapter 12
The drumbeat summoned Daemon from his work, each thump a hammer’s blow to his soul.
Drums in the corridor that connected the palace to Helviti’s throat could only mean one thing—and having heard Isidor’s claim that the terror-maker’s accomplice would be dealt with soon, he wasn’t surprised to hear them.
Even so, his limbs weighed heavy as he climbed from the tube he’d been working in and met up with Eldrid and Logi.
His brothers’ eyes were as troubled as he knew his were.
Logi ran a hand down his full blond beard.
Eldrid passed his over his shaven head. Ember and Elianne appeared in the opening to the living space, where they’d been smoking the meat Isidor had delivered to them—meat Elianne was to take with her when she escaped.
Daemon expected them both to turn back to their work, as they had the other times the drums had sounded.
And Ember did. They hadn’t time to lose, after all.
Isidor’s period of mourning would be over tomorrow.
But Elianne moved forward instead, jaw clenched. “I’ll join you.”
She never had before, and he’d been happy to spare her, and Ember too.
More often than not, the victims who tumbled over the edge of rock and into the lava were dead before they landed, gone within seconds.
But their screams lingered. Their terror moved through the tunnels like a toxic cloud, choking them all.
They’d tasted it before, when they were the ones falling toward molten doom.
None since Elianne had survived it. Decades of screaming death was good for none of them.
But Daemon still needed to be there. Needed to witness.
Needed to stand ready in case, this time, another brother or sister stood from the fire.
Eldrid must have swiped one of the new sets of leathers from the freshly formed shelves, because as he fell in beside him, he clutched the black fabric in one meaty fist.
Daemon nodded his approval and led the way. He stopped them at the mouth of their primary tunnel, opening a few scant feet above the lava pool.
Elianne moved to his side, her eyes directed up, toward the ledge. Was she remembering when she stood up there? Not with the High Council standing in judgment like the rest of them, but with Isidor still. Did the words echoing down about the condemned walking freely make her shiver as it did him?
Brandr had fought to the last—it had taken six Vektors and the magic of three Blessed to wrestle him over the edge, and he’d pulled a hapless guard in with him.
Logi had stood for a moment with his toes over the edge and then jumped in, like a boy into a swimming hole at the hot springs.
Eldrid had backed over the edge, hands raised in a rude gesture.
Daemon had done what this newest sacrifice did.
He’d run, leapt, and willed the lava to rise to meet him.
He saw himself in the form—arms out, ankles together, body in a straight line—if not in the coloring or features.
Dread shifted to hope as the man fell through the heat and didn’t burn, didn’t scream, didn’t even panic.
Hope turned into satisfaction when Daemon felt a new tug on the lava, a silent voice he didn’t yet know, and the cauldron of liquid rock rose up to cushion the man’s fall, then lowered with him and crusted over, giving him a foundation to stand on.
He staggered to his feet, clothing turning to cinders, and turned in a slow circle.
His gaze passed right over their tunnel entrance without pausing—which didn’t surprise Daemon a bit.
Between the blinding glare from the lava, the distortion from the heat, and the fact that they were all dressed in black that matched their tunnel, there was no way his eyes could have adjusted enough to see them yet.
Elianne made a strangled noise and tried to dart forward—that nurturing spirit of hers that she usually offered to everyone but him no doubt taking hold.
Daemon snatched her around the waist to hold her back. “Not yet,” he said into her ear, more gruffly than he intended. “Let him get his bearings first. Give the High Council time to disperse. He survived this long—he’s one of us. He’ll be fine for a few more minutes.”
She struggled against him, writhing like a madwoman. “Let me go! Let me help him!”
“He doesn’t need your help.” When she strained still more, clawing at his arm, he growled and heaved her back, straight into Logi’s waiting arms. “Get ahold of yourself, Elianne. You would endanger us all.”
Wildness in her eyes, she used Logi’s chest as leverage and kicked at Daemon.
He caught her calf and held it there aloft until the awkwardness of her position forced her to stop struggling. Not that a shake of his head would do any more to redirect her than it ever did. “You’re stronger than this. Stop it, or Logi will have to take you back to Ember.”
Her chest heaved. “You don’t know. You don’t know. Let me go!”
Had this reaction been to witnessing death, or had Eldrid not been beside him, perhaps Daemon would have given in to the urge to pull her against his chest instead of letting Logi be the one to hold her steady.
Perhaps he would have run a hand down her fire-bright hair until she calmed, invited her to help him understand why the plunge of this new brother struck her so deeply.
But there was no time for coddling. He met Logi’s gaze, not even needing words.
His oldest friend nodded, turned, and dragged Elianne back toward their quarters.
Daemon and Eldrid exchanged a bemused look, then turned their attention to their newest brother.
The man was older than Daemon had been when he ran into Helviti’s embrace, with the square jaw and broad shoulders so common among the thanes. But dark hair, which was rare on the island.
From Above came a declaration that Daemon could pick out easily enough over the gurgling of lava. “He lives.”
The new brother likely didn’t hear—the rumble and rush and pops of deadly bubbles would be overwhelming his eardrums. But Daemon and Eldrid both did, and it was odd enough to draw them closer to the tunnel’s opening.
Their movement must have finally caught the man’s attention. He looked their way, stared at them for a long moment. No doubt thinking himself hallucinating. Seeing a mirage, a distortion from the waves of heat.
Eldrid, always the clown, gave him a salute and waved the leathers in a taunt. Maybe an offer—but probably a taunt, the way he brandished the pants like a flag.
Daemon was more concerned with peering up, straining for a glimpse of whoever had actually looked into the lava in search of the Cursed. He saw a face, dark curls, there and gone. Female, to match the voice, but then she retreated.
“What are they saying?” Eldrid strained forward too, his promised leathers apparently not as interesting as whatever was happening Above.
Another face appeared, the heat’s distortion doing nothing to hide the rich color of it.
Not Fjordic, of that he was certain. There were occasional brunettes like this new brother, a redhead now and then like Elianne, but most of them were blondes, and all fair of skin.
The long curls, lighter in color than the hair of the first woman—an interesting contrast, given the darker skin—indicated another female, but details of features he couldn’t make out.
Though the next face to appear he had no trouble recognizing, and what distance and heat hid in Isidor’s expression, Daemon’s imagination provided easily enough. He’d be furious—either at the man’s survival or the women’s calling out of it.
No one had ever looked over the side before.
Never. Even Isidor, who surely knew what the flint blade had Awakened or not within them, didn’t ever check—likely because his protective ice melted too quickly, and the heat blasting up the volcano’s throat was too scalding.
He simply asked during his next delivery of supplies whether his last victim was now daemon or cinders.
Something was afoot. Something odd.
Even knowing it, nothing could have prepared him for the sight that next met his eyes.
Voluminous blue fabric fluttered, shapely brown legs strode into the air as if it were solid as glass, and the second woman halted there a stone’s throw from the edge.
She said something about needing space and then glanced down toward the new man, who was staring upward, agape, clearly so shocked he didn’t even realize he was unclothed.
“Hey, Nik? Hang tight a minute. Kyrja just needs to do a bit of reorganizing up here, and then you can climb back up.”
Her words clarified a few things, anyway. Nik was the man—though if he kept to their usual tradition, he would choose a new name in the coming weeks, one that spoke to his new purpose. All of their names appealed to the idea of flame in one way or another.
Kyrja must be the other woman, the first to have peered down.
Valkyrja—the only remaining heir to Isidor. The weakling who stood in the way of the offspring Isidor meant to produce with Elianne. Apparently she was causing her father some trouble, and Daemon immediately liked her for it.
As for reorganizing? He thought he heard the word “challenge” shouted Above.
“Flames.” He turned to Eldrid. “Get him the leathers. We likely only have a matter of minutes before Isidor silences her and the attention of the lady in blue returns to Nik there. I daresay he’d like the dignity of being dressed.”
Eldrid nodded. “What’s your move?”
His gaze was already tracing the path he’d picked out a thousand times before, adapted over and again each time the rock face shifted. “I’m climbing up.”
Silence greeted him.