Chapter 15 #2
Nik’s gaze moved again to Ivar. All of the Blessed would take part, but it would begin with the highest ranking.
What show they put on varied from coronation to coronation—usually it was something flashy.
They’d leap from their seats, calling up ice to propel them to the rink to face the throne.
On one occasion, the leader had kept her seat and lifted the entire rink with her power.
Ivar did…nothing.
Nik frowned. Not that he could sense anything at work in the ice or water, but he saw nothing. Not a snowflake. Not an icicle. Not a single ripple of magic on the rink.
The moment stretched. Was Ivar building tension? Was he waiting for someone else? Surely he knew he was the new high rank, after Kyrja herself.
“Awkward,” Eldrid sing-songed under his breath.
Daemon shushed him. Logi and Ember shifted, exchanging looks. Elianne hissed out a breath. “Are they spurning her?”
No. Nik’s fingers curled into his palms. No, this wasn’t how it worked. She had proven her win, the recording had demonstrated to each and every person, Blessed and commoner alike, that she had won thirteen flaming Challenges all at once. And they thought they could get away with rejecting her now?
Silence pulled taut over the arena. If the Blessed didn’t act, didn’t bend the knee, then what? They were the leaders of the aristocracy, of all Fjordic society. Without them taking the lead, would the Fjorders follow? The thanes?
Indignation roared through his veins. Kyrja was more queen than any Blessed in this building had ever known.
She was a queen anointed by Himmel, given not just magic but the Song.
She was the chosen of the Giver. And these people, who had so long turned their backs on him, thought they could just ignore that?
“Frost it.” He was moving before he’d even thought through a plan, fire erupting from his skin and dancing over his leathers. Beneath him, magma surged, forcing its way into the springs that fed the arena.
“Nik! What are you doing?” His mother set a hand on his arm.
He shook her off and stepped into the opening of their tunnel.
“Nikanor.” Daemon’s voice was a command to stop.
He swung his head toward their leader. “The Blessed must act—and if the ones Blessed with ice will not, then those Blessed with fire will.”
Daemon’s jaw ticked. “We are not Blessed. We are Cursed.”
“We are not. We are Aflame—and we will help our queen forge a new Fjordlandi.” Ignoring the protests from the others, he stepped onto the rink.
Not ice, not anymore. The moment his feet hit it, the ice shook, shattered, splashed into water, and then exploded into steam. Fire and lava burst from the openings that once gurgled water.
Screams rent the air.
He paid them no heed. Couldn’t. The flames roared over him as he strode out onto the rink.
Behind him, he heard his mother say, “Flame it!” and then he sensed her in his fire, and Daemon, and the other three too.
As one, they broke into a run, lava running with them. Pandemonium erupted in the seats, but his eyes were fixed on Kyrja.
She’d risen from her throne—the only thing still frozen—and stood on the dais where she was meant to defend against the ice attacks from the Blessed.
Fire licked at the stands, smoke rising. A moment’s panic flitted through him too, at the sting of it in his nostrils.
He didn’t have control enough, yet, to contain it. The rage eating at him could consume this entire building, the wood of the seating area could ignite in another minute.
“Pull it back, Niki,” Elianne said. He could feel her tugging at his fire—to no avail. “Dae!”
Daemon folded his arms in that way of his, smirking. “The queen will do her job—or she won’t, and they’ll get what they deserve.”
She would. She must. Nik dropped to a knee, pressed a hand to the now-bare stone of the floor, called up the lava.
He couldn’t hold back, pull back like his mother said. Not just because of the roar in his veins, but because the whole point of this ceremony was to prove that she was the rightful Crown. How better to prove it than by facing down what none of them had even known to fear?
Their worst nightmares, come to life. The heart of the volcanoes that doled out both life and death to Fjordlandi.
He sent a stream of lava toward her.
It made it halfway there before water burst up, met it, hardened it, and ice shot down the rails of the arena, extinguishing the flames.
A hoot from Eldrid, and his family got in on the fun, sending lava that hardened not just into rough shapes like it would in the wild, but into sculptures. Displays.
What they could do—and what she could, freezing each and every one.
Nik’s chest was heaving from the effort, but hers wasn’t. She stood on her dais with hands raised but not so much as a bead of perspiration frozen to her brow. Her eyes were alight, her lips curved up.
The lava rock held there for a moment, and then ice burst through their designs, pushed the detritus to the edges of the arena, and new ice formed beneath them, pushing them up the few inches without any seeming effort on her part.
But not the clear, flat ice it had been before. Designs were worked into it, crystal and snowflake patterns.
Always the artist.
Nik stood, turned to Daemon.
Daemon lifted a brow. “Your show, Nikanor.”
It shouldn’t have been—but he wasn’t going to turn it down.
He strode forward, his family falling into some sort of formation behind him, given the way their steps sounded.
He stopped a few yards in front of the dais and knelt, as did the others behind him.
“The Aflame bend the knee to our queen!” he shouted, voice reverberating through the arena.
For the first time since he’d left the kyrka after the Song, he could see Kyrja clearly.
If she’d looked regal and beautiful in the cloak earlier—which she had—she was pure feminine beauty now.
Her gown dripped over her form in a silken waterfall, the cut accentuating each curve and making his mouth go dry.
Then his gaze drifted up to her head. Her crown—it wasn’t the sharp, deadly spears of ice that her father’s had been.
It was an intricate weave of points and curls that somehow evoked fire in the ice.
Their queen. Truly their queen. She inclined her head and lifted her right hand, the fluttering sheer sleeve of silver-white falling to her elbow with the gesture, light catching on the crystals sewn all over her gown like ice.
“The Crown acknowledges the Aflame. I pledge my service to you for all my days.”
They all pressed their right fists to their hearts. “So shall it be.”
Nik stood, holding her gaze for a long moment. She’d have some words for him later, no doubt—and he doubted they’d be all gratitude, given the weeping he could still hear in the stands.
So be it. He moved forward, as did the others, to array themselves where the Blessed should have been, standing against the rails on either side of her. Nik closest on her right, Daemon on her left. His mother and Eldrid on Nik’s side, Logi and Ember on Daemon’s. They all turned to face the arena.
Would the Blessed take their cue now? Nik had, in essence, just stolen their position from them. Declared that he was the most powerful being of magic after their queen. Surely Ivar would want to try to reclaim the order.
The man’s mask of indifference had boiled off into pure rage. But still he made no move.
Someone did, though. Nik heard the clang of metal on metal, felt the thump of feet stomping in unison but had no idea who could be making it. If they were to simply skip over the Blessed, then the Fjorders ought to be going next, but why would that make such a racket?
Vektors spilled onto the arena from all the places they’d been stationed, Viggo leading the charge.
He ran on spiked boots over the ice, spear held aloft and a shout worthy of their ancient ancestors ripping from his throat that sent a frisson of fear down Nik’s spine, even knowing he could melt the projectile if he had to.
It came flying through the air at Kyrja—Viggo’s, and dozens of others besides, all hurtled at full strength and with impeccable aim.
Kyrja brought up her own spears of ice and sent them into the air, each one intercepting the missiles and sending them clattering to the ground. She swept them away a beat later, toward the basalt.
Viggo, still running, dropped to a knee where Nik had, his regiment behind him. “The Vektor Guards bend the knee to our queen,” he shouted.
Kyrja drew in a breath. “The Crown acknowledges the Vektor Guards. I pledge my service to you for all my days.”
The guards pressed their right fists to their hearts, like the Aflame had done. “So shall it be.”
This time, no one waited to see if the Blessed would act.
Dania stood from her seat of honor, snowball in hand, and an excited-looking group rose with her.
Their projectiles flew through the air, making it over the rink before Kyrja turned them all into snow-dust—and sent them swirling in a picture-perfect dance.
Her friend had stepped onto the ice, an assortment of Fjorders behind her. They all knelt. “The Fjorders bend the knee to our queen.”
“The Crown acknowledges the Fjorders,” Kyrja said without hesitation. “I pledge my service to you for all my days.”
“So shall it be.”
The other Blessed were sending Ivar panicked looks now—and no wonder. With each group of people he let overtake them, the further down the social hierarchy they fell. When another Blessed shoved Ivar in the shoulder, he finally stood.
A wall of ice blocked him, and Kyrja sent a glare his way much like the ones she’d leveled on the High Council in their chambers. “The Blessed have made their stance clear. They will wait until the thanes have spoken.”
Perhaps Ivar and the others tried to fight their way through the ice, but if so, they failed so completely that their efforts weren’t even noticeable.