Chapter 20 #2
“I begrudge no one the chance to appreciate the beauty with which the Giver crafted our world.” Such expressions still felt a bit odd coming off her tongue.
And yet right. Every time she said or thought them, she could hear the same Song that had sung for her each time she attended services at the Grand Kyrka.
And she could feel Mamma smiling down on her.
Stefanos, rather than pausing before her to bow, moved to her side and faced the harbor, drawing in a long breath of appreciation.
“Truly beautiful. I look forward to many visits to Reykstoll with you, Kyrja—and I assure you, you will find Ellas just as stunning—if a great deal warmer. I’m afraid we never see snow.
We can discuss how to divide our time between them, and when logic dictates we each go to our own domains for a time.
I already have some ideas for a workable schedule. ”
Of course he did. And apparently they were beginning now, if unofficially.
She cleared her throat and eased a few inches away from him and closer to Nik.
“I’m certain your homeland is as beautiful as you say, and I do hope to visit someday, Your Majesty.
But tonight we will be renegotiating the contract per your other suggestion—Elianne has volunteered to be your bride. ”
His exaggerated sigh was the last response she’d expected. “A shame. You force my hand, Kyrja.”
What? No. She pivoted to face him, Nik moving with her, so that their shoulders touched. Good. She would take all the strength she could borrow. “You said you would be happy to take Elianne in my stead.”
“I said that I would take another bride whose magic was as strong as yours.” His gaze shifted from her to Nik. “I mean no disrespect to your very lovely mother, Nikanor, but she is the weakest of your clan.”
“How could you possibly know that?” Nik began radiating heat, but he had the good sense to rest his hand on her back, to siphon some of her chill. Good.
Stefanos shook his head. “Honestly. You need to ask? Your primal jumped to her defense as if I—harmless mere human that I am—could have hurt her. Obviously in part his response was because of his feelings for her, but that wasn’t all.
I’d wondered. I saw that when she was helping you regulate, it clearly cost her.
Sweat lined her hairline in moments. Meanwhile, Kyrja was holding the thirteen most powerful Blessed in prison, controlling a continent’s weather, managing the ice in the harbors, and had attention to spare to create that lovely snow-globe in the dining room.
Hence my little test, to see if the primal would have to intervene.
” Another shake, and a click of his tongue. “Hardly equal.”
“It isn’t as simple as you think.” Kyrja felt like a complete beast, trying to convince this man to marry her friend’s mother.
“Elianne was in fact hand-selected by my father to be his next wife, after my mother died. He sent her into the mountain nearly thirty years ago to train, but she had refused to do so as a silent rebellion. Think of it as a man with the bone structure and musculature of one of your greatest athletes, with natural talent but who hasn’t dedicated himself to training yet.
When put to the test in that state, he won’t win the games or the races. But once he does start training?”
“My mother wants to do this.” Nik’s heat had begun to subside. “She will serve both our lands well because it is her desire. You will need to give her access to Mt. Therios or another of your volcanoes, of course, but she will improve quickly now that she is setting her mind to it.”
“You misunderstand me.” Stefanos twitched a hand, and each of the thirty hoplites clicked their booted heels together and shifted.
“I am intrigued by this fire magic, yes. Very much so. And certainly curious as to whether the newness of it gives the magic in your blood a strength that could be useful to me. Perhaps, if her raw ability matched her beauty, I would consider it a risk worth taking. But it is not skill that I need. It is proven power. Power scientifically bred by your Test, and from the information I have managed to gather in the last two days, the blood of the Aflame has not been Tested against other blood in the same way. When they are discovered, they are generally eradicated. Which does call your people’s scientific method into question. ”
How in the snow had he gotten that information? Even if the Fjorder physicians were angry with her for turning the country on its head, they surely knew that selling state secrets to the king of Ellas, of all people, would have disastrous consequences.
What were the hoplites doing now? They’d all pulled their red capes over their right shoulders….
As she wondered, Stefanos clapped his hands, and each of his soldiers pulled out a short metal tube that looked like a miniature cannon and pointed them up at the mountain.
A second later, a concussion sounded from each of the tubes—and then came the screams of her Vektors.
Even as she spun to see them all collapsing, red blooming through their uniforms, she was acting.
Ice, snow, frost—she wielded them all at once, calling on the springs in the mountain, the clouds up above, the moisture in the air.
She let loose torrents of freezing rain upon the hoplites, froze their boots to the ground, packed their weapons with ice.
Stefanos reached out, gripped her wrist.
And the ice stopped. Her connection with it vanished. She could still feel it, hear it, see it, but she couldn’t touch it.
“A closely guarded secret of the Ellesians,” he said, snaking out his other hand to grab Nik by the throat when he lunged forward.
“It isn’t precisely that we don’t have magic.
We don’t, it’s true. But we do seem to have the ability to temporarily short out the nanites in the Awakened with our touch. ”
She yanked on her arm, throwing her entire body weight into the effort as Nik tried to chop at the offending arm with a hand, but the hoplites had converged on them, and Stefanos was clearly hiding well-toned muscles under that tunic.
Within seconds, two soldiers had Nik by the arms, and another had belted her against an armored chest with a rock-hard arm.
“You can’t do this!” She screamed the words, panic raking its claws through her guts as she watched the clouds she’d been ready to bring together after sunset break fully apart above them.
Not because of the clouds, exactly—Laila and the others would take care of those easily.
But how long would her locks and bars in the prison hold against Fodur and the Council with her not actively fighting them?
No one else had learned how to handle those.
“You’re ruining everything, all the work I’ve done. You’ll set Fodur free—”
“I have no argument with your father.” He trailed his fingers up her bare left arm. “He proved a most reasonable ally. But I believe in your absence, the primal of the Aflame will take over, will he not? As the First Seat of the High Council?”
She’d been the one to appoint him to that highest position—but she’d never paused to think about the ramifications.
That, yes, since she had no Heir, it meant he was second in command.
Daemon, who had scoffed today at the thought of a fair Fjordlandi.
Daemon, who made no attempt to hide his disdain for the Fjorders and the Blessed.
He would fight for the thanes, which they needed—but who would fight him for the others? There was no one on the High Council yet besides his own family.
Too late. She had waited too long to trust Laila or Magnus or the others, and now they’d all pay for it.
Writhe and wriggle and kick as she might, the hoplite’s arms held her firm, and she couldn’t even dislodge Stefanos’s poisonous touch. “If you think that you’ll get away with taking me by force—”
“I am within my legal rights. I was promised my bride within two weeks of her Blessing Day, and the agreement stipulates that I can use whatever means necessary to arrange it.” He arched a brow.
“I was generous, Kyrja. I gave you an extra two days to come to terms with the arrangement or provide a suitable alternative.”
Another strain, but it was like fighting against Therion steel. “I offered you a suitable alternative.”
“You did not. You offered me a substandard, untested alternative.” He shrugged and lifted his hand from her shoulder.
Hope surged—her connection to the ice didn’t. It took her a moment to realize the hoplite had a bare hand on her right wrist.
When Stefanos reached those fingers toward her lips, she snapped at him with her teeth.
He laughed. “Such passion! I hadn’t dared to hope for such a thing from the Ice Princess. We will suit well, once you get over your anger with me. I am not a monster, Kyrja.”
“Could have fooled me,” Nik growled from her side. He, too, must have continued to struggle while she was distracted, because a third hoplite had joined the other two, and this one had one of those miniature cannons jammed into his stomach.
She had a feeling his leathers wouldn’t stop whatever projectile they used.
“Have I not proven it at every step? Even now, I ordered my men to aim for non-lethal targets on your guards’ bodies. They should all recover, barring infection—and that is out of my control.”
Relief as that was, it didn’t negate the horror. “You cannot force me to wed you. You cannot steal me from my home.”
“You clearly lack imagination.” He nodded, and the soldier who held her lifted her a few inches off the ground and started toward the path.
She screamed.
Nik roared.
Stefanos held up a hand, halting them, his gaze on Nik.
“My legal agreement does not cover taking you by force, firebrand, though I could kill you and say, quite honestly, that you were interfering with my claim. But I am intrigued by this new magic of yours. You can come with her, if you like. By your own choice. Let my scientists study you for…” He made a show of considering.
“Three to five hours a day, once we arrive in Ellas. And otherwise you can do what you like with your time, even spending it with Valkyrja. Does that suit? There will be, of course, limits to what you are permitted to do when together. You will be chaperoned at all times after we’ve wed. ”
“No!” Much as she didn’t want to be alone, she couldn’t let this happen, couldn’t take Nik from Helviti, from his family, from the only people in the world who could teach him how to harness his magic. “Nik, you can’t. You…”
Her voice trailed off as she met his gaze.
He wore the same expression he had the day they met—a lifetime ago, yet not quite two months ago.
The face of a stranger who had no reason to put his life at risk, but who would do it anyway.
Because Nikanor Tristansson couldn’t see someone in need and not try to help them.
Yet not a stranger, not anymore. In those weeks, that face had become the one she most looked forward to seeing, the one she dreamed about when she snatched a few minutes of sleep.
That expression wasn’t just about helping a stranger—it spoke to his utter unwillingness to let her go anywhere without him.
“Yes,” Nik said, eyes locked on hers. “Take me with you. I agree to your terms.”
“Excellent.” Stefanos turned toward the path.
“Herodes, guard the tunnel entrance and neutralize the other firebrands when they appear—non-lethal force, if possible, especially with their primal—we mustn’t leave Fjordlandi without a leader, after all.
Demetrios, see that the Vektors are all taken to hospital.
Eudoxos, eye on the skies—if that interfering Daryatlean makes an appearance, don’t wait for her to make a move. Deploy the net.”
“No—wait!” Kyrja struggled again, hoping to land a solid kick to a shin, at least. Wishing she hadn’t when her foot reverberated off the man’s metal shin guards. “Nik, you need a volcano—don’t agree to anything without negotiating that, at least.”
“Too late,” Stefanos chirped cheerfully, striding away. “Though we’ll reach some sort of agreement. A dead firebrand wouldn’t teach us much.”
The hoplite slung her over his shoulder like a sack of flour, bare hand clamped on one of her calves to secure her.
Kyrja considered pounding against his back, but given the armor…
what was the point? Instead, she went limp.
Even knowing the hoplites were too well trained to fall for a standard trick, she had to try it anyway.
She made herself dead weight as they started down the mountain, let herself feel the rhythm of the man’s body, sense the blood in his veins.
She couldn’t reach it, but it was there, waiting.
Her moment came after a few minutes of hiking, when sounds of distress from the plateau reached her ears—the Aflame must have arrived. Her captor turned his head just a bit, perhaps to see if they were within view.
It was likely the best opportunity she would have. She fisted the icicle necklace she wore and jabbed it into the hoplite’s neck, in the two bare inches between helmet and breastplate.
He swore, flinched, and she kicked. Not successfully enough that he would have dropped her, but enough that his hand lost contact with her leg for a second.
A second was all she needed. The connection to the water around her sang again, and she froze the blood in his veins, put a coating of ice all over him, and then slid free.
Victory gathered with her first running step, burst with her second.
Then something collided with her temple, and the world went black.