Chapter 21
Daemon wanted to make the volcano shout.
Wanted to rain fire down on all of Reykstoll.
Wanted to send a ball of it toward the triremes hovering just outside Fjordlandi waters.
And maybe he would have, if he had a clue which one had Nik and Kyrja on it or dared to assume that if he set the thing on fire, they’d find a way out.
For all he knew, they were unconscious, like he’d been until twenty minutes ago.
He and the rest of his family had been hurrying to the surface at Nik’s call, only to feel their power gutter out the moment they stepped foot Above, when Ellesian soldiers grabbed them, then knocked them out with blows to the head.
If he set the entire fleet ablaze, they could die. Kyrja would be susceptible to the flames. Nik to the waters that would be quick to crowd in.
And that was assuming they lived, that it had been kidnapping and not murder the Ellesians had committed.
Perla, when she’d found them, had reported seeing them both being dragged onto a trireme, Kyrja lax but Nik fighting.
His newest Aflame, then, was alive. As for the queen?
Well, he just had to trust that Stefanos didn’t want a dead bride. Just as he had to assume that Elianne’s offer had been refused.
They ought to have known the snake wouldn’t take an unknown quantity when he could, by rights, have a queen.
He strode past the last of the windows and looked out to sea, even though he couldn’t see the Ellesian vessels from here. Another part of the problem. He couldn’t sense them in the water like Kyrja or Perla could. He’d be raining fire without aiming, if he tried it.
“I should have been there.” It was the ninth time Perla had muttered it since she’d wakened them all with water in the face and told them they’d better hurry to the Ice Prison, if they didn’t want Isidor and the old High Council to break free in the next hour. “I shouldn’t have risked a rendezvous.”
Daemon sliced a gaze her way but said nothing.
The first time she’d muttered it, and had confessed that she’d been seven miles out at sea giving a report to one of her father’s people during Stefanos’s raid, he’d silently agreed.
She should have been here instead of there.
If she had been, everything could have gone differently.
From the skies, she could have evaded those destructive hands of the Ellesians, and…
What? Pelted them with rain? Blown them off the mountain with a gale? Would it have made a difference? She was still one woman against a regiment of the most elite fighters on the planet, fighters well trained to withstand the elements, natural or otherwise.
“Your loyalty is to your own people first,” Ember said from behind him. “No one faults you for that.”
Some of them did. Elianne’s body pulsed with heat. He’d never seen her so furious, so out of control, in all the years he’d known her. If she couldn’t get a handle on it by the time they reached the prison, he’d have to make her stay outside.
He looked to Perla as they turned the last corner before the stairs into the prison. “Still holding?”
“Barely.” Despite the cold in the palace corridors, sweat gleamed on her forehead and dripped down her neck.
She wore her honey-brown leathers, at least, instead of a ridiculous gown.
Not that the clothing would aid in her attempts to maintain Kyrja’s locks, but as distracted as she was, long skirts might have tripped her up.
“Saltwater is my forte—ice doesn’t sing to me like brine does.
And those Blessed are all attacking at once, with what I seriously hope is renewed vigor, otherwise I’m about to have an identity crisis over here and whine about how much stronger than me Kyrja is, despite being a wee bit younger. ”
If he dared to smile at her, she’d probably remember to make one of her ridiculous flirtatious remarks, so he kept his mouth neutral and felt for the veins of lava nearest them.
“I only need you to maintain it until we’re down there.
Once I can positively identify the spring that feeds the locks, I’ll be able to work my way backward and replace the water with lava.
” He and Kyrja had spent several hours, over the last two weeks, discussing, diagramming, and planning the new locks they both agreed they needed as soon as possible.
But it was a complicated process. He couldn’t sense the water, she couldn’t sense the lava, so they’d had to make their own separate maps to a careful scale and then overlay them.
He’d known they were close. Another hour or two, and they’d expected to be able to implement the change from a distance, which would allow the young queen to rest for the first time in weeks.
They’d just have to hope they’d been close enough that he could bully his way through any gaps. Proximity would help.
Temperatures dropped as they descended the stairs and approached the guard-protected entrance to the Ice Prison. The guard snapped to attention at their approach, suspicious gaze flicking from one of them to the next. “State your business.”
Daemon tensed. He’d never been down here before, and he knew none of his Aflame had either. Had Perla? He didn’t think so. Which meant they were just six strangers about to demand entrance to the most fortified place in all Fjordlandi.
“To whom are you loyal?” Perla shoved back a few brown curls clinging to her sweaty face. “Valkyrja or Isidor?”
The guard frowned. “I am loyal to Fjordlandi.”
“The old Fjordlandi, that promised success to the Fjorders? Or the new Fjordlandi, that strips them of power and gives it to the thanes?” Perla stepped closer to the guard, staring him down.
Her tone didn’t give away which was the correct answer, though the guard could likely guess which side they were on.
Unless he’d been living under a rock for the last two weeks.
The man moved his gaze from Perla to Daemon and gripped his ceremonial sword. “Where’s the queen?”
“Indisposed,” Daemon said. He straightened his spine, lifted his chin. Glared. “And as the First Seat of her High Council, I’m authorized to act in her stead. Stand aside.”
The guard frowned. He’d know that Daemon spoke true about the rank—but how would he know if Kyrja was truly indisposed? She hadn’t exactly sent out a memo.
Perla pointed toward the doors. “If you don’t let us in there in the next two minutes or so, Isidor and his High Council will be out of their cells and subjugating the whole country under their thumbs again in another three minutes. Give or take.”
Another searching glance, and then the guard pivoted and opened the gate. “The Giver go with you.”
They charged through the opening, Perla and Daemon in the lead while Logi, Ember, Eldrid, and Elianne followed. He didn’t feel her pulsing with heat anymore—a quick glance told him Eldrid had settled a hand on her arm, like she’d done for her son two days ago.
Her face was a ruin of pain and regret and shame that threw his memory back twenty-six years, to when she’d first arrived Below. When Isidor had stolen her from her husband and son and condemned her to the volcano.
Now Stefanos had stolen her son from her, effectively declaring her willing sacrifice of herself unworthy. Unacceptable.
He knew she wanted to be out there, on a boat, searching for him. But if they didn’t contain Isidor first, they’d soon be fighting a battle on two fronts—and they’d lose both, that way.
Shouting greeted them as they slid into the block of high-security cells.
Here, the prisoners weren’t guarded by guards but by the queen’s magic, and it was clear they’d noted the sudden cessation of her hold on it, as surely as Daemon had felt her inner hand release the springs in Helviti, where water and lava converged.
Perla jerked as if she’d run into an invisible wall, fell to her knees, and pressed a hand to the ground. Her face twisted in exertion, but she managed to snarl, “Go!”
He went, his family close on his heels. “I can’t feel anything in this place,” Eldrid muttered, head swinging from side to side as he took stock of the situation.
Daemon could, but barely. The stone here was too thick, too closely fitted together, ice filling all the cracks, and crystal lining parts of it to dampen the magic of those within.
It was like being behind Isidor’s ice wall again, but without the heart of Helviti beating on their side of the divide.
No, that monster wouldn’t win today. They were not trapped within the mountain, and that would be their strength, not their handicap.
“Fan out, go to the cells themselves. If you can’t find the lava, then summon the flame—send heat straight into their faces, if you have to—but for the sake of all that’s frozen, don’t melt the bars.”
His family scattering, Daemon jogged to the circular stone in the center of the cell block.
According to the maps he and Kyrja had worked on, directly under this central spot was the spring that fed the entire prison’s ice.
He dropped to a knee and pressed his marked palm to the stone.
Giver, guide me. I cannot do this alone. Only you can save us.
In a flash, he was in the dome he’d grown up in.
Praying those same words as he crouched behind a berm and tried to gather his strength, his courage.
Praying that somehow, the Giver would give him the power he needed to save the girl he loved from the Blessed governor she worked for who’d been beating her for months.
He’d known he couldn’t do it on his own. He was only a farmling, broad of shoulder but weak of blood. No power over the waters, the ice. He had brute strength, nothing more, and it wouldn’t be enough.
When the shadow had fallen over him, he’d thought his fight was over before it even started, that Tuva would have to watch him drown on his feet and then freeze solid as whatever Blessed had found him shoved water into his lungs.