Chapter 29
His feet felt like blocks of ice. His core on fire.
Much like on the trireme, Nik found he had plenty of heat available to him even without a direct link to the ground…
and that was the problem. He had to keep that heat out of his legs, his feet, or he’d start turning the ice to slush he then had to trudge through.
Holding it in made his torso overheat. Sending it up in the air meant that he was then freezing until it built up again.
He let Kyrja funnel some of it away now and then, but it weakened her ice too much to be a constant answer.
It was some consolation to think that, thanks to Pab’s bracelet, at least Raf would easily be able to keep his group of refugees warm on their way to the dome, lighting whatever fuel they could find quickly. Flint worked, but it could be finicky. The bracelet would simplify things.
They walked through the night, and by the next morning, he felt much like he had in those first two days after his Awakening, when the fire raced through him like a fever, leaving him weak and more than a little nauseated.
Kyrja’s fingers found his, and she gave him the same worried look she’d been giving him for the past twenty-four hours. “Nik—”
“I’m fine.” He had to be. What choice was there? He gave her a smile and glanced to the southwest. Harroby’s enormous dome was no longer in sight, though its glare still reflected back onto the clouds above it.
Raf and the group of outcasts who had welcomed them would surely have made the safety of the dome well before nightfall yesterday. No doubt the elder’s grandson had already reached the next village, perhaps even the one after it, to send them inland as well.
Good. Because the fact that Isidor’s ice daggers had stopped was more worry than relief. He wouldn’t have given up, especially not with so many of the Blessed helping Kyrja from Reykstoll, in whatever ways they could. That would only infuriate him more. Make him more determined to stop her.
Behind them, the peak of Radsla grew ever more distant. Ahead of them, Helviti beckoned, though it was still days away.
“We can cut inland. Walk on the ground for a while,” Kyrja offered for the fifth time.
Nik shook his head. “We’ll lose hours that way and have to navigate terrain. Plus, that’ll put us on the main road, which means people.” At least the ice flats were flat.
Kyrja looked to the west, where the Frozen Sea shimmered a few miles out.
When she drifted to a halt, her hand tightening around his, Nik sucked in a breath.
Waited for her to tell him what had nabbed her attention this time.
Probably just Isidor slipping into the work of the other Blessed, as he’d been doing off and on since she gave the Blessed loyal to her control of it.
But then she sucked in a breath, and he knew it was something more. “What?”
“He’s close. He’s…I don’t know what he’s doing. Pulling seawater, but not in, not out, not—” Brows creased, she turned fully toward the water.
He didn’t have to ask what she was sensing as she gasped. He saw it for himself. A mountain, rising from the sea—but not of earth. Ice. All ice.
Water roared. The ice shelf on which they were walking groaned, cracked. Waves crashed onto it, rushing over it, a tsunami of frozen slush that was eating up the distance toward them far too quickly.
“Frost and flame!” Kyrja dropped his hand and lifted both of hers toward the oncoming rush, freezing it, pushing it back.
She was clearly trying to mend the cracks too, but even so, the surface under them tilted, wobbled, groaned more as the mountain of ice kept rising.
Five hundred feet, a thousand, two thousand.
Fissures formed as the mountain ate up more and more of the space where the ice flat had been. Nik grabbed Kyrja by the arm. “Kyrja—we need to move!”
She ran with him, toward the east, inland, but he could tell that her attention wasn’t on what was before them.
She was continuing to work, to try to undo what her father was doing.
“He’s…it’s not just him. It’s all his allies.
Not the twelve from the prison, so they must still be secure, but there are at least two dozen others.
They’re pulling up so much water.” She choked on a sob.
The ice cracked ahead of them, the surface beneath their feet tilting down. Or perhaps what was ahead tilted up. Either way, they didn’t have enough time to react before they crashed into it.
Kyrja screamed, though he couldn’t think it was from the pain of impact. She spun back to the sea, eyes wide and chest heaving.
The mountain stopped growing. Given the strain in her neck muscles, he knew it was from her efforts and not her father’s decision.
“No.” It came out garbled, her face contorting. “He’s…no! He’s pulling hot water from a vent on the sea floor. Bringing it up the center of the mountain. Like a—”
“Volcano. Of ice.” Nick spun, though the ice shelf above him obscured his view. “Does he mean to smother us?”
“Let him try.” She dropped to a knee, hand pressed to the ice. Their berg leveled out, the wall behind them just a step now.
The world rumbled. Shook. Shouted in agony. Then the ice volcano shot water and ice from its cone.
Nik pulled all his heat from his core into his hand, ready to send it upward. Kyrja swept a protective sheen of ice around them, like she’d done that first day he’d met her, in the streets of Reykstoll, when it was Pab’s ash and debris raining down.
But aside from a few chunks that clattered and splattered, nothing came their way. Instead, the ice flew up and arced out. Toward the southeast.
They both turned, watched the largest chunk go, though it vanished from sight.
“He’s aiding it. Propelling it,” she said.
It was far worse than that. “Kyrja—it’s headed for the dome.”
“What?” But she must have realized it even as he did. Horror replaced the disbelief, and she shot out her arms, clearly straining toward it. “No, no, no. Back here, ice! Down!”
He couldn’t see whether or not she succeeded, but he had to trust she would. Did trust. But her father would only send another, he and his allies. And another, and another.
Nik framed her face with his hands and waited for her eyes to focus on him. “Stop fighting the symptoms, Kyrja. Go fight the source. You know where he is?”
Her eyes glazed over for a second, and then she nodded.
“Good. Go.”
But she frowned. “What about you?”
He looked toward the ice volcano—impressive, yes. But not as impressive as the real things flanking them. “I’ll take care of this source.”
“Nik—”
He met her gaze again, those beautiful silver irises that he wanted the chance to look into daily for the next couple centuries. “Do you trust me?”
She didn’t even hesitate. “With my life.”
“Do you trust me with your people’s lives? Our people’s lives?”
She didn’t even hesitate. “Of course I do.”
“Then get off this ice, back on solid ground, and find your father. Cut him off. Distract him, at the least. I’m going to show him what a real volcano looks like.”
She shook her head. “Radsla and Helviti are both too far away.”
“I know.” But she’d said her father was pulling on the hot water from an undersea vent, which meant there was volcanic activity already at work, right there. “So I’ll make one here. Usurp his.”
Those silver eyes blinked at him. “Are you insane?”
“Probably.” He grinned, pressed a quick kiss to her lips. “Go.”
“Nik.” Her eyes, her voice said what her words didn’t. All the fears, all the doubts.
He kissed her again. “I have to try. I love you, Valkyrja. Now go.”
Her cold fingers stroked his cheek. “I love you, Nikanor. Do not die.”
“Not my plan to.” But it was a risky maneuver, he knew that.
As he pulled up the heat and lava, it would melt the ice on which he stood.
There was no way around that. He’d end up in the water, and she couldn’t focus on helping him, not now.
He’d have to hold his breath, say a prayer, and hope new land built fast enough to save him as the lava hardened.
Though she looked like she’d rather cry, she nodded and turned inland again. Her hands shook.
“Kyrja.” When she turned her face his way, he willed every ounce of faith he had in her to travel through his gaze and land in her soul.
“You are stronger than he is. And you’re not alone.
You have your allies, yes, but you have someone even more important.
The Giver is on your side. You are his anointed. Don’t forget it.”
She pressed a hand to her heart, nodded, and ran. As he watched, twin blades of ice formed on the bottom of her boots, raising her up fraction by fraction. Then she was gliding across the ice far faster than she’d ever be able to run.
Nik waited until she was a good distance away and then sent his fire-sense out, down. Not to draw heat up, just to find it. Locate the source.
Isidor’s volcano was a fine help with that, actually. He was drawing hot water straight up it, which meant that heat was directly below the cone.
The mountain of ice rumbled and grew again, though far more slowly now. More ice spewed from its top.
His teeth clenched. “I don’t think so, Isidor.” After another glance to make sure he wouldn’t suck Kyrja into the puddle he was about to make, he dropped to his knees. Pressed his hands to the ice. Latched his every magical sense onto the magma far beneath the water. And pulled.