Chapter 33
Bellanca heard the frantic footsteps pounding up the stairs before the knocking started. Her eyes locked with Carver’s, her pulse hammering as hard as the heavy fist on the door. They sat across from each other at their table, sharing a meal more out of necessity than appetite. There was strength in food.
The pounding intensified. “Bellanca! Bellanca! Carver!”
She abruptly stood, her chair scraping back. “That’s Dimitri.” She looked down at herself, horror dawning. “I’m covered in weapons.”
“Does it matter? You won’t be serving at Spiro’s tomorrow.” Carver stood, too, rounding the table.
She tried to swallow, her mouth suddenly bone-dry. Whatever she might be about to gain, she was about to lose something precious. “So dies Atlantian Bellanca,” she whispered hoarsely.
His eyes locked on hers. “So lives the queen ,” he said sharply.
Nodding, she finally managed that swallow and moved toward the door.
“Bellanca! Carver!” Dimitri frantically pounded. “Are you in there? Please!”
Foreboding barked inside her like a watchdog. “Dimitri never gets worked up about anything.”
Carver’s mouth flattened. His eyes flicked to the door, and she reached for the latch, opening it.
Dimitri froze mid-knock, gaping at them. “Did you…? How did you…?” He looked back and forth between them, his shock-wide eyes taking in their weapons and attire. He snapped his mouth shut. “I don’t understand.”
Carver tugged him inside and closed the door behind him. “What’s wrong?”
Dimitri speared a hand through his hair, and a wet sheen burst across his eyes. “I didn’t know where to go, what to do… How to help her.”
Bellanca’s heart started to pound, the boom of dread echoing inside her. “What happened? Help who, Dimitri?” She and Dimitri loved the same people. If she had a family in Atlantis besides Carver, it was at Spiro’s. Her breath shortened, fear taking up all the space in her lungs.
“Soldiers came,” Dimitri said unsteadily, his blue eyes swimming. “They just dragged Lilika out of the taverna. Eryx chose her for sacrifice, and he’s starting the procession early.”
***
Horror and fury tore through Bellanca, and she erupted in a wash of fire. Dimitri stumbled away from her, his back thudding against the door. “It’s you. The fire mage who took the oracle from the castle.” Staring at her in shock, he visibly swallowed. “Magic. How?”
She cooled without even needing to think about it, iced over by the way he looked at her. Fear. Betrayal. Confusion. Atlantian Bellanca just died, as predicted, and her friendships probably died with her. “Because we’re not from here. We’re from Thalyria. There’s magic there.”
Dimitri’s mouth worked, but no sound came out. Finally, he simply uttered, “How?”
“You might’ve heard rumors from that night at the castle. At least some of them are true. We are emissaries from Zeus. He sent us here to end Punishment and take over the rule of Atlantis from Eryx.” She paused, letting him absorb that before moving on to the bad part. “But now, Hera is at war with her husband and trying to end Punishment in her name in order to make all of Atlantis grateful to her for it.”
Dimitri squeezed his eyes shut, seeming to process what she said behind closed lids. He opened them again, shaking his head. “Why? Why grateful?”
“Because the gratitude, prayers, and offerings of thankful Atlantians will increase her power enough to rival Zeus’s,” Carver explained. “She wants to take the high throne of Mount Olympus from him and rule by herself.”
Dimitri breathed loudly, his expression tortured and confused. “And Lilika? Why her? Why today when something’s different? Eryx erected some kind of altar in the temple square. He’s calling for huge crowds. He came to Spiro’s and took her himself even though she’s never set a foot out of place to get herself noticed.” His voice faltered.
Bellanca swung on Carver, her eyes widening. “The blood ceremony. Hera already gave him the Shard of Olympus.”
Carver hissed a curse. “We thought this might happen, but he’s not even waiting until this evening.” Turning to Dimitri, he winced. “But why Lilika? I don’t know.”
“I do.” Self-loathing sank through Bellanca as she took an unconscious step back. Eryx had linked the two whippings. Only…he didn’t come for them . “It’s my fault. I didn’t just take Cleito like I should’ve. I took revenge on Eryx, and he must’ve figured it out.” Her words thickened as the threat of tears clogged her throat, regret sharpening the sting crawling toward her eyes and nose. “We feared he might connect Carver to the female Magoi who took Cleito from him, because I whipped him with fire. I whipped him, twenty lashes, just like he whipped Carver. Eryx must’ve linked Carver to me, and me to Spiro’s. He took Lilika out of spite. It’s my fault. I’m so sorry.” Her voice faltered, just like Dimitri’s.
His frown deepening, Dimitri pushed off from the door and moved toward her. He raised his hand, and Bellanca braced for the slap or punch she deserved. Instead, he gripped her shoulder. “I see you’re ready for battle. So let’s go get her.”
Nodding, Bellanca scorched the tears from her eyes. “Let’s go get her.”
Today was not a day she lost two sisters.
***
For Lilika. For Atlantis. For Zeus. They ran through the streets of Atlantapol.
Dimitri—the gutting and boning expert—held a knife in his hand like he’d never seen one before.
“Pointy end into anyone trying to get between you and your woman,” Carver told him as they raced toward the temple square. “We’ll take care of Eryx.”
Dimitri still looked uncertain.
“It ends today. The sacrifices. The fear for your mother and sisters. For Lilika.” Bellanca finished her determined words a little winded as the road sloped upward toward the main temples.
“But no one comes back from the high wall.” Dimitri could barely talk, barely keep up with them.
“ She will,” Bellanca growled. “You’ll marry her. You’ll have lots of babies. You’ll inherit Spiro’s.”
Dimitri just nodded, his face bright red from running flat out for minutes. She didn’t know if he believed her. She’d have to prove it.
They met Dex and Silas jogging toward them at the next intersection. They all stopped, breathing hard. Dimitri gave them a wary once-over, lifting his knife between them.
“It’s okay,” Bellanca panted. “They’re with us, not with Eryx anymore.”
Dimitri lowered his knife. “We have to keep moving.”
Silas’s tawny eyes softened with sympathy. “We heard. We saw. We were on our way to warn Carver and Bellanca.”
“It’s all happening early.” Dex’s gaze flashed up the hill, then back to Dimitri. “And then we saw who Eryx chose…” His grimace said everything. Dex and Silas had only met Dimitri and Lilika a handful of times when they’d accompanied Carver to pick up Bellanca at Spiro’s, but they’d talked and laughed, and no one forgot Lilika. She was too kind and beautiful.
Bellanca’s chest lurched, making breathing even harder. “Let’s go.” They sprinted off again as if Cerberus chased them and death followed.
“Do we have a plan?” Silas asked.
“Kill Eryx,” Bellanca snarled.
She ignored his side-eye, and he added, “That’s not a plan, that’s a result. How do we do it?”
She shook her head, her breath pounding in her throat. “We’ll see when we get there.”
Dex snorted, and she wished he’d saved his air for running. As they got closer to the temple square and the heart of the city below the castle, the streets grew more crowded. They garnered looks that went from shocked to fearful. Several people started chasing after them. Not to catch them, but to see where they were going and why.
Good. She’d wanted an audience from the beginning. She let sparks sizzle down her braid and cascade off her arms. Flames trailed behind her. She’d start the show early—just like Eryx.
The crowd thickened, and she toned down her fire and pushed her way through people as the cobbled streets climbed toward the highest point above the main harbor. At times, it became impossible to run, and while she’d needed to catch her breath, she internally screamed in frustration at the slowdown. She blazed up again, her flames making a path for them. “Out of the way!” she shouted.
I will not fail. The words burned as brightly in Bellanca’s mind as her magic did in her body. She blazed and sweat and panted and ran . There was too much at stake. Failure wasn’t an option.
The road climbed steeply, and she and Carver outpaced the others. Feet pounding, breath sawing in and out, they didn’t look back. The streets whispered as they blew past. “Magoi. Fire. She did it.”
Bellanca had no breath to answer, but she flamed the entire way to the huge courtyard that marked the center of life—and death—in Atlantapol.
Lookout point. Killing wall. Red colored her vision.
That wall was the backdrop to temples, grand and soaring. To Zeus. To Poseidon. To Apollo, Artemis, Demeter, and Ares. To Hera. Hate and heat roared through her. This was the site of generations of daily sacrifices that should never have happened. Zeus could’ve stopped them. Poseidon, too. Their hands were not clean in the history of Atlantis.
Punishment had turned into nothing but a way to keep Magoi in check, creating new problems in the place of previous ones. But then, the gods never fixed the wrongs their worlds spiraled into—the greed, the violence, the injustice. When it got bad enough, Zeus finally chose a human to set things on a different path.
No, a couple. A fated pair.
Bellanca abruptly stopped flaming as she barreled into the back of a huge, solid crowd that had already formed in the temple square. She couldn’t risk burning everyone between them and Eryx, so she held back her fire, keeping it alive and blazing inside her body. She and Carver pushed and shoved their way forward, moving too slowly. Dex, Silas, and Dimitri caught up and joined them, but the crowd was too thick and stopped their progress halfway across the vast marble courtyard.
“Make way!” Silas boomed with authority. He drew his sword, puffed out his barrel chest, and used his castle uniform to get people’s attention. Dex did the same, and they created a path toward the front of the square. After maddening minutes, the five of them finally tumbled out of the mob and into the empty area around Eryx.
Bellanca’s jaw dropped. Eryx always had soldiers maintain a large perimeter, and today it was even bigger. Tall, burning torches made up a wide semicircle around him with the harbor wall as a backdrop. Eryx stood on the far side of a marble altar close to the sea wall. Lilika lay atop it, tied down and struggling.
Bellanca snapped her mouth shut. She heard a strangled sound on her right and turned. Theophania and Spiro stared at her from the front row in utter shock, him pale and sweating and her gripping his arm and crying. She locked eyes with a wan, weeping Theophania, and a gaping hole opened inside Bellanca. Her stomach plummeted right through it, hollowing her out like a gutted animal.
Of course they’d be there for their daughter until the bitter end. Lilika was their entire existence.
Her heart a tight, aching knot, she tore her gaze from them and turned back to Eryx. He stared straight at her, smug, and her eyes narrowed. She might not have given him the awful surprise she intended, but did he think himself safe behind his wall of soldiers?
Wrath smoldered over her as she stared back at him. The Shard of Olympus hung around his neck, glowing in the center of the amulet. He still had a slight red mark across his forehead but no real burn, and he moved without any obvious discomfort. Hera must’ve healed him so he could perform his ceremony, just as they’d feared.
“Lilika,” Dimitri choked out. He took half a step forward then stopped. “We have to…” Turning to Bellanca, he gripped her elbow. “What do we do?”
Slowly, she exhaled. Her throat loosened. They had to save Lilika, expose Eryx for who he really was, and keep Hera from gaining the gratitude of Atlantians. This wasn’t just another confrontation like so many they’d already lived through. And it wasn’t about just one life, either, no matter how precious to her. It was politics .
She wanted to spit the word from her thoughts. She only knew one way to get things done. She blazed in and fought. How could she leave her friend tied to an altar, terrified and facing down death with thousands of people watching, while she stood around and talked ?
“Eryx!” she yelled, steeling herself.
With the wall at his back, he stood beside Lilika’s head, holding a curved knife in one hand and a golden chalice in the other. Lilika turned her head at the sound of Bellanca’s voice. Her eyes widened. Tears streamed down her face.
Bellanca stared straight into her friend’s panicked eyes. Then her gaze slid to the right, finding Spiro and Theophania again on the fringe of the crowd. What did they see when they looked at her? A warrior? A stranger? A fraud? She broke eye contact with them, swallowing hard.
Eryx had the gall to laugh, a low chuckle she couldn’t hear, but the Shard of Olympus illuminated his face from below, throwing icy-blue light over the cruel slant of his lips and the milky gleam of his teeth. His gaze flicked to Carver. “Seize them!” he shouted.
Bellanca stepped forward and burst into flames. “Don’t move!” The soldiers reeled back, alarm blaring across their faces. “Touch me, and you will die. You know that.”
They halted. She’d already killed. She just wasn’t in disguise this time.
“She’s trying to stop me from ending Punishment!” Eryx yelled to the crowd. “She’s working with Zeus to keep Atlantis sunken and magicless. Hera wants to save us. She wants our glory again. She gave me this”—he tapped the hilt of his knife to the amulet—“to bring back magic.”
Bellanca’s voice trembled with fury. “Zeus gave me that amulet to end Punishment for Atlantis. Hera stole it from me and gave it to you.”
“Lies!” Eryx spat. “Zeus is our oppressor. Hera is our savior.”
Bellanca’s loathing rolled off her in scorching waves. She took three measured steps forward, holding her flaming hands out to stave off the guards. They backed away from her but didn’t open a path to Eryx. Looking beyond them, she called out, “I challenge you, Eryx Atlantis, to your throne.”
Eryx recoiled, his eyes widening in shock. “You can’t challenge me. I’m king.”
“A throne you’ve bathed in the blood of Atlantian women,” she continued forcefully, ignoring his protest. “A throne you keep with the help of an undeserving goddess who kidnapped Atlantis’s children and killed its oracle. That’s right!” She spun, addressing the crowd. “Eryx is a selfish, unworthy king, and Hera betrayed us all!”
Any noise from the crowd seemed to get sucked straight into the Underworld, and shocked silence rang out just as loudly now.
“It’s true!” A male voice suddenly shouted from the portico of Zeus’s temple. Her gaze snapped to him. It was the soldier who’d found his son in the meadow earlier. He still wore his uniform, and the boy was with him. His voice carried to every corner of the square as he told everyone exactly what had happened with Hera that day.
“Lies!” Eryx yelled again.
“Not lies!” another voice called out, this time from beneath the pillars of Athena’s temple. Pav stepped forward, flanked by four of his men. “We were there, too. Bellanca saved the children, who are all finding their way back home right now. She saved us.” He looked straight at her. “She’ll save you .”
Gratitude exploded in Bellanca’s heart. She stood tall, her voice strong. “Hera doesn’t care about ending Punishment for you. She just wants the glory of it. Zeus wants to restore Atlantis to magic and to the real horizon—above the waves—but he refused to do it with a leader like Eryx on the throne. He sent me to reignite magic and take Eryx’s place. Zeus brought me across worlds for you. I’m a Thalyrian princess. I’m Magoi. I’m the Firebringer, and Atlantis will rise again!”
The crowd erupted in wild cheering. But not everyone rejoiced. Her eyes tripped over Theophania and Spiro again, their horrified faces bloodless, tear-streaked, and stunned. There was no way they didn’t understand that their only child was on a sacrificial altar because Bellanca had come into their lives, and they’d helped her. Her chest folded violently in, crushing her burning heart. Yes, she was the fake they’d been accidentally harboring. She was no second daughter.
The cheers turned deafening, and she swung back to Eryx. He’d have to answer her challenge now. It was too public to ignore. She’d planned on restoring magic before this fight, but with Lilika’s life on the line, she didn’t have a choice anymore.
Fury and hatred screwed up Eryx’s features as he stared her down. His lip curled, and she waited for him to step around the altar and fight her for the throne. Instead, his eyes still locked on her, he plunged the knife into Lilika’s stomach.
“No!” Bellanca leaped forward, running. Lilika’s cry of pain and shock echoed in her ears as Bellanca ran for Eryx. The guards pitched out of her way. Eryx lifted the bloody knife, scraped its dripping edge against the chalice, and licked the rim of the cup. The Shard of Olympus ignited, going from ice blue to Magoi green, and powerful magic exploded in the air.
“Don’t move a muscle,” she heard Carver snap to the guards. Dimitri yelled Lilika’s name. His footsteps pounded after her.
“Today, I end Punishment!” Eryx dropped the cup and the knife with a clatter and dragged the amulet from around his neck. He held it aloft. “With the help of Hera, Queen of Olympus, magic is mine!”
A great pulse of translucent green power burst from the shard, crashing into Bellanca and halting her progress before she reached the altar. Gritting her teeth, she leaned into the magic-thick air and struggled forward. Water abruptly poured from Eryx’s hands, drenching him and Lilika. He still clutched the amulet. Blood ran from Lilika’s abdomen and dripped over the side of the marble slab. Eryx started to laugh, an awful gleam in his eyes. They brightened—lighter, greener. Breathing hard, she pushed toward him, each step a battle against the magic blasting out of the shard. A puddle formed beneath the altar, darkened by Lilika’s blood. Her stomach flipped over.
“Dex! Dex!” she screamed over her shoulder. If Eryx had just received his ancestral magic, there was a chance Dex had, too. “Healer!” She waved him forward and pointed at Lilika.
Dex started to push his way through the web of magic. Behind him, people huddled and covered their heads, the crowd too thick to be blown backward. Bursts of flames popped here and there—fire magic. If any wind blew, she couldn’t see it. A tremor shook the ground. Water arced over heads, splashing chaotically.
She turned back to Eryx with hate in her heart. Atlantians were gaining elemental magic and had no idea how to control it. That was bad on any day. With a hysterical crowd, it would be deadly.
The greenish pulse suddenly freed her from its sticky clutches, and she lurched, nearly falling after pushing like a plow ox to make any progress. Regaining her balance, she saw the powerful wave roll out over the island, huge and all-encompassing. The gift of Olympian magic back to Atlantis.
There’d be consequences to the sudden change, but they’d have to wait. Sprinting for Eryx, she launched a crackling red line of vengeance at his head. He ducked, and her fire scorched the harbor wall behind him.
Not slowing, she ran flat out, put a hand down next to Lilika’s hip, and vaulted over her, slamming knees first into Eryx. She toppled him over, and they hit the ground on the far side of the altar. Bloody water splattered around them as she grabbed his face in her hands and savagely burned him.
Eryx yowled and twisted so hard that he got away from her. He slithered out from under her like the snake he was, his cheeks wearing twin blisters. His eyes wild, he slipped the medallion back around his neck as he jumped to his feet and conjured more water. It spewed out of him, graceless and messy, but it still soaked him and dampened her when he’d never used magic before in his life and shouldn’t be able to call it forth so easily. Springing up from the wet ground, Bellanca sun flared him. Her magic engulfed him, and he sizzled, steam rising from his skin and clothing. The wetness evaporated, leaving him dry and reddened. He gaped, backing away from her.
Ferociously, she growled, “Magoi to Magoi, I claim your throne. I claim Atlantis. You’re finished, Eryx.” She stalked after him.
“Never,” he growled back, drenching himself all over again. He whirled and ran, pulling up short at the tip of Carver’s sword.
Smiling acidly, Carver edged his blade toward Eryx’s chest until the tip touched Eryx’s sopping tunic, and a bead of water rolled down Carver’s shiny Thalyrian sword. “I never should’ve thrown that sparring match to keep my cover.”
Eryx’s tense stare slid down the length of Carver’s impeccable blade. His jaw ticked. “I should’ve known you were an imposter from the way you spoke to your king.”
“You were never my king.” Carver lifted the amulet with the tip of his sword. “Time to give this back.”
Eryx sprang away, drawing his sword in a whip-fast move. “The amulet’s mine.” He settled into a fighting stance. “Let’s see who wins this match,” he taunted.
Carver’s condescending snicker probably did as much damage to Eryx as a sword. “Don’t you know anything about Power Bids? Magic fights magic—which you have now. And I’m not the one claiming your throne.”
Eryx paled. Fury? Fear? Then he turned on her and lunged.
Bellanca spun out of the way of his blade and came back with her own. Metal clashed on metal. They only exchanged a few heavy blows before she knew she’d lose without magic. Eryx pushed hard. She pushed back, sending a surge of fire over the crossed swords that forced them both to drop the searing metal.
Eryx hissed, shaking out his scorched sword hand. Panic flashed in his eyes. He drew a dagger and threw it. Bellanca sun flared it to ash. He backpedaled, water bubbling out of him. She sun flared it away. He drenched himself again, and she dried him off. He burned a little more each time, blisters painting his skin an angry red-black to match the anger in her heart. She burned him again. He grabbed the Shard of Olympus and tensed, his damaged face puckering as he dragged enough moisture from the air to send a big wave crashing over her.
She gasped as cold water tainted with Eryx’s essence slammed into her. Bellanca stared at him, dripping and enraged. She curled her hands into fists, sparks fizzling between her wet fingers. Smart . But unpracticed as he was, he’d never be able to do that without the shard bolstering his magic.
Eryx’s eyes gleamed. The smug bastard knew he’d won a round. She tried to dry herself, steaming and sizzling. It was too slow. Eryx had drenched her, so they were down to blades again—a fight she’d lose.
She glanced toward the altar. She wasn’t the only one who might lose. Dex hunched over Lilika, his panic obvious, strain contorting his face. Bellanca turned away from the blood on the ground, from her unmoving friend, keeping emotion at bay by sheer force of will and the promise to herself that she’d make Eryx pay for this.
Still hovering on the edge of her fight with Eryx, Carver caught her eye. He nodded reassuringly. She could do this. Magoi to Magoi. It was the Power Bid she’d wanted since arriving in Atlantis.