Chapter Fifteen #3
Cynthia edged up beside her, on high alert, one arm out in case she needed to push Ione behind her. But Ione shouldered past, needing to see.
“Ione,” a voice called back, and the air emptied from Ione’s lungs.
Lina.
Lina.
Why?, Ione thought, trembling, as Lina stepped into the light. Why did you leave? Why did you come back? Why now?
Lina halted a safe distance away, still partially obscured by shadow. But she could see Ione well enough, it seemed: the scrap of lace, the sparkling veil. “You are married,” Lina breathed, disbelieving.
Shame heated her and Ione hugged her arms, a paltry attempt to cover herself. “We made a deal,” she choked out.
Cynthia woke up, dived between them, knives out.
“Stand down,” Ione commanded, but while Cynthia stopped in her tracks, it was Lina who lowered to her knees, hands up.
“Please,” Lina mustered. “I didn’t come here to hurt anyone.”
“How did you get through the ward to begin with?” Cynthia demanded.
“The same way the rest of your guests did: en masse, when Kai lowered it earlier.”
Ione’s stomach flipped. They had grown lazy, overly reliant on the ward – Lina would still be known by most as her attendant, but the fact that no one had mentioned her attendant suddenly returning meant that Lina had slipped in without being noticed.
“Why did you leave?” Ione asked, her voice hoarse. “After what I told you? After – after what happened?”
After we kissed. After you looked at me like I was precious.
Lina held out one hand; it was Cynthia who spoke next, knowing Ione wouldn’t be able to see it: “She is missing two fingers on her left hand.”
“I returned to Soliz to try to stop Castor from coming anywhere near you,” Lina said hastily. “It took six phalanges before they believed the lies I fed them, about laying low and not knowing anything important about Oseidos or – or you.”
Her breath hitched and she stood, advancing a step even when Cynthia angled a knife towards her.
Closer, limned by the light of a nearby lantern, Ione saw that her hair was pulled back, out of her face.
And instead of the soft summertime dresses she had always seen Lina wearing, she wore trousers tucked into boots, a long-sleeved woollen shirt.
Fireproof, practical, an outfit for fighting.
For running.
“Castor is egotistical enough to believe I actually came back for him. But after the raid on Hearthstone, everything became so much bigger than Castor and his grudge, and I – I couldn’t – ” She wavered, her eyes burning into Ione’s.
“There was no stopping it, Ione. I’m sorry.
I’ll never not be sorry. I came back to warn you, get you out, and from there – ” Lina’s jaw tightened, uncertainty flashing. “From there, play it by ear.”
Nothing else came, until Cynthia grabbed Lina’s arm and shook her. “Warn us about what?” she pressed, “Stop what?”
Lina paled. Swallowed. “I’m not the only one who snuck in while the ward was down.”
Thunder rolled overhead, making Lina recoil. “I’m begging you,” she hissed to Cynthia. “Either come with us or go and warn the high priests, but please, gods, let me get Ione to safety before Castor finds her.”
“You – you’re insane,” Cynthia managed over an incredulous laugh. “You think I’d just let you leave with her?”
With a desperate noise Lina grabbed Cynthia’s hand and pressed it against her neck. “Do you feel that?” she challenged. “The binding ward Kai put onto me when he found out what I was?”
Cynthia wriggled, pulling back. “I don’t feel anything – ”
“I can’t hurt you, any of you, or I’ll forfeit my own life.” She released Cynthia and rounded on Ione, desperate, eyes darting to the window. “Please, Ione – ”
Ione stirred, awakened, and tentatively lifted a hand to Lina’s neck.
There, faintly – razor-thin wardstrings, the slightest hint of Kai’s signature, as familiar as her own now. A hint of malice, the threat of death.
“I believe her,” Ione murmured, and at once Cynthia whirled, aghast, and Lina slumped with relief. She sent Cynthia a look, her friend, her seleneschal, and Cynthia sheathed her knives. “Alert the guards.”
“But – ”
“Now, Cynthia.”
Lina took Ione’s hand as Cynthia sprinted back towards the stateroom, the gentle warmth of her coursing through Ione’s veins. “Can you run?” she asked, gesturing at Ione’s dress, her silk slippers.
Halls flew by in a blur, their footsteps reverberating through the strange nighttime silence. “Where are we going?” Ione asked, breathless, the hem of her dress gathered in her free hand.
“To Llyr’s crypt,” Lina said. “Behind Oseidos. It’s remote enough that no one would think to look there for you.”
“And then?”
Determination darkened her voice. “Then, I’ll come back up here and see what I can do about Castor while Rigel isn’t here to stop me.”
Cold air slammed into them as they launched out of a side exit. “I made good time,” Lina was saying, helping Ione down the stone steps and towards the plaza. “They’re waiting until midnight, until everyone is either asleep or too drunk to know what hit them.”
She paused at a crossroads, looked left and right, tugged Ione behind her down the left path. A high, keening alarm splintered the nighttime peace, and then another, another, each guard station flanking the altarhouse ringing to life.
“There’s Cynthia,” Ione said, and Lina laughed and hugged her.
“Thank the gods,” she breathed into Ione’s shoulder, making her shiver.
“They’ll find them. They’ll stop them. Menon above, with half the Mahina clan here, Castor will be obliterated.
” She cupped Ione’s cheeks, smiled through tears.
“I’m so sorry I disappeared on you. I’m so sorry for what you must have felt. ”
Ione smiled back, sniffling. “Don’t do it again or I’ll take it personally.”
Lina released a shaky laugh and kissed her cheeks. Kissed her. Held her tight and let Ione breathe her in, feel their hearts pounding as one, a steady drumbeat beneath the wailing alarms overhead.
Lina gently pushed herself away and unpinned the veil from Ione’s hair, her grin illuminated by more and more lamps being lit in the houses and shops lining the street. “Now,” she whispered. She dropped the veil, let it glide down the path, carried on the wind. “Let me get you out of here.”
“To the cave,” Ione supplied, and Lina threaded her fingers through hers.
“To the cave,” she agreed. “And after that – ”
Thunder roared, energy ricocheting across the night sky. As one she and Lina gazed skyward, both waiting for rain, for any sign of normalcy.
Nothing, until that energy crackled, fractured, a frigid wind sweeping over them.
Hydromancy. Kai’s hydromancy.
“The ward,” Ione whispered, dread settling like ice in her veins.
More sounds accompanied the screeching alarms, frantic footsteps, doors slamming, people shouting. The ward was down. The ward was down, and everyone on Oseidos – as far as Lodestone, as Soliz, beyond – felt it.
“But – ” Lina quivered, her horrified eyes still on the heavens. “But Castor wouldn’t know how to do that.” She grabbed Ione’s arms, frantic. “He wouldn’t know where it was, where to even start.”
“Who it was doesn’t matter now,” Ione shot back, although it did. “We have to go.”
Kai had sensed someone tinkering with the wardstone, someone who doubtless knew what to do.
She tallied the options as she tugged Lina after her, now.
Nalu, because he hated his brother? Hilo, still sulking over the wedding?
Her own parents, or perhaps River, a childish endeavour to protest the marriage and make Kai look weak?
Light flashed high above them, so abruptly that Lina shrieked and Ione staggered back, her hands flying to cover her face.
Bodies began to surge past them, a mix of people in wedding finery and nightclothes, firelight painting their terrified faces.
And overhead, magic, the dizzying scent of earth and charcoal from Sowelan’s spellcasters, and rallying against it, Menon’s briny petrichor.
Ione blinked the spots from her eyes, barely cognizant of the stampede pressing her and Lina into the wall, of the screams, the prickle of heat.
Spirals of flame high above the island spun themselves into dozens of spheres like tiny suns.
Comets, the same that had felled Caelos.
One by one they rained down onto Oseidos, barrelling into trees and buildings and altars, destroying everything in their wake.
Hundreds of homes, buildings, toppled like toys. Just like that.
“Ione,” Lina begged, her voice lost in the din. “Come on!”
The hordes of people thinned, replaced by spellcasters and guards, allies and enemies, shadowed forms she could not identify churning against the light of the fires.
Acolytes and Leviathosi worked to douse the flames razing the blackened, reeking shells of their homes; beyond them, crying, cursing, commands for more water, for more space, to get away from here.
Lina pulled at her, pleading, but Ione couldn’t move. Couldn’t leave. Couldn’t think for the cries of hatred ringing in her ears, the metallic clangs of colliding swords and tumbling stone.
Cynthia’s voice rang out over the chaos, hauling Ione back to life.
Cynthia was alive, thank the gods, and so close, just on the other side of the plaza, shouting orders at people to follow her to the beach.
Ione braced her weight against the cold wall, against Lina, her mind screaming at her to run, to go to Cynthia, to get all of them to safety.
Kai would protect them. He’d promised.
Another fireball barrelled into a shop across the street.
She recoiled at the vibration of a wall hitting the ground, a bloodcurdling scream cut short.
Dirty water swept down the path, soaking into Ione’s dress, Lina’s trousers; mangled bodies rode the current, limbs blackened either with char or frostbite, the stench of death.
And distantly, glowing with firelight, three waterspouts taller than Oseidos itself shot up behind the altarhouse.
They bent like the heads of snakes, lining themselves up before spearing through the gaping holes in the altarhouse’s ceiling. The resulting wave crashed through the plaza, down the hill, forcing Ione and Lina to cling to one another to stop from being swept away.
“Kai,” Ione hissed, hope overriding the nausea, the sickening sensation of bloody water clinging to her. He was there – of course he was, right in the thick of it. Ione took Lina’s face in both hands, brought her back down, forced her to hold her gaze. “I can’t leave them, Lina.”
Lina stilled, fear and understanding slackening her features. “You have no idea what Castor will do once he finds Menon.”
“Tell me.”
“Rigel wants Menon eradicated.” Lina shivered, haunted. “Not just dead, and not just Her vessel: Menon Herself, drawn to the surface, taken apart, immolated piece by piece.”
“And Castor’s just the man for that,” Ione returned, her voice coming out stronger, surer than she felt.
“He is. I know that more than anyone. He’s…” Lina lowered her face, her hands gripping Ione’s. “He’s my brother.”
Ione drew in a long, burning breath, her lungs choked with smog. Focused on Menon’s power within her. Felt nothing but her own frantic pulse.
But this is what she was destined for, wasn’t it? She could imagine Saros’s chagrined sigh. Finally, he would say. It only took half the island going down.
Another of Kai’s waterspouts snaked up over the altarhouse. It sharpened and curved, about to thrust down into the building again – until midway through it collapsed, sending tonnes of water bucketing down to earth. Another tsunami swept over them, a swamp of blood and ash and charred muck.
“Kai,” Ione and Lina said at once.
And then, from Lina, “Shit.”
Ione stared, lightheaded, up at the sky, willing another waterspout to rise, to prove that Kai was still fighting.
“Lina.” She lifted Lina’s hands to her lips, kissed her fingers. Tasted blood. “I understand if you want to stay behind.” She bowed her forehead to Lina’s, memorised the gentle curve of her cheeks, the honey-brown eyes. “But this is everything I’ve trained for.”
Lina shook her head, crumpling. “This is what Castor wants.” She wiped her eyes, let out a shuddering breath. “Godsdamn it, Ione. I’ve suffered Castor my whole life.” And then she smiled, her mouth trembling, and squeezed Ione’s hand. “I would never let you face him alone.”