Chapter Sixteen
Lina
They clambered over the rubble into the altarhouse, sharp, mud-slicked debris from fallen walls and collapsed ceilings cutting their legs, scraping their hands.
Lina’s foot slipped on something in the ankle-deep water flooding the halls, revulsion slithering through her at the gelatinous hint of a leg.
Voices resounded from other rooms, some she recognised, many she didn’t.
Guards, high priests; Mikau, shouting at someone to help lift an injured person.
Ami was alive, too. Of course she was, had to be, down at the beach, safe with Cynthia and the rest of the people who fled in time to escape the onslaught.
Beside her, Ione resonated with rage, one hand over her heart. Feeling for Menon, Lina gathered.
Please, Menon, Lina prayed with every ounce of herself. I have not been good. I have not done enough. But please, gods, don’t leave us to die.
The enormous double doors to the stateroom had been blasted open, one hanging on its last hinge.
Ione hurtled through, heedless of the inferno raging beyond, the countless spellcasters brawling amongst the remains of what was once a lavish room.
But two voices resounded close by, bringing Ione to a screeching halt: Kai’s, and River’s.
Lina pulled Ione back, giving them both a moment to think.
To strategise, as though that was possible in this fracas.
Pyromancers climbed onto fallen stone and broken pillars, raising walls of flame and summoning midnight suns; Menon’s followers remained below, using the marshland of bloody water cloaking the lattice-tiled floor to their advantage.
Ione coughed, blinking hard against the brightness of the flames and the overwhelming twang of magic, one hand wiping her eyes and smearing blood across her face. She stared, frozen, at her own hand, someone else’s blood, and Lina hauled her behind a fallen pillar.
Ione shook her head, clapped her hands over her face. “Any second now, Menon,” she ground out. “Can you hear that? Our people, dying?”
A clash of metal demanded their focus. River, just on the other side of the pillar, his rapier flashing.
One, two men fell before him, his movements quick, precise.
Fire blasted towards him, making Ione scream, but River called Kai’s name and ducked, letting Kai whip a heavy trunk of water over his head to knock back whoever had attacked him.
“Ineen.” Kai’s voice, alarm mingling with fury.
River whirled, his horror palpable.
“Ineen, what the fuck are you – ”
Fire surged, too bright to see. There was a shout of pain – River – that sent Ione to her knees.
Suddenly Kai was there, dragging her to her feet, his arms blood-red and blistered through his torn clothes, his face a horror that had Lina stumbling back.
“It doesn’t hurt,” he told Ione. His jaw and neck shone red in the light, the flesh bubbling, healed just enough to keep himself going. “Don’t look.”
River came to Ione’s other side, his expression grave. Parts of his leather armour had cracked, revealing deep, angry lesions on his arms and shoulders. Kai flicked a sheath of water over his wounds, stanching the bleeding, before he thrust Ione into his arms.
“Get her out.” He fixed Lina with a weary stare. “And you. Are you here to make my day harder?”
Lina bristled. “If I was, I wouldn’t be standing here.”
Kai nodded. “Then do me a favour and help River lug my wife to the shoreline.” Blades of ice materialised in his hands, but Lina could tell from his posture, the dull bite in his voice, that he was tiring. Weakening. “Unless you wanna help me put out some fires.”
“Wait.” Ione wrestled herself from River’s grasp and marched up to Kai, her fists clenched at her sides. “I’m going to – ”
“No, you’re not.” Kai stooped to her height, his eyes dark. “If Menon gave two shits about any of us – ”
“She does care, and I – ” Ione broke off, her eyes glazing with some dawning dread. She swallowed, touched her fingertips to her neck. “She will come. I will see to it.”
River saw something in the smoke and dashed behind Kai, his sword flying, connecting. A cry of anger, a wet thud. Lina’s eyes darted, ensuring his safety, searching for familiar faces. For Castor.
He had to be here. Waiting, watching. He liked a good show, liked to see how things played out before he stepped in.
“Ione,” Kai said flatly, his ruined face exhausted.
“I keep my promises. Keep yours.” He tossed one of his ice blades into the air, snapped his fingers, sent it whizzing behind him into someone’s chest. “I will protect you, and protect what’s left of this island.
But you – ” He took her chin in one hand.
“ – get out of here, alive, and go and tell everyone what a big fucking hero I am.”
Ione slapped his hand away. “How dare you sacrifice yourself, when you’ve yet to answer for your ward failing.”
She was trying to goad him into arguing, fighting back, but Kai barely mustered a smile.
“Aye, that does need answering for,” he said agreeably. “And don’t misunderstand me: I’ll be leaving this room in one piece. I still have to figure out who was bold enough to tamper with my property.”
Kai caught River as he fell back to them. He gripped River’s sleeve, careful not to touch his wounds, before his hand moved to clasp his shoulder, and then to rest on his cheek. “Riv,” Kai murmured. “Go. Let getting you and Ione out of here be one good thing I do.”
River was silent for a horrible moment, before, “Kai, I – ”
“Well, don’t get all sensitive about it.” He shoved River towards Ione and smiled, wincing through the pain of his marred face. “I enjoyed playing that waltz with you,” he said. “We’ll play again soon.”
Kai summoned another ice blade and stalked away from them, back into the flames, the bloodshed. He launched forward, blades high, until he was swallowed by smoke; Ione dived after him, cursing when River yanked her back.
“Don’t,” he hissed, holding her still. He shot Lina a look sharp enough to cut, his eyes bloodshot. “Are you going to stand there and let her get killed, or are you going to help me get her outside?”
Ione bucked, kicking up a spray of rust-coloured water. “You have to let me try.” She thrust out an arm, reaching. “Lina.”
Lina grabbed her hand, but it was River who held her attention.
“I came back for Ione,” she said, drawing Ione’s hand against her heart.
White-hot embers bloomed close by, making Ione gasp and River fold her into his arms, but Lina twisted her wrist and extinguished the flames without a second thought.
“And as Menon as my witness,” Lina finished, her voice low, “I will protect her.”
Rumbling, screaming. Another portion of the ceiling collapsed, stones falling onto Moths and Snakes alike. The filthy water surged, but Lina held firm, strengthened by the awe in River’s eyes. Bit by bit, he loosened his hold over Ione, freeing her.
Ione straightened and cast River a withering look, the fear that Lina knew was strangling her tamped down, masked by her regal mien. A bloody queen, a goddess of death. “This is what I’m meant to do,” she said, summoning an ice blade of her own. “And I will do it.”
The water rippled, heavy, splashing footsteps approaching. River drew his sword and Ione pivoted, her head high, but Lina’s world tilted, her stomach roiling with nausea. With pure, immaculate dread.
“Lina,” Castor called, his voice lilting with amusement. “You decided to join us after all.”
He twirled his favourite dagger in one hand, one Lina knew well. The space where her left pinkie and ring fingers once were tingled, a phantom itch; she clenched her hands tight, willed herself to look unafraid. Unterrified. Unsick.
He pointed at Ione and River with the blade. “And you are?” he asked, cordially enough. Castor tossed the dagger into the air, caught it, looking none the worse for wear aside from some hastily-healed cuts, his blonde hair dirty and his eyes, Lina’s eyes, firelit and foxlike.
River charged, his body low as he threw himself in between Ione and Castor. His rapier flew like lightning, a long, diagonal arc.
Castor laughed and leapt backwards, out of River’s range – but River bolted after him, his steps sure and swift despite the water and rubble underfoot. He angled his blade, slicing downward, aiming for the space between Castor’s neck and shoulder, the fragile collarbone and bundles of nerves.
Castor twisted out of the way of the deadly blow, gritting out a curse when River’s blade glanced off his bicep.
River pivoted, his sword carving through water, smoke, the spray of blood, back up towards Castor’s unguarded abdomen – but Castor regained balance in time for twin flames to roil around his fists. Too close for River to dodge.
Ione darted, threw her weight into a violent swell that doused Castor’s flames and forced him back.
A burst of light, of steam, Castor evaporating the water and rearing back like a lion.
The grin on his face widened when Lina charged, every frazzled ounce of her focus on his magical signature, a twin to hers.
She seized his fists, poured her own pyromancy into his. The blinding fire sputtered, fizzled out, making Lina shiver with the sudden cold.
Castor stilled, a wild grin still plastered on his face. “You know there’s no coming back from this, right?”
“That doesn’t matter.” Lina let out a breath, embers crackling. “You won’t survive the night.”
He shoved her off of him; Lina staggered back a step, landing into Ione’s arms.
“You must be Castor,” Ione said coolly, although her grip on Lina’s hand was tight, edged with fear. River, too, tensed, subtly angling his sword and widening his stance.
Castor regarded Ione with the mild curiosity of a child about to squash an insect. “And you must be my sister’s latest distraction.”