19 Violentia Nervus Potestas #4
When she pressed them over Gaius’s near-decapitation without question, he brought his over hers and wrenched out the projectile embedded in the man’s shoulders. Gaius jerked.
“Do all you can.” Kadra flooded her with power, drawing recklessly upon his strength in a way he hadn’t in over a decade.
Her irises flared, expanded. Looking dazed, she closed her eyes, vessels healing and tissue closing beneath her fingertips under the surge of magic.
It seethed from the unknown spigot Wrath had opened in him and boiled between their hands as he pooled more into her.
A tight burn pressed at his fingertips, a scrape and curl of power underneath as though something trapped under his skin sought to free itself.
He glanced down and went rigid at the bone-white protuberance forcing its way from his left index finger.
A claw that looked like a sharpened fingertip above his own.
Ten fucking hells, Wrath.
Behind them, a pillar crashed down lengthways across the Aequitas’s tiers.
The smoke had dissipated enough for him to glimpse the wall of flame closing in on the people still stuck there.
Withdrawing his left hand from Gaius, he felt for the heat, grasping the wispy tips of flame and redirecting them toward him.
The claw seemed to concentrate his power, arrowing it with exacting precision.
The conflagration slid over the rails toward the stage.
He siphoned away every active source until a fiery wall rose before him, temporarily contained to the width of his arms.
“Done!” Sarai panted, opening her eyes. She flinched at the flames before them.
They had no way of extinguishing the blaze. People piled over each other to flee, trampling those in their path. The Aequitas shuddered, on its last legs. Tiers that had stood for centuries collapsed. He had no choice. He turned to her, but she spoke first.
“I’ll find Cassandane and round up everyone stuck here. How much time can you buy us?” Pupils blown wide with fear, she still carried herself like a seasoned soldier. Love stole what air he had left.
“As long as you need.” It meant holding up the Aequitas and fencing in the blaze. The shaking fingers she fisted in his robes told him that she knew just how fatally that could stretch him magically.
“I’ll see you outside,” he vowed, covering her hands with his.
She squeezed them fiercely. “I’m holding you to that.” Then, she ran into the chaos.
Releasing a breath, he focused on the supports.
Power surged, and lightning twisted to life in his hands, forming a rope that wound around to the crumbling pillars and propped them up.
More fiery threads webbed around the Aequitas and netted the structure together.
His other hand grappled with the waves of fire trying to spread toward fresh oxygen through the exits.
Screams rang in the pandemonium, a song for which Noceo would pay dearly.
Minutes dripped by. Arms outstretched, he shook with strain as magic drained from him, resisting the quiet, distracting horror of the realms reaching clawed limbs into his world of fire.
Vessels erupted behind his eyes; blood filled the back of his throat as he wrenched flame away from those fleeing. His world narrowed to Gaius at his feet and the promise he had made Sarai. The Aequitas quaked. Cracks ran through it like capillaries and burst.
“Kadra!” Cassandane’s voice rose over the tumult. “They’re all out! No one else in here is alive!”
“Leave!” he roared, waiting for her to run past him before releasing his hold on the fire. It arrowed around the formerly great courthouse in serpentine claim. The air was quiet in Death’s wake. All that remained was the crackle and hiss of lightning on a leash, demanding somewhere to go.
Dissipating the lightning supports too soon would bring the Aequitas down on his head.
Hoisting Gaius over his shoulder, he let go of a thick rope of lightning holding the northern half of the courtroom together.
The Tetrarchy’s dais disintegrated in response, shifting the courthouse’s weight toward the statue of Aelius.
The Aequitas groaned, its last load-bearing walls tilting.
Pulling on a god’s power, Kadra channeled the remaining lightning ropes into the statue. It shattered.
He dove into the closest exit and sprinted out right as Aelius’s marble face landed atop the courthouse amid a cloud of dust.
He had never understood why people hadn’t wanted to get rid of it. Tourist attraction or not.
His steps slowed into the field where tens of thousands of voices rose in grief. And for once, he could say nothing. This was his handiwork as much as it was Noceo’s. He should never have believed himself safe. The past had demanded blood, and everyone had paid but him.
Kneeling, Kadra gently set down Gaius’s comatose body. He shut out grief and drew on rage.
“Rest well, old friend.” A door he’d kept locked for eleven years sprung open, ice and madness within. “They’ll pay ten times over.”