Chapter 44
Chapter
Forty-Four
Selene braced at the Entia’s bow, the wind whipping her hair into ropes that lashed her cheek. Salt stung her lips, and the air carried the heavy promise of rain—but that storm was hours away. Their storm would break much sooner.
Around her, the Triarius Fleet floated in a crescent formation, sails furled, decks hushed. To any outside eye, they were ghosts adrift among the rocks and fog. But beneath that quiet, hearts beat, blades waited, and vengeance breathed.
Beyond the cove’s jagged mouth of rocks, Thorne’s fleet floated arrogantly in the open. Thirteen ships, their decks crawling with figures too far away to name, but close enough to count. Secure. Certain. Blind to the reef’s hidden crescent and the narrow opening to the cove.
A fatal oversight.
Little Gus shivered on Selene’s right shoulder, then gave a little squawk.
“I know, I’m anxious too,” she said.
Overhead, gulls wheeled and screamed, while the crew worked in silence behind her. No sound outside the scrape of whetstone on a blade, or the clink of chains. All of it muted by the breathing of the sea.
Selene filled her lungs once more with the salt air and waited.
Oskar Dahlin crouched in the shadows of Thorne’s cramped gun deck, inhaling old powder and the cold tang of metal.
Lanterns swung on thick ropes overhead, casting restless yellow light across the cannons.
The ship swayed faintly beneath him. A warm draft pushed through the gunports now and then, but it did nothing for the seawater clinging to his skin and soaking his clothes.
Fish—never Ramon—dripped water beside the forward cannon, bare chest gleaming in the lamplight. He wore his tightly coiled black hair beneath a dark bandana, and checked the fuse with the easy, restless hands of someone born to the sea.
“You ever get used to this part?” Fish whispered.
Oskar leaned back against the hull, his bandolier of knives resting across his chest. “What part?”
“The waiting.”
“No.”
Waiting was when the ghosts came to sit with him, breathing down his neck while the world held its breath for violence.
Above, the sounds of boots moved in steady patterns. Oskar followed the sound to the murmur of the crew speaking. It was all normal. No one suspected a thing.
He prayed the same was true for the others. If Omar’s other grandkids were half as lithe as Fish, and the Blades and Drynopians were keeping close, then maybe—just maybe—they were all where they were supposed to be. Hidden. Waiting.
Fish peered outside and huffed out a breath. “Soon, yeah?”
Oskar nodded and glanced out to where he knew the fleet was hidden. “Soon.”
Blaze ducked behind a scrubby bush, palm loose on his blade hilt. He wasn’t planning to use it—unless the herd of Sandstone Elk spooked. And then? Every man for himself.
The herd grazed in loose knots across the saltgrass flats, driftwood-colored antlers swaying like branches. Occasionally, one would raise its head, scenting the air for predators.
Roslyn knelt beside him, peering over the sharp drop of the cliffs and into the cove below. She put a spyglass to her eye and aimed it at Thorne’s fleet. “Think this’ll work?”
Blaze stared over the other side of the narrow strip of land, the white sand dunes, and the graveyard of Thorne’s making. “Has to.”
To their left, Luc crouched low in the grass, one hand on the ground to steady himself. Xavier eased around the herd to the far flank.
Below, red spilled, quick and brutal, as Thorne’s men opened throats. Augustus fought his way free and, for just a moment, it looked as if he’d make it. But the swarm crashed over him. Pinned him in under a minute.
Blaze squeezed his blade hilt until his knuckles went numb. “Damn it, Augustus,” he whispered. “It’d be just like you to die before we can rescue you.”
Roslyn lowered the spyglass. “That’s the last signal.”
Standing, she pulled a square of glass from her leather coat and flashed sunlight into the cove.
Selene caught the flash of light from the corner of her eye, high above the cliff face.
Roslyn.
Everyone was in position.
Selene brushed her fingers beneath Gus’s chin, steadying her own nerves as much as his. “You remember what you have to do?”
A wash of images spilled through her mind. The herd. Short bursts of fire—just enough to scare them.
Selene dipped her chin, mouth curving despite the storm in her chest. “Make trouble.”
“We have bigger trouble,” Kai said, voice low but unshakable. “The gas burns.”
Her Stormguard spun to face her.
Otekah followed Kai’s gaze to where a loose tongue of flame twisted unnaturally in the mist. Fire coiled from the torch, then winked out with a sharp, unnatural hiss.
Poloma’s eyes narrowed on the green-tinged haze. “It’s flammable. If the gas thickens—and it will—we could be looking at multiple explosions.”
Poisoned and burned alive.
Usti had thought of everything.
“We need to put out the torches,” Pamuy said, already turning to move. “Tiponi and I can—”
“What if you’re not fast enough?” Otekah cut in.
“We can’t stand here and do nothing,” Niabi argued.
“We won’t.” Kai’s pulse kicked harder. “But, whatever we’re doing, we need to do it fast.”
A tendril of gas drifted toward a fallen torch. The flame caught—
Not an explosion. A bright, sharp flare. It licked toward the mist and curled back on itself, like it had tasted something it wanted more of.
Not violent. But hungry. Controlled.
A memory surfaced, fierce and clear. A piece of advice her mother had given her long ago. “Sometimes you don’t fight the fire—you feed it. Just enough to turn it back where it came from.”
Shadi had meant emotions. Rage. Grief. But the memory roared forward now, uninvited, and made a different kind of sense.
Kai’s breath caught.
She knew exactly what to do.
“We don’t stop the fire,” she said. “We start it.”
The others stared at her, blinking.
“Not in here,” she clarified. “At the source. The vent.”
Poloma straightened. “A controlled burn.”
“Exactly.”
Kai scanned their faces—her Stormguard, every one of them the sharpest blade in her arsenal. “Arrows. Flame-tipped. We burn the poison before it spreads.”
“The fire will hit the heavier gas at some point,” Poloma said. “It will explode.”
Kai didn’t like it any more than Poloma did. How much more strain could the mountain take?
But it was this, or risk a culling of Silver Wolf that would leave the mountain with little to no protection. Anyone could take the mountain, and would, just to control their mines.
Niabi drew her bowstring. “I’m in.”
Otekah shrugged. “Why not? Let’s do it.”
Tiponi and Pamuy exchanged a look, then nodded once, together.
Only Poloma remained silent, scanning the training hall. Females cleared the arena of fallen bodies, dragging stunned warriors to higher ground, calling softly to those still conscious.
Kai gripped Poloma’s arm. “They deserve a chance.”
Poloma sighed, long and low. “Then let’s give it to them.”
Each step to the arena floor brought every doubt to the forefront. What if the fire caught too soon? What if they misjudged? What if she burned them all alive?
What if the entire mountain fell?
Kai thought of Fala. Brave. Brilliant. Her heart, her home.
She had to try. For Fala, she had to survive.
Her hands trembled. Just once. Then stilled.
The Stormguard formed a semicircle before the vent, arrows notched and ready. The Broken Axe sisters each held a torch between them, flames flickering with the weight of everything unsaid.
Above, from the viewing gallery, survivors watched with damp clothes pressed to their mouths. Fifty. Maybe less. Too many had already fallen ill.
“Yesterday, we were but strong fingers,” Otekah said, drawing back her string. “Today, we are the fist.”
The one Usti would never see coming.
Kai met all their eyes. “I chose you for a reason. I don’t make mistakes.”
Five sets of eyes gleamed back in response.
Then all six warriors raised their bows.
One spark.
One shot.
And the mountain would decide who survived.
Kai pulled her bowstring taut across her cheek. “Steady—”
The knife held steady at Augustus’s throat.
Trust Thorne to pick the most dramatic way to kill him. Back against a splintered plank, throat bared to the wind, blade ready to open him up while the surf cheered them on.
Augustus’s mind wasn’t on prayers or regrets, but on the count of weapons within reach. The distance to his father. And the precise moment to move before the cut came. Because fuck Thorne, and fuck his hurt feelings.
Augustus wasn’t dying over this.
The earth trembled.
A subtle vibration at first, a tickle through the bottom of his boots and up his legs.
Every gaze lowered to the shivering sand.
Then came the hooves—unmistakable, thunderous, shaking the ground like a war drum.
The Vorash shrieked and launched from the plank, wings beating hard enough to shake feathers loose.
Mettius froze, turning slowly to look over his shoulder.
Augustus followed the sound—hoofbeats, growing louder—
Impossible…
A herd of Sandstone Elk was storming the beach.
Six flaming arrows flew as one.
A flicker of orange trailed behind each shaft as they sliced through the mist, then disappeared inside the vent.
The silence was absolute.
Then—
A sound like the world inhaling.
Fire erupted.
The vent ignited in a spiraling blaze, racing backward into the unseen tunnels beneath the mountain. For a single heartbeat, nothing else moved.
Then the ground shuddered.
Far below—deep and distant—the mountain groaned.
A thunderclap split through the training hall, and in the far reaches of the stone walls, a muffled explosion boomed—low and distant, but powerful enough to make dust rain from the ceiling.
Somewhere in the belly of Black Spear Mountain, the poison had met its match.
Fire nipped at the heels of the Sandstone Elk. Small bursts, spitting through the grass, never touching hide, just enough to drive the herd down the sharp incline, through the reeds, and across the sand.
Little Gus.