Chapter 40
As soon as I cleared the house, my wings snapped open on either side of me, and I plunged into the fray at such speed that the wind pulled tears from my eyes.
I bolted straight for a quartet of Upper Army wind elementals battling the same titan I’d seen ram into the wards.
They were at an impasse, wind buffeting against wind as a cyclone of dirt and stone spun up around them.
The soldiers quaked with effort, their knees close to buckling; the titan’s eyes flared with triumph. Knots of lightning brewed in its fists.
I put my head down and picked up speed, aiming my body right at it.
Even the gossamer-looking wind titans had some physicality to them.
They weren’t the four Olden Winds themselves; they were simply beings who embodied their elements and could manipulate them.
Though they were admittedly better at it than any human, they weren’t infallible.
And this one was brittle with age; when I rammed into its chest, all its bluster evaporated, and it crashed to its knees, reduced to a heaving, pale creature with a gaunt face and bones like white twigs.
I raced on, the cheers of the soldiers I’d saved quickly swallowed up by the sounds of chaos all around me. A hundred smaller battles made up the whole, pockets of soldiers engaging Oldens with magic and gunfire everywhere I looked.
A knot of swarming chimaera caught my eye.
They’d killed two Lower Army soldiers and were now fighting over their corpses.
Fury licked hot through my bones. I sped toward them along the perimeter of the battle, dodging and ramming into and punching through any hostile that barred my way, and when I finally drove into the chimaera, they scattered like a pile of dead leaves.
I immediately spun back to dispatch them properly, my power roaring like fire in my veins and my body responding with lethal swiftness.
A jab, a kick, a brief tussle with one of them that ended when I slashed through its throat with my talons, and soon all five of them were dead.
I couldn’t linger over the slain soldiers and honor their deaths as they deserved, but at least the chimaera who had killed them wouldn’t be able to kill anyone else.
Suddenly the ground jolted. A shock wave of power knocked everyone, human and Olden, off their feet.
Only I remained standing, but I swayed to recover my balance.
Cracks in the earth raced down the lawn, some finger-thin, others so large that several Lower Army soldiers near me dropped into the chasms and disappeared.
I followed the cracks up the lawn in horror. They originated at the house, which had split in two; a jagged break sliced from roof to foundation, right through the entrance hall. The west wing and much of the house’s center remained relatively intact.
But an entire section of the east wing had crumbled.
My body turned to ice.
Gareth.
I launched myself into the air and sped back to the house, nearly crashing into Ryder, Farrin, and a detachment of Upper Army soldiers as they emerged from the front doors. I landed hard, skidding to a halt with Gareth’s name on my tongue. “What’s happened?”
“Caiathos,” Farrin said breathlessly. “I think we’ve finally calmed him down, but it was touch-and-go for a while.”
“To put it mildly, my lady,” added one of the soldiers, grimly surveying the ruined lawn.
Gareth. Gareth. I swallowed hard, forcing my mind to focus. “Can Caiathos fight?”
“Your mother thinks so,” Ryder replied. “She and Gemma are working with him now.”
“Philippa suspects that being imprisoned by Kilraith was so traumatic for his host body,” Farrin explained, “that now it’s doing everything it can to defend itself and resist Caiathos’s will.”
“Resist the will of a god, my lady?” another soldier asked. “Is that even possible?”
“A reborn god who isn’t at his full strength and has been tormented by Kilraith? Unfortunately I think it’s very possible, Lieutenant.”
I hardly heard them. There was something on Ryder’s face that I didn’t like, something that made my whole body prickle with fear.
“Where is Alastrina?” I asked. It seemed the safest way to ask—for me, if not for him.
“I can’t find her,” he replied brusquely, not quite looking at me. “That whole wing is in ruins. Three of the librarians got out before Caiathos…” He fell silent, his jaw working.
It was like the ground beneath me disappeared. I lost both my breath and my balance. My talons instinctively dug into the earth to keep me standing.
“We’ll find them,” I heard myself saying, as if it wasn’t me talking at all but someone very far away.
I strode past him toward the doors. “I’ll find them.
I’ll move all the rubble—I’ll blast it to pieces if I have to.
Someone find Lady Fontaine!” I shouted in the general direction of the soldiers.
“She’s a stone elemental, and she knows the house… ”
I trailed off as the ground began to quake, a soft tremor the others didn’t notice.
I whirled around, tracking its source to the horizon, where a dark figure loomed over the distant Mistline.
The figure was small, still far away, but the shape of its wings was clear, like the sails of a massive ship, and it was getting closer every second.
The long silver Mistline roiled behind it, right on its heels, like the train of a cape. The Mist was following it.
Following him.
Farrin came up beside me. “What is it?”
“He’s here,” I whispered, my mouth going dry. “Kilraith is here. And I don’t know how, but he’s dragging the Mist right toward us.”
A stunned silence followed my words. For a moment we were all caught in the same fist of terror. I heard Farrin’s sharp intake of breath when the disaster coming toward us became visible to her ordinary eyes.
Then the brisk clip of bootheels on stone made everyone turn back toward the house. Ryder let out a small, ragged cry.
Alastrina stood at the cracked threshold of Big Deep, hands on her hips, dust in her short black hair, and a glossy raven on each shoulder. Her blue Bask eyes glittered with gold, and even in a borrowed Upper Army uniform that didn’t quite fit, she was resplendent. She glowed.
“Kilraith’s here?” she said, her voice somehow deeper, sweeter, and brighter all at once. Everything about her was a more resonant version of the Alastrina I’d known. She took Ryder’s arm with a grin. “Then let’s kill him, shall we?”