Chapter 33
As much as he loved seeing Kyrja’s face hovering over his the moment he opened his eyes, Nik would prefer doing so someday without a cloud of dread—and in this case, ash and lightning and ice—looming over them.
Her hair was a beautiful ruin, lashing her face in the wind from the billowing plumes of fire and cinders, her hands cool on his flaming cheeks.
He could still feel the lingering touch of her lips on his, even as he pulled awareness and his hold on the volcano back to him.
“Kyrja.” He pushed up onto his elbows, trying to sort out the last few minutes. There’d been the plunge into the icy sea, the fast-forming rock rising up to meet him, to lift him back out, to shoot upward. Then… “Modur?”
Kyrja motioned down the mountainside. “She went down to face my father.” Her fingers feathered the hair off his forehead. “We need to end this, Nik. Can you feel those tremors?”
He pushed the rest of the way up, hands to the ground. Was it him, causing the disturbance? He’d known it would upset things, to call so much lava to one location. But he’d trusted that Daemon would see in an instant what he was doing and counterbalance.
He was, Nik could feel that. They all were. Every other volcano was stable, if more still than usual, their flows and pools diverting to him. Even as this mountain had risen so quickly, he’d felt Daemon’s stabilizing hand at work around him, keeping things steady.
Isidor wasn’t letting go without a fight, though.
Where new land was still forming under the ice, he was pushing back, trying to stop him.
That was what was causing some of the tremors, and more were coming from that ice mountain of his, which had its roots deep in the earth, where the springs fed it once Nik had cut off its path to the sea.
“That mountain needs to come down now,” he said.
Kyrja picked up one of his hands and linked hers with it. “Then let’s do it.” She sat beside him, both of them facing the slope, the riven plain, the far-off glint of light on Harroby.
“Giver, help us,” he said on a breath, even as he saw his mother, cloaked in lava, lunge for Isidor.
His fingers tightened around Kyrja’s, and he sang the lava down from the sky where it spurted, down the slopes, aimed fully at the ice mount.
When molten rock slammed into the ice, he could feel Kyrja there, widening the gaps, breaking it open.
He sent some into its cone, more into the springs that fed it.
“It’s cracking apart!”
Below them, Modur’s scream rent the air, and then Isidor’s. Nik gripped Kyrja’s fingers tighter, prayed harder, kept just a bit of lava in reserve, ready to help his mother if she needed him.
She landed on Isidor, and they both went down. He saw ice flashing, extinguishing flame, then more fire roaring up, lava splashing like water, melted ice and snow sizzling, turning to steam.
A roar. From the man? The mountain? Both, perhaps. Because in the next moment, he felt a heave unlike anything he’d ever known, against his magic and his body both, as Isidor flung everything he had into the shattering ice.
The mountain exploded.
For a moment, just one, it felt like victory. The resistance suddenly vanished, his lava flowing free.
Then he realized what a lie it was, as all those house-sized shards, the boulders of ice flew through the air as if launched from Stefanos’s canons.
“No!” He and Kyrja shouted it together. He sent lava out after it, but not fast enough, and the cold air at that great distance began cooling it, hardening it, sending it shattering to the ground.
Kyrja lurched onto her knees, reaching up with both her hands, dragging his up too.
She didn’t speak. Didn’t shout. Didn’t have to.
He could feel her magic pulsing out, even without having his own connection to what she could sense.
He knew every ounce of her will was focused on stopping those ice-rocks from reaching Harroby, from pounding down and destroying the dome, killing thousands, ruining the lives of many beyond that. He shared her desperation to stop it.
Raf was in there, along with all the outcasts they’d sent to the dome for safety. Brother Gylfi. Raf’s family. Countless others.
Nik had no idea how to reach that ice, already so far away, with his heat. So he didn’t try. Instead, he focused on Kyrja, on giving to her anything he could, pouring his own connections into her and praying it didn’t just burn her alive.
Lightning flashed. Not from the sky, but from the cone of his mountain, through the ash clouds. And then…lower. Their raised hands acting like a lightning rod, it streaked down to meet them.
He expected a jolt. Death.
Instead, it was like her kiss on the trireme—heat that should have stopped his heart but instead fueled it.
Not coming to them at all, he realized—flowing out from them, to the clouds, to that other lightning.
Bluer, edged in purple, and streaking not toward the clouds of smoke and dust, but out across the plains, like the bolt that had taken down the block heading toward her minutes earlier.
Ice shattered. Fell. Rained down upon the barren plain, harmless.
And then…quiet. He braced for another attack from Isidor, but there was nothing. No movement. No fight.
They pulled each other to their feet, both of them focused now on the base of the mountain, where his mother and her father had been locked in that battle of ice and flame.
On the ground was a mound of white and silver that had once called itself king, unmoving, smoke still rising from him. And standing over the fallen traitor was a woman consumed by fire.
His breath eased out from his lungs, peace filling him. Not just any woman. Not even just “Elianne.” The one who’d given everything for him, and who would do it again, no matter the cost to herself.
Modur. With a kiss to Kyrja’s knuckles, he staggered to his feet and ran toward her, thanking the Giver it wasn’t too late to finally let her into his heart.