7. Seismology 101
Ciarán was wrong. Obviously.
I couldn’t be the source of the earthquakes. The volcanoes were. We’d established that.
But there was an invisible force pressing against me, tangible the same way my tether to Ciarán was, but simmering with a more volatile magick.
The mountains themselves were calling out to me, drawing me in along a secret gravitational pull, begging me to let them loose.
No.
No, I was imagining things. I had to be.
The others stared at me in the dull glow of our Skal bottles, and I could see them calculating in their heads, lining up my actions with each earthquake.
I’d been fighting Ciarán on the bluff outside the hideout when the first one had hit.
That had been the first time since freeing Gams that I’d used so much magick.
“No,” I half-laughed. “It’s a coincidence, because the volcanoes are waking up.”
“And they’re waking up because the Saergrim is free,” Ciarán said carefully. “And the Saergrim is free because you released magick so powerful it broke half your ribcage.”
“I’m not the one who triggered the volcanoes!” I snarled. Orla and Fana flinched at my raised voice and both looked up at the cavern ceiling as if it might collapse over us. “Stop it!”
A tiny aftershock shook the cave. Orla grabbed Fana, but what was left of the ceiling remained intact.
“Careful, Blue.” Ciarán raised his hands with his palms towards me, like I was some sort of wild animal that needed calming. The gesture only made me more angry. More panicked.
“It wasn’t me.” I hissed, but that was wrong. I knew it was wrong. Ciarán was right. I was causing the earthquakes.
No. No, I wasn’t. Not directly anyway.
It was the magma running beneath the mountains. It was the pressure building beneath the earth. It was the volcanoes, fed by my magick. The earthquakes were just a symptom.
And what was it that Gams had said, about other factors influencing the volcanoes and when they might erupt?
She can’t have meant me.
I felt like I was turning into a rotsbane again. I didn’t have control. I couldn’t stop any of this.
“Remember to breathe,” Ciarán whispered in my head.
I forced myself to take in a wavering breath, and Ciarán nodded in approval.
“We shouldn’t be surprised, given that your grandmother is one who created the volcanoes with your family’s magick,” he said out loud for Orla and Fana to hear as well. “It’s not something you can help. Don’t worry, just be careful.”
“Don’t worry?” I repeated incredulously.
“The glacier should hold.” He looked up at the ceiling, ignoring me. “We might as well get as far as we can before we have to rest.”
He readjusted the pack on his back, and orange fire swathed his hand as he led the way deeper into the ice cave. I could sense Orla trying to meet my eye, but I didn’t have it in me to look at her, so I focused on my footing over the rounded river rocks and followed Ciarán into the dark.
I loved volcanoes. My dream to become a volcanologist had always been a source of shame considering my geophysicist biological father who wanted nothing to do with my existence. I wasn’t sure if love for geophysics was hereditary, but if it were, I assumed I’d gotten it from him.
The idea that my fascination with volcanoes might have come from Gams wasn’t just ironic, it was a cruel joke because those volcanoes were threatening to kill her, and every magical attempt I made at saving her meant bringing the volcanoes closer to blowing.
I was the one who had woken them up. I was the one who was stoking their power.
Fana bumped next to me as we hiked over loose stones and ice in the gloom of the cavern. Jonquil’s eyes glinted up at me from her arms, and then Fana raised her face to look at me too.
“I can blind people,” she said simply.
I faltered and frowned at her. “What?”
“My magick!” she chirped. “If I used it right now, you’d probably all go blind. Or you’d suffer heat death.”
I tried to remember when I’d ever seen her use her magick before. I’d spent most of the summer traveling with her, keeping her safe, but had never so much as seen her wear Skal-goggles.
“Oh.”
“It’s because we’re Sovereigns, and our ancestors built Skalterra!
” She brightened. “I’m descended from Sir Fireld, and his magick created Skalterra’s sun.
I’m the last of my family, so there’s no one left to teach me how to control Skal, but every time I feel the sun, I know that’s my family’s magick. It’s my magick.”
“Great,” I sighed. “And when the volcanoes destroy everything north of the mountains including my grandma, I’ll know that’s mine.”
Fana laughed, which wasn’t quite the reaction I’d been expecting.
“The Saergrim created more than volcanoes. She made all the land and all the seas. Sir Quill,” she nodded at Orla’s back, “he made the air and the winds, and Lady Lyria made the moons and the cosmos.”
“And do their descendants also have unusable magick?” I snorted.
“I’m not sure,” Fana admitted. “It’s just Orla, but she seems to get on okay.”
“What was that?” Orla looked back at us. “I heard my name.”
“Wren is sad she can’t use magick without waking up volcanoes.”
“That’s silly.” Orla tilted her head at me. “Of course you can.”
“But Ciarán said—” I started.
“I didn’t feel any earthquakes last night.”
“I wasn’t using magick last night.”
“Yes, you were. I saw you healing yourself like Sorcha does.”
I placed a hand over my ribs. She was right. I’d been healing my ribs as we rested around our campfire, but there hadn’t been any earthquakes.
“Maybe it’s because healing magick is quiet and intentional rather than emotional and outbursting?” Orla suggested.
“I’m not emotional,” I shot back. Ciarán snorted up ahead, and I pressed my lips together.
“Of course not!” Orla hooked her elbow around mine to walk side-by-side. “But now that we know your magick can agitate the mountains, we know to be careful.”
“Agitate the mountains” was a nice way to say “initiate a cataclysmic chain of volcano eruptions”, but I tried to smile my thanks at Orla anyway.
“And don’t worry,” Fana whispered through a giggle. “If Ciarán is rude to you about it, I’ll blind him.”
We had no way of knowing just how far under the glacier we were when we finally stopped to set up camp.
Ciarán and Orla melted out a cave in the ice wall so that we could eat and sleep away from the mist that sprayed up from the rushing river.
We piled our bottles of Skal in the middle of the cave and ate our food in the pale blue glow of the liquid.
Ciarán offered a piece of dried meat to Fana. She shook her head and shrank back against the wall, but Jonquil padded out of her hiding spot behind a pack to take Ciarán up on the offer of food.
Orla turned her bread over in her hands, chewing slowly.
“There’s a baker at home who makes the best bread you’ve ever had. And it lasts for days without going stale.”
“Orla,” I sighed. She tensed next to me.
“I know.” Her voice tightened. “We’re going up there to find Iseult, not bread. But we’ll have to restock our rations eventually, and—”
“We get the Lyrian and then we leave,” Ciarán asserted. “In and out.”
“And Tiernan,” Fana whispered. When no one had the heart to reply, she continued. “He’s not our enemy. He’d never hurt me.”
I caught Ciarán’s eyes but kept quiet.
“We have to make it up there first,” Ciarán said. “Lady Quill, do you know where they’ll be keeping the Lyrian?”
“They killed her grandfather.” Orla wrapped her arms around her knees as she huddled beneath her cloak. “If they haven’t killed her too, she’ll be in the prison suite.”
“If they haven’t killed her?” Ciarán straightened up.
“They probably haven’t.” Orla shrugged. “My uncle doesn’t kill if he doesn’t have to.”
“Very reassuring. What a relief to know my parents are only dead because he felt he had to kill them,” Ciarán growled.
“He killed my parents too.” Orla’s eyes glinted in the dull blue glow of our shelter as her eyes flitted from the Skal bottles to Ciarán. “The prison suite is on the top level of the city. Iseult will be there.”
We prepared to sleep in silence, each of us wearing all the clothing we’d packed on the trip to stave off the cold the best we could.
The uneven floor of our cave was far from comfortable, and even though I’d curled up with Fana and Orla under all our cloaks, the bite of the icy air still stung.
They were used to sleeping in rougher conditions than I was, however, and Fana was snoring next to me with Jonquil snuggled in the crook of her arm before I’d even attempted to close my eyes.
Ciarán sat at the mouth of our cave, leaning against the carved-out entryway with his hood up and his head bowed towards his chest. Something about the stillness of his shoulders told me that he was still awake.
That, and the buzzing of his thoughts vibrating against my skull.
Maybe he was keeping watch, or maybe he was too shy to join us on the floor as the only man in the group. Blood was still dried on his cheek after being struck by the falling ice. A sudden shiver racked his shoulders, and though he suppressed it, his arms and hands continued to shake.
“Are you cold?” I wasn’t sure he would be able to hear me at all. I might not have tried if I knew it would work. However, Ciarán’s voice purred back in my head.
“Go to sleep, Blue. You’re injured. You need the rest more than anyone.”
“You look cold.” I asserted.
“I’m fine.”
Liar.
“Why are you sitting over there?” I asked.
“I’m keeping watch. Now sleep, Blue.”
He was too proud to admit he was cold. Fine. I could play that game too. Besides, the blood on his face was my fault, and I wouldn’t hesitate to do what I was about to do if he were still Liam.
“But I’m cold,” I said.
For a moment, I thought maybe the link between us had severed, because Ciarán turned silent in my head, still unmoving where he leaned against the ice.
And then—
“Would you like my cloak?” he asked.
“I would.”
Ciarán’s chin lifted, and his opening eyes cast an orange glow over his nose. He stood, pulling his hood back and removing his cloak from his shoulders. Ice and frozen dirt crunched under his boots as he crossed the few feet between us.
He crouched, taking care not to meet my eye, and let the weight of his cloak fall over me.
“Now sleep,” he said in my head. “Please.”
He tried to straighten up, but I grabbed his hand.
“I’m still cold.”
“Wren—”
“Lie down.”
“Is that an order?”
It could be. It would be for his own good.
“No.”
He pulled his hand out of mine, but then the gravel beside me shifted as he lowered himself into the dirt.
I lifted the edges of the cloaks to make room for him under their layers, and he shifted towards me until we were pressed together.
It almost felt like Liam holding me the way he had on the hotel bed when we’d visited Von Leer University together.
Almost.
“Satisfied?” Ciarán’s voice growled in the back of my mind.
“Yes.” I closed my eyes. He was annoying, but I felt better knowing he would be warmer here, and it didn’t hurt that I was warmer now too.
“You’re a pain in my ass, Blue. You know that?”
“It’s a pleasure and an honor.”
His fingers clenched where he held them against my side. I burrowed into the dark of his chest and pretended he was his other self, the one who had died for me, as his shivering subsided.