Chapter 32
TERRAN
“She is magnificent, is she not?”
The human watched his partner, Queen Nerys, below. She, Lyra, and Mev stood below on a platform, still higher than any Gyorian would feel comfortable standing with no guards around it.
Aye, Lyra was magnificent.
Pulled apart again last eve after the Glade, I hadn’t spoken to her yet. The aftermath of the Gate had sent the palace into a frenzy of activity. With no sign of my father or his men yet, I was left to my own devices after declining to meet with the king and Kael this morn.
Heading back to my chamber, I stopped in the open corridor, spying the women.
“I’ve not seen anyone do that before,” I responded as the queen channeled sea water from further away than was typical. As they spoke, each of them performed some sort of magic. We all did it, absently at times, as an outlet for our extreme emotions.
In their case, sadness. Frustration. And not a small measure of confusion.
“Some say Nerys is the most powerful water-wielder in Thalassaria’s history.”
I looked at Sir Rowan with more than a small measure of skepticism.
“More powerful than King Thalos the Tidebreaker?”
An entire fleet was named after him, so powerful was the water-wielder who was said to summon waters without use of his hands, though I knew no one who had actually seen him do it.
“I suppose power is subjective and a case could be made for them both.”
“A human Thalassari king. A first. Do they accept you, Sir Rowan?”
“Rowan,” he said. “Some do. Some do not. It is Nerys who rules her people, and those who realize it take me for my role.”
“Which is?”
“Supporting her. And my own people, however I’m able.”
Something about the way he spoke… it was impolite to ask, but I was not known for subtlety.
“What is your human ability?”
He smiled.
An odd reaction to a question many would see as offensive.
“I’ve more than one,” he said. “Why do you ask?”
A non-answer, but I’d not expected one.
“It seems to me, supporting a Thalassari queen would take a human of exceptional skill.”
My brother had told me little of Sir Rowan, though it was clear he held the man in high regard. Especially for a human.
“From what I’ve been told, you have little regard, much less admiration, for any human.”
“You are not one to mince words. My brother mentioned as much.”
We watched the women pace, practicing their skills like caged trexan having been cornered. How could the failure of an action I never intended to aid weigh so heavily?
Lyra.
She’d not stormed into my life but slipped in as gently as any Aetherian. I’d seen her coming, but it mattered not. And the repercussions would be many, perhaps lasting for centuries.
But ’twas done. I’d no sooner see any other touch her than—
“They’ve breached the palace defenses.”
Those five words, impossible as they seemed, had to be true. Shouted by a guard nearby, and supported by evidence of chaos surrounding us— from the women below, who all began running at the same time— to Rowan’s expression, they were a catalyst like any other.
We both took off in the same direction: toward Nerys and Lyra and Mev.
The alarm bells clanged in my skull, and Rowan and I sprinted toward the platform. The air vibrated with the queen’s water magic, waves surging through the stone channels as she tried to fortify the walls.
“How in the hell did they breach undetected?” Rowan yelled.
“Cloaked ships,” I called to him, somehow knowing even though I hadn’t detected as much before now. “The Aetherian whispers can’t pierce iron and shadow. Someone inside must have helped them.”
The first wave of my father’s men crashed into the courtyard like a tide, shields raised, eyes gleaming with the kind of hate only bred in Gyoria.
I met them head-on, magic pulsing through my fingertips and then flagstones.
Buckling the ground beneath their boots as a tidal wave washed an entire contingency away.
When a fissure formed, I knew without seeing him it was my brother.
Only Kael, and my father, could create one so precise as that.
One Gyorian warrior fell screaming into the fissure. Another staggered as a strike of wind from the north side of the courtyard saw him join his comrade.
This was my clan Father was destroying.
A roar of frustration at my father for forcing such a clash followed another fissure, this one circular in pattern.
Lyra darted forward, my heart sticking in my throat watching her enter the fray.
Wind magic lashing into a cyclone that threw two soldiers back against the wall.
Even in the chaos, I felt her fury tethered to mine.
But then another joined it, one so powerful, I knew it must have come from King Galfrid.
Except, when the wind subsided, it was his daughter who stood amid the carnage.
“Terran!” Kael’s voice thundered from behind me, my brother now at my side.
Cries of pain rose as our warriors moved with purpose.
Gyorians in obsidian leathers met Aetherian power in bursts of wind and stone.
Archers filled the terraces above, their volleys vanishing into a storm of magic.
Queen Nerys’s water had begun to flood stone channels as she attempted to hold fires at bay.
Palace guards tried to drive a wedge through the Gyorian flank and failed.
This was not a skirmish at a border post. This was the kind of fight that rewrote songs.
And then I felt it. His presence.
My father.
King Balthor pushed through the chaos as though the battle parted for him, his great black ax in hand.
He had little use for it, but cherished the weapon.
The world seemed to hold its breath as he advanced.
Magic rippled out from him… dark, heavy, ancient, as if the mountain itself remembered what it was to fear a king.
Lightning flickered through the clouds, turning the palace spires into jagged silhouettes.
Below, hundreds clashed as stone and screaming wind unleashed immortals’ power.
I’d faced monsters, traitors, and gods. None of them compared to this. Balthor’s very presence bent the world around him, his will a storm that sought to break us all. The power that sealed a gate between worlds was within him.
He wasn’t just a king. He wasn’t just my father.
He was the wound Elydor never healed from.
“Balthor, call them off.”
The king of Aetheria, now stood beside his daughter. Bodies all around us. The ground split in more places than I could count. Buildings around us, demolished. But it would be just the beginning. All knew what a battle between the three most powerful rulers of Elydor meant.
The palace would be destroyed.
Balthor’s gaze, as hard and unforgiving as ever, found mine. Kael’s.
“You stand between me and our enemy. You’ve chosen your sides, and now you will fall with the rest of them.”
I tightened my grip, heart hammering. Whatever fate awaited, it was coming for me now.
It was coming for all of us. Just when I’d found her. Lyra could not get to me, nor I her, from across the deep chasm, but she was there. Standing beside the princess and her father with Queen Nerys looking on.
“I chose you. He”—I gestured to Kael—“chose you. For decades. But you chose hate over both of us.”
My hand twitched. Another explosion of magic like the one that had accompanied our clan would end tragically for too many.
The air thickened. This wasn’t just another battle…
it was the reckoning of bloodlines. Kael’s power pulsed beside mine, answering our father’s and cracking the stones beneath our feet.
The fire around us seemed to hesitate, caught between thunder and silence, as if waiting to see which of us would fall first.
Kael moved closer to me. So close, we were nearly touching. It wasn’t difficult to sense the unease, seeing us united in this way, among our warriors. It was them I spoke to.
“Well done,” I shouted. “A surprise attack against Aethralis has never been executed before in Elydor’s history. To what end, Father?”
“He will not listen to reason,” Kael said, loud enough for me, and no one else, to hear.
No. He would not. It had been some time since he’d done so. I’d been blinded by memories of the father he once was to have overlooked the fact.
My chest constricted as Father flexed his fingers, the gesture small but noticeable enough since it was one we’d seen many, many times before.
Apparently, the Aetherian king had as well, and he would take no chances with his daughter’s safety, having seen what our father was capable of. He didn’t move his hand, but Galfrid was close enough to us that his expression was not difficult to interpret.
I cannot do this.
It was a silent plea to Kael, but somehow, he heard it, nonetheless. He grabbed my right hand—something he’d not done since we were young ones —leaving my most powerful weapon, my left hand, free.
“Blood answers blood.” The words, if not the crack in his voice, were my brother’s. No one could do it but us.
I squeezed Kael’s hand, and at the same time as the King of Gyoria made a fist, Kael and I dealt the killing blow. He anchored the fissure as I kept it so tight, none but our father fell through.
I heard the gasps. Knew they weren’t for the death of the Gyorian king but for the kind of precision magic that had likely never been seen before. I certainly had no notion such a thing were possible.
It would not have been. Not without my brother by my side.
We released each other’s hand as deafening silence settled on all those gathered.
The Stone, at times restless and others, silent, released an energy impossible to ignore. With the shock of our father’s death having not yet registered, I reached for it, almost without thinking.
This time, there was no mistake.
It glowed as I’d only seen it do before for my father.
Every Gyorian warrior, including my brother, fell to their knees. They could be killed in such vulnerable positions as that. But would not be, of course. Neither Galfrid nor Mevlida nor Nerys would interfere now. They were mine to command.
And probably, I’d known it for some time. It had just been easier to deny it rather than admit my father’s days had been numbered.
“We killed him,” I whispered, pulling Kael to his feet. “We killed our father.”
I stared at the crack that had swallowed him in disbelief.
“We killed him.”
“We didn’t kill our father,” Kael said. “He died many years ago.”
I didn’t see her coming, but I felt Lyra at my side. Pulling her into me, I wiped a tear from her cheek. Words escaped me, but thankfully, they weren’t necessary. King Galfrid’s voice boomed through the courtyard.
“I know the pain of your loss well,” he said, addressing our clan.
Addressing me.
“May Balthor rest in peace as a new dawn for our clans, for Elydor, arises. I recognize his son Terran as the most powerful among you, and the new King of Gyoria, as does the Stone he holds in his hand.”
“As do I,” Queen Nerys added. “May we unite in the coming days. Forge a new path forward. End an unwarranted hate among those who wish only to live peacefully among us.”
She looked first at Kael and I, and then her partner, Sir Rowan.
Lyra tugged on my tunic, which is when I realized I was expected to speak. Gazing at my brother, who nodded, I said the only thing there was left to say.
The silence was suffocating, and I was expected to break it.
Raising the Stone high into the air, I took a deep breath, buffeted by Lyra on my left and Kael on my right, and called out, “I am Terran of Gyoria.” Lyra was amplifying my voice. How many hidden skills did she have?
I would enjoy finding out.
“The Stone has chosen. I vow to lead not with hate, but with the courage and strength to end it. Rise and do the same. Your king commands it.”
And they did.
One by one, they rose.
I was King of Gyoria. The price for such a title, heavy. But it was mine, now, and I would not see it wasted as our father had.
Terranor take him.
Reunite him with Mother and let him find peace in the afterlife that he was unable to find among us here gathered.