59. Thyra
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Thyra
“Maxim!” My scream echoes across the cliffs as I throw myself out into the air.
Nara’s sprinting form is a blur of white behind me. I already shouted for her to get Antony and Stellen and I trust her to race back to them as fast as she can.
I also trust that Stellen will have heard my cry.
Plummeting toward the dunes below, I calm my heart and take these long seconds to center myself and set my intentions.
Only minutes ago, I watched Azul risk his life to carry away that damn wood. A risk that cleared my mind. For a few incredible moments, I pressed my hand to my chest while my heart expanded, the beats lighter. Not for days has my mind felt this unclouded.
Then Maxim appeared in the distance, flying on his serpent to one of the few intact towers, only to quickly turn around and leave, soaring low across the dunes, this time in my direction.
That’s when I saw the dunes rippling. The sand shifting. Serpents racing along beneath the surface, all of them headed for Maxim.
Now as I fall, the dunes thrash.
Riderless serpents ram Maxim’s serpent out of the air at the same time that more riderless beasts crash into Maxim, using their horns to hit him hard and fast. Bam! Bam! Bam!
Fire explodes around them. Sand sprays. My acute eyesight gives me the false sense that I’m nearer than I am. As if I could reach out and put a stop to the attack.
My fall is about to come to an end.
I brace for impact, taking a final deep breath and reaching for the sense of weightlessness that allows me to slow my tumble and levitate to the ground.
Even so, I hit hard, a thump that vibrates through the dunes ahead of me and back through the stony mountains behind me. If the attacking serpents feel the vibration, they don’t show it, their attack frenzied even as flames engulf them.
Leaping up from my crouch, I sprint as fast as I can toward the fire, smoothly navigating the shifting ground after a childhood of running along beaches.
Serpents wouldn’t attack like this out of the blue. Not without being commanded, I’m certain of it. Especially when attacking Maxim means certain death. A terrible fact evidenced by the scent of burning flesh now wafting through the air.
The heat waves and flames ahead are too thick for me to see through them while the sound of splashing lava fills me with dread.
I don’t, for a moment, second-guess my decision to run toward that heat.
Maxim is my hope. His kiss tore through my inhibitions to a raw need. He was the one I saw in my blade visions. He and I are fated in ways I can’t yet understand. I refuse to believe he isn’t yet rising to his feet, that he won’t emerge any moment from the fire ahead of me.
The splashing sounds stop. The flames begin to die, but the heat waves only increase, filling the air.
I reach the edge of the devastation, a wide section of sand now resembling molten gold.
Serpents float within the wash, burned and dead, a horrifying sight.
My heart wrenches at the sight of Maxim’s serpent, easily identifiable as the largest beast, one portion of his black scales pressing against Maxim’s far side, as if he were trying to shield his master.
Maxim lies face up, his eyes closed, his body floating in the deepest section of lava, his hair swirling around his head.
His entire body is on fire, a simmering flame.
A cry rises to my throat.
Maxim’s chest is torn open, his limbs gashed, bones visible. I want to believe his fire is healing him, but I can’t tell, and my fear rises.
“Maxim!” I cry. “Get up!”
I press forward into the heat waves, listening for his heartbeats, willing myself to hear the thuds as I reach the very edge of the burning lava.
“Get up, dammit!” My scream nearly dies in my throat because this heat… Dear Goddess. Too hot.
My armor shrieks an anxious melody and I’m relieved when the silver threads tear through my warrior’s garb, pouring between the torn edges to rush up into the cooler air at my back, seeking safety there.
Now, my scream changes. “Stellen!” I don’t care about the tattered rags I’m left wearing as I try again to push into the heat. “I need you!”
A rush of air brings me hope until a new group of golden serpents soars across the sky above me, rapidly circling back and landing to form an arc in the clear sand.
I’m not afraid of being boxed in. I can fight my way past these men.
Their leader dismounts first. Boaz. The man who hurt the Mothers. My rage toward him resurfaces and this time, I don’t have to worry about collateral damage.
“Did you do this?” I prowl toward Boaz, deciding against trying to draw him nearer to the fire, where I could just as easily injure myself as hurt him.
“Sacrificing a few serpents was worth it,” Boaz says as he reaches for a contraption attached to his serpent’s saddle.
“So is sacrificing a few men to slow down the former Kings of Iron and Frost, although I’m certain that fight won’t last long.
Which is why I’m not about to waste another breath on talk. ”
Boaz lunges toward me and that’s when I get a full look at what he’s holding.
A wooden collar attached to a pole. The entire thing made from ashen-brown wood that won’t burn.
Worse, I have only a heartbeat to identify the metal sparkling around the collar’s inner edge, the chain of a ruby circlet embedded within the wood, the chain’s latch exposed.
Antony warned me there were more of those circlets. If wrapped around my neck, this circlet could be triggered to sever my head from my shoulders. A deadly means of controlling me.
My reflexes kick in and I evade Boaz’s first attempt to snap the collar around my neck, darting to the side, staying clear of the other men.
“You hid from me the other day, Oracle,” Boaz says. “You won’t evade me again.”
So much for his promise not to waste air.
I may not be able to easily break that wood, but I can certainly break his arms and legs.
Dashing forward, sliding beneath the rod, I aim a bone-breaking punch at Boaz’s ribs.
A split second before my fist would have connected, the air shrieks all around me, a disorientating rush of sound and movement.
I’m wrenched backward with barely enough time to register the multi-pronged lashes wrapping around my arms and legs, each belonging to whips being wielded by Boaz’s men.
I have a split second to wrench my right leg out of the way, but the other lashes meet their targets. The men were clever enough to aim for where I was headed, not where I was.
One of the whiptails snaps around my left wrist, pulling my left arm taut, while another wrenches my right arm outward, and the third pulls my left leg out from under me.
Each lash is ashen brown, supple strands of wood woven into seemingly unbreakable rope.
Worse, they’re barbed.
As the men pull back on the lashes, the barbs hook deep into my flesh and I’m driven to my knees on the ground.
Through watering eyes, I make out the men quickly securing the lashes to their serpents’ saddles, the beasts’ strength ensuring the ropes stay taut.
I fight the panicky urge to struggle, trying to breathe through my alarm.
I tell myself I can get out of this.
Even if the lashes have already cut deeply enough into my flesh that hot blood flows down my left wrist and my left calf.
Only my right wrist, where the lash wraps across the Dragonstone Blade, remains unscathed while my right leg is unbound because of my quick evasion, an imbalance I’m determined to use to my advantage.
Boaz grins as he approaches me, brandishing the collar again.
I cope with the pain by imagining my right foot breaking his jaw. Maybe my leg squeezing around his throat and breaking his neck. Somehow.
Come a little closer, Boaz.
I guess the pole provides him with a sense of safety.
Taking deep breaths, accepting the tears of pain flowing down my cheeks, I work to bring calm to my mind.
Peace is knowing that Maxim will heal any minute—I’m sure he will—and that Stellen and Antony will fight beside me soon, and above all else, that my body, mind, and heart are strong enough that I can hold my own without them.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” I ask Boaz, my voice soft now as I allow my body weight to drop a little, testing the pressure on the serpents’ saddles, along with how much more pain I can bear.
Boaz hesitates before he continues creeping toward me. “I’ve been promised.”
I arch my eyebrows at him. “Promised what?”
“A place beside the throne.”
I squint a little. “Hadrian’s throne?”
“Stanimir has decreed it will be so.”
“Hadrian’s mentor said so, huh?” I murmur. “I’m not sure Hadrian will want to share me.”
Just a little closer now, Boaz.
Boaz’s focus flickers to my torso, where I’m certain the gaping material leaves my iron burn across my upper-right rib fully visible.
My brief glance down gives me an alarming view of the lava streams now encroaching along the sand at my sides.
Maxim’s fire is spreading. Fingers of lava stretch in little rivers on both sides of me.
My blood drips freely from my outstretched left arm and into the lava, deep-red liquid sliding along the surface of the molten sand. I sense the blood flow from my left calf could also be slipping into the lava. Strange that my blood isn’t burning up, but that’s the least of my concerns right now.
Boaz’s smile only broadens. “Hadrian won’t want to share you. But he will tire of you. I don’t mind taking what he discards.”
As Boaz creeps another step toward me, the edge of the collar comes within inches of my chin.
Nearly close enough.
Taking a final calming breath, I expand my senses past the immediate threats of Boaz, his men, and their serpents, and across my surroundings.
My silver armor floats in the air thirty paces away, a safe distance from the heat and men, although the strands hum anxiously, edging toward me, swirling in the shape of a sash.
If I weren’t concerned about the serpents’ lives, I could scream for my armor to fracture and strike.
I’ll only go down that path if I have to.