W e hit the ground hard, Caduan and I on top of each other. I felt a shift happen immediately, felt the sudden tear in the magic below, like sand
falling away beneath my feet.
I rolled over. Caduan was not moving. Panic crawled up my throat. “Caduan.”
He did not move.
My senses screamed as the tear grew wider. The Lejara. They were using the Lejara. “CADUAN!”
His eyes snapped open just as the rip burst, as light began to bubble around the house, similar to what we had witnessed in Niraja.
It all happened at once.
Caduan rolled over me, pushing me to the ground beneath him. I felt him struggling with his magic as he tried to carry us away. But he was weak, injured. His own power resisted him.
Blinding light surrounded us.
He wouldn’t be fast enough. I needed to act.
I lifted my hands, summoned every scrap of magic inside of me. Protect us protect us protect us—
“Don’t let go,” Caduan ground out, as his magic gave one final, powerful push.
White light consumed everything.
 |
WHEN I OPENED MY EYES, everything was different.
Caduan and I lay together in a tangle. We were not in the house any longer. Somehow, he had managed to complete his spell. We lay beyond the walls of the main building.
I pushed myself to my knees and looked around. The aftermath of the Lejara’s power surrounded us. Walls had been rearranged without being broken, buildings now spotlessly half-buried in the ground.
The house was ahead of us. It was barely recognizable, a leveled pile of white rubble. Before it, the ground had cracked and shattered, rough stones jutting up into the air like the rocks at the bottom of a waterfall, rising so tall that they blotted out the late-afternoon sun. At first glance, it reminded me of a white version of the Obsidian cliffs.
No part of the terrain had been untouched. It was as if the hand of a god had reached down and simply rearranged the earth itself.
I looked down. Caduan was on the ground, not moving.
Panic. I forced myself to my knees, shaking him. Wake up, wake up, I shouted, or thought I did, because I could not hear myself.
My hearing returned with a loud POP, and my own screaming rang clear in my ears.
Now I heard what I couldn’t before: “AEFE!” Meajqa skidded to a stop beside us, covered in human blood, his sword in his hand.
And with his shout came a hundred, or a thousand, other screams, here and in the distance. Wails of pain or shouts of soldiers trying to find their comrades. Cries of sheer shock at what they had just witnessed.
At last, Caduan’s eyes opened.
Hours ago, I had been telling myself how much I hated Caduan. Now the sight of those eyes, open, piercing through me, was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.
Meajqa helped us to our feet. Caduan was weak, barely able to stand.
When Meajqa released his arm, he nearly fell back to the ground. “Are you hurt?” Meajqa asked, brow knitted.
“No,” Caduan said, in an obvious lie that Meajqa did not challenge. “Are you?”
“I’ll survive.”
Caduan turned to the scene around us. Ahead of us, the landscape had been irreparably changed. Blood-streaked white stone blocked us from the Zorokov’s main estate. But behind us, a different kind of carnage unfolded.
Ela’Dar’s soldiers had poured into the eastern end of the city, and while they had stopped to gape in confusion at whatever had just happened, it was clear that they were making quick work of the Threllian leadership—the streets were strewn with white-clad Threllian bodies.
Meajqa turned back to the strange wall of stone and let out a long, shaky breath. “What in the seven skies was that? I was seconds away from being caught in it.”
“That,” Caduan said, “was the work of a Lejara.” Meajqa swore.
“We go after them.” My voice was raspy. “Right now. We go get it from them.” Despite myself, I teetered on my feet. Blood soaked my midsection.
I saw Caduan take careful stock of these things, and not answer. “We cannot just leave them,” I spat. “We are so close.”
Caduan’s lips thinned, the wrinkle between his brows deepening. He leaned heavily against a pile of stone, though he seemed like he was trying to disguise his weakness. A button of his shirt had fallen open, revealing a glimpse of strange purple bruising before his hand quickly moved to close it.
“We were not without victory,” Meajqa said. “Between the humans and us, there’s not a single one of those Threllian bastards left alive.” He cast a glance down the hill, where Fey opened throat after throat. “Or won’t be, soon. Let the rebels keep what remains. Luia and her men can cut our way north. Leave the south… for now.”
Caduan looked like he did not love this plan either. “And just leave Vytezic?”
“Temporarily. Besides… we have found something else that will lift your spirits, I’m sure.” Meajqa’s eyes glinted with hungry pleasure. He led us down the path and signaled to a soldier.
“What a gift,” he drawled, and motioned to the stones below—and the listless, half-conscious body of the Queen of Ara. Her white jacket was now almost completely crimson, a rod of gold protruding from her stomach. She was alive, but barely. Two of Luia’s soldiers knelt beside her, carefully binding her hands and ankles as she moaned.
Meajqa was right. Seeing her like this, powerless, was almost enough to make me forget that Tisaanah and Maxantarius had slipped away from us.
Meajqa dropped to his knees before her. “My,” he crooned, “we are lucky, aren’t we?” He reached out and stroked her face, like a lover would,
as her head rolled back. His touch lingered at her throat. “Let me kill her. Don’t I deserve to be the one to do that?”
I was drunk on death. I wanted him to take her apart the way she had done to him, and I wanted to help.
But Caduan said, “No. We let her live.”
Meajqa whirled around. “Let her live?” Even I recognized the hurt in his voice.
“For now,” Caduan said. “She has our people in captivity. We need to find out where they are and how to reverse whatever she has done to them. Then we can kill her.”
“But—”
“Are you telling me that your vengeance is more important than saving our people?”
Meajqa’s jaw was tight, as if forcibly keeping his words to himself. “I apologize,” he said, eventually. “As you command, my king.”
Caduan laid a hand on his shoulder. “Your time will come.” Meajqa gave a silent nod.
“Tell Luia to keep pushing through,” Caduan said. “Head north. Take down the Threllian cities that you pass. It should be easy now. Their leadership is gone.” He looked to the queen. “We have more important battles.”
