But that choice didn’t change her heart. She would still love Domenic Barrow until the day she died, even if she was the one to kill him.
XLVIDOMENICWINTER
Domenic held his head in his hands. Since the alban network had burrowed within him,changedhim, he had the surreal notion that as he trembled, so, too, did the earth around him. He felt every root of the alban rattle throughout the mountain. He felt all the roots woven throughout Alderland shudder with a seismic grief. He felt so much.
Too much.
Until his grief faded; his despair ebbed. Yet he did not feel peace.
He felt nothing at all.
Domenic staggered out of the cavern and through the Vault. In the minutes he’d spent fulfilling the final piece of the prophecy, the elevator had lost its function. So he stumbled up the stairwell. Each time he braced his hand against the wall to steady himself, its imprint scorched the stone.
The Citadel’s central floor was in disarray. Even indoors, the winds whirled with broken glass as well as frost, the debris grating across the marble floor. Domenic shielded his face with his arm and pressed dazedly through the grand doors to the steps outside.
The city of Gallamere was gone.
Despite looking out from the mountain’s zenith, Domenic could not see it, its skyline obscured by the storm. What nearby shapes he could make out were blurs: the slivers of blackened lampposts, the tangled masses of overturned trees, the silhouettes of other magicians. Up and down the Citadel steps, theyrushed past, their heads bent low against the freezing, lashing gusts, their faces indistinguishable beneath their gear. Wands gleamed as he approached, Summer’s supposedly great champion. And their magicians turned, baffled until they saw him, squinting at his radiance. A shadow of golden light shimmered beneath him. Several cheered at his presence, their hope so desperately bright.
Domenic didn’t acknowledge them. Then a figure suddenly seized his shoulder—only to release him, cursing violently. Domenic spun to face Sharpe hunched over, bundled in a down coat and cradling his burnt hand.
“Y-you’re here,” Sharpe sputtered, gawking at Domenic’s antithetical shadow. “Finally. I’ve got the entire Order out here and in the city, but it doesn’t matter how many ghasts we slay. There’s no slowing this storm.”
Domenic didn’t respond.
“Well?”Sharpe demanded. “Seong said you were leaving to finish the prophecy. So have you? Do you know how to stop this? And where’s Caldwell?”
In the darkness beyond, a chorus of winterghasts screeched—hundreds and hundreds of them. An invasion.
Sharpe’s mouth quivered. “What the hell is wrong with you? Didn’t you hear that? Aren’t you going to do anything?Sayanything?”
The nothingness throbbed in Domenic’s chest. He couldn’t answer.
Yet Sharpe seemed to understand enough. He grimly surveyed their surroundings, then, with his jaw locked tight, he pointed Ballathim toward the dim outline of the Citadel. With a deafening groan, its exterior shifted, ancient bricks huddling closer together, fresh mortar weeping from their cracks, crumbled cornerstones hardening and sealing tight. It was astounding. It was incredible. And while Sharpe hacked out coughs of exertion, while the very wand that had first constructed the Citadel fortified it once more,Domenic turned and wandered down the steps, without a destination, without any purpose at all.
As he neared the front lines, the panic around him descended into chaos. Winterghasts advanced toward the Citadel as if in siege. At first, the magicians who battled them attempted to keep formation, but any semblance of order quickly shattered. There were too many monsters, in all manners of grotesque shapes and sizes, and in the ever worsening scurge, they had the advantage. Domenic passed bodies splayed on cobblestones, already half-buried in snow. In their limp, frostmauled hands, he glimpsed wands he recognized. They belonged to students who’d once walked the halls beside him, magicians whose hands he’d once shaken, once promised he would save.
It wasn’t their fault Domenic couldn’t bear his destiny. Nor was it fair they should bear the consequences. But if Domenic could speak, he would tell them the world wasn’t fair.
Then something caught in the corner of his vision—an orange light.
As Domenic moved toward it, he realized it was no simple beacon. Targath’s power had carved a sanctuary out of the storm, light and heat cascading in a shield that covered the mountain’s entire eastern slope. Over a thousand people crammed within it, battle-weary magicians and city personnel and civilians all together on the slushy pavement. Up the hillside, Peak stood within a cluster of parked and toppled cars, several of them smoldering with flame. Winterghasts drawn to Targath’s heat swarmed toward him, and no sooner did he slay one than another took its place.
Yet he never stopped fighting, not even to catch his breath.
Something stirred like bile in Domenic’s chest. Peak was an even greater fool than he was.
As Domenic watched him, his sight flickered. Its edges broke like fractals, yet he couldn’t focus enough to know if he was hallucinating. For the first time since he’d entered the storm, a chill shuddered through him.
Thirty yards uphill, Peak froze, then he craned his head back. Domenic realized he, too, sensed something. But if the other magicians had noticed it, they made no move to act—they only stared at Peak with desperation, with awe.
Then above Peak, something glinted, like a spark of electricity.
Domenic sucked in his breath, but even when he tried, he couldn’t force it out in any shape, not Peak’s name, not a warning, not even a scream. He could only watch as lightning crackled across the oblivion, the tempest so loud that whatever thunder followed was drowned out. Two tremendous eyes beamed open overhead, monstrously blue.
Peak’s eyes widened in alarm, and his bad knee faltered as he spun around.
In a bolt of lightning, Kythion’s claw shot from the sky and speared through Peak’s abdomen.
