XXVDOMENICWINTER
Through the storm’s churning blackness, Peak only came into focus as he skidded to a halt beside them. He raised Targath. Its calcified wood gleamed like a hot coal, and its heat scorched across Domenic’s skin as its warming spell expanded, making every magician in a one-hundred-foot radius slump in relief, even cheer. The darkness of the courtyard thinned, like smoke-tinged amber.
“You both all right?” Peak asked.
Domenic’s panic blazed, a fuse dangerously close to explosion. Bearing the weight of the world had been burden enough before the world had shifted beneath them. He didn’t know what to make of these ghasts who fought with strategy. What to make of Ellery, calling Kythion by name. What to make of the countless Living Wands around them, each burning with a presence that felt suddenly unnerving, monstrous. Least of all, he no longer understood the wand in his own hand, which seemingly possessed no presence entirely.
The boom of a collapsing building rumbled somewhere beyond.
“’Course we are,” Domenic croaked, and Ellery managed a bleak nod.
“Have you two gotten a good look around?” Peak squinted through the whizzing shrapnel of snow. “I don’t know how it’s possible, but these ghasts are here with a mission, a goal. So the three of us, we figure it out, we stop it, and we save as many people as possible. ’Cause my guys—they’re good, but they’renot trained for this. And if I have any shot of bringing that thing down”—he gestured at Kythion overhead—“I can’t be worrying about collateral damage, you hear?”
“Youbring it down?” Ellery repeated. “It took me and Dom together to slay Decibel—”
“Well, Thundersnow isn’t like Decibel, is it? It’s got nature magic. No tricks or illusions to worry about.” Peak tilted his head back, and he didn’t flinch as Kythion’s lightning detonated across the scurge. “Maybe Targath and I have finally met our match.”
At first, Domenic swore Peak had reached their same conclusion. But as Peak smiled crookedly at the monster, the cracks between his teeth shining molten, Domenic realized that this,thiswas the truth of Peak. The man who ran into danger without a single thought for himself. Who strolled through Winter’s cold without need for warmth, whose very presence had made the snow melt in a circle beneath him, had made the once frozen grass blacken with char. Who held Targath high—not to help him see in the darkness, but as a beacon to anyone else in need of hope.
“G-good luck, then,” Domenic stammered.
With a final thumbs-up at the pair of them, who both awkwardly returned it, Peak charged off toward his epic war story in the making. A strange nerve tightened in Domenic’s chest as he watched Targath’s glow diminish through the scurge. Surely Peak was the last person he ought to worry about.
“Do you think he’s valiant or deranged?” Domenic asked Ellery.
“Both,” she answered grimly. “Now, with this many ghasts, I still think you’re right—finding the eye is the only way we’ll ever stop this scurge.”
“But what about all the people here?”
The surrounding magicians shivered and shuffled around as one of that afternoon’s stern-faced generals corralled them intounits. With his magic like magma in his veins, Domenic had forgotten about the cold, and he hastily cast a warming spell of his own. The blackened grass greened, and the storm receded into a roiling dome overhead, their small pocket of refuge free from the smothering darkness and torrential winds.
As onlookers cheered again, Ellery answered, “Stopping the storm is the best way to save them.”
“But that will take time. And you heard Peak—they’re not trained for this. We need to get them out of here.”
Ellery winced at another crash of thunder. “Then we split up.”
“What?No. No way.”
“It’s the only thing that makes sense. One of us should find the eye, while the other should evacuate the NDC.” Her lip quivered even as she bit it down. “A-and you see how they look at me. If they’re going to trust anyone to lead them to safety, it’ll be you.”
Spite simmered in Domenic’s core. While the pair of them stood there, still, Ellery’s shadow lashed across the ground, alive and wild with magic. Several nearby magicians pointed at it. Some even lunged from its path as if it might strike them.
They didn’t notice how even beneath the glare of Valmordion, Domenic had no shadow at all.
“Fuck what they think,” he growled. “They won’t give a shit so long as we’re saving them from—”
“Dom, this is a better plan,” Ellery snapped. “You know it is.”
Domenic had never loathed his costume more than in that moment. That he couldn’t reach for her. That he was bound to be noble. That he ought to care what anyone else thought of them when no one could ever see the entirety of who they were anyway.
“Please,” he said desperately. “Be careful.”
“You, too,” she told him.
Ellery ran off, and Domenic raced toward the closestbuilding—a garage. One of its doors whipped in the storm. He ducked through it.
“Hello?” he called. Even inside, the wind wailed, and icicles speared down from the ceiling rafters. Shards of those already fallen littered the concrete.
