Arms clamped around me to prevent my next reach, and I cried out, struggling against them.
“Astraea, stop,” Nyte said calmly in my ear. But it was a distant echo through the wild pounding in my ears.
“There werethousandsof people in there!” I cried.
How did this happen? It couldn’t have been natural. No… someone hadmurdered them.
“Father…” Antila’s voice was too young to carry such heartbreak.
Had Dawn been truthful in telling them Zephyr was here?
A new scream tore from me, and I broke free from Nyte’s hold to claw at more rocks as if I could reach my friend inside.
Nyte hooked an arm around my middle this time, hauling me away from the slope.
“There’s nothing we can do here,” Nyte tried to console.
I cried into his chest with that fact beginning to settle.
“Father!” Antila yelled, though it wasn’t in pain. It was joyous.
Pushing away from Nyte, I whirled around, gasping at the celestial who descended gracefully.
Zephyr’s eyes were wide, trapped with terrors. He kept them on me even as Antila barged into him. Raider embraced him too, and Zephyr snapped his attention from me, checking them over with the panicked worry of a father.
I sniffed, wiping my disbelieving eyes as I approached him. His children let him go, and he reached for me as I did for him.
“I thought you were in there,” I croaked.
“I was,” he replied, haunted. We released each other. “I got as many out as I could, but there were still so many left behind… hundreds of lives… I couldn’t save them.”
“Thanks to you, we have survivors,” I said, my heart ached at his devastated look over my shoulder.
“I don’t know what happened. The water system… it had to have been tampered with. In all the centuries the pipes have never come close to leaking, never mind bursting to flood the place, which inevitably caved the structure in on itself. Even with my ability to control the element of water, it was too much.”
The sanctuary column was colossal.
I exchanged a look with Nyte, then Drystan, but they seemed as clueless as me. Until I realized…
“The trident was taken by someone to reach the underwater temple,” I said, puzzling overwhocould have possession of it.
Nyte’s expression fell as he and I combed over the potential list, which wasn’t long.
“It has to be our father,” Drystan said first. “I just can’t figure out how he managed it when last I heard he sits on the throne of Vesitire.”
“From whom and when did you gather that intel?” Nyte demanded.
“I’ve been asking around,” Drystan said vaguely. “All that matters is that we find out if he’s responsible for this.”
“But why?” I asked, mulling it over in my mind. “What reason would your father have to collapse the sanctuary?”
“Maybe he heard about it from Auster somehow and shares the same prejudice against the Nephilim and wingless celestials,” Zephyr supplied.
That conclusion didn’t settle right with me. The powerless celestials and the Nephilim were shunned by the gods of Dusk and Dawn.
“He didn’t do it by Auster’s bidding nor his own,” I said, drawing only one conclusion. “He’s acted on behalf of Dusk or Dawn, maybe both, and Dawn wanted me to see this as a warning.”
Nyte’s hand caressed my back in comfort. The devastation of losing the sanctuary and the hundreds of innocent souls inside tore a fresh wound in me.
