“Your mother’s pet—her request.” Apparently giving up on her throat, he shoved her.
Ice-bladed skates still on her boots, she merely drifted back a few feet. “You’re not making sense.”
He pulled water up from one of the cracks in the ice, hardened it, sent the blade toward her heart.
She turned it to snow. “Why was Mamma’s request cause to hate me? You agreed.”
“Yes. I agreed. Because she’d done her duty well, given me two fine heirs, against all odds. Einar and Krystiana were everything I could have hoped for. She was a pleasant enough companion. So I made the deal. Gave her you. Committed to a union that would last the rest of her pathetic life. And what do I find a few short years later?”
It took her a moment to process his words, the timeline. Perhaps she wouldn’t have, had the water not roared, the ice groaned, and a steaming, lava-seeping mound not risen just then from the sea beyond Fodur’s icy imitation, a dripping, steaming Aflame atop it who made her heart pound.
Nik—and that was the answer. “Elianne. You found her when I was a child. But why did you even test your blood against hers? You were already wed—”
“Don’t be an idiot as well as a fool, girl. Your mother had a few decades more to live. When the physicians told me about the anomaly in Elianne’s blood, showed me her image, I was curious. And the results of the Test told me exactly what I’d suspected. We would have created something powerful together. A child capable of rivaling the Daryatleans, the mer, anyone.” He pulled another chunk of ice from his volcano, into the sky. “And if it weren’t for you, she’d have been my wife already. I’d have that heir, instead of you.”
His wasn’t the only magic tangled up in the flying ice this time. She needed more than brute strength to break it up. She focused not on the mass but on the pieces, calling them apart.
Snow showered down.
Fodur growled and lunged for her again. She skated away, just barely evading a swipe of his hands. “But you already had two heirs. What were you going to do with Einar? Krystiana?”
He waved that off. “Your siblings were reasonable. They understood the need of a strong Fjordlandi. They would have stepped aside, accepted seats on the High Council and left it at that.”
An incredulous laugh slipped out. “You really think Krystiana would have bent the knee to a younger sibling?”
“If that sibling were strong? Absolutely. It was only you she never would have acknowledged.”
Kyrja clenched her jaw. Krystiana had been wrong. Fodur was wrong. She wasn’t the weakling. She’d proven it. “You speak of a strong Fjordlandi, yet you’re hurling ice at our largest dome, ready to set our progress back centuries—and for what? Because I want to give all Fjordic people the chance to be educated? To chase their dreams? Because I want to hear their needs and meet them? A strong Fjordlandi will be a freeFjordlandi, Fodur.”
“A strong Fjordlandi is a fierce Fjordlandi. You would ruin all we’ve built with your thane temperament—”
“Who’s the one throwing a temper tantrum like a child, tossing ice about? You say my passions make me weak, yet you are no less ruled by yours.”
He snarled. “They need to be reminded of their place. Let half of them starve, and then they’ll remember that they need us, need our rule.” He strode toward her, face back to its usual mask.
She skated backward, fully aware of what he was doing, where he was pushing her. Closer and closer to his ice mountain. She could feel him pulling more chunks upward, ready to spew them, could feel the very different trajectory this time.
He meant to crush her, like Tristan’s bomb had crushed their family. To hurl something big enough, fast enough, close enough that she wouldn’t have time to work her way through it, to unravel all the different Blessed touches within.
It was a good plan. She could grant that. Blasting a single chunk of ice to dust was doable, yes, but the entire mountain of it? She’d never attempted anything of that magnitude. For all she knew, bursting it apart would send shards hurtling toward the dome and she’d be doing the very thing she meant to stop.
And there were so many people at work. It wasn’t like the Challenges in Helviti, where each Blessed had been working alone to attack her. This was unified. Each magical thread undergirded Fodur’s, strengthening the attack.
Other signatures filtered into her awareness too. Hovering in the snows, waiting. For what? Why weren’t they also in the volcano? Though as she took a moment to recognize them, none were Fodur’s inner circle. They weren’t the ones already working with her, either—they were the ones who hadn’t yet declared an allegiance. Was it possible that they weren’t here to help him?
She wasn’t given time to sort them all out. A chunk of ice spewed from Fodur’s mountain. She reached into it, felt those undeclared others doing the same, felt the fight against Fodur’s allies at the basic level.
Nik’s volcano rumbled, groaned, and the ice under her—now underscored with new volcanic ground—shook. The sky ripped, cracks nearly deafening her, and she couldn’t help but look away from the block of ice threatening her, to the lightning flashing and dancing from the top of the true volcano’s cone, into the clouds. The forks seemed to chase each other, trip over each other, illuminating the whole world with their electric charge.
One branch of light found the ice chunk soaring her way and vaporized it. Though she was still too far from Nik to make out his expression, she would have sworn she heard him screaming.
He wasn’t alone anymore. She caught a flash of red, bright as lava, leaning over him. Where had Elianne come from?
Fodur seethed a curse that blistered the air. “How can you not see what you have done? Unleashing that on Fjordlandi? He’ll destroy the entire kingdom!”
As lava began to belch from the cone, shooting its stream higher than she could see, a frisson of fear clawed its way up Kyrja’s spine. She didn’t doubt Nik’s intentions at all—she knew very well he meant only to destroy Fodur’s ice volcano, to stophim. But the way Elianne was bent over him made her wonder if Nik was still in control of his creation or if it had taken from him more than he had to give.
Giver, help us. Save us.
