As she watched, Nik sagged, Elianne scrambling to catch him. Kyrja’s heart stopped. Or pounded. Her own blood filled her ears so much she could hear nothing but her own panic. “Nik—Nik!” Without even thinking it through, she shoved up a wall of ice between her and Fodur and took off toward the mountain, her skates eating up the now-uneven surface. She lifted and lowered the ice as she went, then broke off the skates when she reached still-steaming rock.
The heat knocked her backward. She went sprawling onto the ice behind her, which was quickly melting. Turning to new steam that threatened to scald her. She reinforced that ice, letting go of still more control elsewhere without even pausing to consider what it was, trusting that whoever was helping would continue to do so. Maintaining enough chill to survive in the face of an erupting volcano took more than just a thought, it took focus, will, action.
Even so, she could manage it only inches at a time, then feet. But then it wasn’t the heat that arrested her.
It was the sight. Nik, crumpled, held in his mother’s arms, the world aflame behind them.
Something about it took her back, back two months. Into the Grand Kyrka, that first day she dared to step foot into it. She was staring up at the stained glass, parting the clouds so she could see light arrow through the mosaic. Seeing the story she’d heard only whispers of before then but couldn’t forget now.
The Giver’s only-born son, willingly sacrificed for his people. For them, forher. Held in the arms of his mother.
Tears stung her eyes. It wasn’t the same, she knew it wasn’t. Nik didn’t have the power to save the whole world, and she had to believe he wasn’t dead, just overcome. She had to believe it—because she knew this man she loved had no power over death, not like the Giver she was still coming to know.
And his mother was no silent mourner. She lowered him to the ground, and even from this distance, Kyrja had no trouble seeing the rage on her face. Elianne started down the incline, screamed, and its notes pierced the air, broke through the rush in Kyrja’s ears.
For a moment, it seemed Elianne’s wrath was focused on her. And why shouldn’t it be? She was the reason Nik was here, why he’d been taken by Stefanos, why he’d been tossed into this fight with her father.
But no—it was Fodur on whom Elianne had focused, Fodur who was building himself a road of ice and skating across it, aimed at Nik’s mountain.
Nik. He wasn’t…he couldn’t be dead. But why else would Elianne have left him there? “No. No, please. Giver, no.” Kyrja stumbled forward, pulling ice with her at every step, beating back the heat. She heard the sizzle, saw the steam, and didn’t care. She would protect herself solely because she had to, to get to him.
Elianne took a different path down than Kyrja took up, lava flowing in her wake. The eruption continued, ash billowing into the air now along with the red-orange liquid rock. Rivers of it streaked down the mountain, faster than it should have gone by nature, all courses leading to the same place.
Fodur’s ice mountain hissed, steamed, cracked as lava met it. She felt its ice shaking, melting, fissures forming. Felt Fodur and his allies struggling to maintain it. Felt her unknown friends picking at their magic, making holes for the lava to seep through. Felt the battle rage.
Let it. Let them battle it out. She’d reached Nik’s prone form, and she dropped to her knees, focusing all her own magic on the patch right under her. “Nik!”
She pressed icy hands to his hot face, his neck, her deepest fear uncoiling a bit when she felt the flutter of his pulse. Notdead. Praise the Giver, not dead. A sob of relief catching in her throat, she leaned down and pressed her lips to his.
32
Elianne held the lava in her magical fists, the rivers of it her son had called forth, from which he’d built a mountain that would stand long after they were gone. She knew, as she strode down its incline, Nik exhausted behind her, that he would prevail today.
Nothing would stop her son from doing what the Giver had created him to do. He would help forge a new Fjordlandi from its molten heart. He would love the Ice Queen and build with her what Isidor had tried to force Elianne into giving him. He would be a king. Wear a crown of fire.
And the wretch gliding her way would not stop him.
The fury inside her burned, yes, but it wasn’t like the other day in the Ice Prison. It wasn’t a boundless, reckless thing, set on her own destruction if she couldn’t just have his. Today, it wasn’t enough that she die and maybe take him with her.
Today, she wanted victory. The real kind, the kind that wasn’t about taking from someone else, but about building what was good.
Isidor would stop her, stop Nik, stop Kyrja if he could. She could feel his ice lashing out against their lava, could sense him trying to control the mountain her son had built as he’d alwaysboasted he could Helviti, Radsla, and all the others in the Ring of Flames.
But he’d never actually had to do that, had he? King Axel had put Daemon in charge of the volcanoes—all Isidor had ever had to do was controlhim. Them. His ice had never actually stemmed the lava.
And it wouldn’t succeed today.
Giver, she prayed, as she hadn’t dared to do in so long.Giver, you have made your will known. Now help us to achieve it. Help me to do this thing for my son, to help make a way for him to step into the future you want for him. Help me to stop this man who hates all you stand for. Help me to save the woman my son loves, and all Fjordlandi with her.
She called the lava up in a surge around her, riding onto the plain that now looked like a field of ice cubes spilled from a glass, melting it as she went.
An hour ago, there’d been only ice here, and sea beneath it. Now, new land stretched and met the old, growing still outward, literally expanding the borders of the kingdom.
“My flame.” Isidor’s voice carried over the melting distance between them.
She sent a ball of lava at him, even knowing he’d freeze it over. “I am not your anything, Isidor. I never was. I most assuredly never will be.”
Lightning flashed in his eyes. A reflection of what came from the ash cloud, no doubt, but no less chilling for having an explanation. He lifted a hand, clenched a fist, and she could hear his ice mountain shifting, reforming off to the side. “This is no way to speak to your king.”
