Eldrid nodded. “What’s your move?”
His gaze was already tracing the path he’d picked out a thousand times before, adapted over and again each time the rock face shifted. “I’m climbing up.”
Silence greeted him.
It said much. A century’s worth of things. Daemon sighed. “This may be our only chance to overwhelm him, Eldrid. If he’s fighting his daughter, he’ll be distracted. And whoever that woman of wind is”—even as he said it, realization dawned. It had to be either Queen Arden or her daughter, they were the only two women in the world with such abilities, so far as he knew—“she’s antagonizing Isidor too, which means she could be on our side.”
“He’ll kill you.” Eldrid’s tone said it wasn’t a reason not to try. Just a reminder of the likely cost.
Daemon clapped a hand to his brother’s massive shoulder. “Then lead our family to freedom beginning with Elianne, just as we’ve discussed. Giver willing, I’ll at least punch a hole for you.”
Without another word, they both leapt out into the lava, Eldrid darting toward Nik while Daemon made for the wall. He’d climbed plenty of them in the lifetimes he’d been down here, but never this central one, the throat of Helviti. According to the tyrant who’d tossed him into the volcano’s teeth, there would be Blessed Vektors stationed always at the openings, ready to shove water into his lungs if he tried to escape.
He’d had no reason to doubt it and had always assumed there were easier paths out, if he decided to. But still, he’d mapped that route up the concave side. Now he grabbed the first handhold, hauled himself up, reached higher.
As the shaft narrowed toward the mountain’s peak, gravity fought him, but he fought back—melting each handhold enough to make it sticky, giving himself just enough purchase to move on.
Wind whipped. Snow somehow blustered past him at one point, defying the heat as audaciously as he did the pull downward. He moved as quickly as he could, looking down only once to see Nik tugging on the black leathers and Eldrid explaining something to him with his usual expressive hand gestures.
He fully expected the woman in blue to notice him, but by the time he should have been in her line of sight, she’d moved back onto solid ground and was clapping and whistling.
Impossibly, Valkyrja’s voice rang out next. “Let the record reflect the results of the thirteen Challenges, scribe. Isidor has forfeited his crown and each of the twelve High Council members their seats and titles.”
Daemon paused, her claim undoing everything he thought he knew. Was she…lying? Wrong? Deceived?
Or, more likely, worse than her father, just as Isidor had been worse than Axel?
Regardless, his words to Eldrid stood. This was the best time for him to make a move.
He hesitated another moment when Isidor called for his guards, their footsteps vibrating through his rock and spears clanging in two beats. But when they shouted, “Hail, Queen Valkyrja!” he knew he didn’t dare wait any longer.
He pulled himself over the ledge, onto the rocky platform he hadn’t stood on for at least a century and a half.
He didn’t know what he expected to see. But it certainly wasn’t all twelve High Council members encased in blocks of ice to match the king’s, their thirteen matching guards saluting the woman who looked to be wearing a dress made of snow, and the wind-woman cheering like a fan at an iceball match.
One of the frozen Blessed spotted him first. She couldn’t manage a shout, given the ice-muzzle over her mouth—he was growing fonder of the new queen by the second—but her grunts and squeals and wide eyes directed his way were an effective enough alarm.
He straightened from his crouch, pulling heat from the lava below into his hands, ready to blast the flames at whomever moved against him first.
The Daryatlean was nearest to him. She spun, her startlingly-blue eyes going wide. And then smiling. “Well. Hello, hot and handsome.” She held out a hand, blue sparks arcing from finger to finger. “I ought to have known our friend Nik wasn’t the first. Is he all right down there?” She moved toward Daemon as if she expected to shake his hand. Like two friends meeting on the village green.
He didn’t have time for whatever distraction she posed. He had to evaluate, act, and win whatever freedom he could for theothers. His fire blazed as his gaze darted around the gathering, hunting for the most serious threat.
“I warned you!” Isidor shouted. But, strangely, not at Daemon, it seemed. “You’ve loosed the king of the daemons!”
Daemon’s lips tugged up, even as he measured each movement of the guards. “Thanks for the promotion, Iz. Last we spoke, I was mere spawn.”
The Council were immobilized, they were no threat. And surely the amount of effort it took to restrain them all was costing the new queen, who’d halted the guards with a raised hand. But as she too turned to greet him, she didn’t look so much as winded.
And her eyes—they were nothing like her father’s, nor was the look on her face. He saw warmth there, something that ought to be foreign to the ice-hearted Blessed. Relief, too, and something else it took him a long moment to name.
Welcome.
He lowered his hands, banking the flames a bit. The supposed-weakling was even then raising ice over her father’s mouth, and the only one moving was the wind woman. He sidestepped her electric touch, raising one hand again in defense.
She rolled her eyes. “Oh, relax, King of the Daemons. It won’t hurt.”
He let the fire blaze, but she only sighed, sent a gust of wind to blow it out like a candle, then doused his hand with a spurt of water for good measure.
