The princess nodded and set the droplets to spinning. “For whatever reason, the Blade seems to send a message to the nanites. We’ve yet to be able to see what is happening, but our current head scientist likens it to a chemical reaction between the material of the Blade and the nanites that opens a door on them. Then when the blood of another Awakened encounters those nanites, now yawning open, and enters them…”
The drops whizzed around them all before combining back into one globe that hovered over Perla’s hand.
“Magic.” Kyrja curled a finger toward the sphere, and it puffed into snow that drifted down.
“But my mother’s wind magic proved to be different.” Perla sent a gust into the snow, somehow making each flake spin in place instead of fly away. “Her mother is a seraph, so the magic in her blood is something new. Clearly still related to the nanites, because she, too, had to be Awakened—but the metal blades that work on water magic were not what primed hers, though it was enough to reveal it. It took a slice from the claw of my grandmother’s hawk-form. And my father’s blood still sufficed to finish the process.” She looked from Nik to the other Cursed. “For you all it took…?”
The others all deferred to Daemon, who still stood with his arms crossed over his chest. “Flint.”
“How poetic.” Perla grinned like it was just part of a children’s fairy tale. “But still, I’m assuming other Awakened blood finished the process. Yes?”
The rest all nodded, but they also snuck glances at their leader that were obviously curious. Had he never shared his story with them? It would seem not, given the looks they exchanged when he, too, jerked his chin up in acknowledgment.
“I thought so. Now, these new magics have not yet been around that long. The only people with the corresponding nanite halves are us. My brother and I, when it comes to my mother’s wind magic. And whoever among the Fjordic have descended from your First One. Hence, Daemon, why I asked if your family here are your actual family. It’s the only thing that makes sense.”
Daemon shifted, dropped his arms, and glowered at each of his people in turn. It must not have been the intimidation tactic it seemed, because the one who’d given Nik the leathers—praisethe Giver for that kindness—flexed a bicep and struck a pose. “Who do I look like, Dae? A sweetheart of yours?”
“Idiot.” But the glower turned into a hint of a smile. “I had a brother, Thorin. He was married and settled already when I left home. I’d assumed, in the years since, that we must not have shared a father after all, since it seemed only I had this Curse. But perhaps it was in his blood too, and he passed it along. Perhaps you all really are my family, generations removed.”
“It isn’t a Curse.” Perla’s playfulness fell away, erasing the image of a carefree girl and leaving in its wake a warrior. “It’s a gift from our Creator, just like the gifts of water or wind.”
Daemon shifted his feet to face her again. And his veins…they seemed to glow, like the tracks of lava Nik had glimpsed inching their way down the tunnel from which the others had come. Fire sprang to life on his skin, consuming him without, well, consuming him.
Kyrja drew back. Not dropping Nik’s hand, but half-tucking herself in behind him.
Perla just arched a brow. “Thanks for proving my point. When the spirit of the Triada went forth after the Once and Coming One returned to the skies, it showed itself in wind”—a blast of it went from her hand toward Daemon—“and flame. Tongues of fire danced over the heads of the first believers. We have suspected for many years that my grandmother wasn’t the only angel asked to assume human form and bring a new gift to humanity. We suspected if water and wind were already given, that flame and earth couldn’t be far behind.”
Not a Curse. Nik craned around to meet Kyrja’s eyes. A gift, like her Blessing. A gift meant to help them. “Do you think that’s true?” He hadn’t had time yet to grapple with what had happened, with the fire coursing through him, with the way the lava had responded to his instinctual shout for it.
But her father’s words had seared themselves onto his soul. Had made him instantly doubt his own faith, his place in the eyes of the Giver. As he’d plummeted into Helviti, it had seemed like the old lore was true, like it was the very mouth to the underworld.
When the lava had greeted him, his mind had accepted the only logical truth—the only creatures that could walk the underworld without crying in agony at its flames were the daemons themselves. So he must be one of them.
Kyrja’s smile didn’t show a trace of his doubt. “Obviously it’s true. What else could it be? Your…uncle over there made it clear he’s been at work all these years, helping to keep our people safe and protecting our land. By compulsion instead of voluntarily, which is inexcusable on the parts of my grandfather and father. But Perla’s point remains. This is a gift, one given to help our people survive and flourish.”
She saidour peoplein a way her father certainly never had. A way that seemed to include both Fjorders and thanes.
“Uncle.” Eldrid laughed, slung a meaty arm around Daemon’s neck, and gave it a mighty squeeze. Daemon’s shrinking flames didn’t so much as singe his beard. “I’m going to start calling you Uncle Siggy.” Then he made a face at Logi and Ember. “Though let’s not think too much about what that makes you two.”
Logi glared with nearly as much force as Daemon. “Don’t make me smack you, pup. Thorin was my father—and I was one of twelve children. My older siblings were already married and multiplying before I was…Awakened. Ember is no doubt descended from one of them, yes, but generations removed. One of my nieces or nephews must have moved to the mines in her dome—but there were eighty years between our births. We are no more closely related than most people in a given village. Probably further.”
Eldrid’s grin was unrepentant, but he withdrew his arm from Daemon’s neck. “So Dae really is your uncle. Literally.”
“And you never sorted this out before now?” Perla waved her own question away. “Never mind. You can draw your family tree later. The point, at the moment, is that this gift of fire manifested at almost exactly the same time as my mother’s gift of wind. I for one would like to know about your Awakening, Daemon.”
Nik did too. But his knees chose that moment to wobble, buckle. His vision grayed around the edges, the earth tilted.
Arms came around him, lean enough to tell him they were a woman’s, but no coolness came with them. And when he blinked, red hair drifted before him. Elianne pressed a hand to his cheek, but he could see only her jaw, her ear. The rest of her face had turned away. “We need to get him Below, into the baths.”
“What?” Kyrja, that voice, with alarm bells ringing in it. “What do you mean, Below? Into the volcano? But no—none of you need to return there, I’ll repeal whatever my father—”
“This isn’t about your father’s banishment.” Footsteps shook the ground underneath him, and Nik could feel them not in his body, and not from the rock, but in something deeper that pulsed like blood, thick and hot. “We all had to bathe in the lava, to burn out any impurities. He will be fine—but it must be done. If you deny him this, Majesty, I don’t know what would happen, but I don’t think it would be good.”
“I am denying him nothing.” She sounded miserable though. Nik tried to drag his gaze up, to find her with it, but his eyes wouldn’t obey. They closed instead. “Do what you must, of course.”
“Eldrid, Elianne, get him Below. Logi and Ember and I will make arrangements with the queen and join you soon.”
Nik didn’t know what else might have been said. He drifted in and out of awareness, only catching glimpses of black walls andthat ever-present red-orange glow, of blond beard and red hair and dark tattoos in patterns he’d never seen before.
