The moment stretched. Was Ivar building tension? Was he waiting for someone else? Surely he knew he was the new high rank, after Kyrja herself.
“Awkward,” Eldrid sing-songed under his breath.
Daemon shushed him. Logi and Ember shifted, exchanging looks. Elianne hissed out a breath. “Are they spurning her?”
No. Nik’s fingers curled into his palms. No, this wasn’t how it worked. She had proven her win, the recording had demonstrated to each and every person, Blessed and commoner alike, that she had won thirteen flaming Challenges all at once. And they thought they could get away with rejecting her now?
Silence pulled taut over the arena. If the Blessed didn’t act, didn’t bend the knee, then what? They were the leaders of the aristocracy, of all Fjordic society. Without them taking the lead, would the Fjorders follow? The thanes?
Indignation roared through his veins. Kyrja was more queen than any Blessed in this building had ever known. She was a queen anointed by Himmel, given not just magic but the Song. She was the chosen of the Giver. And these people, who had so long turned their backs on him, thought they could just ignore that?
“Frost it.” He was moving before he’d even thought through a plan, fire erupting from his skin and dancing over his leathers. Beneath him, magma surged, forcing its way into the springs that fed the arena.
“Nik! What are you doing?” His mother set a hand on his arm.
He shook her off and stepped into the opening of their tunnel.
“Nikanor.” Daemon’s voice was a command to stop.
He swung his head toward their leader. “The Blessed must act—and if the ones Blessed with ice will not, then those Blessed with fire will.”
Daemon’s jaw ticked. “We are not Blessed. We are Cursed.”
“We are not. We are Aflame—and we will help our queen forge a new Fjordlandi.” Ignoring the protests from the others, he stepped onto the rink.
Not ice, not anymore. The moment his feet hit it, the ice shook, shattered, splashed into water, and then exploded intosteam. Fire and lava burst from the openings that once gurgled water.
Screams rent the air.
He paid them no heed. Couldn’t. The flames roared over him as he strode out onto the rink.
Behind him, he heard his mother say, “Flame it!” and then he sensed her in his fire, and Daemon, and the other three too.
As one, they broke into a run, lava running with them. Pandemonium erupted in the seats, but his eyes were fixed on Kyrja.
She’d risen from her throne—the only thing still frozen—and stood on the dais where she was meant to defend against the ice attacks from the Blessed.
Fire licked at the stands, smoke rising. A moment’s panic flitted through him too, at the sting of it in his nostrils.
He didn’t have control enough, yet, to contain it. The rage eating at him could consume this entire building, the wood of the seating area could ignite in another minute.
“Pull it back, Niki,” Elianne said. He could feel her tugging at his fire—to no avail. “Dae!”
Daemon folded his arms in that way of his, smirking. “The queen will do her job—or she won’t, and they’ll get what they deserve.”
She would. She must. Nik dropped to a knee, pressed a hand to the now-bare stone of the floor, called up the lava.
He couldn’t hold back, pull back like his mother said. Not just because of the roar in his veins, but because the whole point of this ceremony was to prove that she was the rightful Crown. How better to prove it than by facing down what none of them had even known to fear?
Their worst nightmares, come to life. The heart of the volcanoes that doled out both life and death to Fjordlandi.
He sent a stream of lava toward her.
It made it halfway there before water burst up, met it, hardened it, and ice shot down the rails of the arena, extinguishing the flames.
A hoot from Eldrid, and his family got in on the fun, sending lava that hardened not just into rough shapes like it would in the wild, but into sculptures. Displays.
What they could do—and what she could, freezing each and every one.
