“The old Fjordlandi, that promised success to the Fjorders? Or the new Fjordlandi, that strips them of power and gives it to the thanes?” Perla stepped closer to the guard, staring him down. Her tone didn’t give away which was the correct answer, though the guard could likely guess which side they were on. Unless he’d been living under a rock for the last two weeks.
The man moved his gaze from Perla to Daemon and gripped his ceremonial sword. “Where’s the queen?”
“Indisposed,” Daemon said. He straightened his spine, lifted his chin. Glared. “And as the First Seat of her High Council, I’m authorized to act in her stead. Stand aside.”
The guard frowned. He’d know that Daemon spoke true about the rank—but how would he know if Kyrja was truly indisposed? She hadn’t exactly sent out a memo.
Perla pointed toward the doors. “If you don’t let us in there in the next two minutes or so, Isidor and his High Council will be out of their cells and subjugating the whole country under their thumbs again in another three minutes. Give or take.”
Another searching glance, and then the guard pivoted and opened the gate. “The Giver go with you.”
They charged through the opening, Perla and Daemon in the lead while Logi, Ember, Eldrid, and Elianne followed. He didn’t feel her pulsing with heat anymore—a quick glance told himEldrid had settled a hand on her arm, like she’d done for her son two days ago.
Her face was a ruin of pain and regret and shame that threw his memory back twenty-six years, to when she’d first arrived Below. When Isidor had stolen her from her husband and son and condemned her to the volcano.
Now Stefanos had stolen her son from her, effectively declaring her willing sacrifice of herself unworthy. Unacceptable.
He knew she wanted to be out there, on a boat, searching for him. But if they didn’t contain Isidor first, they’d soon be fighting a battle on two fronts—and they’d lose both, that way.
Shouting greeted them as they slid into the block of high-security cells. Here, the prisoners weren’t guarded by guards but by the queen’s magic, and it was clear they’d noted the sudden cessation of her hold on it, as surely as Daemon had felt her inner hand release the springs in Helviti, where water and lava converged.
Perla jerked as if she’d run into an invisible wall, fell to her knees, and pressed a hand to the ground. Her face twisted in exertion, but she managed to snarl, “Go!”
He went, his family close on his heels. “I can’t feel anything in this place,” Eldrid muttered, head swinging from side to side as he took stock of the situation.
Daemon could, but barely. The stone here was too thick, too closely fitted together, ice filling all the cracks, and crystal lining parts of it to dampen the magic of those within. It was like being behind Isidor’s ice wall again, but without the heart of Helviti beating on their side of the divide.
No, that monster wouldn’t win today. They were not trapped within the mountain, and that would be their strength, not their handicap.
“Fan out, go to the cells themselves. If you can’t find the lava, then summon the flame—send heat straight into their faces, if you have to—but for the sake of all that’s frozen, don’t melt the bars.”
His family scattering, Daemon jogged to the circular stone in the center of the cell block. According to the maps he and Kyrja had worked on, directly under this central spot was the spring that fed the entire prison’s ice. He dropped to a knee and pressed his marked palm to the stone.Giver, guide me. I cannot do this alone. Only you can save us.
In a flash, he was in the dome he’d grown up in. Praying those same words as he crouched behind a berm and tried to gather his strength, his courage. Praying that somehow, the Giver would give him the power he needed to save the girl he loved from the Blessed governor she worked for who’d been beating her for months.
He’d known he couldn’t do it on his own. He was only a farmling, broad of shoulder but weak of blood. No power over the waters, the ice. He had brute strength, nothing more, and it wouldn’t be enough.
When the shadow had fallen over him, he’d thought his fight was over before it even started, that Tuva would have to watch him drown on his feet and then freeze solid as whatever Blessed had found him shoved water into his lungs.
But when he’d wheeled around, it hadn’t been one of the fearsomely beautiful faces that greeted him.
It had been one just as perfect, just as fierce—but far more familiar. He hadn’t known whether to rejoice or curse the arrival of the man who seemed to be half-wraith, slipping in and out of their lives like a specter. “Fodur.”
His father stood taller than the other thanes, but now he crouched beside Daemon—Sig, at the time. “Took you long enough.”
“What?” Fodur’s voice had sounded teasing, but that made no sense. This was not a situation made for levity, and Fodur, of all people, ought to have known it. The way he vanished, his visits lasting only hours or at most a few days—he was a revolutionary. He’d never said it, but their whole family knew. There was no other explanation. He wouldn’t joke about the injustice he was so busy fighting that he’d rarely been there to watch his sons grow up.
“I was never certain if it would be you or your brother who would first wake up and realize you are not Elyon, not the one with control over life and death. That you must seek help to achieve what matters most.”
Sig had been about to ask who Elyon was, but the words froze on his tongue when Fodur pulled out a knife. It didn’t glint like metal would. It looked like flint, but this certainly wasn’t time to build a cooking fire.
Fodur had reached for his right hand. “Strike the flint, my son.” He’d drawn the edge over Sig’s finger, blood welling up. “Fan the flames of freedom.”
Sig’s palm had burned, the heat so sudden, so consuming, that he’d wondered if his father—his own father, absent as he had been—had poisoned him with something. Something that made his vision swim, made the familiar features of the man who’d sired him flicker as if he were made of pure flame.
Fodur had nodded over the berm, toward the Blessed. “Make him bleed.” He’d pressed the crude blade into Sig’s hand.
Permission to attack, he’d thought at the time. To use whatever violence necessary to win, to save Tuva. He’d thought, as he went roaring over the berm and launched himself at the Blessed beast, that Himmel had granted him favor. That he’d win. That, somehow, it would change things.
