Now, he realized what it really was. His father—not just a revolutionary, not even human if what Perla said was true, butrather a seraph—had primed Daemon’s blood with the flint, called those nanites in it to alertness. Opened the door.
But he’d needed that Blessed’s blood to Awaken the fire within him.
He hadn’t saved Tuva that day. He certainly hadn’t saved himself, only landed himself in prison. But he’d slashed the man in the side, and he’d obviously gotten blood into his own still-bleeding wound.
The fires had Awakened. And they’d changed things. Had brought the weight of the Crown down upon him and gotten him tossed into Helviti. His father’s knife, the very blade used to Awaken him, had been confiscated and handed over to Axel, still with Sig’s blood on it. Effectively showing him how to find the same power in others. All while Sig burned Below.
Eternal damnation, Axel had called it. Because the Giver had reduced him to a daemon.
But his fodur’s words echoed in his mind still, again, after all these years.Wake up and realize you are not Elyon, not the one with control over life and death. You must seek help to achieve what matters most.
He hadn’t saved Tuva that day because he’d fallen back on his own strength, and even with the newly-lit fires that he’d had no idea how to harness, it hadn’t been enough. Just as it hadn’t been enough for the endless years Below. Hadn’t been enough to help his people escape the chains of slavery. It—him, his own power—had never been enough. His way only led to failure.
What had finally brought change to Fjordlandi? A young woman opening her heart to the Giver. A young man willing to risk his own neck to teach a princess the way of faith.
Daemon had been wrong. All these years, he’d been wrong.
He wouldn’t make the same mistake today.Not my power, he prayed toward Himmel.Yours. Only yours, Eternal One.
His senses opened, and he felt the heat of the water, increasing the farther down it went. Hotter and hotter, until he found its source—the river of lava. A pull, a tug, and he brought that molten rock up through the thin layer separating it from the spring, into the water, fast enough that only the outer layer could harden and crust over.
As water turned to steam and sought an exit, the stone trembled. Pressure built. Daemon pulled more, replacing water with lava, forcing the steam upward, outward.
The prison shook. The voices, a cacophony around him, turned to shouts of surprise and even pain as ice locks melted, turned to gas, and exploded out onto them.
He pulled lava into its place. Molten rock every place ice had been, the very bars of the cells becoming streams of it. The prison warmed, grew hot, sweltered.
The ice-hewn Blessed cried out in distress.
It would serve them right to bake in here. To die of it like countless thanes had in their ice. To let their screams fuel him, feed him.
Strike the flint. Fan the flames of freedom.
But then he remembered his father’s glowing eyes. They hadn’t been giving him permission for vengeance. They’d anointed him with some other purpose. A nobler one, if he was strong enough to grasp it.
Kyrja, young though she was, had demonstrated that strength. She had righted wrongs, beginning in this very place. Then had shown mercy to those she’d sentenced here, rather than ending them on the spot, as Daemon would have done.
Her words had said life was punishment, but he’d known even then that it wasn’t true. She hadn’t put the Council in this prison to torment them, but because hers was not a heart that could take a life.
He pulled back the heat. Not from the locks or the bars, but from the stones. As she’d pulled back the ice for Nikanor and the other prisoners who she’d since released. And so, for all of them.
I’d wondered if you served only your Aflame or your Blessed queen.
Perhaps the answer Daemon had shown Stefanos two days ago hadn’t been the right one. Perhaps when he’d bent the knee during the coronation ball, it had been only a display, for Nik and Elianne’s sake more than Kyrja’s. But he’d revise it now.
Her father, his before him, Daemon had called a tyrant. He refused to ever, ever call them king. But from that first moment, he’d recognized something different in Kyrja and had no trouble giving her the title she deserved.
Queen. But not just that.Hisqueen. She led them, even when she wasn’t here. Led them into a better way. A way that would make his father, and the One in Himmel, proud. And so he would honor her rule, even when she wasn’t here. Truly bend the knee to his true queen. Do all in his power to solidify the kingdom she strove to establish, one of equity and mercy and truth.
Freedom.
Once he felt the lava fill every crevice of the crystal locking system and sealed off the access to the springs, Daemon pulled his hand away from the stone. Stood, blinked to clear his eyes of the past, of himself, and focused again on the world around him.
His family were all taunting the Blessed behind the new bars with grins and laughter—and in Eldrid’s case, a few rude gestures. Perla was staggering back to her feet, braid drenched in sweat. With fumbling fingers, she unfastened the clasps on her jerkin and wrestled it off her arms. No doubt with the new heat, anything more than the undershirt beneath her thigh-length leather coat had been suffocating.
It was the sudden wave of exhaustion that made him forget to look away, that was all. Not the fact that, dressed in leathers just a few shades off her hair color, she looked like a honeyed version of an Aflame.
She stumbled a bit as she moved toward him, clearly as drained as he was.
