Page 29 of A Sea of Fate and Starfire

My bare feet touched down, and in the final few strides toward myself, I crunched through the hardened shell of snow.

Collided with my own body in a violent crash that snapped my head back. Struck my mind with a brutal rupture of thought. Sent shock waves down my spine to my fingers. I threw myself forward. Me. Whole and alive and mortal.

I rolled, caught my balance, leapt to my feet.

And tore down the mountain.

“TURN AROUND.”

Kye’s expression of surprise ignited from behind his eyes. He twisted, though, obeying either the shout from my chest or the sudden fear in my eyes, reaching behind his head for his sword. But his baldric wasn’t strapped to his back.

It was strapped to mine.

14

Maren

I’d taken Kye’s sword from his body to Perpetuum, and we’d never switched it back to his.

The Naiads of Juile whipped their heads as I flew past them, pausing in alarm. Ahead, they spun on their heels, changing direction at the sight of me charging down. The ones behind me did the same, the crush of pounding feet against crisp snow.

Flashes of red below the trees, Rivean soldiers realizing they’d been spotted while storming toward the mountain.

Unarmed, Kye braced for them, sinking his weight into his heels. Holding an invisible line at the very bottom. He only faltered for a moment, a half-stumble forward, his recovery swifter than mine. His soul had met his body.

Climb the mountain, I shrieked at him. Come to me!

But his gaze was set forward on the men now only feet from him.

My breath fogged, thick from the wild pant of my lungs. I didn’t hear it. The Naiad’s steps had also faded away, lost under the brutal throb of blood in my ears. Water dripped from my fingertips, freezing to ice before it hit the ground. Kye was so close. I was so close.

Not close enough.

He twirled away from the first man’s blade. Ducked under the second, kicking the ankle of the third with the heel of his boot.

But the fourth man.

The Rivean guard from the market slashed. Kye fell.

The world rocked under my feet. Cracked. Exploded.

Not again. Notagainnotagainnotagain.

Ice wove from my fingers, laying myself a trail directly to Kye. I leapt on, sliding down the mountain as lightning illuminated the darkening sky. Heat tumbled after me in a vicious wave, ash and rock and sulfur bursting from behind my shoulders.

Kye rolled. Rolled and pushed to his feet, already dodging the guard’s second blow.

Another man rushed him, but I was close enough to call to the water in this one’s body, his heart a fragile bird in my fist. The guard—Kazimir, if I remembered right—raised his sword toward Kye again, and I dropped to my knees. Leaned back. Slid straight under the Rivean blade. And smiled as I felt the jounce of Kye’s sword leaving its sheath.

A torrent of black-swathed sirens followed. Behind my back, steel met steel. Thunder roared, the boom vibrating through my collarbone. Water sputtered from my hands, begging for my call. I answered. And the three closest men choked on their final breath.

“Čarodejnica!” they called around me. “Zožeň čarodejnicu!”

Get the witch.

Leihani, Kye warned inside my head. But I was already prepared.

That fire that lived inside my chest still hadn’t cooled. Even after bartering with the Fates, crossing the stars, completing Theia’s errand, it screamed through me, a molten flame in my heart that ruptured every artery, every bone, every drop of blood. I opened my mouth, the only way to set that scream loose, and it nearly drowned me under its volume. The Riveans surrounding me froze in shock.