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“Yes, Vesper,” Pa says with a soft smile, “We’re doing it your way. Now, your first ikon still stands—what was it, a sticking ikon?”
I glance back at where I’d drawn an ikon beside Pa’s ground-melting one. His was used up; mine is still intact. “Yes.”
He staggers to it on stiff legs. “Lead it here if you can. Keep it still and bound as long as you can, and I’ll handle the ikoncuffs.”
The charcoal crushes to dust before he’s finished with the first ikon. He pulls out a shard, but his blood spills in crystalline droplets that clink as they hit the ground. I fish the stub from my sash and toss it to him.
“That’s for the beast,” I say.
I grab a sharp-looking rock—not one of the glass shards—from the ground and cut my arm. Blood wells up, and I use it to finish the ikon for him.
The beast pounces over the edge of its stone enclosure. It now has a ridged back and a squat body, snapping two lizard-like heads.
I focus on the Queen’s power within me, reaching for the beast. It pads toward me, mesmerized.
Its front legs touch down upon the sticking ikon, and it gets stuck. A thunderclap breaks from its throat.
Pa gets in close and scribbles quick on its left hind leg. The brass falls. The roar from the audience grows deafening, and I tune them out.
The beast shifts from leg to leg, roaring. Its newly freed leg changes shape, growing talons as it struggles against the sticking ikon.
It jerks its front legs free, leaving wisps of cloud like paw prints.
Be calm.It turns its heads to me, smoke breaking apart and melding back into a face like a panther’s. A face like Izamal’s. I exhale through my teeth.
Pa gets another leg free.
The beast’s focus goes to the man under it, and I leap forward, putting my hand to its muzzle.
Pa sucks in a breath as if he would shout at me to get back. I shake my head without looking at him.
I stare into the stormbeast’s lightning eyes.Go back to her. Go back to the Storm.
Pa frees another leg.
It huffs a breath against my palm, black clouds curling around my fingers.
Pa frees its last leg.
Go.
It dissolves into stormcloud and rushes toward me, enveloping me, gusting past me and through me. For a moment, I’m back in the Storm, with Ma, with the Queen, with my shadow, with Dalca, before everything went wrong.
The stormcloud frees me. It rises up and returns to the Storm.
“We did it,” I say, something almost like joy rising in my chest. I drop to my knees before Pa, but as I get a good look at him, the joy dies.
Pa stays kneeling on the ground. The glass has inched up Pa’s neck. After the glass punctured him, it didn’t stop spreading.
“Vesper.” A tear rolls down his cheek and drops to the ground with a tinkle, rolling to a stop.
“Pa?”
He reaches a hand to my cheek. He moves so, so slowly, each movement accompanied by the sound of grinding crystal. His hand stops before it touches my skin.
“Pa? You’ll be fine, right?” My voice breaks. “We did it, we beat the Trial.”
His eyes burn with fierce love and determination. “You’ve shown them, love. You’re stronger than them all.”
The glass freezes his expression as it takes him over.
“Pa?”
He falls back and the glass that was my father shatters into hundred thousand pieces of glinting dust, catching on the wind, rising up in the wake of the stormbeast.
I scream and scream and scream.
