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The missile launchers turned white-hot. Lidia rallied her flames. Even if she intercepted the missiles in midair, the shrapnel alone could kill her allies—
There was one way to stop it. To get there first. Before the missiles launched. And take them all out, herself included.
She began running.
She wished she’d been able to say goodbye to her sons. To Ruhn. To tell him her answer to what he’d said.
I love you.
She cast the thought behind her, toward the Fae Prince she knew would keep her sons safe.
The war-machines followed her movements with their launchers. They’d try to blast her into Hel before she could reach them.
Emphasis on try.
It had been a short life, as far as Vanir were concerned, and a bad one, but there had been moments of joy. Moments that she now gathered and held close to her heart: cradling her newborn sons, smelling their baby-sweet scents. Talking with Ruhn for hours, when she knew him only as Night. Lying in his arms.
So few happy memories, but she wouldn’t have traded them for anything.
Would have done it all again, just for those memories.
Lidia dove deep, all the way into the simmering dregs of her power.
The war-machines loomed, black and blazing with power. Ready for her. Launch barrels stared her down, brimstone missiles glowing golden in their throats.
Lidia unleashed her own fire, ready for her final incineration.
But before her flame could touch those war-machines, before the brimstone missiles could fire, the launch barrels melted. Iron dripped away, sizzling on the dry earth.
And those brimstone missiles, caught in the melting machinery …
The explosions shook the very world as the missiles ruptured, turning the war-machines into death traps for the soldiers within. They melted into nothing. The heat of it singed Lidia’s face, and amid the burning and billowing smoke—
Three tiny white lights burned bright.
Fire sprites. Simmering with power.
Through the fire and smoke and drifting embers, Lidia recognized them. Sasa. Rithi. Malana. Blazing, raging with fire. They must have crept up unseen from behind enemy lines. Too small to be noticed, to ever be counted by arrogant Vanir.
Another war-machine rumbled forward, rolling over the ruins of the front line.
A stupid mistake. The metal treads melted, too, pinning the machine in place. Trapping the soldiers and pilots within it.
They tried to fire their missiles at Lidia, at the three sprites now coming to her side, but they never got the chance. One moment, the war-machine was there, missile launchers primed with their payload. The next, the metal of the machine flared white, and then melted.
Where the machine had been, a fourth sprite glowed, a hot, intense blue.
Irithys.
She lifted a small hand in greeting.
Lidia raised one back.
“We found her,” Sasa said to Lidia, breathless with adrenaline or hope or fear or all of them at once. “We told her what you and Bryce said.”
Malana added as Irithys zoomed for them, leaving a trail of blue embers in her wake, “But it did not take much convincing to get her here.”
“How did you know to come today?” Lidia asked as Irithys joined them, a blue star in the midst of the three shimmering lights of the others.
