Thane coughed, breath hitching, and managed a bloodied half-smile. He grabbed Jakobav’s wrist. “Jake… you and I both know I’m not powerless. I haven’t been near my own soil long enough—but the Windforce is in me.”
Jakobav shook his head once, and it seemed to be his final answer.
Thane’s face contorted with pain, his breath hitching, but he pressed on. “You’re the only bastard I’d let use it before I ever get to see it myself. So take it—before more Leaches come, before that tear opens wider, and before the realm implodes—taking every last one of us with it.”
“No!” Jakobav shouted, composure long gone.
“Including Ella.”
Jakobav flinched at her name. His gaze snapped to her—raw, torn, his refusal breaking in his eyes.
Ella watched as Jakobav bent with the grim resolve of a man who had run out of refusals. He pressed his thumb to the blood at the corner of Thane’s mouth and brought it to his own lips.
Thane’s mouth twitched, a shadow of his usual grin. “Knew that would do it.”
The effect was instant. Jakobav’s body jolted, muscles tightening as if something struck from within. His eyes went wide and strange, and for a moment he looked as though hewere staring past the hall into some unreachable place. Then he wrenched himself back, chest heaving once, shoulders squaring.
The air changed direction.
45
CROWNED BENEATH RED SUN
It wasn’t a draft or the erratic pull of the breach.
Jakobav stood with his hands thrust out as the wind answered him.
The force of it seized the room as if it had finally found its master, snatching at torchlight, banners, hair—at the very smoke twisting through the rafters. Everything bent to his will. His gaze locked on the glowing seam splitting the dais.
And the Leaches reacted.
A wave of wind crashed downward, hard as a hammer. The nearest Leach skidded across the cracked marble, claws tearing grooves as it was shoved toward the tear. Another was flung sideways, dragged screaming toward the breach as Jakobav forced the current deeper, pushing them back into the darkness below.
Ella braced herself as the wind tore past her.
She watched him turn and walk straight to Savina, who was holding back a swarm of Leaches by force, her stone spikes trembling. Jakobav thrust out his hands. The wind slammed forward in a single brutal surge, ripping every creature off the stones and hurling them into the open seam.
Yes. It’s working. Thank the gods.
She watched as more were forced into the tear in the marble. Their cries vanished down the darkness as the wind drove them deeper. Jakobav stood over the seam, wind surging down into it to hold the creatures at bay.
She’d seen him do this before. But not this much and not this long.
Power that wasn’t his always burned through him fast. Minutes, sometimes less. The longer he held it, the more she saw it draining him—his shoulders trembled under the strain. His breath was ragged, his arms rigid as the wind pinned them there.
The shadows in the tear shifted.
The Leaches were still deep in the darkness—but the moment the current faltered, the shadows surged upward again.
The Leaches were climbing back up. And his strength was waning.
“Shit,” she said.
Jakobav couldn’t hold that wind forever. And when it finally slipped, every Leach below would claw its way back up.
A cold certainty slid through her. This wasn’t over.
Beneath the roar of the wind, she felt it thread-deep—the breach didn’t stop in this hall. It ran farther. Beyond Orchid. Across the world.
