With a flick of her fingers, one of the dead lunges at him.
But Rian is faster.
He launches forward, onto the corpse’s back, and with a savage twist, snaps its neck, sending the thing crumpling to the cobblestones.
“Stop them, Sabine!” Rian shouts, wiping jelly-thick remnants of corpse flesh hastily on his trousers. “Use your godkiss like you did with the tigers in Duren Arena!”
For a breath, I hesitate, staring down at my glowing hands, where silver light pulses beneath the skin, soft and steady like a heartbeat. The memory of the tigers—how I reached into their minds, how they couldn’t help but obey—returns to me.
I turn toward Hawk, Woudix’s snarling companion, hoping, praying, that I can reach her the same way.
But as I try to project into her, I feel nothing. Not a mind. Not a soul. Just a dead, echoing void. When I direct my godkiss to the walking corpses, it’s just as silent.
“I… I can’t,” I whisper, horror lacing every word as the truth sets in. “The tigers were alive. I can only control the living. These things—they’re already gone.”
The realization lands in my chest like a weight dropped from a great height. Even now, with all this power thrumming beneath my skin, I’m still bound by my godkiss’s laws.
Basten’s voice slices through my rising panic. “Brimfire.”
When I look at him, his expression is calm, resolute. And I understand.This is the only path left.
I inhale, grounding myself.
Drawing the magic upward from my core, I feel the burn of brimfire gather in my chest, a blistering heat building behind my ribs until it surges through my arms and bursts from my palms in a sweeping arc.
The blue flame rushes across the stone in a brilliant wave, incinerating the corpses that stagger from the portal before they can take more than a few steps into the city.
But brimfire is not a gentle magic, nor easily controlled. As I learned with what happened at the convent. The flames leap—onto carts, onto banners, onto the wooden shutters of the belltower itself.
Panic stirs in the crowd as screams rise.
My heart clenches as I realize what I’ve done.
These aren’t just monsters. They were people once. Men who carved boats, women who sang to their children at night, lovers who kissed on darkened docks.
They should be in Volkany with the refugees, or safe in their villages, not here—twisted into weapons.
But I don’t get to dwell on what theyshouldbe.
This is what they are now.
The bell tower chimes five tolls, each one echoing between my ears.Dawn comes at six, I think.
If it’s too risky to burn the hungry dead with brimfire, and I can’t command them with my godkiss…
Then maybe I can tap a different kind of strength.
I close my eyes, extending my sense of connection with the natural world beyond the city walls, to the sleepy lake Basten and I passed when we first arrived.
But I frown, sensing a barrier.
“Something’s in the way,” I say, gripping Basten’s arm. “The city gate is closed—I need you and Rian to open it.”
Basten holds my gaze, his eyes fierce with love. He nods without question.
Then I turn, gathering my skirts, and plunge back into the crowd.
The city still pulses with half-drunk celebrations, but the Royal Arena lies quieter now, the chaos of the day’s events scrubbed clean. Even the workers have cleared out, the props and banners have been hauled away, leaving the great structure silent.
