“But why here?” Fortiss demands. “Why would Rihad send him…” He breaks off, his eyes going wide. “It has to be the crown of wings,” he whispers. “Thisis where it is.”
Zhang’s reaction to Fortiss’s words is a massive convulsion. A new wave of panic rolls through me, but when I turn, Fortiss is already backing away from the scorpion’s head, heading toward the center of the basin. He shuffles his feet, kicking up dust.
“There’s no way it’s here,” I call out, though I eye the ashy bowl with concern. Clearly, the recent storm we barely escaped didn’t reach this far, if all this ash is still here.
“Oh, come on. Why do you think Gent threw us both over the wall? He had to want us over here for something.”
I think about Gent’s mournful howl when he and I had spied into this barren, blighted land—had he known Zhang was here? I hadn’t noticed anything but the tiny glimmer of light…but had Gent known more than he let on?
Fortiss exhales an excited breath. “It’s here—we both know it is,” he mutters. “Can’t you hear it humming?”
I jolt in surprise, and a flicker beside me has me glancing back to the trapped scorpion’s eyes. The shiny black surface shivers as Zhang’s eyes practically spin in their sockets, but there’s no denying the image burned into my mind. The crown is here, Fortiss is right. But I don’t hear any humming, and frankly—I should. I won the tournament, after all. I earned the winged crown. Not Fortiss.
“How is it connecting to him?” I mutter, and another image surfaces in my mind— Rihad in his chambers, the fire leaping high in the grate. I’m watching Rihad as if I’m the one standing in the fire, I’m the mighty Sahktar and skrill, all bound up as one.
I jolt, curling my lip in disgust. I need Rihad, I realize. I…Iyearnfor him to free me, desire it with a desperation that vibrates in my very bones. I will promise himanything—any power, any service, any treasure.Anythingto set my people free.
Even the long-lost crown of wings.
What was sundered shall be?—
“I found it!” Fortiss’s shout explodes my vision, and I gape at him as he turns toward me, holding something high in his fist.
The image of him wearing that golden circlet, collapsed on the floor of the Eighth House with my arrow through his heart, stabs through my mind.
A teeth-rattlingboom!rips across the sky as the skies betray us once again.
And this time, the screeching cries of the hummerlets can’t save us.
Chapter 38
Idive under Zhang’s head as the storm breaks open above us, leaving Fortiss trapped in the dust sea. I lunge out to grab him even as I feel the sheeting rain connect with the dust in my hair, instantly dragging me down. The myriad howls of “No!”surge in my brain—equal parts Zhang, Gent, Szonja and Kreya—but with an echo that seems to travel all the way to the Blessed Plane and back.
I jerk back with a scream of frustration, ripping at my hair. I succeed in pulling out smallest pebble of cement but take out a good chunk of my scalp as well. Angrily, I shove aside the trickle of blood that drips down my forehead.
The storm passes and I peek out, my heart practically pounding. Fortiss is caught in half-run, as if he’s trying to make his way back to cover. His hand is outstretched, and dangling from it is a plain circlet of gold with a jagged triangular flourish.
Otherwise, he’s covered in cement.
Fear rips through me. I think of Fortiss laughing—running—fighting—leaping—kissing and touching me with fire in his eyes. Now those eyes are stone, his breath choked out, his beautiful body frozen, locked in place like a statue formed by the Lightitself. A statue that looks like it may crumble down to ash at any moment.
“Fortiss!” I don’t think anymore, I don’t even breathe. I surge out into the basin, my boots slamming hard on the newly hardened surface. I reach him and yank the crown out of his hands and slam it onto my head.
“Free him!” I scream, and my eyes pin wide, my mind filling suddenly with the same vision I’d seen before when Mirador flung his hands wide and commanded the Light to deliver their delegation from the attack of the skrill. Only what I’m seeing now is completely different. Meridor doesn’t stand alone with his hands outstretched to the heavens. While the rest of his troop is hip deep in writhing snakes, awomanstands beside him now. A fierce, clear-eyed warrior with long, flowing hair, her arms outstretched, her chin tilted up, a longbow lashed to her back.
But that’s not the most shocking part. Asecondcrown of wings atop her head, what looks to be a perfect mirror to Mirador’s own.Ehlyn, I think. Her name is Ehlyn.
Then the image shifts and I’m surrounded by a seething wall of skrill, while the three immense figures of smoky death rise high behind them—the Sahktar. The Divhs roar, and I roar back; the skrill hiss, and I snarl and thrust my hands up in the air?—
Then I feel as if my body’s ripped in two, and all I’ve ever wanted, all I’ve ever loved, is ripped away from me with a brutal, devastating surge, and?—
“No,” I gasp, ripping the crown from my head as I refocus on what is and not the fever dream pounding through my head. The vision disappears, but the shattering sense of wrongness remains.
I drop to my knees beside Fortiss, who has collapsed to the ground, now freed from his cement trap. Chunks of rock lie in a pile of scree all around him.
Behind me, the great Divh Zhang screeches in triumph as he surges up, but my focus can only be Fortiss—my friend, my leader, my heart…I can’t lose him! Not now—not when I’ve finally come to understand what he’s become to me.
“Fortiss,” I lean over him, using all my strength to haul him upright, but no sooner do I stagger backward under his weight than I hear an unearthly, blood-curdling scream.
