It was a horror he hadn’t ever contemplated in the years of guiding his children down a road he thought was the only way to the stars. Had he been so blind?
Aaralyn’s fingertips pressed into his skin. “I will not let you become our nightmare. Why else do you think I have done what was needed?”
Defiance and secrets and rallying their brethren to bring all the countries of Maricol to bear against his choices. Always holding out her hand to him every time their roads crossed.
And they had always crossed.
“I cannot stop this. There are roads yet for our children to walk.”
“Then let us guide them. Together, how we always have.”
She drew him into a kiss and drew him away from mistakes made out of love and the desire for something more, letting Maricol teeter on the precipice of change.
Behind them, as they bled into the aether, the starfire throne burned.
Fourteen
CARIS
“Take cover!”
Caris tumbled to the ground behind a building’s corner, dragged there by Blaine as gunfire erupted from the heavily guarded boulevard leading to the palace. Hands grabbed at her, hauling her farther back amidst the group of fighters that had grown since they’d left the jail behind. In the intersection they’d been attempting to enter, a bomb exploded. Starfire called forth by Soren erupted between them and the threat, melting whatever shrapnel might have tried to find a home in their bodies.
“All right?” Honovi asked, staring down at her through his brass goggles, voice coming out a crackle through his gas mask’s filter.
He, like the other E’ridians with them on the ground, had jumped from their airships when several had dived low on a bombing run, following Blaine’s marker he’d shot off. Not all of the aeronauts had made it to the ground—their parachutes made them easy targets in the sky—but Honovi had, and Caris was grateful for his presence.
“I’m fine,” Caris got out as he helped her back to her feet.
She wiped at her throat with the back of her hand, smearing the sweat there. Like the others in that first group to infiltrate Amari via the catacombs, Caris had discarded her Daijalan uniform jacket. They no longer needed to wear it, not after what had occurred in the jail, nor did they want to risk any friendly fire. Pretending to be something they weren’t would no longer aid them. Besides, Eimarille knew they were coming, their arrival impossible to miss as buildings went up in flame ahead of them.
Some of it was her doing. Most of it was Soren’s. He’d taken it upon himself to cleanse the city the same way he might cleanse the poison fields. Except no alchemy was in use here, only starfire, the aether never in fear of running out. Even now, Soren stood near the intersection, hands moving as he wielded starfire with a sureness Caris wished she could emulate.
The raging fire that had eaten through a block of buildings on the other side crossed the street under Soren’s control, starfire cascading over cobblestones. An Ashionen magician had their wand pointed at the fire that remained burning on the buildings, using magic to create wind that drove the smoke upward rather than into the street they huddled in.
“We need to break through their defenses,” Blaine said as he planted himself next to Caris. “Soren said he can burn them out.”
Caris flinched behind her brass goggles and gas mask, grateful that both hid her dismay. “Can he ensure the fire won’t spread? We aren’t here to cause another Inferno.”
“He says he is able to.”
Caris wanted to call up starfire but knew she needed to conserve her strength. She didn’t have Soren’s training that enabled him to press forward no matter what, for the poison fields were never kind to a lone warden who let their guard down. Caris had spent her entire life growing up loved and cared for, never needing to fight until she became a cog and then queen, and she’d repaid that love by letting her parents die.
She wrenched that knot of grief aside, trying not to cry. Soren had seen that her mother and father had become ash, and that was better than the horror of the revenants they’d been turned into.
“Then let him. What of the airships?”
Honovi tipped his head back for a brief moment, staring at the sky. “Caoimhe said she and the other airships would keep bombing the streets around the palace to keep the Daijalans at the barricades from reaching our position.”
Caris hated that they’d resorted to bombing runs, knowing far too many citizens would die from the attack. Not everyone who called Amari home was beholden to Daijal, but she knew enough about public sentiment these days that their side would take much of the blame in the near future. Perhaps the history books would look upon their choices with a better eye, but Caris could see no positives in war.
Maurus pushed his way through a knot of royal guards, giving Caris a sharp nod. “We’re moving forward behind Soren’s wall of starfire.”
Caris let herself be put in the center of a group of soldiers, Blaine ever by her side as everyone readied themselves for a march. She couldn’t see Soren up ahead, but she saw his efforts clear enough when it was deemed safe enough for her to turn the corner.
Starfire extended from one side of the street to the other, a white-gold wall of heat that warmed the air to an uncomfortable degree. It was stifling but not deadly, and it was a defensive wall that no bullet or bomb could get through. Fighting starfire with guns was a useless gesture. One had to fight starfire with starfire to win.
Caris shouldn’t have been surprised Eimarille knew that.
