“There will be more attempts,” Honovi said grimly.
Soren raised his hands, palm up, fingers spread wide. Starfire flickered to life against his palms, bright like tiny stars. “Good.”
Bursts of starfire erupted from his hands into the sky like fireworks, guided by his will, to arc over the street toward the Daijalan force that backed Eimarille. He targeted the automatons first, and Caris made sure Soren would hit them by lashing out at Eimarille.
Caris wielded starfire like a cudgel, forcing Eimarille to defend herself and not the soldiers behind her. The other woman rocked to a halt, arms raised and hands braced against the starfire that sought to surround her. With a twist of power Caris felt in her gut, Eimarille wrenched the starfire from her control, letting it wrap around her arms like a fiery banner.
“You will die here,” Eimarille said, even as the automatons behind her exploded from Soren’s attack.
Caris swallowed against a desert-dry throat. “No, I won’t.”
“I was promised a crown. I will not let you take it from me.”
It took everything Caris had to hold off Eimarille’s next attack, feeling as if all the moisture was sucked out of her body with the starfire the other woman called forth. She staggered, but Blaine kept her upright, never leaving her side. She was only dimly aware of Soren moving away, working to keep Daijalan bullets at bay as he sought to remove their rifles and pistols from the fight. Caris had to trust he and the others could handle the soldiers while she drew Eimarille’s attention and ire.
Eimarille’s control was better than hers, but their strength in calling forth starfire was about equal. Caris kept it at bay from herself and Blaine and did her best to keep Eimarille’s attacks from reaching the others.
With guns out of play and automatons melted to scrap, soldiers resorted to close and deadly fighting, with the wardens and their poison grenades taking the lead. A circle of starfire kept them all at bay, trapped on the outside while Caris faced the woman who would have been her older sister in some other life, down some other road.
“Eimarille, please! You rule Daijal. Can’t that be enough?” Caris asked desperately as starfire twisted between them like stormy waves of searing heat.
“I am Rourke. Ashion is mine by right of blood,” Eimarille spat back.
“You can’t reason with her, so don’t try,” Blaine said from behind Caris, guarding her back with Honovi.
“Did you hope to rule with your Blade?” Soren called out from where he was fighting with theKlovod, their poison short swords clashing against each other in a furious duel.
Eimarille went deathly still at his words, fingers curled like claws around flickers of starfire. “What have you done?”
“I killed her.”
If grief had a sound, Caris thought it would have resembled the terrible, wordless scream that escaped Eimarille’s throat just then. Eimarille rounded on Soren, thrusting one arm toward him and releasing an inferno of starfire that consumed the area he and theKlovodfought in.
“Soren!” Caris shouted.
Eimarille turned again to face her, white-faced with grief and rage, gray-blue eyes glimmering with tears that reflected the light of starfire surrounding her. “If I must live without my love, then so will you.”
The threat had Caris running before she even knew she was moving. “Nathaniel!”
She was ready to push back against starfire, to keep him from burning to ash, but it wasn’t his body she needed to protect—it was his clockwork metal heart.
Eimarille yanked free a clarion crystal rod from where it hung from her belt. Caris recognized the song of it only because she was close enough now to hear it, the notes the same as the one that sang inside Nathaniel’s chest, ever a comfort to her. When Eimarille dropped the clarion crystal onto the ground and slammed her boot heel down on it, that precious song broke.
Nathaniel staggered forward, like a puppet with its strings cut, both hands going to his chest. His mouth worked, but nothing came out. The world went quiet, and Caris didn’t know she was screaming until sound rushed back to her like a cresting wave hitting the shore.
“Nathaniel!”
Caris fell to her knees beside him, heedless of Eimarille at her back, of anything but the man she gathered into her arms. He was seizing, fingers clawing at his chest, eyes full of a terrified horror as he stared up at her.
“Caris,” he gasped out, struggling to breathe.
She could hear the discordant notes of shattered clarion crystal emanating from his clockwork metal heart, the self-destruct spell having been activated by Eimarille’s actions. The threads of Ksenia’s magic that had held back theKlovod’s control were still present but rapidly fading as the mechanics and alchemy and magic that had kept Nathaniel alive since being turned into arionetkabroke apart.
“You’ll be okay,” Caris gasped out, lifting one shaking hand to push his hair away from his eyes as she clutched him close. “The wardens can save you, I know they can.”
“No, they can’t,” Eimarille said, heat growing at Caris’ back from a summoning of starfire. “And no one will?—”
Eimarille broke off with a wet gurgle, the silence that followed her unfinished words enough to momentarily wrench Caris’ attention away from Nathaniel. She glanced over her shoulder, watching as Soren slid his poison short sword free of Eimarille’s chest. He’d stabbed her in the back and didn’t bother to catch their sister’s body as it fell to the ground.
