“Hate me if it helps you, Ione.”Kai widened his stance, water rushing to his aid.It swirled around himself and Ione, tripling in size as he pulled vapour from the air to join it.He straightened, palms lifting skyward, and the water stretched and enveloped them both in a raging torrent.
“Anger is an anchor,” he called over the roar of the deluge, over the shouts of the seleneschals just outside.He quickened the torrent, built upon it, made it impossible for River to breach, for Cynthia to stop.“Anger keeps us alive.Use it, Ione.”
The water surged on, the arena Kai had woven tightening; he drew her closer, step by step, daring her to fight.Ione hissed as a spray of ice grazed her arm.She clamped a hand over it, her teeth bared.Kai smelled blood.
“Someday, I’ll have to kill,” she ground out, her hair and dress clinging wetly to her small form.“I had made peace with that.I had even decided who would be my first.”She smiled, twisted with hate, and looked more like a drowned ghost than any goddess Kai had ever heard of.“Saros will have to settle for being my second.”
Kai grinned right back when Ione thrust her hand into the water, drawing forth a thick tendril and freezing it into a spear.
Good.He shattered it, sent the pieces flying right back at her.“Kill me then and get it over with.”He spun, kicking; a strand of ice sprouted from the torrent, following the arc of his leg.“Let it strengthen you,” he commanded, pleased when she melted it into a cloud of hot steam.“because the first one’s the hardest.After that, you’ll have millions of Moths to do away with.”
Ione cursed when another sharp spray hit her.A lock of ivory hair, shorn, landed at her feet.“I know,” she shouted, her face pink with rage, “I’ve always known – ”
“Knowing isn’t enough.”Kai advanced, drawing the torrent tighter, feeling it whip at his own shirt, tearing the shoulder, the hem.He stooped, eye-level.“Think about it,” he whispered, watching her eyes shake, fury slowly morphing into fear.“Menon’s vessel, our only hope, having tea with her seleneschals and hiding from the rain while the rest of us fight and die in her stead.”
Closer, closer, his face a hair’s breadth from hers, the water surrounding them deafening.“Hate me,” he said softly.“Hate Saros.Hate yourself, the Moths, whoever it takes.But you need me to learn how to hone that into strength, and so you’re gonna start fucking listening to me.”
A sharp sting bloomed in Kai’s cheek, hard and sudden enough that he staggered back a step.She’d just fucking slapped him.
He had to have been stunned for half a second, but it was long enough for Ione to twist to the side, jamming her palms into the water.Kai sensed her flooding it with her own magical signature, reverberating against his to the point of pain; the water swelled and burst, a column of ice cracking the torrent open.
Another half-second passed and River was there, and then Cynthia, silver and ice flashing.Kai fended them both off, his attention catching on Lina as she leapt in front of Ione like a little hero, her arms up and feet planted.
Kai frowned, barely missing a swipe of River’s sword.A wall of ice caught it, surprising River; Kai wrested control of the rapier and heaved it across the courtyard.
Did no one else notice the way Lina was holding herself?He shot a stream of hail at her, his eyebrows raising when she easily sidestepped it.Her hands opened, but then clenched shut again, alarm flickering across her face.
She stood like she knew how to fight.Like she knew how to use magic.
Kai liked this less and less.“Awful brave for someone who can’t wield,” he said dryly, letting the water fall to the flagstones.He lifted both arms, surrendering this round before River got his sword back.
Lina tucked her chin, staring up at him like a mouse to a cat.“You say you want to help, and teach, but the only thing people like you want is to flaunt your power over others.”
He couldn’t help but laugh.“Whoever you imagine I am, I’m not.”
One more, then, for fun, to see what she’d do.Kai snapped his fingers, sending one of Cynthia’s ice daggers flying, its tip pointed at Lina’s gut.Not a killing shot, he reasoned: an experiment.
Unfortunately he was the only scientist here, it seemed, because Ione gasped and threw an arm out, conjuring one last wave tall enough to shield them both.
It was an excellent shield.But Kai only had a second to pat himself on the back before he felt the air shift behind him.He ducked, his heart thudding to see River’s leg swinging just over him, right where his head had been.
“Celestial fucking Pearl,” Kai laughed, leaping backwards.“Is there no end to mundane henchmen trying my patience?It’s Her Ladyship I’m here to teach.”
The others fell into place.Cynthia, standing in front of Ione and Lina with a dagger in each hand; Lina, holding Ione back as she made creative threats against Kai’s life.A couple of guards had filed in from the altarhouse, checking on Ione and then wisely staying away, and that was all Kai could afford to note before River lunged again.
River hadn’t retrieved his sword, but he was devastating enough without.He moved like mercury, fluid and beautiful in a way that brought Kai back to his teenaged years, fist-fighting his brothers or other crewmen for glory, for a bottle of verdure, for anything.Kai pivoted, raising a heavy stream of ice, and grinned like a madman when River kicked it cleanly in half and dived at him, fists bared.
For an embarrassing moment, Kai balked, distracted by the intensity in River’s eyes, the chilled concentration – and then he saw the blur of River’s palm, angled straight for his nose.He fell back, sending out ice like panes of cut glass; River deflected some but not all, grimacing as one sliced his cheek, another, his shoulder.
A blur of movement, a strike, a pulse throbbing in Kai’s temple.Something hot and wet stung his eye, but Kai revelled in the thrill of it all and reared back like a snake, relishing the blunt, stabbing punches, the satisfying sensation of his knee digging under River’s ribcage.The hatred in River’s eyes, the taste of blood.It was all just as he had hoped.
Better.
He wasn’t in a sunny courtyard on Oseidos.He was below deck on the Cetos, listening to drunken cheers and the sounds of coins hitting the floorboards.
Reality rushed back in when River charged one last time, evading Kai’s foot and jamming his fingers into the base of Kai’s throat.Kai was on the ground before he knew it, coughing, his throat on fire; River loomed over him, straddling his hips and holding him down by his neck, blood dripping from his cheek onto Kai’s once-white shirt.
“Fucking lunatic,” River mustered in between breaths.
