Ami huffed, impatient.“I don’t know, I’ve never heard of it.Hearth-something, it’s over in Eastwick.”Her hands fluttered, wiped away a jittery smile.“Thirty dead.It’s nothing compared to what they took from us in Caelos, but they were high priests, seasoned pyromancers.”She laughed, although it was tinged with anxiety, panicked.“They’re saying the men who headed the siege on Caelos were there, celebrating something.Probably planning another attack.And now look at them!”
Her ears ringing, Lina looked past Ami to the sea of bustling bodies, talking heads.Some of her peers laughed; some cried, hugged one another.Finally, she heard, over and over.Justice dealt!
Her attention snagged on a familiar pair of eyes across the room, wide and troubled as he assessed his own surroundings.River met her gaze and lurched back, startled; he shook his head, gestured innocently to the riotous energy.
“Excuse me,” Lina said to Ami, pushing herself up from her seat.
River waited for her to wend through the crowd, didn’t complain when she grabbed his arm and hauled him with her into the corridor.“You,” she hissed, pushing him against the wall, “promised you’d at least warn me before going to Saros with everything I told you.”
River sighed like she was an idiot.“First of all, you aren’t exactly in a position to beg favours.”He shoved her right back.“Second, I didn’t tell Saros, and I didn’t know Kai would this soon either.”
“How can younothave known?”Lina demanded, her voice strained with the effort of keeping quiet.“You two’ve been in each other’s fucking pockets for – ”
“Kai and I haven’t so much as spoken to one another in days, and…” River’s face fell.He raked his curls back and pivoted, kicking the wall so forcefully he left a heel-shaped mark in the plaster.“I thought he’d do something tome, not –Prick.This’ll only add more pressure to – ” He caught Lina’s eye and groaned, trailing off with a string of curses in the gods’ tongue.
Lina paced, counted her breaths, her footsteps, anything to keep her focused.“This will bring hell onto us,” she whispered.“They won’t take this sitting down.And we won’t survive their – ” She coughed, hands flying to her throat, fingers pulling at the wardstrings.Were they tighter?Was this it?She couldn’t breathe.She saw Castor’s face, wreathed in firelight, eyes, teeth, knives gilded by flame.
I told you I’d find you.
“Lina, breathe.”River yanked her hands away from her neck, gripped her wrists so she was forced to look at him.“You’re fine.Kai left you another fucking loophole, so stop with thepoor me, I’m so scaredbullshit unless you can do it quietly.”
Her blood froze, leaving her paralysed, wrenched back to when Castor had pinned her like this.She waited for the pain to come, her breath like a stone in her throat.But River looked tired, fed up but not with her.
Not with her.
Little by little, she released her breath, loosened her fists.
Loophole.From this moment, Kai had said about the binding ward: nothing she’d told him before that could hurt her.
Lina nodded, grim.Kai had saved her from the immediate consequences of giving so much information, but now, the rest of them would suffer.
River released her and scrubbed his hands over his face.“You had to know this would happen,” he muttered.“As much as I’d like to avoid crediting that childish twat with anything right now, we’re safe as long as his ward holds.”River fixed her with a hard stare.“And it will.”
Lina rubbed her wrists.Unharmed.“You deal with Kai, then,” she said, her voice steadier.“I need to find out more.”
Oseidos hummed with frenetic noise: people bustling back and forth with the news,Leviathosiparading about like heroes, healers seeing to their burns and battle wounds.Lina caught snatches of information, but nothing concrete – Hearthstone was attacked; the Leviathos executed it; a number of people between ten and fifty were killed – so she snaked through the crushing tide of people, eyes trained on the source.
On the altarhouse.
Was Castor dead?Rigel?Lina imagined them gone, dreamt of both peaceful passings and bodies speared with ice and blanketed with hoarfrost.Tried to drum up some guilt, some humanity.
She was guilty only for not feeling guilty.For wishing the worst, if only because it would keep the worst from herself.
The doors leading to the altarhouse’s inner courtyard were already open.Sharp, biting words seeped through, Ione’s and others; when Lina crept around the corner and saw the backs of Archpriest Saros and Penina and Ronan Artem, all three of them facing off against Ione, she huddled into the cold shadows of the threshold and listened.
Ione stood before the fountain, straight-backed and regal, although her arms quivered with leashed rage.“It was short-sighted, Saros.Even I expected better from you.”
Saros tittered into his sleeve.“Of all of us, I’m the only one playing any sort of long game, Ione.It was high time we showed our teeth.”
Ione’s father Ronan shuffled forward, all smiles.“We had to act quickly, you understand, given our new information.”
Ione lifted her chin, unmoved.“I should have been forewarned at the very least.”
“This is precisely why you weren’t forewarned,” Penina Artem said.“So that your stubborn questions wouldn’t have delayed us any further.This attack was a return for every wound we have suffered.”
“And a warning,” Ronan added pleasantly.“After the damage Captain Etan and Lieutenant Nalu have wrought, the priests at Soliz will be suitably cowed.”
Ione’s mouth twisted with fury, a momentary crack in her icy façade.“This will do nothing but anger them,” she whispered, echoing the words rattling around Lina’s own heart.
