“To the cave,” Ione supplied, and Lina threaded her fingers through hers.
“To the cave,” she agreed.“And after that – ”
Thunder roared, energy ricocheting across the night sky.As one she and Lina gazed skyward, both waiting for rain, for any sign of normalcy.
Nothing, until that energy crackled, fractured, a frigid wind sweeping over them.
Hydromancy.Kai’s hydromancy.
“The ward,” Ione whispered, dread settling like ice in her veins.
More sounds accompanied the screeching alarms, frantic footsteps, doors slamming, people shouting.The ward was down.The ward was down, and everyone on Oseidos – as far as Lodestone, as Soliz, beyond – felt it.
“But – ” Lina quivered, her horrified eyes still on the heavens.“But Castor wouldn’t know how to do that.”She grabbed Ione’s arms, frantic.“He wouldn’t know where it was, where to even start.”
“Who it was doesn’t matter now,” Ione shot back, although it did.“We have to go.”
Kai had sensed someone tinkering with the wardstone, someone who doubtless knew what to do.She tallied the options as she tugged Lina after her, now.Nalu, because he hated his brother?Hilo, still sulking over the wedding?Her own parents, or perhaps River, a childish endeavour to protest the marriage and make Kai look weak?
Light flashed high above them, so abruptly that Lina shrieked and Ione staggered back, her hands flying to cover her face.Bodies began to surge past them, a mix of people in wedding finery and nightclothes, firelight painting their terrified faces.And overhead, magic, the dizzying scent of earth and charcoal from Sowelan’s spellcasters, and rallying against it, Menon’s briny petrichor.
Ione blinked the spots from her eyes, barely cognizant of the stampede pressing her and Lina into the wall, of the screams, the prickle of heat.Spirals of flame high above the island spun themselves into dozens of spheres like tiny suns.Comets, the same that had felled Caelos.One by one they rained down onto Oseidos, barrelling into trees and buildings and altars, destroying everything in their wake.
Hundreds of homes, buildings, toppled like toys.Just like that.
“Ione,” Lina begged, her voice lost in the din.“Comeon!”
The hordes of people thinned, replaced by spellcasters and guards, allies and enemies, shadowed forms she could not identify churning against the light of the fires.Acolytes andLeviathosiworked to douse the flames razing the blackened, reeking shells of their homes; beyond them, crying, cursing, commands for more water, for more space, to get away from here.
Lina pulled at her, pleading, but Ione couldn’t move.Couldn’t leave.Couldn’t think for the cries of hatred ringing in her ears, the metallic clangs of colliding swords and tumbling stone.
Cynthia’s voice rang out over the chaos, hauling Ione back to life.Cynthia was alive, thank the gods, and so close, just on the other side of the plaza, shouting orders at people to follow her to the beach.Ione braced her weight against the cold wall, against Lina, her mind screaming at her to run, to go to Cynthia, to get all of them to safety.
Kai would protect them.He’d promised.
Another fireball barrelled into a shop across the street.She recoiled at the vibration of a wall hitting the ground, a bloodcurdling scream cut short.Dirty water swept down the path, soaking into Ione’s dress, Lina’s trousers; mangled bodies rode the current, limbs blackened either with char or frostbite, the stench of death.And distantly, glowing with firelight, three waterspouts taller than Oseidos itself shot up behind the altarhouse.
They bent like the heads of snakes, lining themselves up before spearing through the gaping holes in the altarhouse’s ceiling.The resulting wave crashed through the plaza, down the hill, forcing Ione and Lina to cling to one another to stop from being swept away.
“Kai,” Ione hissed, hope overriding the nausea, the sickening sensation of bloody water clinging to her.He was there – of course he was, right in the thick of it.Ione took Lina’s face in both hands, brought her back down, forced her to hold her gaze.“I can’t leave them, Lina.”
Lina stilled, fear and understanding slackening her features.“You have no idea what Castor will do once he finds Menon.”
“Tell me.”
“Rigel wants Menon eradicated.”Lina shivered, haunted.“Not just dead, and not just Her vessel: Menon Herself, drawn to the surface, taken apart, immolated piece by piece.”
“And Castor’s just the man for that,” Ione returned, her voice coming out stronger, surer than she felt.
“He is.I know that more than anyone.He’s…” Lina lowered her face, her hands gripping Ione’s.“He’s my brother.”
Ione drew in a long, burning breath, her lungs choked with smog.Focused on Menon’s power within her.Felt nothing but her own frantic pulse.
But this is what she was destined for, wasn’t it?She could imagine Saros’s chagrined sigh.Finally, he would say.It only took half the island going down.
Another of Kai’s waterspouts snaked up over the altarhouse.It sharpened and curved, about to thrust down into the building again – until midway through it collapsed, sending tonnes of water bucketing down to earth.Another tsunami swept over them, a swamp of blood and ash and charred muck.
“Kai,” Ione and Lina said at once.
