“PRINCESS.” DARSHAN SMILED, his eyes twinkling as they always did when he greeted her. The twinkle dulled when his eyes turned on the captured king. The rebel leader grew tall and triumphant. “Your people have you surrounded. The gate that kept you safe is open. The men meant to guard you have bowed and let me in, and the few that fought against us met the sword. The empire you carved out of the remnants of a once-great kingdom is no more, Yarin D’mor, and it fell without a fight.”
Yarin growled, wiggling against the cold bite of the ice that held him. “What I have made from the ashes of this lives on. You may have gained a castle, a title, and a throne, but the war, my friend, is won, and it is I who am victorious. This is fleeting compared to the glory that comes. The Vel d’Ekaru will rise.”
“He has risen and fallen in the same breath.” Darshan cocked his head high. “Luke Canin has seen to that. The Vel d’Ekaru will never return from the Deadlands. He is no more.”
Saran’s brow furrowed. She stepped hurriedly down from the podium, brushing past the rebel that stood protectively before Darshan. “What do you mean?”
Darshan’s eyes cast her a sad, sympathetic glance. “It had to be done, my dear. It had to be. He turned into the monster, and I honored Rowe’s last request. If Keleir could not be saved from the beast, he wanted me to end it before he hurt you.”
Saran’s heart dropped into her stomach. Her head felt light and her knees weak. “Last request …”
“His injuries were too grave,” Darshan whispered, brushing her hair back with his hand. “He didn’t make it. The healers had already been set to the road, and we did all we could to stop the bleeding. We couldn’t get him to them in time. Rowe Blackwell died a hero to us. His history is now rewritten. He has absolved himself of his sins against us.”
Saran shook her head fiercely. “No.” Darshan reached for her, but she pulled away. “No. He is not dead. They are not dead!”
“Keleir didn’t come back, because he’d already turned on you. He was the Vel d’Ekaru. Would he not be here, by your side, if he were himself? Would he have left you to this misery alone? No! Not if he loved you.”
Saran roared at him. “You had no right!”
“It is for the best, Child. The Prophetess has guided us to this moment. Your husband is dead, which means that a legitimate marriage can happen between the two of us. The people will be united with the army once more. Your grandfather’s kingdom will be united after all this time.”
“You dare speak to me of marriage on the day you tell me you murdered my husband?” Saran shook with rage, wishing so much for the power in her blood, for the ability to age him to dust. She cared little if she cursed herself for it. Rage consumed her soul, killing what fondness she had for the man who had loved her mother, until cold realization dawned. “You planned this.”
“This was all you,” Darshan replied, motioning to the soldiers in the room. “You drew the rug from beneath Yarin’s feet. I was surprised to arrive and find the gates open and the men ushering me in with open arms. This was you! You brilliant, beautiful, strong Queen of Adrid.”
“You killed Keleir so you could be king!” She lifted her sword from her side and pointed it at him. “As long as I live, as long as I breathe, I will never let your deceitful ass sit on that throne. I care not what unity it destroys; I will see your blood, Ishep Darshan. I will paint myself in it. The demon’s wrath you should have feared is mine, not the Vel d’Ekaru!”
Saran swiped her sword at him. The stone at her feet buckled and broke, and earth reached up before her in a great wall. The blade struck the stone and bounced off, chipping the metal. Darshan gave a heavy sigh behind the wall, and water trickled through the cracks in the rock and poured onto the floor at her feet. It swirled and danced around her before worming off, up the stairs to wrap about Yarin’s legs.
The rock wall dropped with shuddering protest.
“I don’t want it to be this way,” Darshan said as his water magic soaked into Yarin’s clothes. Saran, through the Bind, felt it constricting like a snake around his legs.
She turned to her men. “Remember what I asked of you.”
They nodded.
She flashed Darshan a final look before bolting for her father, grabbing Odan by the scruff of his shirt and pulling him with her. They collided with the king and his throne, knocking it backward. They rolled into the far wall, near the tapestry that hung behind the throne. “The door!” Saran shouted at Odan, who ripped the great tapestry sigil of the D’mor house from the wall and kicked open the wooden door hidden behind it. He went feetfirst, coating the spiral staircase with enough ice to create a slippery slide.
Saran pushed Yarin’s weak body through the door, feeling every bump and bruise made by the hard landing at the bottom. She followed close behind him, skidding round and round, down the never-ending ice escape. Desmav and Coban were next, leaving the others to keep the rebels from following.
A long, narrow corridor greeted them at the bottom, nearly pitch black save for narrow slits in the right wall where sunlight cast bright white lights on the stone. Odan waited until the last person slid to a stop, and then the ice melted. Water rushed in a torrent down the stairs and around their ankles.
“Coban, Desmav, bring up the rear,” Saran ordered as she scooped her aged father up by his weak arms and dragged him to his feet.
He batted her away angrily, but she reasserted her grip on him, dragging him close to her face. “If you will not run, I will drag you. Understand?”
Saran pushed him forward, shoving him along with her body. “Odan! Come on.” But Odan didn’t follow, and when she looked back, she found him stalking in the opposite direction toward Desmav and Coban. “Odan!”
The Ice Mage grabbed the men from behind and drove ice-covered hands into their chests. Each one arched back, gasping on a dying breath as Odan wrapped his hands around the still-beating organ in their chests and clenched tight.
“Odan! No!”
Beside her, King Yarin D’mor laughed.
The light in Odan’s eyes grew blinding bright. Ice sprouted from every pore and orifice Desmav and Coban possessed until their entire beings were covered in a hard, cold shell. Their bodies grew, limbs elongating until they stood eight feet tall. Each hand sprouted daggerlike fingers, and the hard ice shell that encased them slowly bled translucent. They stood like sea glass statues before their Ice Mage maker. Odan slowly removed his hands, revealing vibrant red beating hearts in the breasts of his creations. When his work was done, the Ice Mage slumped against the wall.
Above them the ceiling cracked. The stairs shook. Dust wafted through the air as the Earth Mage tore the walls down around them.
“Protect us,” Odan told his Alikons. “Let nothing pass.”
He collected himself and turned from them. The Alikons grumbled an unearthly agreement to his command and faced the opening to the stairwell, shoulder to shoulder, cold icy holes for eyes watching for trouble. Odan did not meet Saran’s eyes as he brushed past her, grabbing hold of his king and dragging him off down the hall.
“You’re a bastard,” Saran seethed, skipping to catch up.
“I did what was necessary to protect my king, nothing more. Oh, and by the way, Princess, this is a dead end.”
“Not entirely dead.”
“The next levels are flooded.”
“There is a way out; we only need to swim to it.”
Saran eyed her weary father as he stumbled along, struggling with each breath. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen him exert so much energy. Not since she was a little girl and he was healthy and whole.
They went down a short staircase but stayed straight along the outer edge of the castle and cliffside overlooking the Andrian Sea. The sound of running water grew louder, starting as a soft trickle before slowly transitioning into a gentle roar.
“This was an escape route centuries ago … a means to get the king out, should the palace be stormed. I used to hide behind that door to eavesdrop,” Saran whispered. “When Father spent long hours in the room, I would go out this way. Then, one day, the old walls cracked and a spring opened, flooding the path. If we can swim past the flooded area, it comes out through a grate in the courtyard. We just have to avoid the tug of the water toward the cliffside, where the engineers opened another crack to try to rid the passage of water.”
The Alikons behind them roared. The walls shook and chunks of stone rattled off the ceiling to plop down in the water ahead of them.
“Wonderful,” Odan muttered. “We’ve got to try to swim a dangerous, pitch-black passage with a decrepit old man and hopefully not get sucked out the drain.”
Odan paused as his feet sank into black water halfway down the stairs. He gauged the temperature of the water and turned back for Yarin, grabbing his arms and helping him down into the water, until it washed up around their waist.
“You should swim first,” Saran said to Odan, propping Yarin against the wall. She eyed her father’s hunched and silent form. He hadn’t said a word since the brisk laugh he’d offered as Odan stole the lives of Desmav and Coban. While uncharacteristic of him, she thanked whatever gods had blessed her with his complacency.
“If this is some clever ruse to murder me …”
Saran glowered at him in the very, very limited light they had. “If I wanted you dead, I would have stabbed you when you turned good men into Alikons.”
Odan scoffed and waltzed off down the passage before taking one step too far and plunging into the water. Saran edged away from Yarin, listening and waiting for Odan to pop his head up again. After several long, agonizing seconds, she almost believed he’d completely abandoned them until he finally shot out of the water with a wet gasp.
“It’s a short swim and not hard to navigate. We won’t be troubled by the drain.”
“For a short swim, it sure took you long enough.” Saran sighed, turning back to grab Yarin. “If we both take him, we can get him across with little effort on his part, aside from him holding his breath. You can do that, right, old man?” Saran grabbed Yarin and pulled him off where he sat on the steps, half-submerged in water. He hung as deadweight in her arms. “Yarin?” Saran shook him harder. “Yarin!” She stared down at the withered old king, shock stealing the words out of her mouth. She felt at his neck for the pulse. “Wake up, you old goat!”
Yarin didn’t wake. Saran lowered her ears to his chest but heard no heartbeat. “Father?” The word slipped from her lips, belonging to some small part of her that still longed for him to be the father she always wanted, a tiny part not yet beaten into submission. After a long silence, Saran let him slip back down to lie in the water. “We ran him to death.”
Odan rushed through the water, grabbing hold of Yarin’s body and hauling him out to rest high on the steps. He checked the king, just as Saran had, his hand trembling ever so slightly as it rested on the old man’s forehead. The Ice Mage glared at her. “You ran him to death.”
Odan flopped into the water, sitting on the stairs just below Yarin’s resting body. In the darkness, Saran could barely make out the Ice Mage’s form, but she could feel his sadness in the change of temperature around them. The water grew colder.
Yarin had been her father, yes … but he’d been Odan’s in some strange way as well. If truth be told, he’d been a far better father to Odan than he’d ever been to her.
“How is it you’re not dead?” Odan’s voice trembled out, half anger and half sorrow. She hated him for loving her father so much, for finding cause to love a man who had loved her so little.
Saran stared at their shadows in the darkness. “The rules. If he died of old age or sickness, and not another’s hand, I would not be harmed. I’m free from his stupid curse, but not this stupid Bind. If I’d known that the key to my freedom lay in exercise, I would have made him run a long time ago.”
Odan’s eyes flared blue, and the water around her solidified for a second before melting away once the Ice Mage wrangled his anger, or perhaps because attempting to harm her hurt him.
Odan stood slowly, the water sloshing around his legs. “We will come back for his body,” he decided. “We will bury him as a king.” Saran imagined he needed to say that aloud to justify the need to abandon the corpse of his beloved adoptive father.
She fiddled with the metal around her wrist, frowning into the darkness. The one person who could give her the key now grew cold in the bowels of a broken escape tunnel built for the sole purpose of preserving his life. She was trapped within the city, and without her magic, for the foreseeable future.
Behind them, the Alikons raged and roared and screamed before finally silencing. The Ice Mage shivered, his cold eyes glowing as the power he’d given returned. The Alikons were no more. Odan grew quiet, listening behind them, absorbed in their deaths. The unfortunate part of creating life was that it always hurt when it ended.
Odan descended deeper into the pool with her. “I wonder what your Alikon would look like.”
Saran stiffened. “Nothing special,” she muttered, turning away from him and wading out into the water.
“Have you ever made one?” Odan asked, stepping up behind her.
“Once,” she replied, feeling at the edge of the steps with her foot, looking for the point where Odan’s feet had dropped out from under him before. The idea of dropping unprepared into black, icy waters didn’t appeal to her, even on a good day.
“What did you do with it?”
Saran frowned at the water. She curled her fingers in it, thankful for the dark around them. “I married him.”
Silence fell between them, with the cool rush of water filling the void. Odan broke the shocked pause with a loud, deep-bellied laugh. It echoed harsh off the walls. “Keleir? But he’s not misshapen or transformed.”
Saran clenched her eyes, regretting her admission. It slipped out, a secret she’d been holding for five years, and she’d admitted it to Odan of all people. “It is different! I didn’t alter him into some elemental beast or something he’s not … I simply changed what might have been. I reached into Keleir and found what he was without the Oruke. I made him that. He was there all along, trapped behind a wall the Oruke created, and I willed him into life. Without our connection …”
Odan gleefully finished the terrible thought for her. “That version of Ahriman ceases to exist.”
“He ceases to have control. He always exists, trapped inside, helpless in his own body, able to experience without acting.” Saran clenched her hands tight. She felt a shudder in her heart, a flutter that didn’t beat quite right. The escape had been a perfect distraction from Darshan’s admission, but now, as she spoke of Keleir, the truth came flooding back to her. “I suppose it doesn’t matter now … He’s dead. They’re both dead.”
The ache blistered her heart so profoundly that it stole her breath. She wanted to fade into tears, drift into the water, and grieve. But she wasn’t that type of woman. There would be time to grieve, but not now, and not in front of Odan.
“Let’s get out of here.” Saran stepped down and readied herself to swim when Odan grabbed her arm and pulled her back a step.
“Can you do it?” His voice trembled with anger, but something else. Something hidden just beneath the surface of his quiet rage.
“Do what?”
His hand tightened on her arm. “Lead us?”
Saran looked aghast at Odan, who hated her and accepted her as his queen all at once. She could not see him well, nor could he see her, but she knew he had to sense her shock ripple in the water. “Why do you care? Why would you want me to?”
“Yarin raised me. I thought of him as a father. I think that is why I hate you so much. I would have killed for him to see me as his child, to adore me as his son. You were his blood and you treated him with such disrespect, and I couldn’t stand to watch. You brought catastrophe and chaos to what he created, and I wanted nothing more than to prove my loyalty to him by showing him how unworthy you were. With him gone, I have no other purpose. I know no life but this one. I am bound to serve you because of Ophelia’s curse. All I want to know is, will you lead us? Do you have that in you? Or will you give in to Darshan?”
Saran swallowed. Out of all the people in the world she knew, Odan was the last person she thought to ever have deep conversations with in the depths of such uncertainty. The princess stepped into the blackness of the water without providing Odan an answer.