60

It feels as though I’ve been walking for the greater part of a year instead of the greater part of a day. I cock my head to listen.

Shrieks and shouts of men. Shrieks and shouts of otherworldly. Steel hitting steel. Thunder from the sky and rumbles from the earth. The sounds of battle.

But whose battle?

I squeeze my pendant, its jewels still glistening in the sky’s weird-colored light. The catherite stone in the moth’s thorax, though, remains cold, dark. I creep toward the roar of fighting, my body tingling as I climb another rocky outcropping, careful to avoid detection. The battle grows louder, and the light of the sky shifts from gray to red. The air stinks. Rotten eggs, corpses, fire, algae, death, and…

Nausea causes me to stop and take a moment to let its crest fall in on itself. My wet, burning eyes acclimate to the strong fumes. Better now, I clamber onto a boulder and see…

A massive plain with steam hissing from heat vents in the cracked ground, a thick crust of salt and bones. No plants, since the closest water source kills, since no decent amount of rain has fallen from the sky, not with a ground that cracked.

The Sea of Devour glows a green that comes not from algae but something far more sinister, more malignant. Death makes this sea green. Its waves are daggers, gutting and melting every creature that dares to dip a toe in her waters. It boils from heat, like hot springs, noxious steam rising from the water’s surface, the temperature high enough to melt the minerals that contain it. Vapor clouds shroud the banks of bleached sand twinkling with crystals and bones of creatures who thought they’d made it safely from the other side.

The sea abruptly ends at the foot of Mount Devour and sheer limestone and shale cliff walls that soar past a scarlet sky that bleeds lava, pebbles, and silt, and disappears into hissing clouds that spew acidic mist. Tangled trees and brush burst from blackened jagged peaks before more naked limestone and shale, monstrous, creeping vines, spiky trees and knifelike ridges notch the mountain’s sides, the harsh terrain ready to squeeze and skewer any man or beast that dares test her.

The only creatures that can withstand this wasteland are now fighting each other. The earth shakes as aburan and creatops, gerammocs and burnu fight sunabi and battabies, large serpents and saloroaches upon the plains and near the banks. Some beasts try to swim across or fly over that sea to scale Mount Devour’s cliff walls. Those that succeed eventually fall to their deaths, adding to the piles of dead and rotting otherworldly that form hills at the mount’s base.

As I suspected, Wake’s troops are battling on the plains. Banners fly high and unblemished from staffs held by soldiers on horseback. Banners bearing leopards, armored hands, and paddled colures mix with blood and mud on the ground. Men wearing copper-painted armor fight poison-quilled worupines, sunabi, serpents, and giant lizard creatures that stand on two feet and have the faces of women… leolsips , I recall. But there are otherworldly, aburan and burnu, that also wear tunics of the kingdom of Brithellum, slashing and trampling, ripping and beheading otherworldly without the emperor’s sigil.

Otherworldly fighting under the flag of Emperor Wake?

I knew Elyn had formed an alliance with Wake back in Caburh when she sent her cursuflies after me. But this is something bigger.

The aburan and burnu do not attack the soldiers wearing the emperor’s crest. No, they’re trying to attack creatures with no outward designations of allegiance—the leolsips, sunabi, battawhale, and serpents. What is either side fighting for? And how did the Wakes harness the power of the aburan and other beasts?

The earth trembles beneath my boots, matching the quaking chaos in my chest. The bare-chested otherworldly surge like a tide against the straining lines of soldiers and their tunic-wearing beasts. The air is thick with the stench of blood and sweat, and I feel the heat of the flames and the force of steel colliding.

There, in the fray, Prince Gileon, his armor glinting like the promise of dawn, fights back-to-back with Jadon, whose new regalia attests his newfound allegiance. His gleaming, dark-gray armor is a stark contrast from the ragtag leather and chainmail he wore when we fought side by side. Now, he shimmers, opulent and glowing, a prince once again.

The two men move in unison, their steps fluid and graceful. Each movement is precise and calculated, their swords flashing and sparking as they strike down their enemies, who soon lie lifeless at their feet.

Envy stings like poison ivy as I watch Jadon pivot and swing with his brother. We’d perfected fighting together, born of trust and intimate knowledge of the other’s every reflex.

But now, the boys are back together. Jadon abandoned me in a cave to join his brother, to return to his place in the kingdom. His time spent slumming over.

Fuckers.

They’ve finally conquered the parts of Vallendor that matter, and what—they’re here to conquer the gods? Is that why they’ve allied themselves with Elyn? The remaining otherworldly not under her spell fight with all they have to prevent them from reaching Mount Devour. Are the Wakes convinced that their strength and privilege and claims of their father being Supreme Manifest as Man will win them the realm?

The earth shakes. A bright light shimmers atop Mount Devour, illuminating the boiling sea below like the daystar. The light pops and, like a comet, soars from that pinnacle and pushes past the stinging mists, past the tunic-wearing otherworldly hurtling across the battlefield. I understand that light—the same as Olivia saw in the sky over Maford when I appeared out of nowhere—and dread no longer exists in me. I’m ready to face her.

Elyn, the woman who’s pursued me since the day I found myself nearly naked in the woods outside Maford, emerges now from a crater, hopping down from the dust and rubble made from her landing near the cliffs closest to the sea. Her long white hair cascades around her head. Her blue-and-gold armor catches the light that survives these clouds of Devour’s poison. She slides her silver blade through the bare chest of a leolsip who attempted to maul her, then kicks the creature’s chest.

She lifts her hand, and the otherworldly closest to her—the ones without tunics —lift their heads and turn her way. She points toward beasts and men wearing tunics, and the commanded beasts race toward the soldiers, teeth gnashing, claws out.

If she’s driving these beasts, that must mean, then, that she is the One after all, not Jadon. She’s doing something that I couldn’t do—control otherworldly. Despite Sybel’s denial, I know that Elyn did send those cursuflies and sunabi after me. She probably sent the burnu and gerammoc, too. And are any of these aburan the creature who swiped his paw at me back in Caerno Woods?

My anger licks off of me in waves as hot and toxic as that sea and the plains before me.

I start my march across the saltpan, sometimes losing Elyn in the vapor but keeping my eyes on the red cardinals fluttering over her. I whip my hand, and my wind smacks at every creature that nears me with their teeth bared. I whip my other hand, and fire consumes any man that nears me. Sweat soaks my hair, and the misty blood of the dead pebbles on my armor. I don’t stop my stride as I mark the cardinals swooping and brightening the sky.

There Elyn stands, thirty paces before me, atop a hillock of new dirt and gravel. Her white hair is now braided, even though moments ago, it floated free. No longer wearing blue-and-gold armor, she wears white pangolin scales and a cloak of swirling golds and blues. The walking stick has replaced her blade, but it looks just as solid, no longer clouds and snow. The glossy black stone in the center of her dove amulet pulses with gray-and-red energy. She glides toward me, her movements graceful and hypnotic. Flawless. She looks as though this battle is just one more task to complete today.

She now stands before me, and the cardinals, her sentinels, flutter away.

I thrust both hands at her, catching her off guard. She’s knocked back by my wind. She speeds away from me, stopping only after she rights herself and drags her fingers through the hard earth.

But I’ve been marching toward her as she glided.

The world around us is silent, as though we’re inhabiting a bubble.

“Stop where you stand,” she shouts.

I throw less wind, enough to knock her back on her ass. “Here I am, bitch,” I shout. “Chasing me across the realm? I’m not running anymore. You’re looking for me? You found me. ‘Give me Kai’? Well, here the fuck I am. Now what?” Hatred and exhaustion flicker in my core until my anger burns white-hot against my skin.

Adrenaline fills my limbs, rolling back like waves and then surging forward, stronger now. I pull out Fury—my sword has gained mass, and I’m ready to take an ear, a finger, a hair, a single slice of her skin. Any trophy, anywhere.