Thronos’s eyes met Lanthe’s just as blue sorcery exploded out from Morgana, striking him like a bolt.
—I’m coming back for you, Thronos!—
It was already too late; once he’d recovered from that strike, he gazed blankly at her. Zero recognition.
She swallowed past the lump in her throat. If the queen forced her from the Territories, Lanthe would create another portal right back here and fix everything. But that didn’t mean it wasn’t killing her to see Thronos like this.
Morgana wasn’t finished with him. “Your love for her will remain. The yearning you would feel to be parted from her will endure. Yet you won’t understand the never-ending ache, won’t comprehend the source of your misery. Should anyone speak to you of your queen, you’ll react with anger, then forget the conversation. And, Thronos, should you live past the next two minutes, you’ll forget we were ever here.”
Lanthe swung her head around on Morgana. “What happens in two minutes?”
The queen looked like revenge personified as she said, “The mighty shall fall.”
Tick tock? Mother of gold . . . “What have you done?” Somehow, Morgana was going to bring the Territories down.
“With access to their power vault, I turned their infuriating defenses against them. Their magics will destroy all that was long guarded and shrouded. Tick tock goes the clock.”
Sabine began shoving Lanthe toward the portal. —This is a done thing. I have to protect you.—
Lanthe broke away from Sabine and lunged for the security lever just inside the doors of Skye Hall. The alarm roared to life, blaring across the Territories.
From the bastion, Vrekeners shot upward in a flood, wings spread as they evacuated according to plan.
At once, the late-day sky turned to night. The air grew chill.
Across all islands, they soared. Except for Thronos, who was still trapped by Morgana.
With her chin lifted, Lanthe turned to face her queen, to accept her wrath.
Morgana seemed to boil with fury, the very ground shaking beneath her. The rainbow colors of her powers merged to . . . black. Raising a hand, she hissed, “Ill-advised, sorceress.”
When Sabine lunged in front of Lanthe, Morgana hesitated, then seemed to rein in the worst of her rage. “I’d punish you for this—and them for fleeing—but I haven’t the time.” With another wave of her hand, Lanthe was propelled toward the portal.
“No, leave me here!”
Sabine snapped, “Not going to happen!”
As Lanthe clung to the edge of the invisible threshold, she screamed, “Thronos, leave this place!”
Though Morgana’s hold on him had eased—he could breathe once more—he continued to stare at the spot where she’d been standing.
“FLY AWAY!” Lanthe commanded.
But her persuasion had been drained from Morgana’s catastrophic use of it.
Sabine peeled her fingers away. “We’re running out of time, Lanthe!”
“Leave, Thronos!” With her grip loosened, Lanthe was sent careening into her room. “Please, GO!” she sobbed as the threshold closed behind them. . . .
The blaring alarm roused Thronos.
He blinked again and again. Why was he standing on the steps of Skye Hall, staring at nothing? He shook his head hard.
Vrekeners had surged upward from the islands, flying in the direction of the outpost. Why was he not moving with them? He wondered if this was another drill, until he heard explosions coming from the outer islands.
One blast after another detonated along the lines of the monoliths. Fires erupted, overrunning the islands in blue and white flames—an unnatural fire.
An immortal killer.
Burning rock shot upward—and downward, cascading toward the gulf far below them.
The warded and protected Territories were being annihilated by some unseen force.
Act, Talos. Move! He tensed to fly—
A white flash fire roared from the Hall itself, engulfing him just as his wings reflexively shielded his body. The mystical flames consumed both wings; the explosive percussion hurtled him down to the vale.
Which had disappeared.
The island had . . . disintegrated.
Thronos plummeted amid the fiery rubble. Blood poured from his ringing ears. Wind snapped what was left of his still-burning wings. They were useless.
My lands, my people. He was helpless to do anything for them.
He couldn’t fly. Could only fall.
He knew he had fallen as a boy. Though he didn’t remember why, he hadn’t used his wings all the way down.
As now.
Once more I fall.
His back was turned to the world below—so he could keep his eyes on the sky. Time seemed to slow.
Traces of malevolent sorcery eddied around crimson and purple clouds. Lightning fractured those clouds, illuminating all the debris raining down around him.
Scorched plaster. Burning books. A charred cradle.
For mere days, he’d been king. Now his realm had died.
You’ve lost something else, something even dearer. His heart twisted. What could possibly be more treasured than a kingdom?
What was it he’d lost?
He finally dragged his eyes from the heavens and gazed below him. The water rushed ever closer. Blue and white flames soared from the gulf. Thronos had no shield from the heat. When he hit, he would be incinerated.
His life had been long and unfulfilling, his dream of finding his mate unrealized. Perhaps he was meant to have died after his first fall. Perhaps fate sought to right that misguided mercy now.
He turned to the nearby mountainside and spotted . . . Vrekeners. Thousands of them. They’d gathered on a plateau above the gulf to watch their home perish.
Thronos had never named a successor. His people were more vulnerable than they’d ever been. For them, he had to survive.
Wasn’t there a way? He couldn’t remember it!
What couldn’t he remember?
Once more I fall. . . .
FIFTY-FOUR
On a mountaintop far across the gulf from the gathered Vrekeners, Nïx the Ever-Knowing and Morgana, the Queen of Sorceri, watched the Skye fall.
One female had allowed it; one had caused it.
Nïx’s lightning crackled all around her—and the bat she carried. Morgana’s usurped powers were so volatile that the color streams of her sorcery had morphed to a permanent black.
As the two immortals bore witness, they sparked off each other like negatively charged ions.
“I foresaw the Queen of Persuasion desperate to stay with King Thronos,” Nïx said, never looking away. The water was already aflame with soaring plumes of otherworldly fire.
Morgana too kept her gaze trained. “As soon as I left her and Sabine in Rothkalina, Melanthe probably created a portal back. To nothing.” Black swirls danced from her lips, as if a contagion was trying to escape her body. “If the Vrekener survives, the memory of his wife will not—”
The giant monoliths crashed into the flames, displacing miles of water, generating towering tsunamis.
“I suppose the mortals will know of this now,” Morgana said, tone inscrutable. “Of us.”
“Not quite yet. . . .”
From the gulf, the sea god Nereus rose up like a mountain himself, visible only to the immortal pair. With a monstrous inhalation, he sucked all the flames into his lungs.
Then he brandished his divine triton, raising it over his head to subdue the waves. The tsunamis paused, their terrible surge arrested in midswell—
Yielding to his command, they gradually subsided, slipping to acquiescence.
The surface was still, the fire defeated. Before Nereus sank to the depths once more, his smoldering gaze lingered on Morgana.
She frowned, but that was the least extraordinary thing she’d seen this day.
A reviled realm—the bane of her entire life—had perished by fire and been entombed in the sea. Her heart was glad.
The Valkyrie soothsayer turned to the sorceress queen. “For better or worse, it’s begun. . . .”
FIFTY-FIVE
1. Portal to Vrekener outpost
2. Adjust directions, portal to outpost
3. Adjust directions again, portal to outpost
4. Offer demon mercenaries gold to scour Canadian forests for difficult-to-find Vrekener outpost
5. Offer witches gold to scry for Thronos
6. Contact Loa, re: Hail Mary option—send gold deposit
7. FIND NÏX
8. Keep from losing your ever-living shit because he needs you
9. Contact oracles and witches in more worlds—offer gold
10. Save up power for tomorrow
“What have I told you about chasing after boys?” Sabine drawled, sashaying into Lanthe’s substitute suite.
Her former residence was still being repaired, nearly a week after the Territories had fallen.
Lanthe glanced up from her desperate letters and lists, allowing Sabine see her panic, her despondency. Both grew with each minute. “Thronos is not a boy—he’s my husband. And I want him back.”
“You look like hell. Would you like me to weave an illusion over you?”
As if Lanthe could be bothered with her appearance—when every other thought in her head was YOU’RE RUNNING OUT OF TIME TO FIND HIM!
How was Thronos dealing with the destruction of his kingdom? How was he coping with his feelings of loss? What if he thought he had nothing to live for and was careless in some battle? What if Cadmus staged a refugee coup?
“You’re pushing yourself far too hard, Lanthe.” Sabine reclined on a nearby divan. “Since when have you been able to create portals so frequently?”
After Lanthe had failed to locate the outpost that first day, she’d reasoned that Nïx had actually been talking about all of Lanthe’s powers behaving like muscles. She’d been able to shave down the time between her portals to once a day, but that was the limit.
Use, use, use, use, use—and no rest? Accuracy . . . suffered.
“You need to dial down the thresholds,” Sabine warned.
“I haven’t created one today.” Holding off was one of the hardest things she’d ever done.
But she was about to go for broke, to try to reach a realm that could be light-years away.
“That’s only one of the things I’m here to talk about.”
She’d known Sabine would want a sit-down soon. Lanthe heard the whispers in the castle growing louder and more numerous. They said that Thronos had surely perished.
She supposed they had reason to believe that. . . .
As soon as Morgana had left Rothkalina to go watch her handiwork from some vantage like a ghoulish spectator, Lanthe had slashed open a rift to get back to Thronos.
In time to catch the blast.
Sabine had shoved her out of the way, taking the full brunt—a force strong enough to send her flying across the room. Her impact had buckled a tower wall. Luckily Sabine had been wearing scads of metal.
Lanthe hadn’t been able to create another portal until the next day. With a suitcase full of clothes and big hopes, she’d portaled to Canada, using the just-in-case directions Thronos had given her to the Vrekeners’ outpost.
Past Lanthe’s threshold, there’d been nothing but rocks and trees, not a trace of Vrekeners. She’d been greeted by a herd of deer so tame they’d approached her. Clearly, no winged hunters had been in that area stalking them, though Thronos loved venison.
Either she’d gotten the directions jumbled (as she had every other time in her life, in which case, she sucked) or her portal had gone awry (in which case, she sucked).
While she’d been recharging for another futile go at Canada, Sabine and Rydstrom had told Lanthe that even an immortal like Thronos couldn’t survive a fire born of sorcery like Morgana’s. Sabine relayed to her that Morgana had watched it all—after the blast, the islands had simply crumbled into flames and plunged.
“Yes, but Thronos’s wings are fireproof,” Lanthe had argued.
Sabine had said, “Even his wings would be vulnerable to an unnatural fire.”
Lanthe had reasoned, “Someone could have swooped in to save him.”
With grave hesitation, Rydstrom had pointed out, “But hadn’t everyone already evacuated, Lanthe?”
Whatever. Thronos had survived. Period. Lanthe had promised herself that she would never underestimate him again. He was an extraordinary male who would prevail in any situation.
Besides, her husband had one more trick up his sleeve. Granted, he wouldn’t quite know he had it. . . .
“We can talk later,” she told Sabine now. “I’m busy.” She waved at the stack of missives she was penning to witches and oracles all over the worlds.
The afternoon of her first ill-fated Canada trip, Lanthe had gotten one of the castle guards to trace her to the Louisiana chapter of the House of Witches. Carrow and her super-powerful friend Mariketa had scried for Thronos, but some of the Vrekeners’ ancient magics still held. The same cloaks that had hidden them from humans lingered.
The witches couldn’t locate an entire populace.
So Lanthe had dispatched Cadeon’s former band of mercenaries to manually search Canuck forests. “Which ones?” they’d asked.