Still, Talasyn didn’t allow herself to relax until the narrow maze of earth and granite opened up into an expanse of sycamore forest. She flew low, as close to the treetops as possible, the aether hearts emanating their fumes of greenish light.
Some of her earliest memories involved sitting on the front stoop of the orphanage at night and looking up at the rushing sound of the Squallfast, her eyes widening in wonder at the sight of coracles streaking overhead and trailing aether in their wake like emerald shooting stars. Back then, she would never have imagined that she’d grow up to steer one of these things. There had been no space in the Hornbill’s Head slums for dreams like that.
As the sky lightened into a less oppressive shade of gray, Talasyn extinguished the fire lamps and unfolded the map that Bieshimma had provided, checking it against her compass to make sure that she was on the right course.
A Shadow Sever picked that moment to discharge, its distant guttural shriek piercing the air. She looked out the sidescuttle to her right and saw an enormous pillar of dark magic erupt from the earth in whorls of thick smoke, just past the Sardovian side of the fraught southern border. It blossomed over the treetops, inky tendrils reaching for the heavens like clouds of ash spewed forth from an enraged volcano.
Zannah’s Fury, older Sardovians called it whenever a Shadow Sever flared into existence, ascribing the phenomenon to the goddess of death and crossroads. Talasyn could almost believe it, viewing the harrowing display even from afar. The Shadowgate had brought nothing but horror and anguish to the world.
She tore her gaze away from the billowing column of magical energy. There were ten more kilometers’ worth of forest to go before the coastline. If she sped up, she’d be able to reach the Eversea before true sunrise and minimize the risk of being spotted by Kesathese patrols.
It would be a lie to insist that she wasn’t nervous. She didn’t know what lay in store for her in Nenavar or if she could even get in—or out, for that matter—in one piece. She knew only that she couldn’t let Sardovia down.
She had to keep moving. That was the only way to survive the Hurricane Wars.
Talasyn accelerated. Her wasp roared through the stillness as it sped toward the waiting horizon.
Chapter Five
Alaric knew that he would have to kill the girl eventually. The Shadow could only fall when there was no light to banish it. As long as the girl drew breath, she was a symbol for the Sardovians to rally around. As long as Sardovia stood, Kesath would never be safe. Would never be free to achieve the greatness that it was meant for.
All around us are enemies, Alaric’s father reminded him time and time again. And the Lightweaver was an enemy. From the moment Alaric first heard the hum of her magic, first saw her on the ice, bathed in moonlight, bringing a golden dagger down over his legionnaire’s broken form, he had known that there was no way that she could be allowed to live.
Which was all well and good, but he couldn’t exactly set about killing her if she was nowhere to be found. She seemed to have gone to ground after Frostplum, sitting out the rest of the battle for the Highlands.
Alaric redirected all his frustration into glowering at the Light Sever as it spilled over the side of the cliff, a waterfall of radiance that shone against the rough, dark granite.
It wasn’t a true Sever but, rather, the remnants of one. The cliff’s summit bore several collapsed archways and piles of rubble, which were all that was left of a Lightweaver shrine, situated in what had once been the border between Sunstead and the Hinterland, before the Night Empire conquered the two states. The legionnaires originally assigned to destroy this Light Sever hadn’t been thorough and, as a result, some of it had lingered deep beneath the bones of the earth, gradually rising to the surface.
It was a good thing, Alaric reflected, that Sardovia had withdrawn from this region long ago and a Kesathese patrol had spotted the stream of blazing magic before the Lightweaver got to it. The girl’s power was formidable enough without the assistance of a nexus point.
With a final outpouring of the Shadowgate from splayed, black-gauntleted fingers, a slim section of the struggling Lightweave vanished and Alaric rappelled further down the cliffside, his steps quick and steady on the granite ledges. There were three legionnaires below him, poring over a wider fracture, chipping away at it with inky masses of the Shadowgate that curled like smoke amidst the air and rock of this high altitude.
“Work faster,” he instructed once he had joined them. “The Night Emperor requires our presence at the Citadel.” They were planning a multipronged attack on several Sardovian cities; the Legion would join the first wave alongside Kesath’s conscripted regiments.
“Easier said than done, Your Highness,” Nisene replied, her throaty voice just the slightest bit petulant. “This one’s stubborn. For every inch we remove, a foot comes back, it feels like.”
“We should just blast this section,” opined Nisene’s twin sister, Ileis. She aimed a fitful kick at a nearby boulder to emphasize her point. “Expose the whole vein so we can dismantle it at the root. I’ve got some shells in my pack.”
Alaric shook his head. “That could trigger a landslide. It might even bring down the entire cliff—we don’t know how deep this Light Sever goes.”
“And so what if it brings down the entire cliff?” Nisene asked slowly.
“There’s a village at the base,” Alaric pointed out. “I do not consider it wise to destroy their homes for the sake of saving time.”
“Your father wouldn’t care about Sardovian villagers,” Ileis retorted. “If the decision were left to him.”
“They are no longer Sardovian. They are Kesathese, like us.” Alaric frowned behind his half-mask. “And I am not my father. The decision is mine to make, not his. I’m the one leading this mission.”
The twins turned to him in eerie unison, subjecting him to the weight of sly, searching gazes from two sets of brown eyes glimmering silver with magic, peering out from identical helms that crisscrossed over their bare faces in whorls of obsidian, sporting winglike projections along the sides. He gritted his teeth against what threatened to be a migraine. Ileis and Nisene could drive a man to drink, and not in the flattering way that such an adage was usually meant.
“Prince Alaric’s right, my ladies,” Sevraim called out from where he dangled a little further away on fixed ropes, pouring shadow into light. He’d removed his helm a while back and the sheer amount of concentration required to dismantle a Light Sever had caused beads of perspiration to dot his smooth brow even in the cold mountain air. “How many times do we have to tell you two that not everything can be solved with explosions?”
“Oh, fuck off,” Nisene said blithely.