Her ears rang with a deafening pitch. Eira slowly reached her hands up to them, touching the sides of her face, half expecting to feel blood dribbling from them. Her vision was blurry; smoke
crashed over her, carrying ash that clotted her throat. Everything burned from heat, from the glass-like scraps of the flash shale that battered her, sliced her skin with burning edges and pockmarked tiny explosions on impact. She forced herself to breathe through the agony. To recover and stand on shaky feet.
What had happened? What had gone wrong?
Eira blinked through the haze, willing her eyes to focus. Her heart was in her throat.
Noelle had known the risks. She knew to be careful and was too good with her magic to have allowed it to get out of control. Unless Cullen fueling her fire had thrown her off?
Cullen. Eira’s chest grew even tighter. She croaked, wordless as she stared down into the mine that was an inferno. Cinder and smoke continued to pour out, obscuring her vision further and making her eyes water.
“Noelle!” Ducot screamed. Her name had become the sound of a bone breaking. Of the world shattering. Agony incarnate set free with two syllables. “Tell me…tell me she’s all right. I can’t sense her. I can’t sense her.” He was shaking Alyss. “What do you see. What do you see?”
“It’s just…fire.” Alyss’s words were weak. They were all slowly recovering, crawling and stumbling toward the edge of the mines.
Cullen… Noelle… Everything seemed like it was happening very far away. This couldn’t be—they couldn’t be—
“There!” Yonlin shouted, nearly throwing himself over the railing of his vantage in the tower. Somehow it hadn’t been toppled, but it looked far more precarious than Eira remembered. He pointed, squinting. They all followed his finger.
Far, far below, in the heart of the blaze, the flame moved unnaturally to form a small bubble. It was barely visible. But Eira could see Cullen and Noelle, back-to-back, holding the fire at bay. The air he had used to fuel it, he now was using to try to snuff it—to carve a hollow spot for them. Noelle took a step forward, sweeping her arms to make a tunnel. They stumbled and staggered, movements strained. But even though their wounds must’ve been far worse than the rest of them had endured, neither Cullen nor Noelle was giving up.
“We have to help make a path for them!” Eira shouted. “I’m on it!” Alyss reached out, magic thin and wavering.
They were all at their limit. Eira included. She could either help batter back the flames or widen someone’s channel. There wasn’t enough strength left in her to do both. But the flames made the choice for her—the moisture in the air and earth had evaporated. Dredging up more would take a level of power she no longer had.
So Eira reached out to Alyss, wrapping her magic around her friend’s and prying open her channel once more. Eira poured all the last vestiges of her strength into the effort. Cullen and Noelle were too far for Eira to open their channels confidently, especially with the magic-fueled blaze. But Alyss… She would give her enough power that Alyss would be able to do anything.
Two walls of stone rose on either side of Cullen and Noelle. Then one behind. The first two elongated up the crumbling ramps and smoldering remnants of the mines.
Cullen’s magic shifted to snuff out the remaining flames and cool the stone enough for them to move. Eira debated if she should change to focus on his power instead of Alyss’s once he was in reach. But Noelle was assisting him as well. The two of them moved as easily as Eira and Cullen had together. Their magic natural complements for each other.
“What’s happening?” Ducot pleaded, his face rife with worry. “There’s too much magic, I can’t make sense of it.”
“They’re coming up. Alyss is making a path…” Olivin shifted closer to give Ducot the full explanation of what was happening. “Cullen and Noelle are working together. But the stone is cracking…”
Olivin spared no details. His words underscored the desperation of their circumstances. They highlighted every explosion that burst from tunnels to the left of Cullen and Noelle, battering Alyss’s walls, as the fire that Noelle had triggered ran rampant through the veins of flash shale throughout the mines. The fire formed deep trenches as whole pieces of earth slid off, collapsing into the inferno. Eira wondered just how much of the path Noelle and Cullen were walking on was supported by Alyss.
“We need to move from the ledge.” Yonlin was halfway down the ladder that reached up to the watchtower deck. “This whole area might go. Who knows how deep the tracts of flash shale run, and those other knights from the woods are nearly halfway here.”
He was right. Eira knew it. But they had all come in together. They were all leaving together.
“We have to hurry.” Olivin’s words dripped with worry.
“We’re going to get them, and then we’re leaving,” she declared.
“Eira…” Alyss said softly. Sweat poured down her face. It ran down Eira’s as well, melting instantly through the ice Eira would usually keep under her skin. But she didn’t expend her power on keeping herself comfortable, not now. “It’s becoming too unstable for me to move too much rock. I’m doing all I can but—”
“They’re almost here, Alyss. A little bit longer. You can do it. I know you can.”
Alyss nodded and set her jaw in determination. Her magic continued to surge. But it was beginning to waver, even as Eira tried to dredge up more.
Cullen and Noelle were over halfway up. They were racing as fast as they could. But the ground underneath them was giving way with almost every step. The mine was being consumed by magic fire—waves of power stronger than any Eira had ever felt before battered her with every burst of flame.
A fiery blast had Noelle tackling Cullen to the ground, her hand held out, elbow locked. Fending off the flames with a burst of her own magic. The explosion from the flash shale nearly won.
“Noelle!” Ducot shouted. “Hurry!”
She looked up, finally able to hear his voice. Awash in the bright red and orange glow, a smile crossed her lips. One of confidence, arrogance, of blind faith—everything that made Noelle her. She helped Cullen up and they began running again, magic flickering.
“Olivin, take Ducot and Yonlin, go for the woods,” Eira commanded. “We’ll have a better chance of losing the knights there.”
“I’m not leaving!” Ducot snapped at her.
“This whole place is going down. We need to get clear. Go ahead,” she snapped back. Then, softer, “Noelle and Cullen aren’t far. We’ll all be right behind.”
Eira’s eyes met Olivin’s, focusing on him instead of Ducot. He gave a slight nod. But his expression was just as worried as Ducot’s—except, he was worried for her. Not that she blamed him. Everything was crumbling beneath them and they were a breath away from it all tumbling down.
She gave him a slight nod, one he returned. Then, he started to move. She’d asked him because she knew he would. If there was one thing she’d learned, it was that he’d protect his brother at all costs.
“They’re almost here,” Eira encouraged, even though Alyss could see their status. Her friend’s strength was nearly depleted.
“Eira, I can’t…”
“You’re doing amazing. A little bit longer.” Eira placed her hand on Alyss’s shoulder and squeezed, the contact deepening Eira’s powers.
Between Alyss making a pathway, Noelle and Cullen fending off the flames, and sheer luck…
Cullen and Noelle crested the top of the mines.
Eira let out a squeak of relief as her hand slid from Alyss’s shoulder. Every muscle in her body relaxed. Tears ran sooty rivulets over her cheeks. Cullen’s gaze turned toward her and, in him, she saw the man that had hoisted her from the snow after her brother’s death. The man who had been there in a night of chaos in the Court of Shadows. As the man he was now and could still become. He’d made it.
“We have to go.” Alyss panted softly. “Now!”
They all began to run for the distant line of trees, following after Olivin, Ducot, and Yonlin. The knights were still slowed by Alyss’s upturned earth
—going around it would take them just as long. Hopefully the woods were close enough to escape into. Hopefully where the trees were meant the ground was too soft for the shale since their roots could penetrated.
Hopefully they could lose the still-mounted knights in the dense and uneven woods. They’d find a place to hide.
Hopefully.
Blind hope had them all pumping their feet away from the upper rim, racing away from the still-blazing mines that battered their backs with heat and smoke. Behind them, explosions continued to ring out. The earth groaned and cracked; Alyss’s magic wobbled, flickered, and then gave out. Eira looked over her shoulder when a spiderweb fracture shot between her feet. Geysers of flame erupted.
They’d done it. The mines of Carsovia were going to be no more…it’d take years for the empress to recover from this, and that would give them all time to prepare. She’d tell Vi what she found here—the princess was still alive, Eira refused to believe anything else. If Noelle could’ve survived this, then Vi and Aldrik, as the greatest Firebearers to live, had survived the explosion in the coliseum. Ulvarth would lose all access to flash beads. He’d run through whatever meager stock he’d have and that’d be it. They’d annihilate him, too.
Olivin turned back to face them. His eyes widened with sheer horror. “Look—” He didn’t get more than a word in.
Everything happened almost at the same time. All at once.
Painfully slowly.
Eira’s head swiveled back around. There were three more knights emerging from the forest they were running toward, charging for them, still mounted. The group that had gone into the forest to chase the prisoners must’ve split once more and they’d gained the element of surprise. They’d hedged their bets, taking chances both on the wide path around Alyss’s upturned terrain and on the terrain itself.
One knight struck Yonlin across the face as he rode by. An arc of blood streaked through the air as he spun and fell. Olivin swung with a scream, launching himself into a crazed frenzy.
Ducot skidded. Magic pulsed out under him and made a pit, catching another knight with a whinny and a crunch. But another two were riding toward them.
Cullen lunged, ready to take down one. But the third slowly raised her flashfire. Raw hatred furrowed her brow with ugly lines.
Eira tried to find water in the air, but it had all evaporated from the fire of the mines. None came to her hand. She tried to force it up from the earth. From the heavens above. From her own marrow if that’s what it took. To be strong enough that she could will water into existence.
She wasn’t strong enough.
Another explosion rang out from the mines behind them at the same time as the woman’s flashfire burst with sound, light, and deadly magic. Eira dodged on instinct, bringing Alyss with her, Eira’s hand still on her shoulder. Cullen was already out of the way, the wind under his heels.
But Noelle…
As Eira rolled, sky turning to earth, and then sky again, she caught a glimpse of Noelle staggering back. Blood poured from the wound in her chest. It dribbled from her shocked, parted lips. The ground groaned, cracking under another explosion that was somehow softer than Eira’s scream.
Noelle fell back, lifeless, as the earth under her feet crumbled and the blaze consumed her.
