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  Still the war machines fought on. Kael watched one gilded machine in humanoid form raise two arms that ended in focal prisms the size of a man’s fist. Fire sprayed from them in tremendous streams, matching those of the cannons. Two Candren Seraphs flew through the inferno, coming out the other side with blackened clothes and melted wings. Stone and ice boulders rained down from Candren’s furious Seraphim, smashing into the mechanics. The giant knight collapsed. A storm of lightning bathed its center, ensuring the death of the controller inside.

  “We did it,” Kael said, in shock that such a miracle had come to pass. Then louder, with a whoop, “We won!”

  He swung about to look for his friends. They were farther away than he expected, and he waved to them in greeting. Bree let loose two quick jets of flame beneath her in response, tiny little specks of red in the distance. Kael frowned. A warning, but for what?

  Kael looked down to see a plume of flame rising upward. Ice flashed out his gauntlet in a panic, forming a thin wall against the heat. It quickly melted away but sapped the power of the blast so that only a painful jet of steam washed over him, blistering his skin and stinging his eyes. Kael pushed his throttle, disoriented and not trusting his ability to manipulate the elemental prism with his concentration so broken. A knight was below him, just one, it appeared, but what was he doing alone and so far from the battle?

  With his vision blurred he could only send back a few haphazard lances of ice as he climbed higher. Squinting, he saw that the knight was flying at him at full speed. Kael pushed his throttle to the maximum, jarring his body as he shot higher. Not good enough. The knight overtook him, and for the first time Kael saw the strange gauntlet on the man’s right arm, four slender cannons where there should have been a fist. Kael brought his shield up the moment they crossed paths. The size of the blast shocked him with its power. This wasn’t normal fire. This was akin to Bree’s most vicious rage. He cried out as the attack broke against his shield. His head pounded from the sudden strain, and more blinding steam splashed across his body. His skin tightened and peeled as if he’d spent hours beneath the sun.

  Kael moved his shield aside to retaliate with his ice. A prolonged fight meant death. Had to end it now. The knight dashed closer before he could release, left hand grabbing his wrist and shoving aside his gauntlet so the ice sprayed harmlessly past his attacker. The strange cannon jammed Kael’s throat, the end pressing up against his chin. There would be no dodging this one. He tensed for the killing blow that never came. Confused, he blinked the tears away to stare into the face of his captor.

  To stare into the face of his father.

  “Dad?” Kael asked. He felt too stunned to move. Too stunned to even breathe.

  Liam’s eyes narrowed. His face was a mask revealing only deep concentration.

  “If you move, I will kill you.”

  The hand on his wrist released, instead grabbing Kael by the neck and holding him still. A blade extended from the strange gauntlet, its razor-sharp edge cutting through the leather loops of his harness one by one. His wings fell free, yanking the gauntlets with them on their drop. Kael gasped for air as the hand tightened. Liam pulled him closer, chest to chest. The blade sank back into the gauntlet so Liam could wrap the arm around Kael’s body and keep him still. Liam’s hand yanked two of his own harness buckles free.

  “Tie them around both our shoulders,” he ordered.

  Kael didn’t think he could form coherent sentences, let alone tighten the buckles, but his hands moved of their own accord. That finished, they together turned to see the other Seraphs approach. Bree led the way, her swords bathed in so much flame it was a wonder her element was not already dry. Liam’s blade extended from the strange gauntlet when Bree neared, the sharp edge pressing against Kael’s neck. The message was clear, and Bree immediately pulled back.

  “Struggle, you die,” Liam said, his lips pressed near Kael’s ear. “Try to slow my flight, you die. Say anything, you die. Do not doubt my words, son.”

  Kael didn’t just doubt his words. He doubted everything. He doubted his ears, his eyes, and his very mind. This wasn’t possible. His father was dead. Everyone knew it. He died with his mother battling Galen. He wasn’t here. He wasn’t carrying him to Center like a goddamn trophy. They drifted eastward while facing Bree. Kael wanted more than anything to speak, to ask if he knew those burning swords belonged to his daughter. Did he know? If he did, surely he wouldn’t be doing this. Why take them away? He wasn’t at Center. He was home. Weshern was home.

  “Father—” Kael started to say.

  Thick metal slammed against the back of his head before the first syllable exited his tongue, ending his confusion and misery with blessed darkness.

  CHAPTER

  16

  Johan stood before the crater’s edge amid deafening silence. His eyes swept the starlit ruin of stone and earth. Buried beneath it were the blood and bones of all who’d lived there. What had once been their home was now their grave. Hundreds of innocent souls snuffed out in an instant, and for what? A desperate attempt to retain illusory power? Or had the day’s lengthy battle been an extension of their fear? Fear of change should a new power structure emerge. Fear of being seen as weak. Fear of discovering that those who once served would now rule.

  “You were always such frightened creatures,” Johan whispered to the blasted heath. “Our very visage sent you to your knees. It wasn’t the strangeness of our bodies, either. You have always thought yourselves the greatest of beings. To see before you proof of your inferiority … how else could you cope but to worship us? To think us your heavenly guardians?”

  The eternal-born shook his head, and he kicked loose dirt into the sunken crater that had been Glensbee.

  “You labeled us, put us on a pedestal, and then safely went back to your ways. You didn’t want a savior. You wanted a crutch to rest your sins upon.”

  Center’s army had shattered homes and lives alike throughout the long day, thousands dead while the murderers’ chests thudded with divine confidence. Johan held no doubt that every minor island’s Seraphim would unleash similar destruction upon Center’s civilians in retaliation. They too would feel righteous in their slaughter. They didn’t need God and angels to justify the blood. It just made things easier.

  Johan heard the soft thrum of wings behind him, then the sound of landing feet. He smiled and turned to greet his visitor.

  “Welcome, Bree,” he said. “It is good to see you survived the carnage.”

  “Your disciples said I’d find you here,” she said. She brushed a bit of dark hair away from her face. The girl had trouble meeting his gaze, Johan noticed. Was it because of the nature of her visit? Or had she begun to mistrust his human persona?

  “I needed to look upon this for myself,” Johan said, and he gestured to the ruins. “I would see the terrible destruction Center is capable of with my own eyes.”

  Bree stepped beside him, toes hanging over the lip of the crater. It was so peaceful there, so quiet without the bustle of life. Both beautiful and terrible to Johan’s ears.

  “You have spies everywhere,” Bree said. It wasn’t a question.

  “I do,” Johan said.

  “Even on Center?”

  Interesting. Johan glanced her way, found her still avoiding his gaze.

  “Yes, even on Center,” he said. “The people there are not as blindly faithful as Marius would believe. Many wonder at the source of their wealth and power, and at the source of the prisms their entire economy relies upon.”

  Bree tapped her fingers against the side of her leg. Johan’s curiosity heightened. What could Weshern’s appointed Phoenix need from him at such a late hour?

  “My brother’s been captured,” she said, finally blurting it out. “Taken by one of Marius’s knights during their retreat. I need to know where he is, and what they’ll do to him.”

  “You’re hoping to rescue him,” he said. “A fool’s errand, I assure you, but I have doubted you before and
been proven wrong. I’m surprised Argus has signed off on such a plan, though.”

  Bree started to answer, hesitated, then sighed.

  “He didn’t,” she said. “Argus said the Archon would send a formal political inquiry, and that maybe we could do a prisoner transfer.”

  Just as Johan suspected. Ideas started whirling in his head, ways to take advantage of the situation.

  “And I assume you don’t feel like waiting?” he said.

  “The theotechs have taken an … interest in me and my brother,” she said. “I don’t think they’ll ever give him up. They may lie and swear he’s been killed while they hide him deep below Heavenstone. I have to know the truth for myself.”

  “And I have devoted my life to spreading the truth,” Johan said. “I will send word to my spies immediately. Meet me here tomorrow, just before nightfall. If you have others you trust to come with you on your rescue, bring them as well. Tell no one else.”

  Bree stared at the heart of Glensbee’s crater. It hadn’t been simply crushed inward. The ground itself had lifted and swirled, stone melting from the heat. Upon settling, and the rock cooling, it had left a bewildering array of twisted, mangled structures, like art pieces of a grim madman. Johan felt it appropriate, for this was Marius’s artwork, the culmination of his egotistical reign.

  “Despite all the death, there is beauty in the remains,” Johan said softly. “Even amid destruction so terrible. When Galen fell, others banded together to save whom they could. Battle ceased, enemies forgiven so all might work together in the rescue. I have always felt that is humanity’s greatest, and most often wasted, trait. Peel away the anger, hatred, and pride of men’s souls and you’ll find an innate desire to protect others. Such a shame it requires a terrible catastrophe to jostle this selflessness free.”

  “Silver linings,” Bree said, and she turned her back to the crater. “I know many seek silver linings, but I’m not one of them, Johan. Galen fell, and there was no beauty in its fall. Glensbee broke beneath Marius’s wrath, and the beauty of those twisted structures is nothing compared to the dead. If Kael died, my aunt would tell me I’d still have my memories of our times together. I don’t want memories. I don’t want petty reassurances. I want my brother back.”

  Johan smiled at the young woman.

  If only all of humanity were that honest with itself, he thought. Perhaps then it would have been harder for them to justify devouring one another.

  “With such determination, I hold no doubt you will bring him back to Weshern,” he said. “Now go, take rest. It has been a long day for all of us.”

  Bree looked so exhausted Johan thought her capable of sleeping for days, but she wouldn’t take the opportunity. Lives were in danger. Such dedication was a sorely lacking feature of far too many humans.

  “I’ll meet you here tomorrow,” she said. “And I’ll bring those I trust with me.”

  Her wings shimmered silver and began to thrum. Johan dipped his head low in respect. He sadly shook his head as she shot into the night.

  “I sense the fire in your blood,” he said to her vanishing silver star. “The rage and dedication. How many of the redeeming qualities I find in you are stolen from the fireborn your kind enslaved for centuries?”

  It was an interesting thought. Johan had sensed lightborn essence flowing in Kael’s veins during his brief time with him. Perhaps that was why he’d been so timid compared to Bree’s rage, so weak compared to her strength. Had the eternal-born blood in them molded their personalities, or was Johan seeing only biased confirmation of his personal theories? Curious, but there’d likely be no chance to investigate it further. Come tomorrow night, he expected both Bree and Kael to die, broken upon Center’s soil.

  Johan turned southeast, skirting the edge of the crater as he traveled toward Weshern’s edge. It would be several miles’ walk, but the distance meant nothing to him, nor did the time required to travel it. Night was a refuge of peace and privacy. The frail human bodies lay down to recover from a mere day’s strain, blessing the floating island with a rare quiet. Johan drank it in as he walked through the devastation wrought by Center’s cannons. Bree had brushed him off, but Johan had spoken the truth about finding beauty amid ruin. Deep grooves marred the land, great burned patches and forests consumed to ash, but among these scars Johan still sensed the natural.

  A little copse of trees grew in the center of the fields separating Lowville from Glensbee. Fire had slowly consumed the fields, spreading outward from the devastated town like burning ripples, but those three trees seemed mostly spared, the fire having licked the grass below them but not climbed the bark. Johan shifted directions, approaching the trees as ash crumpled beneath his footfalls.

  Behold the consequence of humanity, thought Johan as he gazed upon the burned fields. Behold nature struggling mightily to survive their reckless anger.

  Johan stopped before the trees and smiled up at the many high branches. Deep among them scurried frightened squirrels and birds, shining like little lanterns in Johan’s mind. He sensed their worry, their rapidly beating hearts. What could the day have meant to such little creatures? The weaponry and machinery was far beyond their understanding. The world erupted in fire, and yet they clung to life. Such wonderful creatures.

  One of the little lanterns was worrisomely dim, huddled on one of the lowest branches. Johan closed his eyes and expanded his false body, rising upward as his legs extended into poles of shadow. Huddled on its side atop that branch was a small sparrow. Its eyes were glassy, its breathing slow and uneven. Too much smoke, Johan was certain. Perhaps the sparrow would live. Perhaps not.

  Johan reached a hand toward it, just a momentary forgetfulness before he yanked it away. Even that brief proximity to his hand had caused the bird to tremble violently.

  “Forgive me,” he said. “It was not my intent to cause you harm.”

  As much as he tried to be calm, Johan could not stop the growing anger in his center. There was a time when his touch would have healed away every illness from the little thing’s body. Just being near him, awash in his aura of life, would have ceased its pain. But those days were long past. His light had ceased the moment he slew one of his fellow lightborn. Now his shadow granted sickness and death.

  Johan shook his head and tried to smile for the sparrow.

  “Fight on, and live,” he said. “The world needs more of your song.”

  He lowered himself back to the ground, shadow receding and molding itself into a visage of legs, feet, and robes. His trip toward Weshern’s edge turned somber.

  Whose fault was it that he could not heal the sparrow? Was it his own for succumbing to anger and extinguishing the light of his brethren centuries before? Or was it God himself, cursing him like men of old in the religious fables? He didn’t know, and no amount of debate had drawn him closer to a solution as the decades steadily rolled on.

  I cleansed humanity from the world but for these wretched islands, Johan thought. All is grasslands and forests and river lands, awash with life where stone and steel once proudly mocked the natural. As billions died, God never intervened. My cause is righteous. My shadow is my own manifested guilt, and nothing more.

  It might be a self-serving lie, but it was an easy one to believe.

  Johan’s strides grew longer the farther from civilization he traveled, until he no longer walked at all, instead floating along like a cloud upon the wind. Another city passed beneath him, the childhood home of the Skyborn twins, if he remembered correctly. Another poignant loss. The twins were pawns in many people’s games, and the cost of playing along was suffering, capture, and likely death. Johan floated until he reached the soft earth at the island’s edge. Even there, the land bore the scar of the invasion, the deep green grass churned and trampled by the wheels of Marius’s great engines.

  Johan knelt beside the island edge and looked to the ocean below. The rest of his shadow bathed the surface, and even from such a distance, Johan could feel every dip and swi
rl of the water. It was painful being separated from his essence in this way, but such was the cost of finally bringing down the protective dome the last of the lightborn erected to keep him at bay. Soon he would be whole again. So very soon.

  A wave of Johan’s finger and the shadow roiled, giving the signal for his allies below. Johan crossed his legs and sat as he patiently gazed over the edge. Several minutes later he saw the first hint of the iceborn rising into the sky. The tiny creature was no bigger than his fist, and it swirled in a circle atop a steadily growing cylinder of ice. When it reached Weshern’s surface, it hopped off the butte of ice, dropped to its hands and knees, and lowered its tail in respect.

  “What are my orders?” it asked.

  “Kael Skyborn was captured by Marius’s knights during today’s battle,” Johan said. “I want my disciples searching for him on Center. This is of vital importance, so no risk is too great. I must know where he is being held.”

  “If the Speaker has him, then he is dead,” the iceborn said, its pale blue eyes sparkling with intelligence. “Why risk searching?”

  “Because his sister would rescue him,” Johan said. “If she succeeds, Marius is humiliated yet again, and the other islands emboldened. If she dies she becomes another martyr to keep Weshern’s royalty dedicated to war instead of accepting peace.”

  The iceborn’s tail flicked side to side, revealing its excitement.

  “Still we play the games,” it said. “Is there a need? We are ready to make the climb, L’adim. Give us the order. They will never survive our wrath.”

  “Not yet,” Johan said. “They have willfully forgotten the crimes they committed upon you and your brethren, and buried in ignorance the threat we once possessed. Let them devour one another. I would not lose more of you to their blades and prisms. Too many fireborn perished already.”