“Your majesty!” Baedan calls in a mocking singsong some distance behind us and far to the left. “Your heritage does not excuse your cowardice. Either fight me or surrender.”
Satisfied that she’s lost track of us, I pull North into an alcove. Water seeps through the cracks, dampening our coats. “That spell you used the night we met,” I say. “Can you cast that again? That would kill any of them that don’t have protection spells. From there, we pick them off one by one until it’s only you and her. If you can disarm her . . .” I pull Kellig’s knife from my pocket. “The only cure for a hellborne soul is a carved out heart, and I don’t need magic for that.”
North stares at me in amazement.
“Previous life,” I quip to his unspoken question, before I half smile, hoping forced confidence will outweigh my fear.
North pulls me closer and kisses me, fierce and fast and breathless. “If we survive, you owe me that story.”
Pulling the bag from around his shoulder, he drops it on the ground and rubs his hands dry down the front of his thighs. “Baedan will have to cut my heart out to kill me; magic won’t suffice, not with the spells I wear. I’ll have to let her get close. When she does . . .”
“I’ll be there,” I say.
North hesitates, guilt warring with something else I’m too terrified, too selfish to name—a look he can’t afford to give anyone until he’s safely crowned king. “If something happens to me,” he says, “find Captain Benjamin Chadwick in New Prevast, at the Saint Ergoet’s Monastery. Give him this”—he reaches into his coat and retrieves a small stone with a hole worn through the center—“and he’ll understand. Do you understand?”
Another nod, a sudden desire to cry. I clutch the front of his shirt, thrown back to that night four months ago, to the last time I saw Thaelan alive.
“Good-bye,” I whisper, voice cracking. “Just in case.”
North embraces me. “Good-bye,” he murmurs.
My fingers find his and I hold on tight. “Take every last thread,” I say.
I know what to expect this time, and brace for the discomfort. But North is as gentle with his magic as he is with his kisses; the only pain I feel is entirely my fault as my heart starts to break.
Within an instant, the magic is gone and I’m hollow again as North releases me without looking back. I allow myself a moment of grief before I follow, nearly stumbling with surprise when a bolt of magic splits the sky and webs it like lightning. Cries of pain ring out and I clench my knife tighter, gratified.
He hit his marks.
I scramble higher for a better view. Half a dozen hellborne fight through the lava fields, unsteady on their horses. Baedan has abandoned hers, her fury evident even from here as she spins a circle, searching for North. She casts a spell of colored light, obliterating a rocky outcropping.
“To think,” she calls, “all those nights we shared campsites, North. All those mornings we haggled over each other’s leads. I could have slit your throat and ended the competition years ago.”
“Temperance leads to impotence,” North calls from somewhere behind her.
She twists toward his voice, gesturing several of her men to follow. They do so reluctantly, and rightly so: A moment later, they scream as North’s spell burns the flesh from their bones.
Only four left.
I use the distraction to dart behind another rock, wetting my lips. A woman dismounts from her horse a few yards away, clutching a curved spear in one hand. She wears a leather vest that exposes her upper body, and for a moment, I allow myself to doubt my abilities, my conviction. She’s huge, built to withstand the Burn. For the first time, I don’t think of Loomis’s pistol as a nightmare but a blessing. One shot and we’d be down to three.
Guaranteed victory.
Baedan growls, casting another spell that scorches the air with the smell of rotted carrion. “Why waste magic? Face me like a man. Like a prince.” She snorts. “Face me like the king your father never was.”
Crouching, I grab a pebble from the ground and toss it toward the woman. She twists, eyes narrowing, and takes a step closer. My saliva dries, swelling my tongue, but I tell myself it’s no different than a fight back home. As she draws nearer, I brace my weight and steel my nerves: strike first and strike fast.
North appears in the distance, haggard and exhausted. He opens his hands, the palms gray. He can’t keep fighting much longer, I realize; the poison is returning, overtaking the magic, making him useless. “Here I am,” he says.
The woman reaches my hiding spot and I jerk forward too late. She swings her spear and I scramble backward, losing my footing. Beyond us, Baedan and North face off, casting and deflecting spells until the skies light up with the color of magic.
The woman lunges, her spear striking the stone by my head. I roll out of the way, finding my feet in time to take a swing at her with the knife. She easily sidesteps me, teeth bared in a grimacing laugh.
She’s baiting me.
I back away, heart crashing against my ribs. The woman lifts her eyebrows in invitation before her eyes slide past me. She steps back in deference and, heart sinking, I turn.
“This one’s mine,” Kellig says, grabbing my arm.
North calls my name. He stands over Baedan, pinning her in place with a spell that makes his whole body quiver. His fingers are forced into a painful fist that drips with sweat.
Now. He needs me now, and I can’t even move.
Kellig laughs, damp and sticky, his mouth ringed with the brown bruise of dried blood. Poison has eaten through him and his skin is cracking, flaking loose against my coat. He faced death in Revnik and he chose a monster’s life instead.
Coward.
“Third time’s the charm,” I say with faltering bravado.
“Oh, I’m not going to kill you,” he says. Locking an arm around my throat, he wrenches me toward North just as North looks back, searching for me. It’s only a heartbeat of broken concentration.
It’s too much.
Baedan breaks loose of his spell, scrambling back. Her face is discolored now, a mask of shadow and white. One of her silver eyes is black with blood as she spits a mouthful of poison to the ground.
“Let her go,” North warns, turning his hands toward Kellig. But he hesitates. He can’t risk another spell, not without risking his heart. When his eyes meet mine through the haze of magic that shimmers in the air, there is no accusation, no blame in his gaze, yet I accept it all the same.
He needed me and I wasn’t there, and now it’s too late.