“They would if they thought it would finally win them what they have long coveted: control of Dyved. Eradication of your people.” Soren’s stare is as hard as his words. “Efnysien’s red army has been gathering for months on the ice shelf, completely undetected. Gaining slowly in numbers. Stealing uniforms to slip into your lands unnoticed. Replacing fortified borders without raising the alarm. Biding their time for an opportunity to strike.”
“Gods above,” I whisper.
“From what my scouts witnessed, they are no longer waiting,” Soren continues. “Even now, they are marching north across theplateau with their sights fixed on Caeldera. And they are not alone. Half the Reaver clans march with them.”
I glance at Penn. His face is stark white in the starlight as his former friend’s words begin to permeate. Still, he clings to hope. “Even if what you say is true, even if they succeed in cutting a path across the plateau, they cannot enter the capital. They will never get through the wards.”
“They can.” Soren takes two steps forward, so they stand face-to-face. His voice is grave as death. “With Efnysien’s help, they can breach any maegical protections that would normally keep them out. You know I am right. His power was strong when I banished him almost a century ago; it is unparalleled now. Your wards will fall, Pendefyre. And your armies, however well trained, are both outnumbered and unprepared. They cannot win this fight.”
Sudden horror grips my heart. “We need to warn everyone. We need to evacuate! Surely, there is somewhere safe we can go…”
When neither of them responds, my eyes fly from Soren to Penn and back again. They are engaged in a grim stare-down, communicating something without speaking aloud. Realization falls like a guillotine.
Caelderais the safe place. It is Dyved’s best stronghold. There is nowhere else to go, nowhere better to ride out an invasion on the whole plateau. If the city falls…
We will all fall along with it.
“How long do we have?” Penn asks—the only question that truly matters anymore.
“I don’t know,” Soren admits. “I didn’t wait around for another status report. I came straight here to warn you. It could be tonight; it could be tomorrow.”
He looks out over Caeldera, dazzling in its midnight beauty. Far below us, thousands of civilians still celebrate in the streets, blissfully unaware of the impending danger.
“If it were me…if you were my enemy…” Soren tears his eyes from the city below. “I would strike when you were at your most vulnerable. When your people were most exposed—gathered in the streets in great numbers, in the midst of a celebration, senses dulled by drink…”
“Efnysien will know my powers are drained tonight,” Penn says bitterly. “He will know I cannot protect my people.”
“A full battalion of Llyrian troops will be here by daybreak.” Soren nods firmly to underscore his words. “We merely need to hold out until then.”
“If the wards fall—”
“Then we will fight,” Soren vows. His eyes flicker to me. “You are not the only one with power here, Pendefyre.”
I swallow a bleat of fear and, with a nod, echo him. “We will fight.”
“You will not,” Penn growls, turning to glower at me. His hand snatches mine in a bone-grinding grip. “Come. We need to get back to the keep, where you’ll be safe. If Soren is right, we may not have long before—”
His words are swallowed up by the sound of a massive detonation. At first, I think it is another firework—a belated explosion going off at the lakeshore. But there is no shower of sparks, no cascade of color. The sky itself shudders, as though the heavens might plummet, and I know with a surge of paralyzing certainty that this is no party trick.
The atmosphere strobes bright as a bloodred dawn. A haze shimmers in the air—the same shimmer I’d seen mere hours earlier, when Penn’s power poured into the earth back in the throneroom. The wards are reacting to a great influx of power. Only this time, it is not shoring them up.
It is ripping them apart.
The rumble of the first explosion has hardly faded when a second boom blasts through the sky. As I watch the wards flare again, the red haze flashing like heat lightning…I know, without a word from Pendefyre or Soren, that whoever means to attack us is no longer on their way.
They are already here.
Chapter
Thirty-one
We run.
Penn first, me in the middle, Soren on my heels. Down the passage, past the portal—still glowing faintly from Soren’s journey—to the lift. None of us speaks as Penn activates the glyph and we shoot downward into the earth. The only sound in the jarring quiet is that of my breaths, thready and terror laced, pumping in and out of my lungs.
The lift ride lasts a lifetime. Each second drags into a day, a month, a year wasted. Time ticks away uselessly while those in the streets party on, completely unaware of the looming danger. I think of all the families I passed on my way here, necks craned backward to catch a glimpse of the fireworks show, grins splitting their faces in glee. Defenseless. Innocent. Unprepared. I nearly chew through my bottom lip trying to hold in my hyperventilation.
We hit ground level and charge, full tilt, for the mouth of the mine shaft. Another blast hits the wards just as we exit into open air. The sky flashes faintly red, a weak pulse. A cry goes up from the crowd, a medley of amusement and concern. Most, still caught up in the intoxicating festivity of Fyremas, assume it is just another facet of the celebrations.