duty is to protect you—”
“I’ll buy the queen some time.” The voice belongs to Shanty, who follows at a respectable distance behind, clearly wanting to be the first to get herself out of here if things go awry. “Get Vataea out of here, Ferrick.”
Vataea hisses at the words, but the knot in Ferrick’s throat bobs only once as he swallows, then nods.
“Just get out of here alive, all right?” he says to me.
I nod. “All right.”
Wrapping his arms around Vataea to keep her stable, he kicks the horse’s side and it takes off, leaving nothing but embers in its wake.
“You need to get out of here, too,” I tell Shanty, who rolls her eyes.
“Trust me, I’m on it. But not without a little parting gift.” Dropping to the ground, she slams a palm against the earth. Like the strange door from when I first discovered the Barracuda Lounge, the world around us twists into an illusion of enchantment.
Extra trees spring from the earth. Mist rolls in, concealing us. Visions of fiery wolves take shape, pacing back and forth in the darkness and tricking the eye.
By the time she’s done, Shanty sways and grabs on to her fiery steed. “Use that to your advantage.”
“We will. Now hurry and get to Keel Haul.”
I don’t wait to see her off. Instead I spin to see Bastian’s still fighting the godwoken with curses that have almost no effect on it. Though it stills for a moment each time Bastian hits it with a stone, it snaps out of the curse no more than a few seconds later, spitting fire. It’s enough time for Bastian to get back to my side, letting the godwoken struggle to find us in the mist.
Enough! Magma swells, brightening the night at once. And it’s clear that, no matter how magnificent Shanty’s power or how fast these steeds may be, there’s no way we’re going to outrun the godwoken.
“Do you have it?” His voice is harsh from the smoke.
I wrap my fingers around the scale and the handful of bloodied snake skin it’s attached to and nod. “We’re going to have to fight.”
“We can’t even touch it,” he argues. “How are we supposed to beat something that’ll melt our weapons?”
He’s right; not even Rukan is any match for this beast. To have even a chance of it, we’d need the power of the gods. Fortunately, we have that.
The fire serpent’s above us now, its heat and power all consuming, a true beast of legends.
But I’ve bested one legendary beast before, and I can do it again.
“We have to use soul magic. It’s the only way.” With the scale in one hand, I take Bastian’s hand in the other, as though my body knows exactly what to do before my mind can catch up. The moment our skin touches, it’s as though the fire all around us is now within me.
With the power of the gods in my palms, I can feel my magic pulsing within Bastian. It burns in my blood and takes root in my veins, spreading like wildfire.
Bastian rips his hand from mine, fizzling the fire away at once. Even in the sweltering heat, it makes me cold as frost.
“You saw what happened last time.” He scowls. “I can’t control it. Not to mention I had to put Elias’s blood in my mouth. I can’t exactly do that with lava, Amora.”
“Then we won’t use yours.” We won’t make it much longer in this smoke. Every one of my breaths comes in a rasp now, thin and painful. “We’ll use mine. My soul magic isn’t a gods-created magic; we can use it against the godwoken.”
Panic contorts his face. “But you can’t use your magic.”
“I can’t use it alone. I need you to trust me, Bastian.”
And though I know he’s scared—though I know he wants nothing more than to run—Bastian grips me by the shoulder. “I trust you.”
That’s all I need.
I slip the crinkling snake skin from my wrist and hold it like a cup, praying that this will work. The other godwoken hadn’t been worried about the fire; it wasn’t worried about being burned.
Its skin is immune to the flames. Why else would it live so close to the volcano?
When I work up the courage to lunge, it’s not for the guardian, but for the lava that drips from its body like a second skin. To my relief, it sits in the makeshift snake skin cup, not burning me.
The fire serpent sinks backs, angry and cautious, with seething white