Of Kings and Killers (Elder Empire Sea #3) - WIll Wight Page 0,121

fiddled with one of her braids, staring into the floor. “We know Kelarac is coming. Nakothi, Kthanikahr, Tharlos, and Othaghor are unknowns. With their prison weakened, any or all of them may have manifested earlier than they should have been able to. However, we have two advantages. First, as they have not fully recovered, they will be weaker than they were in our day.”

“Unless they enter human vessels,” Bliss pointed out, forcing down a sudden lump in her coat.

“Which brings me to our second advantage: we know their objective. They can’t possess just anyone, as we saw in the last war, and they must leave our world from this location. I thought that may have changed when the sky broke, but if that were the case, Kelarac would no longer be coming for us.

“They have to come here, and they will head straight for the human with the strongest connection to them. When we know who that is, we have a significant opportunity.”

Calder finally choked out some words, his voice rough. “When they’re in human form, we can strike them down. For good.”

No one looked as surprised as he thought they should have, which confirmed his suspicions. So they had gotten his messages after all.

One of Estyr’s eyebrows lifted. “And how do you know that?”

Bliss and Cheska looked confused, but everyone else turned to regard him.

“I told you. I sent messages. I sent messages to all of you!”

“He told us quite a while ago,” Bliss agreed.

Jorin adjusted his shadeglasses. “Easy to blame silence on a missing messenger. I suppose you learned as much from Kelarac, did you?”

Calder looked around in disbelief before pointing a finger upward. “From him! The man in the sky! I spoke to him!”

The Regents exchanged glances, and Shera’s scowl—still locked on him—deepened.

“You really didn’t hear?” Calder asked.

In their silence, he heard the truth.

His heart sank.

All of his messages had been waylaid. All of them. He was so sure it hadn’t been true.

What else could he have done? Could he have spoken to Shera when she attacked him? Burned Ozriel’s message into the streets of the Capital?

No, he had been trying to keep his knowledge secret from the Elders. If they knew that he knew their weakness, his elimination would have become their top priority.

Light split the room and not-thunder shook the air. Estyr passed a hand over her face. “Only one way to find out. We corner Kelarac. And we keep a tight grip on his host body.”

Once again, everyone in the room was looking at Calder.

He didn’t like the look in Shera’s eye.

“We should get rid of him now,” she said without a blink. “Take him away from Kelarac.”

His fist slowly clenched. She had no idea that he could have crushed her with the Optasia and chosen not to. And she certainly didn’t know that he could crush her now, even without it.

Cheska gave her a sneer. “Look at you, so eager to sacrifice someone else.”

Shera lifted her eyebrows. “If a Great Elder wants me, kill me.”

“Easy for—”

“Shut up,” Estyr said. She didn’t raise her voice, but everyone shut up. “Kelarac’s coming here. He is…very close. Perhaps a day away. We can use that against him, but none of the others are close enough for me to detect.”

Jorin tilted his hat to one side to scratch at the side of his head. “Kthanikahr and Othaghor will be harder to host than a Champion dance party. No human wants to give up their body to those grave-bugs. Nakothi, I’m sure, has choices from here to Axciss.”

“And we know Kelarac will have a backup plan,” Loreli added. “Most likely a series of them. As for Tharlos…”

Bliss calmly pushed down a rising lump in her coat again. “If Tharlos has a better host than me, I would be very surprised. And I do not like surprises.”

“With a coordinated, unified assault, I believe we could defeat any Great Elder alone in their current state,” Loreli said, but she didn’t sound confident. “We know where they’re headed, and we have to assume they’re all moving with urgency as Kelarac is.”

The air crackled again, and the world flashed. Calder shuddered, and he knew he wasn’t alone.

How long would the battle above last? He thought he knew who would win, if the demonstration of power Ozriel had given him was any indication, but that wasn’t necessarily any better than Urg’naut winning.

With a jolt, he realized that the others didn’t know that they were living on borrowed time. Even the Regents might not