Foster back.
Calder’s breath left him…but he couldn’t stop fighting.
He tightened his limbs, wrestling Kelarac down with every ounce of his strength, and this time he was able to knock one arm aside as the Great Elder unleashed fire at Andel. The emerald flame brushed Andel’s side, and the man screamed and stumbled backwards into the mist.
Leaving just Calder and Kelarac.
The Great Elder casually pried Calder off him, suddenly demonstrating strength many times greater than he had shown before.
Or maybe Calder was getting weaker…his hands were definitely growing numb.
“It’s harder than you think, capturing a prize without breaking it,” Kelarac mused. “It has to be preserved so that you can break it slowly. One piece at a time. For years.”
Green fire erupted in the joints of Calder’s armor, and he screamed as skin was seared all over his body. Smoke rose into his nose as his clothes and flesh were burned through.
One plate at a time, the Emperor’s armor crashed down to the deck. Finally, Kelarac pulled the helmet away from Calder’s face.
Calder glared into Jerri’s eyes, hidden behind a steel blindfold. Tears of anger, and grief, and pain clouded his vision.
“I will see you dead,” Calder spat. “I will look on your body and I will laugh. I will laugh because you could have escaped your prison, but you decided to stay and die among your toys.”
Jerri’s head tilted quizzically, and then Kelarac laughed. It was a horrible, layered abomination that fused his voice and hers.
“You think you will be the one to bring me to my end, fallen King?”
Calder forced the biggest smile he could.
“Not me.”
How long had it been since Calder had been able to see the bronze statues fighting the Regents? He couldn’t be sure.
They were hidden by Bastion’s Veil.
A green dagger plunged into Kelarac’s back.
The mist resolved into a gray figure. Shera, hooded and masked, held her silver-blue dagger in her right hand. Her left-hand dagger was plunged into Jerri’s heart from behind.
Kelarac stiffened. His mouth fell open.
And a blinding green light spilled from him like blood.
The impact of that geyser of exploding power blinded Calder’s Reader senses, overwhelming him with Intent. He blanked out for a moment.
Energy erupted from Kelarac like an endless volcano. Calder was battered, blinded, confused.
When his vision finally cleared, he saw Shera standing over him.
She looked the same, but she felt like…more. As though she had crammed a thousand people’s worth of Intent into herself and now her skin was straining to contain it.
She even shivered.
Through clenched teeth, she said, “Why did you have to warn him?”
“If he had turned to look at you, I would have done something.”
“What?”
It was a good question. He could barely move his limbs.
“…something.”
They met each other’s eyes for a moment, and Calder wasn’t sure what to say. Considering the circumstances, he wasn’t sure there was anything he could say.
But he didn’t expect her to break the silence.
“I’m sorry,” Shera said at last. Her eyes still reminded him of a shark’s, and the words were blunt, but they caught him off guard.
“For what?” he asked. Surely not for killing Kelarac.
“For failing to kill Naberius Clayborn.”
Calder was sorry for that too. Sorry that he had ever taken on the contract and sorry that he hadn’t just let Shera kill the man.
But he couldn’t let Shera out-do him, not even in apologies. He forced himself up into a sitting position. “I’m sorry I let Lucan die. I didn’t want that to happen.”
Shera nodded once. “That account is settled.”
That it was.
Whether Kelarac had truly been erased or not, Jerri was certainly dead.
A dwindling green light still raged in the mist and the clouds overhead, but the body was gone. He didn’t know what happened when a Great Elder was killed, but from the feel of it, that Intent would slowly dissipate over a long time.
The mist, by contrast, blew away in an instant.
He supposed that was Shera’s doing.
It took a moment for everyone among the Navigator fleet to spot each other and comprehend what had happened. The water was littered with burning wreckage and corpses. The Lyathatan was still snarling and cupping its missing hand, and screams came from wounded everywhere.
But the Regents were all still floating in the air and the four bronze statues were gone. Since no one could see them or Kelarac, a ragged cheer went up from all the ships at once. It was weak, but it cut through the lapping waves and the silent world.
The cheer died out when everyone seemed to realize at