paw sent the body crashing into the altar. The rune-marked vase atop it tumbled over and shattered against the floor.
“Come now,” said Lizzan, gasping for breath. “Now you are just playing.”
The cat pounced on the corpse and tore off its leg. Shaking her head, she stumbled into Aerax’s arms, unable to do anything but laugh her relief into his bloodied neck as he held her tight.
Then she took his hand and carried Saxen’s bone back to him. “Will it heal if you put it back in?”
With a pained grunt, Saxen used the wall at his back for support as he shoved to his feet. “I know not if it will. Though if that was in his brain, I will not try until after I wash it.”
Likely a fine idea. With the only clean spot on her tunic that she could find, she wiped as much blood as she could from Aerax’s jaw. “You will terrify them all when you open that chamber,” she said. “But they will finally know who you are.”
She went with him, stepping over the bodies of the viswan littering the floor. With his own blood he opened the crystal chamber, and the sheer joy of seeing Cernak within made her head swim dizzily.
There were stunned stares, and grateful exclamations, and through it all she could only see her brother, holding his position as the king’s guard but his eyes telling her all that he would have said, and that he was so glad to see her.
It was Aerax who remembered that Cernak was his keeper—and so served him before any other royal. To her brother, he gave the order, “Make ready to escort my uncle and the princess to the refuge. And take with you the Lithan prince.”
King Icaro frowned, his features so like Aerax’s but his manner now of a man wholly confused. “You would have me leave the island?”
Aerax nodded. “This demon-sorcerer meant to create an army of stone wraiths for the Destroyer. He did not succeed. But the next will come. And the next. And one day, you will not reach the protection of the chamber. Or they will steal the princess and use her to force you to open it.”
Lizzan looked to the girl, who was not much older than Lizzan had been when first she’d met Aerax. Bravely she stood, nodding as her father claimed that never would they give in to such demands, that they would sacrifice themselves for all of Koth.
“And so you will,” said Aerax with a touch of bitterness. “You will sacrifice her kindness and her courage when you tell her the truth of Varrin. Does she know yet what she will have to become? That she will have to be a queen who ignores the sounds of Kothans in torment? That she will have to be a queen who lies to all of her people? Will you tell her that her own mother screams because she died on Kothan soil during the red fever?” His gaze swept the guard. “Will you tell them the truth of what they heard in that chamber? Or will you have them killed for hearing it at all?”
The girl looked up to the king with lips trembling before she firmed them. “What is he saying about my mother?”
“He is saying that he wishes to free thousands of generations of Kothans who are trapped in torment,” Lizzan told her. “And to make certain our people are kept safe from the Destroyer.”
King Icaro’s eyes closed. “I will do it. If it must be done, I will be the one to do it.”
Aerax shook his head. “I do not trust that you won’t delay at the last moment, or persuade yourself to continue as you have been. For ten years, you persuaded yourself every day to cast that spell.”
Anger flashed across the king’s face. “Koth ought to have time to prepare. It will be done, but we need time—”
“You have no time.”
“And you are not the king.” He looked to the guards. “Take the prince and his friends to the—”
“Do not make me kill them,” Aerax interrupted softly. “And do not make me take the throne from you. Instead think of your daughter, and the burden you would put on her—and the danger that will come to her if this is not done now.”
Expression torn, the king looked to her. Silently she gazed back, her eyes huge. Finally he nodded.
Aerax looked to Cernak. “As quickly as you can, to the king’s yacht. I know