After Koth was gone. It was not completely yet. Lizzan paused to look out across the water. The peak of the crystal palace still remained above the surface, but it was slowly sliding deeper.
There Kelir and Ardyl found them, followed by Tyzen and Preter and Seri . . . and Lizzan’s mother and younger brother. So she would not need to search for them, only wait for Cernak to arrive on the yacht. As he was Aerax’s keeper, no desertion would it be if he went with them.
“Was it the blood that killed the demon?” Ardyl asked, never taking her eyes from the sinking spire as it fully disappeared, and Lizzan nodded.
“Or prayer. Or being united. I can’t be certain which one it was, but I think it was the blood . . . and Saxen’s arm bone.”
The warrior’s gaze cut to her face as if to see whether that was a jest.
“Stabbed it right though the ear,” Lizzan told her.
Ardyl laughed, and they both looked to the crowd when there was a sudden joyous cheer, though Lizzan did not see the cause. On the yacht, the king and princess stood in the same way they had before . . . though now they were turning, pointing back across the water toward the center of the lake.
Where Koth was rising again.
Or . . . a part of it was. Not the spires or the crystal palace. It seemed nothing more than the crest of a rocky hill that had breached the surface. Or as if perhaps the entire island had flipped over and now they saw the jagged remains underneath.
Those remains were headed through the lake toward them, water frothing gently at the forward surface. Not moving quickly, but coming.
Caeb snarled uneasily before butting his head into her shoulder, shoving her back away from the shore, then pushing Aerax. As if urging them to run again.
But the cat could not carry all these people.
“Preter?” Kelir stepped back, looking for Seri. “What is coming?”
“Something big.” The monk said the obvious.
“Do you sense dark magics?”
“I sense the demon,” Aerax said, jaw clenching. “The same as I felt in the chamber. Go with Caeb, Lizzan.”
Run away from whatever true glorious battle was coming. A terrible ache filled her chest. Because she was not done. There was so much she still wanted to do.
But always this was the path she would have chosen.
“What happened below the palace?” Preter asked them urgently. “Was the spell completed?”
Lizzan shook her head. “It was prepared. The altar, the conduit, the vessel. But they had no blood from a snow-hair—and we killed the demon before he could take any of Aerax’s.”
“Did any blood reach the conduit?”
“Goranik’s,” Aerax told him. “But only after he was killed, and the vase had shattered against the ground. Then we were in the chamber for a while after. Long enough for the king to reach his yacht. Nothing did I sense of the demon then.”
“Goranik,” Preter said suddenly, his eyes squeezing shut. “He’d invited the demon into his living flesh. Perhaps that was who you killed—Goranik—but the demon fled his flesh. But then the demon would need another host, but could not take a dead body, for it would need to be reanimated with a spell . . . and Temra be merciful, there was a spell waiting. What was the vessel on the altar?”
“It only seemed like a handful of rocks.”
“From Koth,” Preter said. “Which had been filled for years with the essence of all those souls . . . and was suddenly empty.”
Ardyl looked to him in horror. “You are saying the demon inhabits the island now? And that it is essentially a wraith the size of Koth?”
Wordlessly, Preter nodded.
“Then how can it possibly be killed? What is an island’s flesh and blood? Do we do as Seri suggested and throw rocks?”
“Seri, Tyzen,” Kelir said with steel in his voice. “Saddle your horses and race south toward the plains road. Warn the Krimatheans and anyone else who comes in this direction. The rest of us will attempt to keep these people out of its path.”
Most of whom were still celebrating, for the demon was not rising quickly—as if it were walking slowly toward them but still in the deepest part of the lake, and only the top of its head could be seen.
Others were backing slowly away, as if becoming uncertain.
All Kothans who’d just lost everything they’d ever known . . . and now