“We’re out of time.” The kindness in the pirate’s voice was worse than irritation would have been. “We have to make moves now. He surely knows we’re on the way. So here’s what we do: You sneak off once we get there, act like you’ve defected—”
The fire was not a conscious choice. Gabe did not recall the moment he slipped into channeling-space, did not mark the seconds he spent weaving red-orange threads around his fingers. But when he opened his hands, a tongue of flame licking from their inked counterpart on each palm, the terrified look on Finn’s face was exactly what he wanted.
“I will not kill Bastian,” he said, in a voice that roared like a house fire.
The pirate’s terror lasted only a moment before he squared his shoulders, tipped up his chin. “You won’t have a choice, if you want the support of this army.”
“I’m stronger than your army.” Not a boast, just simple fact.
Finn’s eyes shot daggers. “Without the army, you don’t have a ship.”
But a ship wasn’t necessary.
Gabe closed his hands. The fires in them didn’t wink out, not like before. Instead they wreathed his fists, shining gloves of flame. Then he turned and left the cabin, making his own plans, apologizing to Lore in his head.
Knowing that once he came back from this, it wouldn’t be solely as himself.
Malcolm was back up on the deck, talking quietly with Mari. He turned when he saw Gabe approach, eyes going wide at the fire around his hands. “Gabe, what are you—”
“We’re going.” Gabe’s voice sounded alien to his own ears, popping like wet wood in a furnace. “Now.”
“Gabriel.” Malcolm eyed the flames with trepidation, but the hand he laid on his shoulder was gentle. “We’ll get there soon.”
“No.” His mind was blazing, the burning storm of Hestraon urging him forward. The god wasn’t strong enough to take over, but Gabe could sense that He wanted to. That he was flirting with fire, about to throw himself into the inferno. “We’re taking the other way.”
By the railing, Mari’s wide eyes tracked between Malcolm and Gabe, her mouth working around words that she discarded before giving them sound. “Now, let’s be calm about this.”
But the time for calm was over. The time for cowardice was gone. “I have to try,” Gabe said, staring beseechingly at Malcolm. He could see his reflection in his friend’s gaze. See how the white of that one eye he had left was now a blazing, bloody red. “Malcolm, I have to try to save him, and this is the only way.”
And then he was gone.
He felt it like he felt a stretch in the morning, elongating all his muscles from where they’d cramped in uneasy sleep. He felt it like a yawn after a day of exhaustion. One moment, Gabe was corporeal on the deck of a Caldienan warship, and the next he was air, diffused into every particle of heat in the atmosphere that could ever become fire.
He lingered, just for a moment. Long enough for Mari to let loose a startled cry, long enough for Malcolm to curse and pound a fist on the rail. “Dammit, Gabe!”
But then Malcolm was gone, too. Using his power to dive deep, through the ship’s hull, through the miles of water beneath, finding the deep roots of sea-dwelling plants winding beneath the sand and following along.
Gabe became fire, knowing Malcolm would follow deep within earth, and the fire took him all the way to the shores of Auverraine.
All the way to Bastian.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
BASTIAN
Matters of the heart can be easy, if you let them.
—Fragment of poem found in Myroshan monastery
It had been so long since Bastian was in total control of his body, and he found himself out of practice. He stumbled when he tried to get up, falling off knees that creaked onto legs that felt jellied. The only upside was that this sent him careening right into Jax, which made the other man get his hands off Alie.
Bastian made it look like he’d done it on purpose, not straightening to his full height until the Emperor was knocked backward. He glowered. It’d been a long time since he got to glower. Apollius preferred sharp smiles. Bastian used to, but now, he felt like he would transition into glowering.
“You,” he seethed at Jax. “I should have you executed. No, fuck that—I should kill you myself, right now.”
The Emperor was too shocked to look afraid. Bastian could use that. He lifted his hand, twitching his fingers.
“No, Bastian.” Alie, his sister, always one to advocate for diplomacy. Wide-eyed, she stepped between them, one hand outflung to either man. “Now isn’t the time.”
