Domenic’s lodged breath escaped him in a gasp. He clutched at his own stomach as Targath’s magic blasted outward in a fiery shockwave, making a nearby car explode and several members of Peak’s audience fling themselves aside.
As Kythion wrenched its arm away in a burst of crimson, the sanctuary collapsed, and darkness fell like a guillotine. Yet the ghast still loomed above, still peering at Domenic through the black.
Domenic froze. The nothing he felt splintered, cracked.
Then, as if dismissing him, Kythion turned instead to another magician, who clambered frantically away. Electricity sizzled in the wake of Kythion’s movements as its icy hand stretched toward its prey.
Until Domenic hurled a barrage of magic toward it.
He fought furiously, deliriously, one enchantment immediately following the next. Like grenades, they detonated acrossKythion’s gargantuan frame. Gouges of ice shattered across it, re-forming mere seconds before Domenic destroyed them again. Until a mass the size of a train car collapsed upon the steps, and Domenic’s spell lanced straight through the monster’s exposed heart.
Kythion shrieked, a sound like a meteor strike. A network of explosions ruptured across it, so bright the surrounding, cowering magicians ducked so as not to be blinded. Then the stone of its heart smashed onto the concrete, and Domenic stared at the blackness where the beast had just been, and, finally, he screamed.
He didn’t know what made him tread toward Peak, as it couldn’t have been hope. Yet after Domenic cast a scan of corporeal magic over the body, he still flinched from a fresh blow of despair.
It wasn’t fair.
But Domenic didn’t allow himself one more moment to grieve—he didn’t deserve it. Lifting Valmordion, he let his magic roam beyond to where he felt her, the true enemy he needed to slay.
She was close, and growing closer.
She was on her way.
Domenic couldn’t bring himself to look at Peak again, but he did gaze out at the people around him, left to shiver in the dark.
They needed a hero.
And although the legacy Summer had built wasn’t perfect, it was a nation, a people, a home.
“Thank you, sir,” someone gasped, making Domenic startle. It was the magician he’d saved from Kythion, his gear shredded and askew. “But is Peak… is he…?” He glanced down at the body, and Domenic didn’t answer—he didn’t need to. Sure enough, hopelessness caved in across the man’s face.
Domenic’s grip tightened on Valmordion, with purpose. Then he pointed it at the sky. Gold beamed through the scurge, carving a new sanctuary within it over the whole of Gallamere.He couldn’t fend off the cataclysm forever, but he would buy time for Ellery to arrive.
For their duel to begin.
“Go find Sharpe and tell him to shelter everyone underground,” he commanded the magician.
“B-but the storm—”
“Everyone,”Domenic repeated. “I will face the cataclysm alone.”
XLVIIELLERY
WINTER
As Ellery entered the Citadel’s grove, she barely recognized it amidst the storm’s destruction. Leafless trees wailed and shuddered as the winds contorted them and stripped away their bark. The cobblestoned path was slicked with ice, and the cataclysm seethed around her with palpable fury. But as she neared the alban tree in the grove’s heart, the storm shifted. Its gales retreated from her. Directly above, its clouds thinned, just barely, so that a frail light broke through. Until an eye opened within the scurge across the grove, a small stretch of solace.
And as soon as Ellery sighted the tree, she knew why.
Domenic awaited her beneath it.
The storm had not given them solace. It’d given them an arena.
Domenic was unmistakably remade, just like her. His shadow shined golden. Heat wafted around him, blurring the air like a mirage. Valmordion remained sheathed at his side, and so Ellery sheathed Iskarius, too.
But she didn’t lower her defenses.
His gaze raked over her as she stepped closer. “Hi.”
