Crush the King

by Estep, Jennifer

  Including me.

  I always have contingency plans in place, in case things go wrong, Maximus’s snide voice whispered in my mind.

  This had to be one of those plans. I’d taken away his pets, and he’d unleashed these weather magiers on me in return. Except the Bastard Brigade wasn’t just trying to assassinate me.

  No, this time Maximus was determined to kill us all.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Perhaps it was the cold water that had crashed over me, or the sheer size, scope, and audacity of Maximus’s plan, but I stood there, frozen in place, eyes wide, completely dumbfounded, staring up at the wall of water that kept getting higher and higher and closer and closer to the bridge.

  The other people on the bridge saw the wave too, and they started screaming and stampeding back to the closest end. But that wouldn’t save them. The wave was almost as wide as the length of the bridge now, and the resulting crash would crush and drown everyone in the immediate vicinity, whether they were actually on the span or over on the Bellonan shore.

  Unless I stopped it.

  “Evie!” Sullivan yelled. “We have to get off the bridge!”

  The howling wind drowned out his voice and swept his words away. He held out his hand, but I shook my head.

  “No! Get behind me!” I shouted back. “Tell everyone to get behind me and hang on to the bridge railing! I’m going to try to stop the wave with my immunity! It’s the only chance we have!”

  Sullivan turned around, yelling out my instructions. Paloma started toward me, but I shook my head and stabbed my finger at the railing behind me. She didn’t like my order, but she reluctantly grabbed hold of the railing, right alongside Xenia. Serilda and Cho were hunkered down next to them, along with Auster and Leonidas.

  The boy was clutching the railing so tightly that his knuckles stood out like white bruises against his skin, but his features were more resigned than frightened. He must have seen this sort of attack before, and he thought we were doomed. Maybe we were, but I was still going to fight until the wave hit me and the water pulled me under and drowned me for good.

  Everyone else was looking at the wave, watching it come with a mixture of growing fear and dread, but to my surprise, Serilda was staring at me, instead of the rising water.

  All I see is darkness. It’s almost like a . . . wave rising up, getting ready to drown us all, her voice whispered in my mind. A wave that could swallow us, and everyone else here, and all of Bellona.

  She’d given me that warning before the Regalia. I just hadn’t realized how literal her words would turn out to be.

  A faint bit of magic flared in Serilda’s eyes, making them burn an even darker blue than usual, as if she were peering into the future and observing our fate. I wanted to yell and ask her what she was seeing, but there was no time. An instant later, the magic in her eyes vanished, and she gave me a single sharp nod. She was telling me that I could do this—that I had to do this, or we were all dead, along with scores of innocent people.

  I strode over to the opposite side of the bridge, lifted my head, and stared up into the center of the wave. Purple lightning was still crackling through the water, so I opened my mouth and let the gusting air roll in over my tongue, tasting all the scents in it. There was only one—the hot, caustic stench of magic.

  Every single member of the Bastard Brigade that I’d encountered over the past year had been strong in their magic, and now that the weather magiers had combined their power, they had gone from merely dangerous to seemingly unstoppable. I didn’t know if my immunity was strong enough to overcome their collective power, but I had to try. So I kept tasting all the magic in the air, trying to figure out how to destroy the tidal wave that was still growing.

  But the problem with so many magiers feeding their power into the wave was that the magic wasn’t focused in just one spot. It was more or less evenly spread out through the whole length of the water, just like the power was more or less evenly spread out among the magiers. I might have been able to snuff out the magic in one part of the wave, and make that section collapse, but I wasn’t strong enough to dissolve all the magic at once, and the rest of the water would still hit us with its deadly, crushing force.

  So how could I possibly save my friends?

  I looked over at the magiers, whose hands were still moving back and forth in those sharp knitting motions. Even if I’d had lightning, fire, or some other offensive magic, the magiers were too far away for me to attack. Even Sullivan, with all his powerful blue lightning, wouldn’t have been able to reach the ship from here, and especially not now with the gale-force winds gusting around us and the water sweeping over the bridge railing and slapping against our bodies.

  Desperation filled me. I didn’t want to die, and I certainly didn’t want my friends or all the other innocent people on and around the bridge to die. But right now I didn’t see a way to save them, much less myself.

  My gaze flicked from one thing to the next. The purple lightning streaking through the water. The magiers moving their hands. Their eyes glowing like amethyst stars as they fed more and more of their power into their horrible storm. And of course the tidal wave that just kept growing higher and larger with every passing second—

  And I suddenly realized that this wasn’t the first time I’d had to battle two enemies at once. During the assassination attempt on Serilda outside the Mint yesterday, I had faced down a fire magier and an ogre morph. I hadn’t been strong enough to kill the morph on my own, so I’d used my immunity to trick the magier into doing it for me with her fire. Maybe I could do the same thing right now. Maybe I didn’t have to destroy the wave and all the magic churning through it.

  Maybe I just had to redirect it.

  “Evie! Evie!”

  Behind me, my friends screamed my name, although if they said anything else, I didn’t hear it. I tuned out their frantic cries, along with the booming thunder and the wind howling in my ears.

  Instead, I focused on the wave, timing my movements to it. As it grew higher and higher, I reached for my own magic, for my own immunity, pulling the power up and up and up, until the invisible strength of it was crackling around my hands like the purple lightning was streaking through the water. Then, when I had an iron grip on my power, I lifted my hands and planted my boots on the wet flagstones, bracing myself as best I could.

  The magiers must have finally exhausted their collective power, because they all snapped their hands down at once, forcing the wave to start its inevitable deadly downward roll. A final crack of thunder roared through the air, and the concussive boom rattled everything, including the bridge. I bent my knees, bracing myself a little more, and held my ground.

  I had often thought of my immunity as a gladiator’s weapon, as a dagger to slice through someone else’s power, or a sword to kill their magic completely. Now I thought of it as a shield, the largest and most important shield I had ever held. I pictured my immunity streaking out of my fingertips like gray and blue stars, and then those stars fusing together and arcing out into this enormous, invisible shield that stood between me, my friends, and the tidal wave rushing toward us.

  “Come on!” I screamed, urging myself on. “Come on, come on, come on!”

  I reached for even more of my magic. And more magic, and more magic still. Even though I couldn’t actually see it, I still pictured the invisible force of my power going up, up, up, until it formed this strong, solid shield that completely covered me and my friends. And then I lifted that shield up into a defensive position, just like I would in a gladiator fight in the arena.

  I had never tried to use so much magic before, had never tried to dig it out of myself like a miner chipping tearstone out of a cavern wall, but I reached and clawed and scraped up every last drop of power I had, every little shard of magic buried deep down inside me.

  The wave arced higher still, blotting out the storm clouds overhead, and casting the bridge in almost total darkness. All I could see was the dark wall of
water, along with those damned purple streaks of lightning zipping through it. I gritted my teeth and reached for even more magic, knowing that I had to hold the water back or we were all dead, and most likely Bellona along with us—

  With a loud, booming, thunderous roar, the wave slammed down on the center of the bridge, right on top of me and my friends.

  But the water didn’t touch us—not a single fucking drop.

  I looked up, but all I could see was the water churning and churning, desperately trying to batter through the invisible shield of my magic. My arms were still raised high overhead, with my fingers spread out wide, but my entire body was trembling and shaking from the effort of using so much of my own power to hold back so much violent, heavy, destructive force.

  The water kept crashing down, down, down on top of my shield, even as the lightning inside the wave lashed out like a hot, caustic whip. Every blow knocked me back and threatened to break through my immunity, threatened to break me, and I ended up sliding all the way back across the flagstones until I hit the railing behind me. I would have flipped over it and plunged into the water below, dooming us all, but Paloma and Sullivan reached out and latched on to my legs, anchoring me to them and the bridge.

  “We’ve got you, Evie!” Paloma screamed.

  “Hold on, highness!” Sullivan shouted. “Hold on!”

  I didn’t have the strength to yell back. It was taking all my concentration, power, and focus to keep the water from crushing us.

  But that much water couldn’t just stop. It needed somewhere to go, and it started arcing up, up, up, getting ready to come crashing back down again. I wouldn’t be able to shield us from a second blast, so with the last remaining scraps of my strength, I started pushing back against the water.

  Well, I supposed I wasn’t pushing back so much as I was changing the shape and position of my invisible shield. Instead of a round dome covering the bridge and protecting me and my friends, I imagined tilting the shield to the side, so that the water hit it and started arcing up again, forming another massive tidal wave.

  Even though I wasn’t tilting the shield all that much, it still took every ounce of my concentration. One degree of rotation too far, one second of inattention, one moment of hesitation, and the water would slip around the edge of the invisible barrier and flatten me, along with my friends.

  So I focused on that shield like I had never focused on anything before in my life. Everything else fell away. My back pressing up against the railing. Paloma and Sullivan anchoring my legs. The shrieks and screams of everyone on the bridge. All I could see, hear, feel, taste, and smell was that crushing wall of water sliding up against my magic.

  The wave arced up and up and up. Finally, when it reached its peak, I gritted my teeth, shoved my invisible shield forward, and threw the water away from us with all my might.

  It was hard—so bloody fucking hard—but I pushed and pushed and pushed, shoving my invisible shield away from us, and all that damn water along with it.

  The wave wobbled, but it didn’t want to move, so I reached for even more of my magic, and pushed on the shield again, and then again, and then again, as though I were beating my fists against it, even though it was my own creation.

  Slowly, the water started to tilt, but not quite enough, so I kept hammering at my shield, trying to push it and the massive wave away from us. I was almost out of power, and it was now or never. With a loud, primal scream of rage, I pushed on my shield one last time.

  And the wave finally—finally—arced away from me and my friends.

  The water kept moving, churning, seething, but it was now heading in the opposite direction. Even though the danger had passed, I kept my hands raised and my shield locked in place. I couldn’t physically get my body to move at the moment, so I stood there and watched the wave roll away from the bridge and head exactly where I’d wanted it to go.

  To the Bastard Brigade ship.

  The weather magiers were still standing on the deck, and I thought I could almost smell their shock, horror, and fear at the sight of the wave zooming toward them. A few magiers turned and ran, probably to jump off the opposite side of the ship so they could try to swim to safety, even though that wouldn’t save them.

  The rest of the magiers snapped up their hands, desperately trying to summon their own magic to do something, anything, to keep the wave from killing them. But they didn’t have enough magic or time, and a few seconds later the wave crashed down right on top of the Mortan ship.

  Bull’s-eye.

  For several seconds there was just noise and spray and one concussive boom-boom-boom after another. The wave and the water seemed to go on and on and on . . .

  Finally, the wave dissipated, although the water still churned, frothed, and bubbled, as though the entire surface of the harbor was quaking and shaking. I squinted, trying to see exactly how much damage I’d done.

  The Mortan ship was gone—and so were the weather magiers.

  No, that wasn’t quite right. The ship wasn’t gone so much as it was splintered into pieces, and broken bits of the wreckage bobbed up and down on the surface of the water like fishing lures. The largest piece of the ship that was left was the mainmast, and it quickly sank beneath the waves like an arrow that had been shot toward the bottom of the harbor.

  I scanned the still-churning water, but I didn’t see the magiers anywhere. The wave had probably crushed them against the deck, and their bodies were probably sinking to the bottom of the harbor along with the rest of the ship.

  It was over. I had done it. I had saved us.

  My body started violently shaking, and my arms went suddenly limp and numb and fell to my sides. I didn’t have the strength to hold them up anymore. I didn’t even feel them anymore, or my legs, and I would have crumpled to the flagstones if Paloma and Sullivan hadn’t still been holding on to me.

  Slowly, the water stopped its violent churning, although ripples continued to shoot out in every direction, rocking the other boats and ships anchored closer to the shorelines. It would be quite some time before the harbor was completely calm again. More wind blew over the bridge, but this was a natural breeze, and not what the magiers had made, and it quickly swept away the last of the ugly dark purple storm clouds.

  The wind whispered away, and I was suddenly aware of this strange loud buzzing in my ears. It took me a moment to realize that it was the screams and shouts of everyone on the bridge and the people on the boats, ships, and shorelines who had witnessed what had happened.

  A couple of bright purple sparks caught my eye, and I slowly turned my head, looking back toward Fortuna Island.

  Maximus was watching me.

  The Mortan king was standing on a high rise along the waterfront that offered him a clear view of the Bellonan bridge, as well as where the Mortan ship had been. Despite the distance between us, I could see the magic burning in his purple eyes. I didn’t know if he had fed his power into the wave along with the other weather magiers’, but he was clearly furious that his contingency plan had failed.

  Mercer and Nox were standing next to the king, both of them looking stunned, as if they didn’t understand why their bastard relatives were dead instead of me.

  And then there was Maeven.

  She too was standing on the rise, although she was slightly apart from her male relatives, just as she had been during the rest of the Regalia. Instead of being angry or shocked, Maeven seemed contemplative, as though she were thinking about far more important things than how I had survived this latest assassination attempt.

  After a few seconds, she looked past me. I followed her gaze, and I realized that she was staring at Leonidas, who was still slumped against the bridge railing, cold, wet, and shaking just like everyone else was. I wondered if Maximus had told Maeven that he was going to kill Leonidas along with me. Probably. The Mortan king wouldn’t let something as insignificant as his nephew’s life stand in the way of murdering me.

  Once Maeven was sure that her son
was okay, she stared at me. Her features took on that contemplative look again, and she actually tipped her head. I wasn’t sure whether she was mocking or congratulating me. Probably both.

  Maeven turned and vanished from sight, but Maximus, Mercer, and Nox stayed on the rise, still staring down at the bridge. After a few seconds, Nox noticed that Maeven had slipped away, and he did the same. I wondered if they wanted to get away from the king in order to avoid his wrath. Probably a good idea.

  Mercer was glaring at me, but I ignored him and focused on Maximus. His eyes were still burning with magic, and I could have sworn I could smell his hot jalapeño rage all the way out here on the bridge.

  If I’d had the strength left, I would have lifted my hand and snapped off a mocking salute, just to piss him off even more.

  Paloma and Sullivan let go of my legs and got to their feet, although they were both shaking, just like I still was.

  “Evie?” Paloma whispered. “Are you okay?”

  I didn’t have the energy left to answer her. I glanced along the bridge. Serilda, Cho, Xenia, and Auster were all climbing to their feet. Leonidas was still sitting down, slumped against the railing, but the boy was in one piece, as was everyone else farther out on the bridge.

  I looked toward the Bellonan end of the bridge. Everyone there was either climbing to their feet or standing in place, still shocked by what had just happened. But my countrymen all looked okay, and no one seemed to have gone into the water. The only ones who had been drowned by the wave had been the ship full of Mortans.