The Desert Rose ascended. Morton banked to give her space before taking her landing space.
His feet slapped on the metal gratings and he leapt down stairwells to the lower deck, barrelling into the cargo bay.
‘Come on!’
Civvies in red robes and soldiers in white uniforms filtered into the Wind. A woman Morton took to be Lockwood stood on the skyport ramparts. Even from the distance, her stare turned his blood cold.
Lightning split the sky and a bolt struck the Liberty Wind.
Eiro save me and Belios give me strength.
The storm grew closer, stronger. Civvies helped Sky Fleet soldiers and vice versa. They pled with Morton to fly off.
‘C’mon, c’mon, Lockwood—I ain’t waiting forever…’
When it was clear she wouldn’t leave her post, Morton closed the hatch.
Buzz threw himself through the orphanage’s doors. His momentum carried him, sent him stumbling into its foyer. The smell of oranges and almonds filled his nose.
A young girl with straw-coloured hair strode towards him. ‘Excuse me, sir, I—’
‘Get everyone to shelter.’ Every word stabbed Buzz’s chest. ‘Basement.’
‘Sir, I’m afraid I need to ask you to leave. Kindly close the door on your way—’
Thunder roared like the wrath of a drunken, angry father. Buzz winced. ‘Listen to me—the shit’s getting real. You gotta barricade this place up, or Pyron Thackeray’ll send his dogs.’
‘Nora?’ Stanley Drimmon marched past the girl. ‘What’s going on? What you after, Buzz?’
A burst of lightning ripped the heavy door from its hinges.
‘The shit’s going down, mate,’ said Buzz. ‘You’ll want to listen to what I gotta say.’
Another crack of thunder, and wooden beams fell and cracked on the lobby’s interior balconies.
‘Sweet Musa.’ Drimmon peered past Buzz with wide eyes. ‘It’s a spirestorm. Nora, get Clara and my wife—take the kids downstairs. Now!’
Coils of blue lightning streaked across the black sky.
A barrage of lightning struck the Wind with a force Morton had never seen before. It sent him veering off-course.
Morton lost rotor control. Fire alarms rang and the bricode machine silenced. The ground filled the empty window.
Morton pulled up, flicked switches, engaged everything he could think of. More lightning blitzed the earth.
Power returned in fitful surges. The Wind climbed—Dalthea’s Outer Wall appeared within the wall of rain. The Talon soared past, back towards the kingdom, while the Desert Rose sailed in front. A Bride’s Code message came through: Race you to the desert.
A smile curled on Morton’s lips. He tapped out a response: Add another thousand—
A barrage of lightning struck the Desert Rose, engulfing its emergency envelope in flames.
Bile leapt into the back of Morton’s throat. His grip tightened on the steering column, but all he could do was watch the Rose’s rapid descent.
Its flaming husk struck the Outer Wall.
Wind scraped in his ears, a howling caterwaul. He accelerated, staying close to the ground, every crack of thunder sending electricity through his arms.
The Outer Wall loomed, and the desert beyond promised safety—Morton hurtled towards it, ascending—
Lightning bombarded the Liberty Wind.
Her thrusters cut out, darkness filled the bridge, and she plummeted.
The airship careened and twisted, cleaving a trench through the ground. Metal shrieked and screamed. Morton’s head whipped back and forth, his fingers still lashed to the steering apparatus.
The Wind struck rock. Sparks showered the bridge and pain knifed Morton. His vision popped in and out, and blood filled his mouth.
Dizzy, he fumbled with the safety harness on his chair. Thunder crashed overhead, rupturing the sky.
He unclasped the harness and fell to the floor.
Smoke filled the Wind’s bridge, metal fixtures fell from the ceiling, and ignium hissed around him. Morton forced himself to his feet and staggered through the gangway, hands on the cold bulkheads. Pain seared his legs but he kept moving, twisting through the airship’s confines. Something exploded, sending him flying into a wall.
Still alive… Still alive.
He dragged breath into his lungs and kept pushing, half-running, half-falling into the cargo bay. Men cried, nursing bloodied wounds.
Morton pulled the hatch—
The airship lurched, wrenching old trolleys and empty cargo crates from their secure fittings.
‘Help!’ Morton called to a man in a red robe. Together, they forced the doors apart.
‘Go, go!’
Morton had saved the lives of two dozen people, and he was alive—but the Liberty Wind would never fly again.
Dalthea burned.
Damien’s fingers glided across cold steel. The Remembrance Tower lurched from the force of the wind, swaying beneath the deafening thunder. Lightning scoured the sky, turning the air hot.
On a platform lined with brass pipes and conduits, a thin line of harsh blue light speared the sky.
The Lightning Harness. Korvan.
The monster was different from the Wraiths. He had strength, cunning, agency.
Can you do what needs to be done?
Damien ascended.
‘Did Nyr speak to you that day?’ Azima had asked the night they’d joined together.
Perhaps I should’ve told her the truth…
A Wraith patrol spilled out of the shadows; no guns, only swords and daggers. Damien didn’t hesitate—he dodged a Wraith’s strike, broke its arm and cut its throat. Another’s sword caught moonlight before Damien dirtied its sheen with Wraith blood.
…But I couldn’t admit it to myself.
He flew up the scaffolding, danced between enemies, his blade piercing their brains without effort. He used the uneven footing to his advantage, feinting and turning the environment against his enemies.
Nyr didn’t speak to me.
He pinned a Wraith’s sword-hand to a plywood wall and hurled a throwing knife into another’s eye, before opening the first from throat to belly.
She never has.
More came, swarming like locusts. Damien weaved between them, striking as swift and true as the lightning around him. Blood rushed harder through his veins with each cut and thrust, his blade a red and silver blur, striking with the deftness of a paintbrush in the hands of a master artist.
The only thing inside me…
He deflected the final Wraith’s attack, drew a throwing knife between his fingers, and rained punches into its torso and throat.
…is me.
Brown blood oozed over his clothes and splattered his skin. The Wraith collapsed in a broken heap.
Damien strode towards the Lightning Harness. ‘Korvan!’
No answer.
But the heartbeats he’d heard earlier drummed in his ears. Damien raced towards them, the iron plating at his feet trembling with every step. He rounded a corner, felt the thrum and pulse of the Lightning Harness from where it stood just ahead of him.
Next to it, Korvan knelt in the centre of a circle of corpses. He had his stone-white fingers wrapped around a watchman’s neck.
Damien leapt—but he wasn’t quick enough.
Korvan snapped the man’s neck and rose to his feet. ‘I was going to keep these people alive to see if I could force you to murder them.’ Lightning flashed and silhouetted the monster, and wind whipped at his heavy, mud-green trench coat. ‘But then I got bored.’
They circled each other. Burns disfigured Korvan’s face, like scorch marks upon stone.
Near-impervious skin, no need to breathe, and falling from height will not kill him. Strategy: Pierce brain with sword through eye. If disarmed, throwing knife. Thumbs will do.
Damien felt every vibration in the iron floor, sensed every movement in the tower. He’d battled Korvan before and almost died—but he’d learned,
adapted. If Korvan was a hammer, then Damien was a scalpel—precise and lethal.
‘Isn’t this exciting?’ asked Korvan. ‘Two adversaries, life or death, kingdom in peril. And can I just say, I’m very much looking forward to cutting your face off and wiping my ass with it.’
‘Vivid. And you raise an interesting question—how does the digestive system in a dead thing work?’
‘Well, it’s quite interesting; what happens is—’
Damien’s blade flicked towards Korvan’s face—the monster recoiled and countered with his fists.
Damien dodged, feinting and opening Korvan’s defences, the tip of his blade scoring the skin around Korvan’s eyes more than once.
Damien caught a punch in his chest, winding him and almost cracking a rib.
He retreated but Korvan closed the ground at once, forcing Damien to push his skills to the limit and perform feats of agility to weave around the monster’s attacks.
The monster stomped on the scaffold’s flooring, rupturing it. Damien righted his footing and took a kick that almost shattered his spine.
‘Why?’ Damien panted, ducking beneath a strike. ‘You gain nothing from this. Why?’
‘Curiosity. What happens when you introduce something lethal to the petri dish? How does the bacteria react? How does it thrive in such circumstances?’
Korvan charged and wrestled Damien to the floor, heavy fists driving into his chest. ‘Mostly, I just thought it’d be funny.’
Damien wriggled free, digging his heel into Korvan’s face and twisting away.
But Korvan enjoyed the pain.
He charged again. Damien flipped back, loosed a throwing knife. Korvan batted it away.
Damien slashed the monster’s chest and twisted to avoid the counter. He pushed himself, utilised every trick and every skill he had. A hundred warriors would’ve died at Damien’s hand by now.
But the fight gave him strength. He didn’t need to hold back against this enemy, didn’t need to silence the voice in his head.
Damien flipped back, his foot catching Korvan’s chin and snapping his head back. His sword danced, driving into Korvan’s skin again and again.
Living in fear of one’s demon was no way to overcome it—but to expose yourself to it—to look it in the eye, dare the demon to do its worst and still walk away from it? It showed you just how weak the demon really was—nothing more than a parasite, an insect leeching your own strength, feeding on your fears and convincing you it was much bigger than you.
But it was an illusion.
And when you realise that’s all it is, it’s powerless.
There was no temptation to kill Zofia, as Azima had believed there would be—no temptation to awaken his bloodlust.
But I’m still here, ‘Damien’—inside you.
Damien raised the tip of his collapsible sword to Korvan’s eye.
I know—but you don’t control me; I control you.
He thrust.
The scaffolding collapsed.
Damien and Korvan plummeted, steel and brick raining around them.
Damien twisted as the tower swallowed him, sharp pain running through his limbs.
He landed by the body of a Wraith, still high in the tower, overlooking Dalthea. Summoning what strength he had left, Damien sprang to his feet, swung his blade, and—
Korvan caught it.
‘Well, it’s been fun.’
Korvan snapped the sword and rammed the blade through Damien’s chest.
Bright blue light flashed and a window exploded, showering Buzz with glass.
‘It’s started!’ Buzz yelled. ‘Go, go!’
He followed Drimmon and Angelo into the depths of the orphanage, fire at his back. A young girl behind them screamed and fell.
Buzz leapt over the flames, felt his skin singe.
‘I got ya.’ Buzz lifted her and carried her back over the flame, the smell of burning wood filling his nose. ‘I got ya.’
‘On your feet!’ Valentine roared.
She hauled the injured Lightbearer to her feet. More people materialised from alleyways and shadows—officers of the Watch, kids, Lightbearers. They were scared, in shock, looking to her for answers. Some were injured—Valentine knew with a glance they wouldn’t make it through the night.
But she had to try.
She ferried them towards the hotel. A white bolt of lightning struck a streetlamp, sending a shower of sparks across the road.
Valentine gritted her teeth.
Move your ass, Damien.
‘See.’ Korvan pinned Damien’s chest to the floor and pressed his knee into his spine, then grabbed Damien’s hair and wrenched his head up. ‘See the bacteria squirm.’
Blood seeped from Damien’s chest and copper filled his mouth.
‘Dalthea is Hell, and I’ll sit upon its throne, little man. Until I get bored, which won’t be for at least a fortnight.’
The rain ceased, and the lightning hit harder, searing hot. Flames sprang up on the streets like they were covered in pitch.
‘See,’ Korvan repeated. ‘See.’
Damien couldn’t close his eyes. His muscles grew weak and his vision darkened, but still he watched the death and the destruction—watched the storm tear his home apart.
The tower swayed and broke in the wind. Death would come soon, one way or another. Damien kicked and struggled; Korvan writhed on top of him, laughing, stone cold fingers gripping his head tighter.
If Damien was to die, then he’d do it on his own terms. He’d worshipped at the altar of death for too long to let his demise come at the hands of someone else.
He kicked again, and the metal grating beneath him loosened.
It distracted Korvan for a second—it was enough.
Damien dropped, plunging through the depths of the collapsing tower. His head smacked against metal beams and blood burst from his mouth.
But at least his death didn’t come at the hands of Korvan.
As he fell, Damien kept his eyes open—he saw the kingdom burn before his eyes, saw exactly how much his failure had cost.
The glass dome of the train station shattered, and the structure burned.
The orphanage cracked and burned.
The Kingsway Plaza Hotel crumbled and burned.
The walls of the skyport melted and burned.
The Fayth Collegium collapsed and burned.
The Raincatchers’ Guildhouse toppled and burned.
The courthouse in Old Town Square, Rochefort Castle, the textile mills in Widow’s Trail, the office of Gallows & Fieri…
Everything burned.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Greasy, swirling mists stretched for miles, blurring the horizon and fusing earth to sky. A fearsome city wall shimmered within the amber-green haze, and behind it stood fields of towers. Their twisting peaks reached out of the murk like stiff, dead fingers.
Palthonheim.
Serena’s skin prickled. How many airships had tried to soar above the lethal murk and crashed? How many luckless souls had dared to prowl close to the wastes and never made it out again? Would the same fate await the Queen of the North?
The fog changed hue as the airship crept closer—from blood-amber to tourmaline-brown; from the red of a ruby to the green of an emerald. Sheets of horizontal lightning burst within the radiation.
The temperature in the Queen’s bridge fell as soon as she passed over the city. Below, silhouettes of fallen airships were perched on landing towers—unmoving, like dried husks. Had the Calamity snatched them out of the sky when it claimed Palthonheim? Or did they come after, like the Queen of the North now—braving the treacherous landscape to raid the Scholar City of her secrets?
Maybe they were escape craft that never made it out.
A shadow weaved between the husks of airships, creeping just beneath the surface of the mist.
The wind wept in Serena’s ears, screeching through the airship’s numerous wounds. She sat at the navigator’s station, fingers drummi
ng the armrests, her instincts begging her to turn back. Everything felt wrong.
No-one spoke. Bound in rope, Ventris sat in the co-pilot’s chair between Gallows and Serena, giving Gallows instructions.
Enoch loomed behind Serena, pacing back and forth, agitated. And Tiera stood by the hatch, fingers wrapped around the hilts of her blades.
Bride’s Code transmissions stuttered with senseless bleeps, their sounds stretching and wavering like an out of tune harp. The ignometer’s needle swung between empty and full like a pendulum, and the RADIOM kit scrawled incomprehensible graphs, like the world was changing around the ship. One moment, something colossal hovered nearby, and the next, nothing.
Serena mopped sweat from her brow. She was used to not trusting people, but being unable to trust her machines was new.
‘How far?’ she asked.
‘We’re close,’ Ventris answered.
Serena couldn’t tell if the pirate sounded excited or scared.
Ventris leaned forward. ‘There—forty degrees south-east, maintain speed.’
Gallows adjusted levers and flicked switches. The Queen of the North trembled as her bearing changed.
‘Slowly,’ Ventris whispered, ‘slowly.’
Serena peered into her viewing globe, a device that accompanied the Queen’s RADIOM kit. Like looking down the funnel of a tornado, a vortex spun beneath the Queen, widening and contracting.
‘Descend,’ said Ventris.
Serena exchanged a look with Gallows. No turning back.
‘And be careful,’ whispered Ventris. ‘Like the sirens of old, she’ll mesmerise you and drag you to your death.’ She leaned back in her chair, gaze fixed on Serena. ‘And I’ve not even mentioned the shadow dragon yet.’
‘If you want to scare me,’ Serena said, ‘try not talking about things I find cool.’
‘This is a fool’s errand,’ muttered Enoch. ‘We should turn back.’
‘All right, Serena,’ Gallows started. ‘Visibility’s near nil, so just read the RADIOM as best you can.’
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