Page 208 of The Stolen Throne
The Tropikan forces are on all sides of us now, encircling us, forcing us together. Just like in the Shadowood. But there’s one huge difference—Reven isn’t here to buy me time to build a portal.
Seven hells. This isn’t going to work.
“Meren, drop!”
At Horus’s shout, I drop to my stomach and a spear clanks against the stone steps not a foot from me. I shoot back to my feet just in time to see Horus take the hilt of a sword to his temple. He goes limp, dropping to the ground.
I grit my teeth. “Pella!”
She takes off, slicing his attacker’s neck from behind, then standing guard over Horus’s body like a mother lioness.
Another shout. I whirl around in time to see the zariph take a sword to the leg. He shoves a dagger up under his assailant’s jaw and twists, but he falls with him, pinned under the soldier’s weight.
“Father!” Pella cries out.
The zaripha goes down with a cry, a soldier tackling her from behind. Her hand claws at the dirt as she tries to wriggle free, reaching for the zariph, who’s a body length away. He groans her name and reaches back. But there are more soldiers there to drag them apart. So many more.
We’re surrounded. We’re going to lose.
A terrible idea bubbles up. One that might kill us all. One Reven gave me. Ironically, the reason he kidnapped me in the first place—the reason he originally thought Eidolon wanted the princess he knew had a power over sand.
Desperation leads to desperate acts. It’s this or we’re all dead. The hells with that.
Cain must read the decision on my face. “What do you need?”
There’s a reason this man was my childhood hero.
“Get ready to direct water. A lot of it.” I hope to every goddess and the heavens and every hell that we’re both ready for what I’m about to try to do.
His frown is immediate. “What water?”
I raise my hands, already glowing golden. “Watch the cliffs.”
Eyes closed, I picture the dominion. The lands are below sea level, and the only thing keeping the oceans out are the massive walls of stone that rise up around the borders.
How much sand do I have to move to collapse the portion of the wall directly behind the palace?
I feel for it, picture it in my head, the ground underneath this part of the dominion. My hands brighten, the glow visible even through my eyelids as I find what I’m looking for down a thousand leagues. More sand than my home dominion. I start moving it, pulling it into the surrounding ocean, out from under the mass of the dominion itself. And I pray Cain can do what I’m about to make him do.
“Meren?” Cain’s voice is full of doubt and questions, because nothing is happening.
“Wait for it,” I say through gritted teeth.
Come on. I need to move more. Faster.
A telltale whistle of sound shoots right by my face. An arrow.
“Keep them off her!” I hear Cain yell.
The vague sounds of people gathering around us barely penetrate my concentration. I picture the terravores of my homeland. Those massive shovels formed by the bony plate atop their heads, rearranging the entire landscape at their whim. I create a huge one in my mind that burrows under this side of Tropikis, shoving the sand out from under this part of it. I only need to sink one part of the wall a little bit.
I know it’s working, because it gets harder. So hard. I’m shaking and sweating with the effort.
Faster. Faster.
The ground trembles beneath me.
Not enough.
