Page 198 of The Stolen Throne
His expression pinches, going stark, but he obeys. They go. I sprint the other way up to the third floor, where I find Pella and Hakan at the end of the corridor, standing outside the door to our rooms.
“Where’s my brother?” Pella demands before I’m halfway to her.
“Out there fighting with Tziah and your people. Your parents are headed out to help him.”
“What the hells is going on out there?” Hakan asks.
Pella is still and straight like a soldier at attention. “Vos lost his ever-loving mind and went after Tabra.”
“What?” Why didn’t Horus tell me? I should go back. Check her over more closely.
Pella grabs my arm before I can bolt and shakes me. “She’s unharmed. But after Horus got her out of the room, Vos froze himself in ice—filled the whole room. Trapped Bene in there with him.”
Which is when I finally notice that the doors they’re standing in front of are crusted over. Vos stopped himself. My respect for him goes up a thousandfold. Can he survive like that? And how do we get him out with the rest of us?
I explain what’s going on as quickly as I can, including how the entire city is no longer safe. “But that’s not who we’re fighting.” Not yet, at least. “The Tropikan soldiers are under orders to kill us all.”
Hakan and Pella look at each other, and the struggle in both of them is palpable. Hakan doesn’t want to leave Vos but can do the most good in battle. Pella wants to fight with and for her people.
“I’ll stay here,” she decides.
Hakan shakes his head. “I’m not leaving you.”
She grabs him by a hunk of shirt, and I flinch, waiting for her to get shocked, but she must not have touched skin. She yanks him down to her level. “Save my people.”
Hakan struggles for less than a second before, with a growl, he slams his mouth over hers in a harsh, swift kiss, then takes off down the hallway.
Pella watches him go.
“Well…” I say. “That was unexpected. Everyone saw it coming.”
She shoots me a glare. “Now’s not the time. Vos trapped Bene in there with him.”
Hells. He’s key to my ability to make a portal.
I need another way to gather enough sand, and I can think of only one option—drawing it from the oceans outside the cliffs and dragging it to me. I’m not sure it’ll work, but I need to be back outside to try. “I’ll send someone for you if we figure a way out of this.”
Pella gives a single sharp nod.
I hate leaving her here alone, but I have no choice.
“Where’s Reven?” I ask before I go.
“I don’t know. He wasn’t with us when Vos…” She shakes her head. “He’s probably looking for you.”
He should be able to feel me. I don’t have time to explain that.
“If I can’t get sand, he’s our only way out of here.” There are too many of us, though. Not everyone would make it.
Leaving Pella with Vos, I race back down the hall and stairs and burst into the fray of the courtyard, where the fighting is still raging. As I hit the open ground, something explodes out of a window overhead. Chunks of ice rain down over me, and I duck, covering my head with my arms.
I look up in time to see Bene in raven form, shaking off a crust of ice midair. He must have broken free of the frozen room Vos trapped him in. He flies away over the trees, toward the ocean, getting smaller and smaller as he gets farther away.
An odd sound somewhere between crackling and snapping is familiar enough that I know what’s coming.
It’s the sound Vos’s power makes when he’s freezing something.
The green marbled stone around the third-story window Bene just busted out of frosts over, thick and sparkling white, creeping and crawling along the outside of the building.
