Page 34 of This Shattered Star

I spun on my heel at the next swing of the pendulums at my front and back.

Brows furrowing in question, Theia copied my movement, whirling around to face the platform we’d been standing on. I expected her to gasp at what we saw. To panic. To finally use her magic. I didnotexpect her to merely sigh withannoyance.Which was exactly what she did.

“How dreadfully inconvenient.”

Kodhan was fighting for his life.

Water surged at him in pressurized beams, molding and splitting into several smaller waves every time he managed to evade them. Those he did not evade, he met with fire, those collisions shooting streams of vapor into the air, clouding around the platform in a heavy mist.

The fight was taking too much of his concentration. He couldn’t focus on protecting himself and us at the same time.

Brannon blew away the next vine that shot at my ankles since Kodhan missed it completely. And the pain in my leg was creeping past the point that I could endure while standing still.

“Do something,” I begged. He could use his wind to blow Kodhan’s assailant off balance. Or even off the platform.Anything. Any of it was far better than waiting for something to happen.

The only thingIcould do.

But Brannon didn’t need to lift a single finger.

Kodhan’s attacker halted his downpour, hands hovering mid-strike as his eyes widened. He then began to slowly back away from Kodhan, face drawing into a slack-jawed, silent scream of terror. Towards the edge of the platform.

I squinted, trying to make out what he could possibly be backing away from through the vapor, but only Kodhan stood nearby, whole and unaffected.

He didn’t waste the opportunity. Kodhan struck, grabbing the water-wielder by the throat. Brought him inches from the drop below, then lifted him until only his toes touched wood.

Leaning inches away from the man’s face, he hissed a warning I couldn’t read off his lips, not with how heavily the vapor shrouded them. But the water-wielder didn’t appear to understand a word he said. He grappled at Kodhan’s arms, his entire body screaming what he couldn’t, not with his airflow restricted.

And that was terror shining in his eyes.

“What’s wrong with him?” I asked quietly. I spared a quick glance at Maverick, whose head was turned, speaking to a member of court I couldn’t name.

“Does it matter?”

The hairs on the backs of my arms stood on end at Theia’s flat tone. Completely devoid of her usual warmth.

The water-wielder did scream, then. Or at least tried to. Fire painted a downwards path from Kodhan’s hand, turning the man into a beacon of light amongst the cloud of steam.

That was when Kodhan let him go.

His feet did not find purchase—they slipped off the edge completely. It did not take long for him to be swallowed by the darkness below. He gutted out like a match. Lost forever.

“No.” The reply was small. Grated against the lump lodged within the back of my throat. “I suppose it doesn’t.”

Kodhan turned to the others who’d stood by and watched. Spat something I couldn’t hear over the audience, whose cheers returned with full force, and drew a line of fire between him and them. The flames were small, but significant.

Cross it, and die, they said.

No one did.

The heat that had been eating away at my limbs cooled so suddenly that my bones were left barren and chilled.

Kodhan graced us with a one-shouldered shrug. “Got distracted,” he mouthed.

Rolling my eyes, I turned back around before he could step past the first axe.Bastard.

A stray thought swam through the outer premises of my mind, housing a question I would likely never gain the answer to. The Son of the Second had a reputation of violence, and a father that could order the death of those that crossed him without further doubt. That manchoseto attack him knowing fully well who he was. Didn’t hesitate once Kodhan found himself without the close help of his allies.

So what had he been so afraid of?