Page 160 of Sharpest Court

I couldn’t hear if the group had made it to safety. I only knew that my power was being strained to its very limit, and I couldn’t bear the weight much longer.

I had barely formed the thought before another wooden leg collapsed, sending a splintering sensation through my specter and into my bones. Osana and I groaned together, and our grips slackened.

The tower creaked.

I staggered back, panicked, the tank’s weight rushing toward my scrambling power. Sparks showered the air, and the tower loomed closer—

Then a new power, one I didn’t recognize, collided with mine, helping to carry the weight off me. It corded between my specter and Osana’s, its rippling mass patching up the weak spots.

I drew a ragged gasp as the pressure eased and then dared to turn my head.

Zeke was standing beside me, his profile gilded by the inferno, his eyes blazing with a fire of their own. Without a glance in my direction, he poured more of his specter into the web.

I jolted as another specter joined the latticework. Then another. And another. Thin specters, powerful specters, specters streaked with scars—all braiding their tendrils into the net we’d formed under the tank, all helping to bear the weight that had threatened to buckle me and Osana alone.

From every corner of my vision, figures drifted into the ashy haze around the tower.

And like a great wave, the emotion swelled and crashed inside me, streaming out into every limb.

Because the Dawni scholars had come up on my left, covering their faces behind their forearms. The Avanish fishmongers stood beside them, fear and courage mingling in their expressions. Then a young couple from Creak, who had always walked hand in hand back on the ship. A brother and sister from Parrey, who would gamble for rationed ale during the card games. An elderly man from Henthorn—the oldest Daradonian on the ship—whose weathered face now appeared carved from granite as he met the blaze head-on, his cane digging into the grass at his feet.

And there, standing beside her powerfully built uncle, was the overseer’s eight-year-old niece, who had once braided my hair when I couldn’t lift my arm. Now her own braided updo came apart as she stared boldly at the tower. As though nothing in this world could break her resolve.

Osana met my gaze through the flames, a similar emotion shining in her eyes.

With the power of my people reinforcing my own, I tightened the muscles of my specter. And we, the Wielders of Daradon, who had always hidden from each other, had always smothered our power, now held one another steady—each seeing only our own specters being ravaged by the flames, and yet trusting that the others were there beside us, easing the burden of our struggle by carrying it as one.

The heat began beating out so fiercely that I didn’t notice the tendril of power around my hand until it tugged. This time, it was a power I recognized.

I threw the cloth from my face and looked back toward the hill. Keil stood like a pillar at its apex, hundreds of figures clustered behind him.

“Fall back!” I shouted, my command roaring louder than the fire.

We turned and ran as a unit, the air rushing past us in one hot sweep. Osana had swept up the eight-year-old girl and now leaped ahead of me. The overseer sprinted at my side, the old man jostling in his arms. I stumbled on debris and Zeke gripped my arm, saving me from the fall. The more distance we put between ourselves and the tower, the more strained our spectral web became.

Then, all at once, the web unraveled.

The tower gave a monstrous creak just as our bodies slammed into the base of the hill. The tendrils of power were already there, feeding out like ropes from the Wielders above. And in a heaving scramble, we clambered up the grassy slope.

I’d barely braced my knee over the lip when a whoosh sent a gust of scalding air toward us. I panicked, nails digging into the earth as I felt myself slipping—

But Keil moved faster, wrenching me over the edge and pinning me beneath him before the boom shook my bones.

The water crashed over us like an ocean wave, Keil’s body slamming down on mine with the impact. I spluttered as my legs dangled off the drop, the pull of the water threatening to drag me out from under him.

But Keil locked his arms around my body—braced his thighs against my hips—and the tide rushed away without me.

Then the world was still.

Only the collective hacking-up of water sounded alongside a heavy pattering, like the last burst of rain after a storm.

Keil helped me sit up, and I looked over his shoulder.

The fire was out. The settlement was destroyed.

46

Grief lay as heavy as the ash in the air.