Magnus stared at Cleo. “Drop it,” he said. “Don’t let him take it from you.”
“Wonderful suggestion,” she said. She shook her arm as the king drew closer to make him stop. “So. You have air and I have earth. But neither one is worth anything, as I’m sure you’ve discovered, with their magic locked away inside.”
“Oh, my dear girl, how disappointing it must have been for you to have such a treasure in your possession and yet no clue how to access its power.”
“And you do?”
He nodded. “My mother told me how. It was she who first told me stories about the Kindred. Somehow she knew I would be the one to claim them one day—all of them. And I would become a god more powerful than Valoria and Cleiona combined.”
“How?” Magnus said, and his father gave him a withering look, which he ignored. “You may as well tell us. Even if she drops the orb, you’ll still kill us both. Your secret will die with us.”
Gaius cocked his heads and gestured at the guards.
“As if such information would benefit them,” Magnus scoffed. “Come on, Father, humor us in our final moments. Share my grandmother’s secret. How do you release the magic of the Kindred? And if you do know how, why haven’t you done it yet? Why not unleash the air magic and simply take the Kraeshian Empire for yourself without going through the hassle of negotiations and agreements?”
The king went silent then, shifting his gaze between Cleo and Magnus. Finally, a smile returned to his face.
“It’s quite simple, really. The secret to the Kindred’s magic is the secret to all powerful elemental magic.”
Cleo’s arm had begun to ache from holding out the orb for so long. “Blood,” she said. “Blood enhances, strengthens elementia.”
“Not just any blood,” the king said.
Magnus’s face went ashen. “Why wouldn’t it have occurred to me until now? It’s Lucia’s blood—the blood of the prophesized sorceress.”
The king only gave him a smug smile.
“How unfortunate it is, Father, that Lucia is off wandering the earth with her fiery new friend, nowhere to be found.”
“I will find Lucia, I’ve no doubt about that. But there is another important component required to unleash the Kindred. Perhaps Eva’s blood would have been enough on its own—she was created from pure elemental magic. But Lucia is mortal. Her blood must be mixed with an immortal’s blood for it to properly work.”
“According to Grandmother.”
“Yes, according to her. Now,” he said, turning to Cleo, “give me the Kindred.”
“You’ll kill us both if I do. You’ll kill us both if I don’t. It seems we’ve found ourselves with a big problem here, haven’t we?”
“Do you think you can negotiate with me, princess? Are you that naive, even after all this time? No. Let me tell you what will happen. You will give me the earth Kindred, and then I will grant you the mercy of a swift death. If you give me a problem, if you flinch, if you sneeze, if you delay the inevitable, I will kill you slowly, so very slowly, and I will make Magnus watch you die before I do the same to him.”
Cleo shared a last look with Magnus. “You’ve given me no choice, then.”
She dropped the obsidian orb off the edge of the cliff.
The king stormed toward her, shoving her out of the way, and looked down toward the frozen lake far below, before he turned on her with a look of rage. “You stupid little bitch!”
As soon as the Kindred hit the hard surface below, an earthquake began to shake the ground, just as it had in the throne room when Magnus had thrown it at the wall.
A crack formed in the ice where the orb had first hit and, as fast as lightning, it snaked up the side of the cliff. A deafening sound of cracking, breaking, and splintering roared up and out across the land, and the edge of ice that Cleo and the king stood on broke away.
Cleo scrambled to catch hold of the rough edge of an icy rock as the very ground she stood on fell away beneath her feet. The king, too, scrambled for a handhold, but he failed.
With a roar, he fell backward into the abyss.
Just as Cleo’s hand slipped, Magnus grabbed her wrist and hauled her up and over the side, crushing her against his chest as he pushed them backward and away from the damage.
“Are you hurt?” he demanded.
All she could do was shake her head.