“Is this really for her?” the king said with disdain. “You would oppose me like this, here and now, and throw away everything that could have been yours for the love of one girl?”

“No,” Magnus replied, his teeth gritted together with the effort it took to fight his father. “I oppose you like this because you’re a monster who needs to die. And when that monster is dead, I will fix the idiotic mistake you made by underestimating Amara, and reclaim Mytica as my own.” He jabbed his blade, slicing his father’s shoulder. “What happened to your experience? It seems to me that I’ve drawn first blood.”

“And I will draw last.” The king dodged the next strike with ease, clearly surprising Magnus. “Never show how strong you are from the very beginning. Save it for the end.”

Gaius jabbed and flicked his wrist, and Magnus’s sword flew out of his hand. Magnus stared at it, stunned, as it landed six paces away.

The king put the tip of his sword to the prince’s throat.

“On the ground.”

Magnus sent Cleo a pained look and sank to his knees before the king.

“I didn’t want to have to do this,” the king said, shaking his head. “But you’ve given me no choice. Perhaps you’re not like me after all. You’re too soft to do what needs to be done.”

“You’re wrong,” Magnus gritted out.

“I saw potential when no one else could. And yet, here we are. Serves me right, I suppose.”

Cleo was shaking her head, lost for words and feeling more hopeless than ever. “Please don’t do this . . . don’t kill him.”

“It must be done. I can never trust him. I could lock him in the tower for months, years, but not a day would pass without the knowledge that he would be plotting to kill me again. However, my son, I will do you the honor of making this quick.”

His arm tense, his expression without pity, the king raised his sword.

“King Gaius!” Cleo shouted. “Look over here!”

He froze, the sword stilled, but he didn’t drop it. The king sent a glance over his shoulder at Cleo, who stood at the edge of the cliff, holding the earth Kindred out at a dangerous angle.

The king blinked. The guards reached for their weapons, but Gaius motioned for them to stay where they were.

“Do you know what this is?” she asked evenly.

“I do,” he said past a tense, tight jaw.

“And do you know what happens if I drop it fifty feet onto a hard sheet of ice? It will shatter into a thousand pieces.”

She was bluffing of course—she’d seen what had happened when Magnus had hurled the orb against the throne room wall. But she prayed he would believe her.

“I know you want this,” she said. “I know you’re obsessed with the Kindred, but that you haven’t found a single one yet.”

Finally, the king lowered his sword. “That’s where you’re wrong, princess. I have the moonstone orb.”

Cleo tried to keep the shock from showing on her face.

“You’re lying,” she said.

“Wouldn’t that be convenient for you? Unfortunately, I’m not.” He nodded toward the closest guard, then to Magnus. “Watch him.”

“Yes, your majesty.”

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.