Page 62 of Prince of the Phantom Sky

In an instant, the port exploded, wood shattering around them, burning debris cascading. Raiden roared through the pain, his power forming a barrier as the child cried in his arms, her tiny fingers grabbing onto him so hard they pinched.

His defensive magic was nowhere near as good as Aerion’s, but Raiden weathered the wood biting into his back. As the chaos settled, Raiden unfurled, the child shivering in his arms. Without wasting a second, he sprinted back to the shoreline, propelling into the air, and landing onto the deck of Flying Pegasus.

“Gloria! My Gloria!” a female ran towards them.

“Mumma!” the child whimpered as Raiden handed her over.

“Thank you so much!”

He nodded in return, staggering back until the railing supported him. The ship took off, sailing across the seas with speed, as all Galenite warships did. He held his breath until the cannons from the Blackstone’s faded away, until they were a black speck on the horizon.

“Don’t you ever do that again!” Kordelia approached, jabbing her finger in his already tight chest.

“They needed us,” Raiden murmured as his hands curled around the railing.

“We cannot risk our lives for everyone! This war is more than a few rebels in Aldara. We are the only ones who can stop this.” Kordelia’s blue eyes raged, her irises churning like the seas.

“Every life we save is a life for the future. Every life we save is a win against the empire,” Raiden repeated, as he’d always done since Kordelia had become heavily involved in this war.

She huffed, and he did a double take as she rolled her eyes. Each day that’d passed in the peak of the Galenite War, the icier she’d become. Her intentions more misguided, her priorities tarnished. Barron, acting as Admiral Darkon’s replacement, had become the singular in her life. All she could talk about, all she could focus on, was his death.

“We cannot help those who cannot help themselves. Barron has everyone in his pocket, we can’t trust anyone outside of Galen,” Kordelia spoke with finality. This was her new truth.

“They’re human! Who else is going to help them? Mages have been rounded up for slaughter, we’re some of the last ones left.” Raiden flinched at the coldness in her stare.

“Perhaps if there were less humans in this world, there would be less death.” Her eyes narrowed on the rebels quivering around the main mast. “I’ll be questioning them before we return home. Any of them could be a spy.” She walked away without another word to the quarterdeck where Aryn hovered, his golden stare pinned to Raiden.

He swallowed the sickening fear down until it was locked away, as his love took her place at the helm. The admiral of the Galenite fleet. Thunder rumbled, greeting the lightning flashing in the dark and gloomy sky, and Raiden’s power quivered in return.

A dark shadow leered behind Kordelia, a glint of purple eyes and thick black talons clawing at her waist. Raiden lurched, lightning breaking again. As the bright flash faded, the shadow vanished, leaving Kordelia Jones alone, sailing them home to Galen.

Kora had slept the rest of the day. She’d summoned too much magic all at once, even channelling water from the far-off river running from the Aurora Gap to the ocean through the nearby forest. It was an impressive feat, but had left her back to square one in recovering her full strength.

Raiden stretched, his spine cracking as he shifted on the stool beside the bed in the infirmary. He rolled his shoulders, the cries of innocents haunting him from his dream last night. Aerion had deemed it better for Kora to be placed under a twenty-four-hour watch, but Raiden’s blood silently simmered at the figure in the bed next to her.

Erick fucking Cadell had seen better days. Bruises mottled his wan skin, now faded to yellow, and the slash on his head was a wrecked mess of scabs, scar tissue, and stitches. His chest rose with shallow breaths, and Raiden imagined how easy it would be to release his air, to deprive his lungs of the essence of life.

Raiden rubbed the ever-present ache in his chest that he couldn’t shift since Talmon Island. A ring shot through his ears and he hunched over, focusing on Kora’s own breathing, how every inhale was a gift.

“If you kill him, she will kill you.” Aryn sat down on the other side of Kora’s bed. The sun hadn’t risen yet, and dark circles lined Aryn’s luminous eyes. The infirmary was grand, with a towering ceiling interspersed with columns hand-crafted from the foundations of the earth beneath Windspire.

Low-hanging black chandeliers hung from the ceiling in a straight row, casting a sombre glow on the smoothed walls, cascading through the glass doors of each ward erected within the naturally formed caverns. Built beneath the castle, the infirmary spanned the length of it, also doubling as a shelter in case of another full-scale invasion.

“I could blame it on you,” Raiden joked. Almost.

A light sheen of sweat coated Kora’s skin, and her fingers fluttered in her sleep as her brow furrowed. Uncomfortable heat rose within Raiden as Erick’s breathing turned ragged, and he wiped his own sweat from the back of his neck.

“I’ve made my peace with Erick,” Aryn sighed as he inspected Kora, his hands swift and methodical as he checked her pulse, her temperature, and her breathing. “His morals are true now, however his past still haunts him.”

“Nothing can change what he did,” Raiden growled, glaring at the unconscious male.

“He lost his wife, Rai. Apparently, there’d been a rebel attack on the islands some years before the Mist,” Aryn said as Raiden stilled. “She’d been with child.”

“Fuck,” Raiden groaned. “I don’t recall any attacks on the islands? We never wanted to put civilians in harm’s way. We only fought on the ocean, or at the Citadel.”

“Me neither. But it’s possible. It’d all been such a mess back then. The empire was campaigning, the islands were suffering. We couldn’t put the fires out faster than they appeared. It’s possible one of our groups led a covert attack to push the empire back.” Aryn rubbed his eyes. “It all blurs together for me now.”

“So, what happened . . . we were his revenge?” Raiden’s anger ebbed away like a slow tide.