Worst of all, Tavi’s watercrafting senses were abruptly overloaded with a single mindless, boundless, endless emotion—rage. It was an anger more vast than the sea, and it made the very air in his lungs heavy, hard to move in and out. And, he thought, it wasn’t even being directed at him. There was a bladed point to that spear of anger, and he had only been grazed by it.

“Are you mad?” cried the vord Queen, staggering before the onslaught of the great furies’ wrath. “What have you done? They will destroy us all!”

“Then we will have chosen our deaths!” Tavi screamed back, struggling through the horrible pain and confusion in his thoughts, through the unbearable rage of the great furies. “Not you!”

The Queen let out a shriek of frustration and terror and flung herself into the air. For a second, the wind of the storm seemed to rise to oppose her, only to relent. She hurtled forward, and in a flash of lightning, Tavi saw her pass into what looked like a great, fanged maw made of clouds of rain and sleet. The jaws of Thana Lilvia closed with a roar of wind, and Tavi saw the Queen spinning, spinning out of control, whirling down miles and miles of cloudy gullet lined with rings and rings of windmanes, their claws flashing and slashing.

Kitai struggled to reach him in the rocking fury of the storm and the mountain’s anger, finally throwing herself down next to him as a bolt of lightning hit a rocky ridge not twenty feet away. He gathered her in close, and said, “I’m going after her.”

Her head snapped up, and her green eyes were wide. “What?”

“We must be sure,” he said. “Alera is here. There must be a way to soothe the great furies, or at least to direct them somewhere else. Talk with her.”

“Chala,” Kitai cried. “You will be killed in this!”

He caught her hand in his, squeezing tight. “If she is not finished, there will never be a better time. And too much is at stake. It must be done. And I am the First Lord.” He drew her hand to his chest and kissed her mouth, swift and heatedly. Then he rested his forehead against hers, and said, “I love you.”

“Idiot,” she sobbed, her hands trembling as they framed his face. “Of course you do. And I love you.”

There was nothing else he needed to say. Nothing else he needed to hear.

Gaius Octavian rose and flung himself up and into the teeth of the storm.

* * *