On cue, a booming laugh echoed over the hilltop.
“I think you’re right,” Kyra said. “Let me take this back to Prija and see if we can get anywhere with it.”
“Have you figured out how to—”
“No. Don’t ask. I’m working on it.”
Kyra ran back to Prija, and Leo turned toward the fire.
Chapter Twenty-Six
“Are they getting anywhere?” Niran asked him. The two men were crouched behind a low wall that had been shattered by the angel’s fist. He was playing with them and enjoying it.
“Of course they are,” Leo said. “They just need time.”
“You’re lying.”
“You know as well as I do.”
“Prija is fine?”
“She’s healthy and angry as hell.”
Niran smiled. “A promising combination.”
“She’s talking to Kyra.”
His eyebrows went up. “I haven’t heard her speak in years.”
“Well, now she’s talking to Kyra.”
The news seemed to invigorate Niran. He rose and hurled a chunk of stone at the angel’s perch on the temple. It fell short, but Leo had to admire the effort. He ducked down when a fireball hit the back of the wall.
Rith jumped over it a few seconds later. “We need to find a way to get him down or get us up.”
Leo popped his head up and looked at the sharply sloped roof. “Getting us up would only result in us falling down.”
“So we need to take him out of the air,” Rith said. “Unless I can get close enough to him, I can’t use this blade. I’m not going to risk throwing it at him. If he takes if from us, we have nothing.”
“Can you make a spear of it?” Niran asked.
Rith shook his head. “It has to be held by my hand to make a killing blow.”
Damn the rules of magic, Leo thought. The Fallen obviously hadn’t heard of them, otherwise he wouldn’t have wings.
“How do we make an angel fall?” Leo asked.
Alyah seemed to be having the most luck annoying the creature. Leo could tell by the amount of fire being thrown in her direction. He’d heard the Irina’s battle song rise above the fire. It was the first sound of it that had wiped out the Grigori. They’d stumbled and fallen to their knees, only to be taken out by Niran, Rith, and the others. Since then, Alyah had aimed her voice at Arindam, making the angel waver but not quite fall. Every now and then, he’d lift and rise from the temple, trying to locate the source of her magic, but Alyah remained hidden, guarded by Niran’s men.
Niran’s eyes shone when he looked her direction. “I wish my sisters could do that.”
“They’d be untouchable if they could.”
“Is it possible?” Niran said. “If they learned the right magic?”
“I think so,” Leo said. “My sister Ava has Grigori blood. She’s mated to a scribe and learned magic from older Irina.”
“So it’s possible.” Something relaxed behind Niran’s eyes. “There is hope.”
“Not if we don’t kill this angel,” Leo said. “Because if he loses interest in us and goes after the women Sura took, they’re lost.”
“I am ready,” Prija said, situating herself on a low cushion Kyra had found in another room. She’d draped Intira’s blanket over her shoulders and washed her face. She looked serene and powerful.
If only Kyra knew what she needed to do.
I can think words to you, she thought. But I don’t know how to copy his song. I can hardly make sense of it.
“Do not copy. See it.”
She huffed out a breath. “That means nothing to me!”
“Then think.” Prija closed her eyes. “I will try to hurt him.”
Kyra felt it when Prija struck. It was a wild jab, her energy shooting out in all directions, just like when Prija tried to hurt her during meditation. She felt the blood drip from her already swollen nose.
A red bloom rose in Prija’s eye as a blood vessel burst. “Think!”
“What was that?” Leo yelled as the monster fell from his perch.
“Prija!” Niran rushed the creature, joined by Alyah and Niran’s men. They leapt on the angel, but he twisted away, backhanding one of the free Grigori and grabbing Alyah by the throat.
“No!” Leo roared, rushing to the aid of his sister. He flung a knife at Arindam’s eye. The creature screamed when it found its mark, and Leo’s ears started to bleed.
Arindam dropped Alyah, who rolled into a ball and ducked her head down, protecting her throat while her Grigori protector stood over her, punching and kicking the Fallen, trying to beat him back. The angel reached out with one arm and grabbed the Grigori by the throat, twisting his neck to the side.
Niran’s brother fell silently to the ground, and Arindam took to the air. The body dissolved, gold dust rising in the red glow of the fiery hilltop.
The angel perched at the top of the temple and screamed.
Leo felt Niran’s rage and held him back. “Wait! Sacrificing yourself with a rash attack will do nothing!”
“Let me go!”
“Wait,” Leo said again, wrapping his massive arms around Niran. “Take a breath. And wait.”
Reshon, you need to do something. We are dying.
Kyra sat up and pushed the red veil from her mind. The Fallen’s scream had taken her to the ground. She had hit so hard she was seeing stars.
She was seeing stars.
Kyra struggled through the pain and focused on the beating pulse of Arindam’s song. It was a grinding noise. A pulse and a wave. She focused on isolating everything else from the noise of the angel until the pulse turned into light. The light glowed brighter against the night. Every beat shot like a star across the blackness.
A star. Another star. They moved and danced. Crossing each other. Rising and falling.
Rising and falling.
Waves.
Intervals.
She saw them and she heard them. They chased each other across the night of her vision. Stars scattering. Waves rising and falling.
Do you see it yet?
Look.
Her vision wasn’t black anymore. It was filled with stars, glowing in the night sky. She isolated those of the angel, reached for Prija’s quiet presence, and threw her mind wide-open to the other woman. She knocked down a century’s worth of walls, threw open every door, and stripped her mind naked.
Look.
Kyra kept her eyes closed and watched the rising and falling stars. She watched a few spike like glowing plumes, rising above the waves, and they pierced her mind like needles. But as she watched, Kyra saw more stars. More waves.
They began in a low thrum that ran beneath the waves. At first they pushed up, barely a ripple beneath the glittering sea. But then the thrum rose higher. And higher.
Kyra heard the drone of Prija’s instrument.
She didn’t ask what the kareshta was doing because she saw it. When the angel’s song went high, Prija’s song went low. In time, the thrumming notes from Prija’s instrument matched the waves from the Fallen. Then another note joined the first, waiting for the rhythm of the spiked plumes and matching them with a plucked note, canceling out the noise.
The painful spikes went silent.
“What’s happening?” Leo asked.
At first it was subtle. The flames around them grew dimmer. The fire started to burn out. But then, as the sun began to rise above the Bagan plain, Leo noticed something else.
“He’s… he’s losing his form,” Leo said.
“Prija,” Niran whispered. “My warrior sister. You did it again.”
The red veil around the Fallen wavered. The gold-tipped beak went first. Then the burning snakes around his wrists.
“What is she doing?”
“I don’t know what it is,” Niran said. “But he’ll be weaker now.”
In the distance, Leo heard the faint strains of something like a violin as Arindam tumbled and fell to the ground.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
The music was everything now. When Arindam’s song rose, Prija’s fell. Kyra kept the connection between their minds, worried that if Prija couldn’t see the waves of Arindam’s song, she wouldn’t be able to play whatever it was she was playing. Because whatever she was playing canceled out the painful waves of music emanating from the Fallen.
The music grew louder. It filled the room. No longer a scraping hum but a resonant hymn of unearthly beauty. Prija was playing opposite the Fallen, matching his frequency and tempo with her own. No music came from her throat, but Prija was singing. Not old magic, but new. Not Irina song, but kareshta. Wholly new, yet ancient at its core.
Kyra opened her eyes and saw her sister’s face glowing.
“Do you see it?” Vasu appeared, kneeling beside her. “The little one saw it immediately.”
“The stars we see in visions,” Kyra said. “They aren’t stars after all.”
“They are. But we are the morning stars, and every star has a song.”
“Intira can see it.”
“Prija’s brother saw it too. That was how they killed their father, though they did not understand how. Their minds were tied together. The effort killed her twin. And his death nearly drove her mad.”
“Do we need to be concerned about Intira?” Kyra asked.
“No.” Vasu smiled. “I saw her dreams and recognized her genius. Her mind is a work of heaven, and it is beautiful. It is the young who are most interesting to me.”