“Then you’re not sorry,” Josef said, leaning away from the quivering point of her sword. “Not about killing the duke and his son? Or about the years you’ve spent poisoning my mother?”
“Of course not.” Adela laughed, her voice echoing in the wind. “I’d kill Finley again if I could, the pompous bore. And Henry. I can’t tell you how happy I am that the Empress came quickly and I don’t have to waste my life being his queen and bearing his dull-witted children. As for Theresa, she deserves what she got for being so trusting. The only thing I regret is that I had to pretend to lose to you at the Proving, but I intend to remedy that now.” Adela smiled, her sword inching forward to press against the naked skin of his throat. “You should have been smarter, Prince Thereson, than to let your enemy choose your fate.”
“I don’t think so,” Josef said, tilting his head into the wind. “Is that enough?”
“More than enough,” Eli’s voice drifted on the breeze. “We heard the whole thing.”
Adela’s eyes went wide, and she swung around, searching for the source of the voice, but the roof was empty.
“Who’s there?” she shouted. “Show yourself!”
Her only answer was the wind’s low moaning as it swept past her, blowing her voice down over the now completely silent crowd.
“Well,” Josef said, pushing himself up. “If you’ve got all you need, we’ll finish it from here.”
Adela spun back around, bringing her sword right up to the skin beneath Josef’s chin. “What do you mean ‘we’? You are alone! No one can save you!”
Josef didn’t move, not even to flinch away from the blade at his throat. “Wrong, princess. You were the only one who was fighting alone.”
Adela bared her teeth with a snarl and flicked her wrist, sending a wave of steel down her sword that would slice Josef’s neck in two. But before the wave was halfway down the blade, the Heart of War’s spirit exploded open, and the weight of a mountain fell on the palace.
CHAPTER
18
Eli watched in amazement from his place in the equally amazed crowd as the corner of the palace where Josef and Adela’s drama had been playing out suddenly fell straight down. There was no warning, no crumbling, no falling stone. One moment Adela was standing with her sword at Josef’s throat, unknowingly incriminating herself to all of Osera, and the next the entire western side of the palace had flattened as though stepped on by an enormous, invisible foot.
For three heartbeats, the people simply stared, and then the crowd turned as one and began to stampede out of the square. Tesset calmly retreated to the recessed entry of a nearby building as the tide of people surged past. Eli dove behind him far less calmly, pressing himself flat against the painted door as far from the panic as he could get. He was thinking about picking the lock when a wind’s voice giggled in his ear.
“Helping you was more fun than expected,” the wind said. “Now, you said you’d make it worth my while?”
“Of course,” Eli said, recovering instantly now that there were deals to make. “How about a favor of your choosing from the prince of Osera?”
“A favor from a human?” the wind puffed, considering. “That’s a fine turnaround. I’ll take it. I’ll call him when I think of something.”
“Do, please,” Eli said.
But the wind was already blowing up into the sky to tell the others about how a human owed him a favor.
Tesset patted down his collar where the wind had blown it up. “You do realize that when the wind comes to claim that favor, the spirit-deaf Prince Josef won’t be able to hear him.”
“Winds like having favors more than claiming them, in my experience,” Eli said. “But if it does ever come to that, I’m sure the wind will find a way. They’re very resourceful.”
“I’m sure,” Tesset said, eyes darting pointedly to the square. “You should look to your young lady.”
Eli followed Tesset’s look and saw, without surprise, that Nico was no longer beside them but across the square and pushing her way toward the palace wreckage. With a long-suffering sigh, Eli started after her. Tesset went with him, gently pushing the panicked people out of their way with his long arms.
They caught up with Nico at the edge of the crushed palace. Eli was about to ask why she’d stopped when he felt it. The Heart’s spirit was still open, sitting on the wreckage of the palace’s western corner like an invisible mountain. Another step and Nico would have been on the ground like everything else.