Divided: The Alliance Series Book Four (32 page)

“I can’t promise,” I said. “But I’ll go after them.”

“And we’ll go to Zanthar,” said Iriel. “Come on,” she added to the crowd, at least half of whom were too terrified by the appearance of the Vox to really get what was happening.

“Listen,” I said to the Vox. “You’re not to harm anyone. That’s part of the deal. You let us use your territory to rid the Multiverse of the Stoneskins, and let every human out unharmed. Understand?”

I sensed the incredulous stares behind me, from people who couldn’t believe I’d have the nerve to barter with a Vox. But they hadn’t seen what I had. Anger had obliterated every trace of fear. I was going in, and I was going to save Ada no matter what it took. I would
not
lose her again.

“Deal,” said the Vox, in its gravelly voice, and its gigantic head shrank, becoming shadow again. I hurried down the corridor, finding the camouflaged hover car where I’d left it. Luckily, it cast enough of a shadow I didn’t run into it. Climbing into the seat, I nearly ran down Nell as she pelted through the corridor.

“You’re not leaving me back there,” she said breathlessly. “I’m going after my daughter.”

“Fine. Hop in.” I’d figured as much.
Probably shouldn’t tell her I’m not sure this thing works offworld.

But driving over the threshold to Cethrax gave no reaction—the car stayed off the ground, the engine kept humming, and I steered it west, like the Vox had said. Cethrax had magic, and apparently that was enough to keep the engines running.

Very good job we were invisible. Wyverns flew overhead, screeching, probably drawn by all the magic used. Dreyverns and ravegens scrambled on ground level, jabbering in Cethraxian. Even the insects had sharp teeth and claws. And yet all that paled in comparison to what was waiting at the end of the road.

I upped the acceleration, and drove on. Towards Ada.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

ADA

Captured again. I couldn’t fight. Not unless I somehow got hold of the world-key, and that wasn’t happening any time soon.

Think.
God, I was exhausted. The StoneKing had dragged me a good half-mile across the swamp—literally, whenever I slowed down. There were no other people left. Except a bunch of Stoneskins who’d crossed over with us, to make sure there was no chance of escape.

No one but me could kill him. When I had my chance, I would. Yet the Stoneskins were winning through sheer force of numbers. Aric had my communicator, my one chance of contacting anyone. I had nothing. Just a worn-out stunner tucked into my pocket, which I couldn’t use as long as he had his hands on me. And he knew, too. I’d never be free.

I hadn’t seen Aric amongst the dead, but there had been at least a dozen. Gervene was dead, too. Dead, because of my attempts to break free. Other people had probably died because I’d pushed those other Stoneskins through the doorway.

Stop thinking about that.

The StoneKing finally stopped in a deserted area of mostly dry ground, far away from any semblance of civilisation—or doorways. I’d seen a few wyverns, flying in the direction of the fortress. They must have been drawn to the magic. Guess the Stoneskins weren’t interesting enough to them, and a single human went unnoticed.

I’m the only human. They can’t threaten to kill the others.
But they
could
threaten to wipe out the Multiverse—and the world-key could take them literally anywhere to do it.

Speaking of which… the StoneKing held the device in his hand, crouching to carve symbols into the ground.

“You learned that at the Alliance, didn’t you?” I asked, clutching at straws. “You worked for them.”

“You can’t stop me, Ada,” said the StoneKing, etching a second symbol by the first, at the point of the arrowhead.

“Wasn’t trying to,” I said. “Is it really worth it? Wouldn’t you rather target the individuals who ordered whatever they did to you? Isn’t that more satisfying than provoking the attention of an entire world at war?”

Silence.
He won’t listen.
I twisted around to look at the other Stoneskins.

“Come on,” I said. “He’s mad—you must see it. You…” I turned to the Stoneskin I recognised as one I’d spoken to on the first day in the swamp.

“Please,” I whispered. “You have to help me. Your boss is crazy. He thinks I can talk down the warring tyrants on my homeworld.”

“I think you can fulfil your potential,” said the StoneKing. “
Our
potential. We were both made to be gods.”

“Oh, sure,” I said. “It’s not like you just tried to feed me to a wyvern or anything. We can be BFFs now.”

I’d meant to take him off-guard, and it worked for about half a second before his eyes narrowed. “Enough, Adamantine. You cannot possibly win, so why not embrace your role?”

“Because you’re a psycho,” I said. “And I was never interested in becoming a queen of anything. Or an assassin.”

The other Stoneskins formed a circle around us. No way out. His grip on my arm ensured that, if nothing else. He carved a final symbol into the ground, and it hit me in a rush, so sudden I almost laughed. He wasn’t following a signal. And Kay had already been using the world-key.

“Open your eyes to the truth, Adamantine. This is what you were made for.”

And the doorway opened… onto another stretch of swampland.

I grinned. “That was stupid,” I said. “You didn’t think the world-key would work the same as auros, did you? It’s tuned into Cethrax.”

“Do not mock me, Adamantine,” said the StoneKing. “Did you think that wouldn’t occur to me?”

Honestly, yes. You’re not the brightest bulb, are you?
But the words stopped before they left my mouth.

The scene in the rapidly-expanding doorway changed even as we spoke, from swampland to a beach, from plains to a city of spired towers. Crap. The world-key couldn’t just be linked to Cethrax, after all. This guy was a walking tracker, and could find
any
magic source. For a brief instant, the scenes overlapped—the skyscrapers of Valeria, another murky-skied city with old-fashioned cars—world after world blurred before my eyes, but I watched the StoneKing, readying myself to grab for the world-key.

He pulled me forward. The ground disappeared from under my feet, and suddenly Cethrax was the other side of the door, and I was…

Nowhere. No ground, no sky, no—anything. The breath stopped in my lungs. I couldn’t see anything except fog. And I’d seen the scene before. He’d opened a door to the heart of the Multiverse itself.

“Still think I can’t change your mind, Adamantine?”

I couldn’t reply, because there was no oxygen. I had seconds. If he let go… who knew where I would end up? Lost in empty space? Pressure built on my skull. My lungs burned, like I’d stayed underwater too long.

I gasped as air slammed into me, as did all the sensations I had no idea I’d been missing. Even the pain from the bruises I’d picked up was welcome. I shuddered on the ground, his hand locked around my wrist. I twisted over, staggering to my feet, trying to pull away.

He gave me a pitying smile. “You really did think it would be that easy.”

The abyss vanished, replaced by Valeria. The view showed a building from above, near the hover train’s tracks. There should have been guards there, but the streets appeared deserted.

There was no one here to defend the city, because, if what Kay said was true, they were in the Passages.

“You see, I did think this through, Adamantine,” said the StoneKing. “The mageblood leaders are difficult to find, but with the doorway open, even they will be unable to ignore the signs of Royal magic. Once you draw their attention, Adamantine, they will come.”

Holy shit.
He was planning to bring the war to Valeria.

We were on a level with the rooftops, but as he twisted the world-key in his hand, the view shifted to show the ground.

The street on the other side was deserted. Cordoned off. Blood smeared the metal-coated material that made up the roads and pavements, and the buzz of magic in the air hit me even from here.

“Here we are,” he said. “This is the last place magic was used, aside from Cethrax… I believe Valeria’s police unsuccessfully tried to subdue some of my Stoneskin people here.”

They must have tried to do magic.

The StoneKing grabbed my arm and tugged me over the threshold, and a buzzing crashed over me like a wave, stopping when it hit the place the StoneKing held onto me.
What the hell is that?

Another Stoneskin followed us, then another. One had held onto the bag of world-key pieces, and the other… I hadn’t noticed he held a bag, too, and the buzzing came from inside.

No.
If I could feel it even as the StoneKing held onto me, it had to be packing a hell of a lot of power.

“This is our purpose,” said the StoneKing, smiling at me. “Now we have the means of drawing Enzar to us.”

The other Stoneskin held up a piece of gleaming blue-black rock. Not adamantine.

Another source, charged with power so intense, it lifted the hair on my head and burned my eyes behind the lenses.

“The source contains the energy of Veyak, and all the other places we have gathered it from,” said the StoneKing, using his free hand to direct the other Stoneskins to form a circle around us. An unbroken circle, with no gaps. “You will unleash that energy, and the world-key will direct the magebloods straight to us. If you don’t cooperate, I need only to order one of my Stoneskins to break the circle, and the city will be obliterated. I wonder if any of your friends are still here?”

I glared at him. If looks could kill, he’d be writhing on the ground.

And in that moment, I had my plan.

The open doorway changed from Cethrax to the deep abyss between the worlds again. The StoneKing grinned at me, took the source from the other Stoneskin, pressed it into my hand—and let go.

CHAPTER TWENTY

KAY

Faster.
Even at the highest speed, the hover car didn’t seem fast enough. The velocity pinned me to the seat, and behind me, Nell hung onto the back for dear life.

“Do you even know where you’re going?” she yelled in my ear. The car skimmed the ground and I pulled a lever to move it higher off the ground, rather than answering. When they activated the world-key, we’d know about it.

“What if they open the door to Enzar?” I asked. “If they try to use her magic, and we can’t stop them, what would you do?”

Maybe I was asking myself more than her. But she met my eyes. “We’re going to save my daughter.”

“I know,” I said. “But if you’d been in that position, then what?”

A pause. “Would I have sacrificed her for the sake of the Multiverse? Perhaps.”

Some questions could only be answered in practise. It was through acting, not thinking of acting, that you knew what you were really capable of. Consequences came later. If you lived through it.

A flash of blue lit up the sky.

“Shit,” I said. The door was already open, the magic rippling outward, and I wondered why I’d ever thought Cethrax was low-magic. The predators had evolved to repel the destructive magic in the atmosphere, destructive enough to rip the world itself apart.

Come on!
I pushed the hover car to its limits, pressed flat against the back of the seat.

Two giants loomed ahead, so suddenly I almost crashed into one of them. “Shit,” I said again.

I’d forgotten the giant Stoneskins. And damn, they were pissed. Gigantic fists swung clumsily, snarling faces leered at us. I pulled more levers, making the car fly higher and sideways, and narrowly avoided being snatched out of the air. The speed kicked up to a roaring trail that left them in the dust—well, swamp.

Another blue flash lit up the sky. And then we saw it.

The doorway stretched across the horizon, growing bigger even from a distance. Stoneskins disappeared through it in groups, but I couldn’t push the car any harder—we were going to lose them.

I cursed to the sky as the doorway closed. We’d missed Ada. Again.

“That wasn’t Enzar,” I said, turning the car around. “It was Valeria. They were too late…”

And now, so were we. The two giant Stoneskins barred the way back into the Passages, their huge forms easily masking the car-sized doorway.

I hit the stop button, and nothing happened. “Seriously?” I muttered, and hit it again. I twisted the lever to steer sideways, and the car kept moving forwards.

We were going to crash.

“Idiot,” Nell snarled in my ear. “You’re an amplifier. Use it!”

The sciras. Could I make the effects transfer over to the car?

Not like I had a choice. I tapped into it, expecting the invisibility to fade, but the car itself did its job. The giants stared, stupefied, as the car barrelled towards them. One moved aside at the last minute. The other didn’t.