The peace of Sol-Aurelia lasted precisely forty heartbeats.
Aurelius was dead, his crystalline corpse cooling upon the obsidian throne, but the scent that suddenly flooded the cavernous hall was not the sweet relief of liberation.
It was the oily, rancid reek of ignited sulfur, boiling mercury, and freshly broken oaths.
"Down!" Gideon’s roar hit Lyra’s ears a fraction of a second before his colossal, armored body slammed into her flank, tackling her off the obsidian dais and driving them both behind the thick, fluted base of a white marble column.
A deafening CRACK like thunder tearing through a dry valley shattered the air above the dais.
A volley of twenty heavy sun-rifle slugs smashed into the very spot where Lyra had been standing. The impact vaporized the obsidian armrest of the ancient throne into smoking, jagged shrapnel, showering the steps in black volcanic dust.
"Ambush!" Talia yelled, her silver rapiers whistling out of their sheaths.
From behind the hundred fluted pillars circling the throne room, the shadows peeled away.
They were not common city guards.
Seventy elite warriors clad in armor of blackened electrum stepped into the light. Their breastplates were embossed not with the weeping solar deity of the dead Emperor, but with an inverted golden sun encircled by a serpent swallowing its own tail—the sigil of theSolar Inquisitorate.
And stepping through the shattered honey-amber doors of the terrace, surrounded by a vanguard of heavy halberdiers, was Grand Inquisitor Malakor.
The Inquisitor was no longer dressed in the drenched, ruined crimson silks Gideon had hurled into the harbor skiff at the Silver Coast. He wore a high-collared mantle of stiff cloth-of-gold and a breastplate of polished sun-glass that crackled with volatile, stored lightning.
His golden eyes, once panicked and humiliated, now burned with cold, calculating triumph.
"You really are a remarkable little animal, Ashhound," Malakor purred, his melodic voice echoing effortlessly across the high marble rafters. "The ancient records said the Sovereign bloodline possessed the frequency of the Primeval Loom, but to watch you actually untie the solar suture with a common skinning knife... truly, a spectacle worthy of the Imperial Archives."
Gideon rose to his feet in a slow, coiled crouch behind the column, his star-iron claymores humming with lethal, violet starlight. A low, terrifying growl rumbled in his chest—a sound so deep it made the dust on the flagstones dance.
"I should have cleaved your head from your shoulders at the Grand Quay," Gideon rumbled, his voice promising butchery.
"Perhaps, barbarian," Malakor said, waving a languid, manicured hand. "If you possessed the intellect to see beyond the edge of your steel. But you wolves are so terribly predictable. You smell a tyrant, you track the scent, and you rush to be heroes."
Malakor took three slow, measured paces into the hall, his golden boots clicking sharply on the basalt floor.
"Aurelius was a senile relic," the Inquisitor sneered, casting a disgusted glance toward the corpse upon the dais. "For three centuries, that rotting fool held the wealth of twelve oceans hostage behind his pathetic guilt! He bled our wyrms drop by drop to nurse his failing marrow, while the true glory of the Dominion withered under his endless, cowardly treaties!"
Lyra stepped out from behind the pillar, slipping from Gideon’s protective shadow to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with her mate.
Her violet eye flared with cold, predatory certainty. Her breathing had steadied; the starlit healing within her veins had already cooled the burns on her palms, and her small, calloused fingers closed firmly around the hilt of her antler knife.
"You never wanted me to be his bride," Lyra said, her voice cutting through Malakor’s speech like a diamond blade. "You knew the Solar Rot had reached his brain. You brought the torque to my harbor to lure me here."
Malakor’s golden lips curled into a broad, patronizing smile.
"Naturally. The Emperor’s dead-man's switch was the only thing preventing the Inquisitorate from claiming absolute dominion over the archipelago. He had to die. But if we assassinated him, the core would detonate and drown us all. We needed someone with the power of the True Sovereign to unknot the suture without triggering the apocalypse."
He tilted his head, his golden eyes sweeping over her with sickening, proprietary greed.
"And now, you have performed your function flawlessly. The old man is dust. The core is stabilized. And the Sun Wyrm in the trench... well, once my alchemists drop the heavy galvanic cages back into the lagoon, the beast will return to its rightful place as our engine."
Malakor snapped his fingers.
The seventy black-electrum Inquisitors leveled their weapons. Heavy repeating arbalests bristling with mercury-tipped quarrels locked onto Lyra, Gideon, and the eight warriors of the Ember guard.
"Kill the barbarian and the northern guards," Malakor commanded, turning toward the terrace. "Take the girl alive. Strip her tendons, sever her vocal cords, and lock her in the alchemical vaults. The Solar Dominion has an entire fleet of dreadnoughts to fuel... and her marrow will serve us for the next thousand years."
"Malakor," Lyra’s voice rang out, soft, deadly, and entirely devoid of fear.
The Inquisitor paused at the edge of the terrace, looking back over his shoulder with an amused smirk. "Yes, little stray?"
Lyra took one step forward, her chin lifting, her fangs lengthening against her lower lip.
"You made one mistake."
Malakor’s brow arched. "And what might that be?"
"You assumed," Lyra whispered, her voice multiplying into that terrifying, subterranean dual-resonance that made the entire volcanic plug beneath them shudder, "that I left the Sun Wyrm in the water."
From the open terrace behind Malakor, the blue sky suddenly vanished.
A shadow—colossal, ancient, and burning with the incandescent fury of a living sun—blocked out the light of the noon heavens.
Rising from the sheer thousand-foot sea-cliff, its three-hundred-foot golden coils wrapping around the exterior of the Solar Spire like an apocalyptic titan, was the Sun Wyrm.
The ancient sea-god lowered its massive, horned head over the terrace railing.
Its golden eyes, each the size of a war-galleon's mainsail, locked directly onto the tiny figure of Grand Inquisitor Malakor.
And from the other side of the dome, circling down through the upper clouds,Cinderlet out an answering roar that shattered every remaining pane of glass in the palace.
Gideon’s claymores cleared the air with a deafening whistle of star-iron.
"Emberguard!" Gideon bellowed, a savage, bloodthirsty grin splitting his scarred face. "HUNT!"