Collette didn’t say any of that. She just spat out some of the blood that gathered in her mouth from where his first punch had split her lip.
Then she smiled.
Not because she was some kind of tough chick, but because Julianna came over the top of the ridge at that very moment with an ogre’s long-handled war-hammer in her hands. She swung it like a sledge.
The Atlantean heard her coming at the last moment and turned in time to avoid having his skull caved in. He caught the hammer blow in the shoulder. He was on the move when it struck him, but something still cracked in there. Collette heard it.
The swing took Julianna around in half a circle, and that was her undoing. The assassin reached for her hair, tangled his fingers in it, and yanked her backward. He snapped her right wrist and she cried out as she dropped the hammer. Her cry was cut off when he gripped her throat and produced a knife from a sheath at his back. He pressed its tip to her grimy skin, drawing blood.
The assassin started to turn her around, maybe to threaten Collette-Julianna’s life for hers-but Collette didn’t wait. She’d been in motion even as Julianna swung the war-hammer. As he tried to spin her around, Collette knocked the knife away and jumped on him, wrapping her arms around his throat and face, legs scissoring around his torso. Clutching him, she threw herself backward. Her weight dragged the assassin down, tripped him up, but he had a hold on Julianna, and she fell with them.
Collette Bascombe-unmaker, Legend-Born-tasted blood on her lips and knew that this time it was her own.
Time seemed to hesitate in the plaza at the center of Atlantis. Oliver felt off balance, as though the island had tilted a few degrees. Breath held, he stared at the blue bird as it tumbled from the sky, at the feathers that floated down after it. All sound seemed to cease in that moment as he watched the bird hit the stones and lie still. Unmoving.
Blue Jay is dead.
Kitsune the fox struggled to stand, then fell again, badly injured but still drawing breath. Where Grin and Cheval lay in a tangle of limbs, nothing moved.
Oliver looked up at Frost. The winter man stood perhaps twenty feet away, his fingers elongated into icicle spears, his body narrow from the heat, sculpted in knife edges. But when Frost lifted his gaze from the dead blue bird and met Oliver’s eyes, he seemed closer to human than ever he’d been before.
They had been so foolish, these two. Oliver saw it, now, felt it, and knew that Frost did as well. They’d had a bond. The winter man ought to have honored it with honesty, but Oliver ought not to have been so stingy with his forgiveness, particularly when he knew that Frost’s only real sin had been arrogance. Recognition passed between them now.
Whatever resentments had separated them were set aside.
Their friends were dying. They were each other’s only hope.
“Can you reach it now?” Oliver asked.
“The Veil?” Frost said. His eyes narrowed and he reached out, fingers scraping the air, then nodded. “I can. Whatever magic blocked us from leaving the library doesn’t extend to the rest of the city.”
“Get us the hell out of here, then!”
“We can’t leave.”
Oliver spun, staring at him. “What are you talking about?”
“If we go through the Veil here, we’ll emerge in your world thousands of miles from where we would need to cross back over to reach the battle lines, probably on an island with an ocean between us and the mainland. If you want to get back to Julianna and your sister, if we hope to bring word of Tzajin’s death to Hunyadi, we’ve got to wait here as long as we can for Smith to return for us.”
Oliver swore, knowing he was right. “What if Smith doesn’t ever come back?”
The winter man felt the heat first. Oliver had become used to the constant change of temperature around him, the warmth of the island sun and the gusts of icy wind that Frost generated. But when Frost glanced up, already starting to back up, it took Oliver a moment before he felt the blast of heat coming from above them.
He glanced up and saw the Guardian of Fire falling toward them. No, not falling. Li had jumped. He plummeted toward the ground with fire and heat roiling off of him. Li landed on the stones and a tremor shook the plaza. A wave of heat swept off of him. It felt as though Oliver were standing next to a raging inferno, a forest fire.
Then the heat diminished. The fire in Li’s flesh flickered and dimmed, and his skin looked more like charcoal-gray ash than the burning embers it had been before. Even in his eyes, the fire seemed to have abated.
Li looked up at Oliver, weary and full of anguish.
“Do something,” he said.
Oliver began moving before he even became aware of his intentions. He strode toward the library, glancing up at the huge, burning hole they’d put in the side of the building. Li had melted the glass wall on the fifth floor. The fire had begun to spread. Jellyfish followed him down, floating and eddying on the wind as if they had all the time in the world. A few eels were among them, but most had apparently been roasted in the fire.
The jellyfish descended.
A blast of cold and ice erupted from behind Oliver, shooting skyward and freezing half of the jellyfish as they descended. Those covered in ice fell straight down and shattered on the stones, but the others kept on.
Oliver glanced over his shoulder.
Frost and Li kept their distance from one another. Ice and Fire, neither wanted to sap the magic and strength of the other. The octopuses and eels and jellyfish moved in to finish them off. Soldiers started to move in.
An air shark darted toward Li and he burned it in motion. The flames in the Guardian of Fire raged again, rising to inferno level. The shark fell, a black, burnt carcass, and split open when it slapped the ground. A curtain of fire swept across one side of the plaza. Soldiers had begun to advance, but the fire held them back. The first line of armored figures were set ablaze and fell to the ground, batting at the fire on them, or turned to flee, hair beginning to burn.
Li faltered, fell to one knee. Again the embers of his flesh flickered as though his fire might go out.
Frost attacked in the other direction, ice and snow and frigid wind killing some and halting others. But it would only be a matter of time. They could not stand against the forces of Atlantis-not with the sorcerers that were among them.
There would be no going home.
Oliver closed his eyes, just for a moment, and sent up a prayer that might have been to God, or to gods, or just a wish from his heart that he hoped Julianna would hear.
Keep my love with you always.
Collette would have to fulfill the prophecy of the Legend-Born. Her brother had other business.
He reached out and put his hands on the smooth outer wall of the library. His heart filled with sorrow and rage. His nostrils flared angrily and he closed his eyes again, then dug his fingers into the strange sea glass that made up the outside of the building. It flowed like liquid, like glass before it cooled.
The building shook.
Then it began to melt, collapsing in on itself. The wall bowed out above him. Oliver stood back, looked up in terror, and then ran.
“Frost! Li! It’s coming down!”
The winter man burst into nothing but ice and snow, and that blizzard blew across the stones, sweeping up the dead blue bird as it went. Oliver ran to where Kitsune lay, still a fox-why had she not returned to her human form?-and bent to lift her in his arms. She was alarmingly light and she whimpered in pain, but her heart still beat. Her blood felt sticky on his hands, smeared on her fur.
Frost took form again beside the fallen Grin and Cheval.