Page 89 of Shadow Throne King

Pito raised a hand to her throat, shaking her head. “He’s a child. I’m not sure he can live. I only lived because I…” She glanced at Topi. “Because I couldn’t leave you alone, sister.”

“No,” Koque breathed the word, leaving it with almost no voice. “I cannot lose him.”

I shook my head, remembering what it had been like removing the creature from Asahi, tearing it from his neck, and how it had struggled inside Pito, freezing to death and still refusing to yield.

The creature had only been two weeks inside Asahi, and much longer inside Pito. How could we remove it from a child who had borne it even longer, with fewer natural defenses?

“We must try to save him. And we must do it soon,”Naî said as she walked through the room, stepping on the pools of water. Each time she set her paw down, ice spread from her footprint, allowing her to walk on top of the water.

She stepped past the twins and Koque, the women gaping at her. Naî shook her head, enjoying the attention.

She sat back on her haunches, considering the pool of water and the child trapped inside it. Then she looked up at me, and even though her face was inhuman, I could feel her sharp attention as she silently asked me whether I had the strength to save him.

Taking a long breath, I knelt, using my one good hand to pull off my boots.

“What are you doing?” Empress Koque demanded.

“Saving your son,” I said, hoping it was true. Then I put my feet into the pool, dropping inside. Before I could go under, Tallu caught my hand, his fingers lighting every nerve in my palm.

His expression was fierce, brows pulled together, everything about him was sharp, everything brittle. Twisting my mouth into a smile, I tilted my head, trying to say everything that needed to be said. He finally nodded, releasing my hand and letting me sink under the surface.

I had learned to swim in frozen waters and pools heated by underground vents. I knew how to cope with extreme environments.

But plunging into this water was something else entirely. I couldn’t bring myself to the surface. Instead, I floated in some middle space, not needing to move my arms or legs to keep me suspended. My hair swirled around me, my braids drifting in and out of my line of sight.

There was a splash, and Naî floated in the water across from me, Prince Hallu between the pair of us. My eyes didn’t burn from the water, and when I took a breath, I felt it like a cool, fresh wave of air.

I could feel the water already working on me, my shoulder warm as though I had taken a blanket from near a fire and wrapped it around the injury. I could feel the bone regrowing, the tendons knitting themselves back together.

If the water could do this, how bad were Prince Hallu’s injuries that it couldn’t heal him? Or could the water heal only the body and not the mind?

“We will do it again, the same way,”Naî said.

I nodded, not trusting myself to speak, even with the strange air flowing into my lungs through water.

Naî started, just as last time, the ice freezing the water around us, her desire clear. Her magic whispered around me,shivering up my skin.Kill this monster, kill this thing. Free this child.

There was more empathy in her voice this time, less rage, less hatred at the creature that could do such a thing.

Let him live, I begged. I needed him to live. Only this time, the magic felt different. The last time, Naî and I had been attacking a fully grown creature, a monster that had already taken over Pito. When we had done it, I had sensed Pito underneath it, the woman I had known, fighting and screaming as she felt herself being dragged deeper and deeper.

But Prince Hallu was a child. The creature had developed inside him as he had grown. It was impossible to tell what he had been before the monster. He had been soft clay, stamped with a curse from his father, and Centipede had shaped him, baking him in terror and pain.

Let him live, I repeated.Let him have time to discover who he is.

I could feel a glow underneath the creature’s evil as the water froze around us, trapping us in it. Hallu was there, but what was left of him? What had the creature not eaten?

In the forming ice, I could see the threads that wrapped around Hallu, the curse given to him by angry, dying blood mages. Was that all that was left? When we freed Hallu, would he be an empty shell, held together only by the blood mages’ curse?

But Hallu’s heart beat with love. As Centipede began to lose its control, I felt it in him: love. Love for his mother, love for his brother, who was no more than a ghost in his memory. Hallu curled in on himself as Naî and I flooded the entire pool with cold, wrapping everything in frost and ice.

Hallu gasped, his eyes opening, and he looked between us, arms desperately moving, trying to swim upward, but the water wouldn’t let him. I reached out and felt the centipede along hisspine. With a single touch, I released all of my hope and all of Naî’s fury.

Hallu’s back arched and he opened his mouth in a scream as frostbite shot down his spine, marking where the creature was. It spread from the top of his skull, all the way to his tailbone. Then he went still, limp. I pressed forward, feeling the creature crunch to death under my fingers, dying in a long whimper.

Naî trembled, the ice vibrating back into water.

Hands plunged into the pool, pulling Hallu out, reaching for me and Naî. Tallu yanked me back onto the path, and I gagged out some of the thick, pale blue water. Gasping in fresh air, I looked over at Hallu. He blinked, crying.