AN ENTIRE WARD put to the torch because of me. A hundred thousand people turned to ash and bones. She wasn’t serious. Elroy told me how they slaughtered cows once. They hit them in the forehead with a piercing bolt, taking them by surprise. That’s how my guilt came at me on the heels of the Queen’s promise: out of nowhere. Right between the eyes.
Queen Madra spun around, her dress rustling, the color shifting like the sheen atop an oil slick, and began to walk across the vast hall, her feet silent as she went. “Make her sing, Harron. I want to hear her music echoing from the dungeons to the towers. It’s been too long since we heard something sweet.”
Sick. Twisted. That’s what she was. Madra’s fair face had fooled many, but a dark, ugly pit roiled away behind the mask she wore. I saw it. I felt it in her words. The countless horrors this woman had commanded in that sweet, lilting voice…
Harron’s eyes were glassy as he reached for his sword. The sound of the blade scraping against its sheath filled the air as he drew the weapon free. He wore no remorse. No regret. Whatever sympathy he might have felt for me as he dragged me up here from the cells was gone now, replaced with…nothing.
When he came for me, he came quick and quiet.
It would be over the same way, then. My life, gone in a heartbeat, my cry severed in my throat before it could meet the air. But Madra wanted my screams to flood the palace. She’d said so, and Harron was her creature to the end. I was helpless to stop him when he grabbed me. With my wrists
still bound, I had no way of fending him off. I aimed a kick at his stomach, throwing my weight behind it, but he deflected the blow, twisting away, wearing a look of bored contempt.
“This is nothing to you, is it? Taking an innocent life.”
A flicker of something passed over his features. Not empathy. More…exhaustion. “You aren’t innocent. You’re a thief,” he replied flatly. His hand clamped around the top of my arm, his grip an iron vice. I attempted to dig my heels in to slow his progress as he dragged me across the hall, but the stone underfoot was too slick.
“The Third is full of thieves,” I spat. “It’s the only option open to us. We take more than we’re given, or we die. It’s an easy decision. You’d do the same if it meant the difference between life and death.”
“Don’t presume to know which way my moral compass points, girl.” He wrenched me forward, snarling when I tried to pull myself free. My shoulder throbbed, promising to dislocate if I strained the joint any further, but there were plenty of things I would do to survive and theft was the least of them. If ripping my shoulder out of its socket gave me an opportunity to run, then I’d endure the pain.
“Easy to judge…from a position of privilege,” I ground out. “But when your family…is dying…”
“Death is an open doorway that’s meant to be walked through. On the other side of it lies peace. Count yourself lucky that you get to make the journey at all.” Shoving me forward, he threw me to the ground. I landed on my side, hard, my head smashing against the stone, and sparks exploding behind my eyes. For a moment, all I could do was gasp through the skull- splitting pain. My vision cleared just in time for me to register Harron lifting his sword.
“For what it’s worth, I am sorry,” he said. And then he brought the blade swinging down.
Lightning tore a pathway through my side and up, into my brain. White hot, the sensation transcended pain. This was more. Raw agony, the likes of which I had never experienced, splintered my mind as the horror of it intensified. I didn’t even know pain like this existed. A rush of wet heat spread over my stomach. I looked down and immediately wished I hadn’t. Harron’s blade was buried in my stomach, the metal plunged deep. The captain’s brows drew together for the briefest second—the smallest flare of something he refused to give way to—and then his features smoothed out.
“Ready, Saeris?” He closed both hands around the hilt of his sword. “This is the part where you scream.” And then he twisted…
A wall of sound and panic tore out of me, too much, the fear and vicious burn in my gut overwhelming my senses. Like a feral animal caught in a snare, I bucked and writhed, desperate to escape, but the ties binding my hands behind my back grew tighter the more I pulled, and Harron had only twisted his gleaming silver blade. He hadn’t pulled it out. I was skewered to the stone, and no amount of thrashing would fix that.
I gave Madra the music she requested. I screamed until I tasted blood and my throat was raw. It was only when I started choking on blood that I understood that I was coughing it up. It spilled out of my mouth in a hot stream that wouldn’t stop flowing.
“I know it hurts,” Harron murmurs. “But it’s temporary. It’ll be over soon enough.”
As he stooped down over me, taking a beautiful, engraved dagger from a sheath at his thigh, I clung to those words. Soon, this would end. I would sink into oblivion. I didn’t believe in an afterlife, but nothingness would do. I—
Fire erupted below my collarbone. I couldn’t breathe. I thought for a moment that he’d punched me, but no. His dagger protruded from my shoulder. A ragged howl bounced around the hall, growing louder and louder with each repetition. It was an inhuman sound, chilling and pitiful.
Escape. Escape. Escape.
There was no room to think around the word. I couldn’t—
I had to— I— ESCAPE!
“You’re lucky. This is faster than it will be for the others,” Harron said softly. There was a hint of kindness to his tone; he took out another dagger and looked down at it, considering its edge. “They’ll burn or choke to death. Stomach wounds are painful, yes, but I made this one quick for you. Now…” He shook his head, flipping over the blade in his hand. “One last, really good scream for the queen, and we’ll have you on your way, all right?”
The dagger flashed, quick as lightning. Harron thrust down, aiming to drive it point-first into my other shoulder, but…something happened. The metal tip froze an inch away from my filthy, torn shirt, hovering above me. He—he stayed his hand?
I gagged on another mouthful of blood, struggling to swallow it back down, to breathe around it. When I looked up at Harron, his eyes were wide, more alert than they had been a moment ago. He stared at me, his disbelief plain as day. Shaking with the effort, he was using both hands now, struggling to drive the knife home.
“How…are you doing that?” he grunted. “That…isn’t…possible.”
I couldn’t answer him. I was a burning wick, consumed by pain, but there was something inside of me, something cool, and calm, and made of iron, that rose up and claimed Harron’s knife as its own.
The stillness wanted the blade, and so it took it. As if I had a third, invisible hand, I reached out toward the dagger, and I wrapped my will around it. The weapon trembled, its tip quivering.
“Stop,” he whispered. “This is heresy.”
I couldn’t stop. I had no control over what was happening. I desperately wanted the dagger away from me, and so I forced against it in mind, commanding it to…
Harron gasped as the dagger glowed white hot. The metal screeched in my ears—a horrific, awful sound that cleaved me to my soul. The sound of madness. Gritting my teeth, I answered the voice inside of me, commanding me to unmake the dagger, like such a thing was even possible. And it was. Almost as stunned as Harron, I watched as the knife liquified in the captain’s gloved hand and ran through his fingers in rivulets of rolling silver.
“Heretical…magic!” Harron gasped. He tried to lunge away but lost his balance, toppling backward onto his ass, his boots kicking against the stone as he struggled to get away. “Where did you learn how to—no. No!”
Terror claimed the captain. He cast about, wild-eyed, breathing heavily, as the thin streams of metallic liquid that had once been his weapon rolled toward him, pooling and diverging, as if it were seeking him. As if it were alive.
“End this,” Harron panted. “Even if it takes me, you won’t escape the palace. You’re bleeding out, anyway. You’re already dead!”
A strange, rippling weight shifted in my stomach. I could barely feel it over the pain, but I could sense that calm, unknown something inside me was turning its focus back toward me. It was a question. Did I want to stop whatever course I had set the once-knife on? It would be easy. To call it back. Bring it to heel. Because it was dangerous. There were things it could do. I didn’t know what, but…
I would find out.
Harron was right. I was already dead. No one could survive the injuries he’d inflicted upon me. But Hayden was still alive. Elroy. Maybe even Vorath, though the cry that came from his shop as I fled earlier suggested otherwise. So long as my friends still lived, I had every reason to hurt Harron. And if the flowing metal I had created from the dagger he had planned on stabbing me with might prevent him from hurting the people I cared about, then I’d use it to hurt him first.
I couldn’t speak anymore. Couldn’t move. I was so dizzy that the vast hall pitched up and down like I was drunk…but I wasn’t done yet. I had enough strength to see this through.
Madra would have to find someone else to murder my people. She had an endless supply of guardians who were more than willing to do her bidding, but this man wouldn’t be amongst them. Harron wouldn’t be the one to spill Hayden or Elroy’s blood, the way that he had spilled mine. I knew that I could end him with this strange and hungry metal if I wanted to. And why shouldn’t I? Life wasn’t fair. I’d never expected it to be, but I did believe that you reaped what you sowed in this city, and that meant that Harron, Captain of Madra’s guard, had a debt he needed to settle before I died.
“Saeris? Saeris! Call it off! You don’t—you don’t understand—”
“Oh, but I do,” I croaked. “You expect me to die by your hand, but—” I held my stomach as I coughed, spluttering on another mouthful of blood. “You don’t want to come with me through that doorway you mentioned, do you, Captain?”
“I can’t go. She won’t let me!” Harron had plenty of room to flee, but the man was frozen solid, muscles locked up, too petrified to move an inch. He whimpered as the humming threads of silver branched out like the tributaries of the rivers I’d marveled over in library books and began creeping up the toe of his leather boot.
What would happen to him?
It didn’t really matter. He was going to suffer the same way he’d made me suffer. I was growing weaker by the second, my wounds losing blood at a phenomenal rate. The clock was ticking. I’d be gone soon, but…the stubborn part of me wanted him to die first. And I wanted to be standing on my own two feet when it happened. So, I got to work.
Saeris Fane was twenty-four years of age when she died. Honestly, she should have died a lot sooner, but the girl never did know when to give up.
My epitaph would be short and sweet. Elroy would see to something for me, provided that he survived any of this. In the meantime, I was going to drag my bleeding backside up off of this hard floor and watch whatever came next.
I was sweating, weak-legged, and nauseous when I finally managed to get up. Panting hard down my nose, I took one staggering step toward the captain and realized just how hard it was going to be to stay conscious. I was a (temporarily) living, breathing pin cushion. Harron’s sword and his other dagger were still sticking out of me. It was a miracle the sword hadn’t fallen out yet. The weight of it twisting inside me was excruciating, but I held back my screams as I stumbled, dragging myself on ice-cold feet toward Harron.
Frantically, he slapped his pant legs, brushing the fabric with a sweeping motion, though very careful not to touch the molten silver at the same time. “Monster,” he hissed. “You’ll end the world with this. D—don’t let it take me. Pl—please!”
What did he expect? Had he listened to me when I was pleading for my life? Had he taken pity on me right before he drove his sword into my gut? He hadn’t. I had no understanding of what it was I was doing, but if this was a world-ending gift, then good. Fuck this city and fuck this world. My family was already doomed, and what did I care for anyone else? If Harron was telling the truth, then I’d be doing the rest of the people in the Third a favor.
The torches resting in the sconces blazed, roaring as their flames danced and leaped, casting an eerie orange glow up the walls. On the ground, the silver threads persisted in climbing up Harron’s legs, probing, ever moving upward, on a mission to find skin.
How I knew that, I couldn’t comprehend, but I did know that Madra would be hearing Harron’s music as soon as they achieved their goal.
“Please,” Harron whispered.
“No.” The word was as hard as granite. I looked down at the bastard’s sword protruding out of my chest, wishing I could pull it out. What a dark and beautiful irony it would be to end this fucker’s life with his own sword, but I’d be dead the second I withdrew the thing, and I wanted to hang around long enough to see…
I needed something else. One of the torches, perhaps. If I could muster the energy to shuffle across the hall and reach one, I could use it to set him alight, the way he planned on torching the Third. I’d made it three bracing, agonizing steps before I noticed the other sword to my left. I’d seen it when Harron had dragged me in here, though I hadn’t been able to make out what it was then. I’d thought it was some kind of lever. But this close, I could see that it was, in fact, a sword, buried halfway up to its hilt into the ground.
Gods only knew if I had the strength to free it, but I was going to try.
There were steps up to the raised platform where the ornate weapon had been buried. When I heaved myself up the first of these steps, groaning out loud in pain, Harron broke free from his hysteria. He got to his feet, his voice ringing out, loud and urgent.
“Saeris, no! Do not touch the sword. Do not…turn the key!” he panted. “Do not open the gate! You—you’ve no idea the hell you will unleash on this place!”
He thought I would care?
My vision flickered red, a lifetime of rage and injustice finally demanding retribution. Hell had already been unleashed upon this place centuries ago. What was a little more suffering?
The second step up toward the platform was slightly easier, but only because it was a step closer to death. A cold, numb feeling washed over me, dulling my senses and fogging my thoughts. I’d left a pool of blood on the floor behind me, along with a wide trail of it in my wake when I got up and limped up here, but now my heart was laboring, almost out of blood to pump.
I reached the top step of the platform, dizzy and exhausted. I immediately dropped to my knees and retched. I wanted to be sick so badly, but my body was shutting down. It couldn’t remember how, or else my stomach couldn’t contract properly with the blade of a sword slicing through it, so I spat out globs of congealed blood onto the smooth ground instead.
The sword was old. I felt its age on the air somehow—a prickle of energy that spoke of hidden, ancient places.
“Do not touch that sword!” Harron repeated. He panicked, rushing toward me, about to hit the steps. He’d given up swatting at the filaments of silver spreading out over his chest, slowly rising up toward his throat.
If he made it to the top of the steps, I was done for. Ignoring the pain and my darkening vision, I sank back onto my heels and turned my back to the blade, resting my wrists against the ancient weapon’s edge. I expected it to be dull—I somehow knew that it hadn’t been touched by another living creature in centuries—but I hissed in surprise when I lifted upward, and the thing cut through the ties at my wrists like a hot knife through butter.
“Saeris, no!”
Harron almost had me. I twisted, releasing an ungodly scream as his sword tipped forward and slid free from my stomach, clattering to the ground. I felt it then: the loosening at the very center of me, as if something fundamental had come undone. There was no putting me back together now. ‘Let’s be done with it, then,’ a small voice whispered in the back of my quietening mind. I grabbed the old sword by the hilt, a bolt of energy firing up both arms as I drew it from the stone and turned it on Harron.
I wheezed out eight words, knowing they’d be my last, and relishing their absurdity. “This is the part where…you scream…Captain.” Then, with all the strength I could muster, I swung.
The sword sliced into Harron’s shoulder, cutting through his oiled leather breastplate as if it weren’t there, leaving a vivid red line of blood behind. Harron’s bark of pain echoed off the vaulted ceiling. The wound wouldn’t kill him, but I’d certainly hurt him. He came at me, pressing a hand to his chest to stem the flow of blood. I expected him to grab me, but instead, he lunged for the blade, his eyes wide with panic.
“Put it back! You’ve got to put it back!”
But it was too late. A song once sung couldn’t be unsung. The sword was free, and I knew there was no putting it back into…
Into…
I was sinking.
What I had thought was solid stone beneath my feet was anything but. Harron’s blade had melted into a pool of liquid metal, but the ground at my feet…the pool at my feet…was more silver than I had ever seen, hissing and spitting like an angry cat. A moment ago, it had been solid. Now, it was softening by the second, the roiling mass already reaching my ankles.
I couldn’t pull my boots free. The surface of the silver pool gleamed in the dim light of the hall, emitting its own eerie glow. With my feet trapped, Harron could have ended me right there, but the silver threads that had once been his dagger were now climbing up his throat, reaching the collar of his breastplate.
His skin turned as white as ash. “Gods,” he breathed. “It’s so…” But he didn’t finish. His eyes rolled back, and he began to shake.
The silver pool around me was rising quickly. Or was it just getting deeper? I couldn’t tell. My thoughts were scattered, none of them making sense. This had to be the blood loss. I’d die soon enough, and then it would all be over.
Hayden. Hayden would be… The queen would forget.
They would all be safe…
My eyelids grew heavy. Ten feet away, at the base of the steps, Harron cursed, thrashing against an invisible enemy. I would leave him to his private war. It was time for me to sleep. I—
The liquid metal erupted beneath me, spilling over the edges of what was now clearly a circular pool. Freed from its grasp, with nothing left to hold me up, I toppled sideways onto the stone steps, a jolt snapping through me, though I thankfully felt no pain.
My vision was fading at last. Blackness crept in, rolling before my eyes like a midnight fog. Only it wasn’t fog. It was something else. It was…
Death.
The bastard had come to claim me in person.
Emerging from the silver, a towering figure rose up from the pool as if ascending from the very depths of hell. Broad shoulders. Wet, shoulder-length black hair. Tall. Taller than any man I’d ever seen. His eyes shone with an iridescent green, the right pupil rimmed with the same metallic silver that ran in ribbons across the black leather armor covering his chest and arms.
He loomed over me, his lips pulled back into a snarl, revealing gleaming white teeth and sharp canines. In his hand, he held a monstrous sword forged from black metal that vibrated with a tempestuous energy, resonating deep within my bones. He raised the sword, ready to cleave me in two, but then his sharp eyes caught sight of the ancient sword I was holding, and he froze, arm poised in mid-air.
“Graceless gods,” he hissed. “What’s this? A fucking joke?”
“Die!” Harron bellowed. “I will not! Take your lies and your serpent tongue. Choke on it! Die!”
Death snapped his head toward Harron, momentarily forgetting he’d come to end my suffering. His damp hair hung around his face, though the silver he had emerged from didn’t coat his hair, clothes, or skin as it did Harron. The metallic fluid rolled off his boots and defied nature as it pooled back together, flowing up the steps and pouring back into the pool.
I didn’t have the strength to lift my head and watch as Death descended the steps toward Harron. My vision was flickering now, but my ears still worked.
“Obsidian. Ob—obsidian!” exclaimed Harron. “Broken. Everywhere, everywhere, everywhere. Down in the ground. In the passageways. In the walls. They move. In the ground. I can’t…it won’t die! It has to!” he screamed.
“Unfortunate.” I had known Death’s voice to be a howling hot wind across the parched desert. A wet, hacking cough in the night. The urgent cry of a starving baby. I had never for one moment imagined his voice might also be the stroke of velvet in the ever-encroaching darkness. “Where’s Madra?” he demanded.
Harron didn’t respond. A scurrying, scratching was the only sound that reached me where I lay on the steps.
“I can’t pull it out of you,” Death said wearily. “Your fate’s sealed, Captain. You deserve far fucking worse.”
“The ground. The passages. They m—they move. In the ground.
Obsidian. Ob…obsid…obsidian…”
A scuffling. A scraping. A low, hard thud. Harron let out a panicked screech, but his cry was quickly shut off.
When Death climbed the steps again, his boots were the only part of him that I could see in my narrowing field of vision. My heart wanted to pound when he crouched down beside me, coming into view, but it could only manage a weak squeeze of fear.
Of course Death was beautiful. How else would anyone choose to go with him without putting up a fight? Even though he scowled at me, his dark brows tugging together to form a dark, unhappy line, he was still the most savagely beautiful thing I’d ever seen.
“Pathetic,” he murmured. “Absolutely…” He couldn’t seem to find the words. Shaking his head, he reached into the front of his chest plate, fishing around for something. A moment later, he withdrew his hand, a long silver chain hooked around his index finger. He unfastened it.
“If you die before you can give this back, I’m not going to be happy,” he groused. The chain was warm against my skin as he looped it around my neck. Ever since I’d fallen against the steps, my body had been blissfully numb, but the reprieve proved temporary as the stranger in black lifted me roughly into his arms.
The pain shattered me this time, until there was nothing left.
My silent scream died on my lips as Death carried me into the pool. The darkness took me before the silver could.
