M
ax peered over the edge of the bridge and clutched the metal rail as if he might topple into the murky
water at any moment. I watched the white overtake his knuckles, cloudy skin betraying his lack of composure. I wondered if I had a similarly obvious tell. I tried to bury my fear so deep inside of me that no echoes would reach the surface, but it still felt like it screamed from my every pore. Sweat pooled at the base of my neck, down my back,
between my breasts. I tried to blame the stiff fabric of the Order of Midnight jacket that I wore — brutal in combination with the swampy heat — and not my own anxiety.
I drew my eyes up, over the rows and rows of shoulders lined up in neat streaks of color. Most were gold, denoting members of the Crown Guard, who were not wielders at all. Then there were a few columns of blue, flashes of moon insignias across their backs. And green, marked with bronze suns. As I peered over my shoulder, I noticed a few sets of eyes flicking towards us, necks craning ever so slightly. Looking at Max, no doubt. Everyone, it seemed, was surprised to see him.
The city of Tairn loomed over us, dark and silent, backlit by the rising sun. It was nestled at the apex of three rivers, built up on a rocky hill. As a result, it was notoriously
inaccessible — three bridges led to the main city, which itself was all centered around one circular building topped with a single silver spire: the Savoi estate, and the central hall of Tairn.
I squinted up at it. That building, apparently, held Pathyr Savoi, the man we were here to coax out of hiding. The son of the man whose blood had soaked through my shoes.
Sammerin stood beside me, following my gaze. He, too, it turned out, had been asked (or commanded) to join the march, as a member of the Orders and a former member of the Military — though unlike me, he didn’t get a personal visit to ask him to do so, which still perplexed me.
We watched another dove fly over the wall, parchment clutched in its feet.
“Fifteen,” Sammerin remarked.
The fifteenth dove. Fifteenth letter. Fifteenth attempt at negotiation. We had been here for hours. Max had spent nearly all of that time leaning over the railing, looking into the water.
I did not ask him if he was alright — he was awful at hiding his emotions, and it was clear that he wasn’t. Instead, I crafted a little butterfly from the swampy lake below and drew it up to hover in front of our faces.
“How is it wrong?” I asked.
He hardly looked at me. “What?” “What is wrong with it?”
Slowly, he turned. Then looked to my butterfly. “So?” I prodded.
“Too heavy,” he grunted, at last. With each word, his voice got a little clearer. “And you got sloppy with the movement. It’s lurching like a—”
But then, there was a crash. We whirled around. I let my butterfly fall back into smelly water.
All faces snapped to attention as we watched Nura step back as the black-clad figures smashed their spears into the bottom of the gates. An orange glow crawled up the planks
of wood, seeping into minuscule cracks, tearing them apart.
Max straightened, exchanging one those looks of silent communication with Sammerin. He somehow managed to look even paler.
My heartbeat quickened, but I strangled my nervousness, forcing it down my throat.
“Those soldiers without eyes… They are Wielders?” I croaked, searching for distraction.
“The Syrizen? Yes. Solarie, sort of.” His voice sounded far away. Then, he asked quietly, “Do you remember everything I showed you last night?”
I nodded. Later that evening, he had called me from my magic practice out into the garden, holding two daggers and handing me one of them. “If you’re going to agree to do something stupid,” he had said, “then you need to know how to protect yourself.” We spent the rest of the night going over various defensive maneuvers — mostly movements meant to keep me alive if I ever found myself in a tricky situation and magic failed me.
Now, I watched the vestiges of those gates come down and prayed I would not have to use them. Still, I mentally rehearsed the movements. Just in case.
“I suppose this didn’t scare him out of his tantrum after all,” Max muttered. Sammerin shook his head, silent.
I closed my eyes, thought of Serel, and reminded myself why I was here.
And then we began to move.
The cold metal of the bridge was replaced with slippery cobblestones beneath my feet. The sun beating down on my face gave way to damp shadows, courtesy of the tall townhomes that crowded narrow, winding streets.
I peered back at the bridge over my shoulder, soon blocked from view by the soldiers behind me. I noted in a distant, matter-of-fact thought that we were now trapped on this island.
Max nudged my shoulder, as if he too shared my realization. “Stay alert,” he whispered, voice taut with caution, beads of nervous sweat dotting his nose. “And stay right here.”
The streets of Tairn were so narrow and twisted, tight turns bathed in the shadows of the surrounding buildings. Max, Sammerin and I were packed nearly shoulder-to-shoulder. We were near the front of the group, only just behind Nura and the Syrizen, but even then, the city itself seemed to bear down on us.
To make it worse, every step brought us into a thicker and thicker fog, so dense every breath felt as if I was inhaling liquid. The bodies in front of us became little more than silhouettes. Ahead, Nura would lift her arms to push the swampy mist away like a swimmer parting water, only to have more arise steps later.
The hairs on my arms and the back of my neck stood, cold nausea turning in my stomach.
Something wasn’t right.
“Something isn’t right,” Max murmured.
The city was completely silent. Shop booths stood empty
— some even had fruit in them, flies buzzing around softened berries and oranges. I looked at the darkened windows, obscured through the fog, and my brow furrowed.
The silence extended beyond my ears, seeping into my mind. An unnatural stillness for a city of this size. A dangerous stillness.
I leaned towards Max. “Look at the blank windows.” “I noticed.”
“I hear no one.” I pressed a finger to my temple, shaking my head. “Nothing.”
Then I raised my eyes to that central tower, perched at the top of the hill, silver spire poised to pierce the hazy circle of the sun obscured through fog. And when I looked at it, my mind erupted into a wordless mass of light and activity and iron fear.
I saw the back of Nura’s head pause, turn, as if she too were noticing what I did.
“They’re all there,” I started to say—
But then, where there had been nothing, there was suddenly something. The fog shifted, moved, changed, thickened and thinned at once, sculpting.
And I could see them, feel them — people everywhere, surrounding us, figures unfurling from the mist.
Nura let out a wordless shout of warning. She raised her hands and shadows roiled around her, around us, shielding us beneath a cover of darkness. The last thing I saw before darkness overtook my vision was the Syrizen’s spears lighting up with warm, orange light, their bodies leaping into the air and flickering into nothing. Simply disappearing.
A deafening crash. Blue sparks barely penetrated Nura’s blanket of shadows. I felt the cobblestones under my boots shift.
Smoke filled my lungs. My eyes groped frantically in the darkness, finding nothing but black.
But then something beyond sight — deeper than sight — sensed a presence beside us, sensed a blade lifting and swinging toward Max—
I didn’t think before I grabbed his shoulders and pushed, sliding my body in front of his, grabbing onto the presence and twisting and pulling and snapping as hard as I could. A sharp pain sliced my hands, raised in front of my face—
Then I felt myself being yanked backwards, felt the ground shake, felt a sharp impact at the back of my head.
And then the darkness melted into something deeper.
 |
I OPENED my eyes and the first thing I saw was blood. Blood dribbling through cobblestones, covering piles of wet,
broken wood. Blood dripping into my eyes, covering my sideways vision, smearing against my cheek as it pressed to the ground.
My fingers touched something soft, and I almost jumped until I pulled it closer and realized it was a torn-up stuffed dog toy, stained crimson. My hand was soaked.
“That was stupid,” Max’s voice murmured. It was weak, nearly trembling. “Never do that again. I would have been fine.”
I tried to sit up. Pain screamed in my palms as I pressed them against the floor, and the world spun, but I forced myself to steady. Max caught my shoulders, stabilizing me. When I raised my head, he looked at me with an abject fear that would have caught me off guard had I not been so completely focused on not vomiting.
Nura’s shadows were gone, the harsh morning casting grotesque patches of gold over broken beams and crumpled stone. I was in what looked to be someone’s home — or had been, once. The building had collapsed into rubble, leaving eerie fragments of some poor family’s life scattered in stained sand. Max and Sammerin knelt in front of me. Sammerin rubbed blue dust between his fingers.
“Lightning Dust,” he said, brow furrowed.
I turned my head and strangled a cry. Two outstretched hands reached from beneath a massive beam. The rest of the body — or whatever could possibly remain of it — was buried beneath a pile of rubble, the river of blood trickling from beneath that mass of broken beams.
Max said something, but I didn’t hear him.
He tipped my chin with his finger, turning my face toward him, and said it again. “Are you hurt, Tisaanah?”
I shook my head, even though I wasn’t totally sure if that was an accurate answer. I looked down at my palms, which were slashed so deeply I caught white flashes of bone.
Without speaking, Sammerin took my hands in his. I bit back a yelp as my skin began to burn.
“He blew up his own city?” Max crouched at the ground, peering at the blue dust. “Ascended above. That’s fucking insane.”
“Perhaps he thinks it’s better than letting Sesri take it back,” Sammerin replied.
I watched, rapt, as the skin of my palms crawled like hundreds of tiny spiders, threads crossing the chasm of my wounds and bridging flesh to flesh. It hurt fiercely, and the gory image of it was… nauseating. But when Sammerin released my hands, the wounds were replaced with smooth skin.
Sammerin stood, pulling me to my feet. The rubble around us was intact enough to form a shadowy shelter, albeit one that looked like it might collapse at any moment. Outside, the soupy mist had returned, obscuring the wreckage to silhouettes. But I could hear the sounds of dull, blunt fighting, shouts and grunts and moaning, of calls for help. Still, always quieter than one expects to be. Just like the night the slavers came to my village.
Blew up his own city.
So that was why it was empty. But I couldn’t imagine what his final goal could possibly be — how this could possibly end well for his people.
I peered out of a gap in the rubble.
Ghostly figures melted into physical forms only to melt back into the fog as if they were nothing at all, striking our soldiers with lethal, silent strokes.
I felt ill. Max’s gaze flicked to mine and I could tell he did, too.
“They have a Valtain up there,” Max whispered. “Probably several. Good ones, to cast a spell like this over so many of their soldiers.”
“Everyone is in that tower,” I said, pointing. “We need to
—”
A crash shattered my sentence. A morass of shadow and fog, thrashing with a young soldier, smashed against our
pile of rubble. Max yanked me back away from the opening, and the three of us held our breaths in the darkness until the Tairnian soldier’s body was left twitching on the ground. And then Nura appeared, stepping out of the shadow, blood smeared over one cheek.
“You’re alive,” she breathed, panting. “Good. Can’t believe the bastard would— would…”
She let out a sharp, shuddering breath, then shook her head. “Get to the estate gates. He and whatever traitors are doing this are hiding in the hall. They’ll see how much they like to play with explosives when we bring down the building.”
My heart stopped. I hoped I misheard her. “You can’t,” I blurted out. “The whole city is—”
“It’s the Syrizen’s directive, not mine. And we don’t have time to fuck around.”
“Nura, even you can’t think—”
She cut Max off before he could finish. “I don’t have time for your judgement. Either we get in there and root out those rats or the Syrizen bring the whole damn thing down.” Silver strands escaped her braids, echoing the whites of her eyes. A flicker passed over the icy determination in her face. “I tried to tell them— You don’t know how many bodies I’ve yanked out of these buildings.” Her throat bobbed. “Get to the gates. That is an order.”
And then, she was gone, her white hair and skin and jacket melting into the fog like she was one of those cursed soldiers. I didn’t notice or watch her leave. All of my attention was drawn to that morass of heartbeats that I could feel pulsating in my mind, thousands of people piled on top of each other beneath that building.
I looked down at the ripped-up dog toy.
Terror hardened into something sharper, stronger, in my veins. When I looked at Max, his stare was already meeting mine, mirroring my determination.
“If we get in first—” I started, desperately, and he returned it with a sharp nod.
“The Syrizen only care about their goal. If they’ve made up their mind, it’s the only thing we can do. Besides.” He let out a puff of air through his teeth. “As good a way to die as any, I suppose.”
We both turned to Sammerin, who gave us a look of silent resignation. “We all know,” he said, “that I’m committed.” Then he poised himself at the gap in the rubble. “If we go, we go now. Ready?”
“Yes,” I lied, confidently.
Max’s answer was not nearly as reassuring. “Ready as I’ll be.”
And then, before there was another moment to think or doubt —
We were out and into the that mass of mist and blood and sweat, fighting our way to the tower. Fire leapt from Max’s hands, curling up his forearms, casting grotesque red light into the mist and illuminating garish silhouettes for only a split second before they lunged at us.
I grabbed at those shadow minds in frantic fistfuls, pulling tight on the invisible threads that connected us, twisting, snapping. Half the time they slipped away before I could grab them. Other times, they stumbled long enough for Max’s fire to catch their clothing or hair, crawl around them, yank them back into their fragile physical existence and send them careening to the ground.
But he never struck to kill. And once they were on the ground, out of our way, he pulled the flames back with him when we moved on.
Out of the corner of my eye, flashes of bright gold sparks alerted me to the Syrizen leaping into the air, flickering and disappearing mid-jump, then reappearing further into the sky — as if they were flying.
“Pay attention,” Max grunted, as fire lit up my face, knocking one of those misty figures away from me. “Blades
up, Tisaanah.”
I would have laughed if I could catch my breath. My little daggers felt ridiculous in a battle like this. What good would these little pieces of steel do, against illusion and smoke and flames?
We fought our way forward, Max surrounded by fire, Sammerin wielding blades like mine. Neither of them had either explicitly told me that they fought together in the war, but now, that was beyond a doubt. Their movements silently coordinated even without looking at each other, as if one constantly had their hand on the other’s pulse. I could only imagine what the two of them would be capable of if I weren’t dragging them back.
Even still, we flew, slipping between bodies and battles, engaging only where necessary. Nura’s words echoed in my head, and I was constantly aware of the flashes of the Syrizen’s movements. With every pounding heartbeat I could hear the ever-present pull of all those people, drawing me forward.
By the time we reached the tower’s solid, brass doors, there were so many soldiers hidden in the fog that we clashed every few steps. Our own men were far behind us. We moved slower as Max and Sammerin’s practiced grace gave way to something choppier and more desperate.
I tripped as Max shoved me aside, warmth spattering my cheek. Too late, I saw a figure tear from the air, sword raised. Max staggered, flinging a vicious stream of fire before I could react.
I didn’t see the body until hit the ground. Max grabbed his shoulder. “I’m fine,” he rasped. Blood seeped from between his fingers, but he only stared down at the listless body of my attacker.
He was not fine, but there was no time for Sammerin to do anything now. We were surrounded, our backs now pressed against the metal doors. My mind was as soupy as
my vision, catching only glimpses of the people we could not see, fire illuminating their broad strokes.
Overwhelmed, I blinked, squeezed my eyes shut to clear my mind—
And in that moment, I could see all of it: spots of light in the darkness. Like I was looking at an inverted version of the world with each soldier, each life, each ball of thought clearly illuminated. In front of me, the invisible soldiers. Behind me, the people huddled beneath the tower. The Syrizen. Everyone.
It was so vivid that I snapped my eyes open again, plunging back into my normal, dulled senses, gasping. Without thinking, I raised my arms in front of me. An invisible force sprung from my arms, pushing the soldiers back, buying us precious few seconds.
“Good.” Max’s voice was a gasping grunt. His right arm was soaked in blood. His left was still crawling with fire, creating a wall around us as he peered over his shoulder at the door.
I knew what he was thinking: we weren’t getting through. Not by physical force. I could feel the faint magic pulse of someone holding it from within. Iron was not the only thing keeping it closed.
The ground rumbled. The Syrizen had begun to compromise the base of the tower, readying it for collapse.
No, I thought. No, no, no.
I winced, squeezing my eyes shut, and as I did the world once again lit up like a map in the darkness. All those souls, so close and yet separated from us by so much.
So close, so close—
All at once, an idea hit me.
I whirled to Max. “Can you send fire in without looking?” I asked, straining to raise my voice over the chaos.
He looked at me like I was insane. “Too dangerous. I can’t go in blind.”
“I can see,” I said, pressing my finger to my temple. When he just stared at me, I said again, more urgently, “I can see. Let me in here.” I brought my hand to his forehead. “And I can tell you where to go. We can push them out.”
Max’s face went hard as stone. “No. Absolutely fucking not.”
At that moment, the ground rumbled again, this time accompanied by a bone-rattling cracking sound.
We were running out of time.
“We have no other ideas,” I pushed, desperately, and Max winced — as if the truth of the statement physically struck him.
But again, he shook his head. “I can’t,” he said, more quietly. “I can’t.”
But I heard what was really hiding in the razor’s edge of his voice, in the hard tension of his features. Before I gave myself time to think, I took his bloodied hand in mine, ignoring the startled jump of his fingers.
His fear was so intense that I felt it vibrating from his skin.
“Trust me,” I murmured. A plea, a request, a command
— I wasn’t sure which, or perhaps all three. Max looked like he didn’t know, either.
He paused, grimacing, fire still springing from his other hand. He looked at the battlefield, then me, then his eyes lifted to the Syrizen at the base of the building.
And then his gaze fell back to mine, and even before he opened his mouth, I knew the exact moment that he made his choice.
“Sammerin—” he started.
Sammerin nodded. Somehow, the man still managed to appear perpetually unshaken. “I can cover.”
He slipped his blades into his belt and lifted his hands. And what I saw next had me transfixed, horrified.
The dead bodies piled around us began to move. Not in a lifelike way, but in grotesque, skin-crawling lurches, their limbs dragging at awkward, sickening angles, heads lolling, clawing over each other to the base of the bridge that led to the tower. They were creating a wall of human flesh, slithering over each other into a twitching morass.
There are more useful ways to utilize someone with Sammerin’s mastery of flesh and bone, Max had told me. Gods, he had been right.
“Tisaanah,” Max barked, yanking my attention back. He opened his palms. A spiral of fire lengthened and broadened between them, creating a ball, then a tower, then something larger, more organic: a serpent, like the one he had produced out of mist that day in the water, but carved from searing flame.
It circled our bodies, so close to my skin that it could have scalded the hair of my arms. Still, it grew, until it was larger than either of us. The fire dyed the mist red, silhouettes through the fog looking like they were swimming through blood. Sammerin’s growing wall of human bodies were reduced to broken, crimson shadow puppets.
“You need to tell me where to go.” Max’s arms were trembling, as if controlling this serpent took every ounce of his strength. “I’ve opened the door for you. Don’t you dare poke around in there.”
His mind, he meant. I nodded as if I knew exactly what I was doing, even though that couldn’t be farther from the truth. And I allowed myself to drop my shield, squeezing my eyes shut.
The world lit up in a map of souls and flames. A pair of blue serpent’s eyes opened in the darkness. I stepped into them, surrounding myself with Max’s presence, slipping into a crevice of his mind that he had carved out for me.
I’m blind. I heard his voice echo. Be very careful. For both of us. And for everyone inside.
The muted terror on his exposed nerves twined with mine. I tried to send him shaky reassurance.
The civilians were beneath the tower, huddled in one giant mass beneath the earth. But a smaller group lingered near the top. This, I thought, had to be Pathyr Savoi and his commanders, who must have been overseeing the battle from the highest vantage point.
And if we cut them off… we’d be forcing their surrender.
Go, I whispered.
And the viper — Max — listened.
The wild path of flames raged through the winding halls, roaring past doors, around corners, scalding tapestries and paintings. And I inhaled it. Became it. Smoke filled my lungs. My stomach. My eyes.
I guided Max with seamless, wordless direction. His power was mine, and I could feel it thrash forward. I realized his muscles had been trembling not because he was pushing so hard, but because he was holding himself back. With every confident turn, every furious surge, it grew wilder.
Careful, he murmured in my ear. I could feel him tasting shadows of past memories, recoiling. Every heartbeat danced on a blade’s edge between intoxicated power and agonizing fear.
We’re fine.
Stop.
Not yet, I soothed. A little further.
Blood pounded in my ears. The lights grew closer, the smoke thicker. Door after door shuttered past my view.
Max’s tension grew tighter, like a bowstring pulling further and further back. Control threatened to slip away. But he waited, his tentative trust still cradled in my hands.
Not yet, I whispered. Doors. Smoke.
Now. Up!
The fire obeyed, the serpent roaring through every crevice of the floor, rising through the doors and windows and between stones.
And there they were: a handful of huddled, well dressed figures. They jumped, terrified, as the fire tore through the room, encircling them within a ring of flames.
A spell snapped in two. And then—
A ragged gasp. My face against stone. Eyes snapped open into darkness, weak and dark and dull. My own eyes. Back on the bridge, back in my body.
Black boots and golden sparks flew by my blurry vision.
Then a flash of white.
Strong hands lifted me to my feet as my blurry vision cleared, revealing Sammerin first, then Max, who was slowly getting up from the ground. My eyes then caught the open brass door, flickering in the firelight.
It was open.
Nura and the Syrizen were racing down the hall, though “flying” might be more accurate. The Syrizen’s graceful bodies leaped through the air, vanishing and reappearing further away each time, like stones skipping across a pond’s surface.
I felt the heat of the flames behind me. A quick glance over my shoulder showed the city ablaze, but I didn’t linger. I ran after them, plunging into the darkened passageways and climbing the tower steps.
I didn’t need to think. I didn’t need to breathe. I knew exactly where to go.
Pathyr Savoi and his companion waited at the very top of the tower, in a room encircled by windows. The first thing that struck me was Nura’s back, stark and white against the dimming room. Despite the bright sky outside, shadows gathered around her, as if she was summoning them. Before her stood a young man, his hands outstretched.
shielding a small cluster of people behind him — including two Valtain.
“Your Queen murdered an innocent man,” he snarled. “My father was no traitor. She is a tyrant.”
The darkness leeched from the corners, clouding the windows, misting the air, forming an inky cape around Nura’s shoulders. My breaths came quicker.
When I blinked, I could have sworn I saw Esmaris’s blood spattered face. Saw Vos’s body dangling from gallows.
“I have no concern for your father.” Nura’s voice moved like ink dissolving into water.
The shadows grew thicker. My heart beat faster, slipping from my control.
Distantly, I recognized that this was not natural. That the darkness that crawled from the shadows and writhed around us was no trick of the light. That the sudden panic surging in my veins was not entirely my own. That some terrible magic curling around Nura’s fingertips was drawing it all to the surface.
But it hit me too quickly for it to make any difference.
My knees struck the marble floor with the force of dead weight. The white stone was cold beneath my skin. White like Esmaris’s floor.
Crack!
Twenty-six.
I plunged into cold terror.
“It’s not real.” I hardly heard Max’s voice. “It’s not real, Tisaanah.”
I could feel Esmaris’s whip striking me, again and again, flesh opening across my back. I could feel his life cracking. Could feel Serel’s hands sliding away from mine.
“I don’t care if your father was innocent. You certainly aren’t.” Nura, a silhouette of white in darkness, raised her hands. The Savoi man was on his knees in front of her, clutching his head. “Your people are dead because of your
actions. Did you know that? Every last one. I hope you like how that blood looks on your hands.”
I flipped my palms up to see crimson.
Perhaps I screamed. Terror suffocated my senses.
Max’s hand slipped into mine. At his touch, I caught a brief, powerful flash of snake eyes and sheets of long black hair, echoes of a familiar face peering between them. And grief so sharp it split me in two.
Snap!
Deafening silence as the bodies hit the floor.
All at once, the darkness was gone. And so was that unnatural fear, leaving only sore exhaustion in its place. Blinding midday light slapped me across the face.
I lifted my head from the ground, watching the Syrizens’ spears bury themselves into Pathyr’s fragile flesh. They made quick work. The dozen people huddled in this room were executed within seconds.
The sound, I realized, was always the same.
Nura watched in silence, her arms crossed over her chest. When she finally turned, she only said, “Good work,” before striding past us. Beside me, Max let out a rough groan and a shaky breath.
I slumped against the wall, so exhausted I could hardly lift my body. Ghosts echoed in my vision as darkness slowly overtook me.
