by Jay Kristoff
Mercurio and Mia both looked to the ruins of Scaeva’s throne, where young Jonnen was still crouched among the wreckage. His eyes were wide with fear, little hand outstretched toward his sister. But the shadows rose up from the floor like razored teeth, barring the way between the girl and her brother.
“Let him go, Father,” Mia said. “This is yours and mine now.”
“He is my son.” Scaeva’s face was twisted, black on his teeth. “My legacy.”
“He’s a nine-year-old boy! Let him go, you fucking cunt!”
“Your mother called me that once.” Scaeva smiled faintly, frowned at the ceiling as if lost in memory. “I believe I took it as a compliment.”
Mia shook her head, looking around at the wreckage of the room. The shattered throne. The spreading flames. The bloodstains of brave senators and loyal soldiers and beloved brothers smeared upon the floor. The remains of Scaeva’s own bride crushed under glittering glass. Everything he’d wrought, everything he’d lied and stolen and killed for, and it had all come to this. Black blood boiling in his belly. Spilling from his eyes and bubbling on his lips. She looked on the man with a sort of awful pity.
“You thought you were building. And all this time, you were only digging.” She shook her head. “Now look what you’ve made of yourself. All for fear of me.”
“What I made of myself?”
Scaeva laughed, strings of black drool between his teeth. He opened his hand. And there in his palm sat a pawn, carved of polished ebony. Spattered with tar black and blood-red. The imperator’s hand was shaking, veins stretched like rusted chains under his skin. The black began spilling from his mouth again as he spoke, too much of the broken god inside him now to hold it all in.
“I warned you about joining a game you cannot hope to win. Do you see this, daughter? This is what you’ve made of us both. Mere pieces in a game of gods.”
“Take heart then, bastard. Because the game ends tonight.”
The shadowviper coiled around Scaeva’s neck bared its fangs.
“… Do you still not see what your precious Goddess has made you…?”
Mia didn’t even meet the snake’s stare.
“Whisper, if you speak one more word to me,” she warned it softly, “I promise things will go very badly for you.”
The serpent narrowed his not-eyes, hissing softly.
“… I do not fear you, little girl. You should never have come here. Least of all alone…”
Mia looked at him, then. Eyes glittering like polished jet.
“O, but Whisper,” she sighed. “I am not alone.”
Mia spread her arms, and the dark erupted. A many, a horde, a legion of daemons, bursting from the shadow at her bare feet, from within the black of her gown. They streamed past her on black wings, pounced forward on black paws. Dozens, hundreds, a roiling, furious multitude.
They wore the shapes of night-things: bats and cats and wolves and owls and mice and crows, all the shapes of all the darks the world had ever known. Drowning out the winds with their snarls and roars and cries. They gnashed their teeth and curled their claws and crashed into Scaeva like a flood, falling upon the serpent about his throat and ripping Whisper from his master’s shoulders.
The shadowviper hissed in fury, tumbled among the countless other shapes, biting and spitting and flailing. He was darker than the rest of them—dark enough for two—the taste of a murdered not-wolf still fresh on his not-tongue. But the many tore at him, relentless, the hunger burning inside them, pieces of him spattering black upon the floor as he cried out to his master.
“… Julius, help me…!”
“Release him!” the imperator roared.
Scaeva’s hand cut the air, the dark turned sharp as knives. But though he stabbed them, bled them, scattered them across the hall like the rising smoke, Mia’s daemons were simply too many. Tumbling and tearing at Whisper as his cries grew piteous, his form grew thin, trembling and fading. All of them feasting on him until not even a shadow remained.
All save one.
He sat on Mia’s shoulder, wearing the shape of a cat. Paper-flat and semitranslucent, black as death, his tail curled around her throat. His not-eyes were fixed upon Scaeva’s serpent as it perished, as if savoring his screams.
“… that…,” Mister Kindly whispered, “… is for eclipse…”
“You dare…,” came the trembling growl.
Scaeva turned on his daughter, fingers curled into claws, black fury bubbling over his lips as he roared at the top of his lungs.
“YOU DARE?”
Mia’s lips curled in an ice-cold smile.
“How does it feel to lose something you love, bastard?”
Lifting one pale hand, Mia pointed to the gravebone stiletto he wore at his waist. The dagger gifted to her years before by the shadowcat now riding her shoulder. The dagger that had saved her life. The dagger she’d buried into the heart of a doppelgänger and dared to dream all this might end another way. Its eyes were red amber, twinkling in the gloom. Its hilt was fashioned into the likeness of a crow with wings spread—the sigil of the familia this man had so utterly destroyed.
“That belongs to me,” she said.
“Nothing belongs to you,” Scaeva spat, black tears bleeding from his eyes. “Do you not yet understand? Everything you have, everything you are, you owe to me.”
“I owe you nothing, Father.”
Mia raised her longblade between them.
“Nothing except this.”
Scaeva’s shadow boiled. Black eyes fixed on his daughter. Black drool on his chin. The darkness deepening between them until nothing else remained. He glanced to the place Whisper had perished, lips peeling back from his teeth as the pure and perfect rage inside him spilled upward and outward, finally and forever taking hold.
“Come give it to me, then,” he whispered.
Mia vanished without a sound, reappearing a second later in the air above and descending with her sword raised high. The shadows warped, curling into grasping hands, slicing through the air. But instead of vanishing, stepping aside, Scaeva reached up with a roar and caught her by the throat. And with titanic strength, he spun with her momentum and slung her backward onto the floor.
A thunderclap sounded, the marble and gravebone splitting asunder as she struck the ground. Mercurio flinched away from the shards cutting the air, the boom ringing white inside his skull. In a heartbeat, a black shape flashed up from the ruins, a dark phoenix rising, striking Scaeva in the chest and driving him upward into the gables. The ceiling shattered like ice as they struck it, great shards of gravebone falling about them as they crashed back down to earth. Mia’s longblade skidded across the floor, coming to rest among the rubble.
Mercurio could see Mia’s body was shrouded in shadow now. Ink-black tendrils sprouted from her shoulders like wings, ribbons of razor-sharp darkness springing from her fingertips. The old bishop could barely recognize the daughter he loved as the power inside her finally and completely broke loose. Her hair was longer, flowing about her like serpents. Her skin seemed aflame. He saw a pale circle burning at her brow as if it had been inscribed into her skin. She seemed more shadow than flesh, growing in size, filling the hall. Scaeva loomed larger also, the pair of them colliding with another clap of thunder and flash of moonlight. Mirrored fragments of a murdered god, the two halves within him at war now with themselves and ripping all to ruins. The air was a storm of daemons, a choir of black screams, all the Abyss breaking loose.
The city about them shuddered, thunder crashing in the sky above, the wind like a hurricane. Mercurio had crawled away from the brawl, back to the edge of the room. He found Sidonius clutching his butchered belly among the wreckage, soaked in blood. The gladiatii was holding his intestines in with one hand, trying to drag an unconscious Bladesinger to some kind of safety. Mercurio saw Marielle crouched in the shadows nearby, pressed by the howling wind, lank hair plastered to her tortured skin.
It seemed the whole world was coming
to an end. All their stories along with it. And there, amidst all the chaos, all the sound, all the fury, a thin black shape appeared on the cracking floor beside him, tail twitching side to side.
“… you must lead them away from here, mercurio…”
“I’m not leaving her!”
“… you will always be with her. and she with you. but it is time to let her go, old man…”
“No! She doesn’t end like this, I won’t let her!”
“… you promised to remember her. not just the good parts. the ugly parts and the selfish parts and the real parts, too. all of her, mercurio. who can do that, if not you…?”
The old man looked at the not-cat as the black storm raged all about them. The love they both bore her as real and sharp as broken glass, cutting him to the bone. But he knew the shadow spoke true.
“… remember her…”
Ever since he began, he’d known how this story would end.
We all did, didn’t we?
“Marielle!” he bellowed, turning to the weaver.
The woman seemed almost comatose, lost to her grief, to the chaos around them. Leaning against the wall and staring at titans clashing and waiting for death.
“Marielle!” Mercurio roared again.
She blinked blood-red eyes. Looked at the old bishop.
“Can you walk?” he shouted.
The weaver flinched as Mia and Scaeva collided with the far wall, tearing a mighty fissure through the gravebone. The remains of the ceiling shuddered, more cracks spreading through the support pillars as Mia’s legion shrieked and howled about them. The island shook so violently, Mercurio was tossed onto his knees. Sidonius covered Bladesinger’s body with his own, prayers on his bloody lips.
“Can you fucking walk?” the old man bellowed again.
“Aye.” Marielle blinked the shadow of her brother from her eyes. “Walk I can.”
“Help Sidonius! We have to move!”
The weaver grit her teeth, crawled across the bucking floor. Reaching the wounded gladiatii, she held out one twisted hand, whispering beneath the roaring winds. Sidonius gasped, clutching his sundered gut. But before his wondering eyes, his innards crawled back up inside him, his wound sealing closed as if it had never been.
“’Byss and blood…,” he breathed.
“The weaver knows her work!” Mercurio yelled. “Now get the fuck up!”
Sidonius swayed to his feet, staggering as the shadow titans smashed into another wall. Mercurio’s eyes were narrowed against the sight, as if the dark they shed were somehow too bright to look at. Mia and Scaeva were almost entirely unrecognizable now, looming black figures with translucent wings and bodies rippling like shadowflame, crashing against each other like tidal waves amidst a storm of howling passengers. Only Mia’s long, writhing hair and that circle scribed at her brow served to tell the pair apart.
“Merciful Aa,” Sid breathed. “Look at her…”
“Where shall we go?” Marielle demanded. “Without Adonai—”
“We’ve got to get off these fucking islands!” Mercurio shouted. “A republic in ashes behind her, remember? A city of bridges and bones laid at the bottom of the sea by her hand! We all know what’s going to happen here!”
“What about Jonnen?” Sid yelled.
Mercurio looked to the boy, crouched and terrified near the wreckage of Scaeva’s throne. He was sealed behind bars of solid shadow, eyes wide, cheeks wet with tears as he watched his father and sister collide.
“… the boy must remain…”
Mercurio looked to Mister Kindly, sitting calmly on the broken ground and licking at one ink-black paw.
“… he also has a story to tell…”
The avatars crashed into another pillar, ripping it out by the root. The walls of the Rib split again, hurling them all to their knees. Mercurio gasped, breath ragged, his whole body shaking. Gravebone dust on his tongue, his shadow twisting beneath him. Mister Kindly appeared in front of him, not-eyes wide.
“… go…!” he shouted. “… head to the nethers now…!”
Sidonius grabbed Mercurio by his collar, hauled him to his feet. “Come on!”
Helping Marielle up, the big Itreyan slung Bladesinger over his shoulders and pushed the weaver out through a gaping new split in the wall. The city beyond was in flames. Storm howling. Earth shaking. Oceans swelling. All Four Daughters, arisen. Mercurio looked back into the room, watching the pieces of the Moon crash and burn. Looking for whatever remained of the girl he’d loved. And knowing what he had to do.
Sid roared over the tempest, “Mercurio, come on!”
The old man pressed his fingers to his lips, held them out to her.
“I’ll remember you,” he whispered.
He turned and ran.
CHAPTER 47
ALL
Dark flame burned inside Jonnen’s chest as he watched them crash against each other, shattering the world around them. Each of them part of a god unleashed, the moon made manifest beneath their Mother’s sky. They were giants now, the dark about them growing and flaring. Their wings brushed the edges of the broken hall, the dark flames burning at their crowns were tall enough to scorch the ceiling. But if he squinted hard enough, through the storm of black, the bodies wrought for them of living shadow, the boy fancied he could still see faint impressions of the people they’d once been.
His father. His world. The man he’d dreamed of being. The god he’d worshipped, now taken on the guise of a true divinity, corrupted and rotten through. Rage and hatred and misery, seeking only to hurt the way it had been hurt in kind. The boy could understand it. Because looking from his mother’s broken body to the thing his father had become, he knew what it was to hate the one who’d made you.
But his sister. His de’lai. A girl he’d never met until a few months ago, and yet had somehow always known. Brave in a way he’d never been. Dark and bloodstained and scarred to the bone. She had every reason in the world to be nothing but rage and hatred and misery. But he knew, as much as she tried to hide it, she hadn’t let life turn her cold. She loved with a heart as fierce as lions. Gave in a way that left her bleeding, but never broken. Because even with all she’d lost, all she’d sacrificed, all the hurt heaped upon her shoulders, she’d still come back.
She still came back for me.
He could feel it, burning out in that storm of rage and shadows. The love she felt for him. Too bright to smother, even beneath the power of a god.
But a fragment of that power burned inside him, too. He could feel it reaching toward the other pieces of itself, even now, longing to be made whole. A hunger filled him, scorched him, bottomless and ravenous. He wanted to join them, he realized. Be swept up in the totality, many made one, ascending to his rightful throne in the sky.
He tore at the shadows that hemmed him in, tried to bend them to his will. His father and sister ripped at each other, shaking the first Rib about them, all the darkness howling. Mia’s daemons tore through the air like a hurricane, smashing themselves against his father’s skin. Her claws cut great gouges through him, black spraying upon the walls. But the longer the battle wore on, the more they tore off each other, the more Jonnen realized they were equals. Each a dark opposite of the other. It was like watching someone fighting their own reflection—every inch claimed was also lost, every hurt inflicted was another gained.
They were so alike in so many ways, the two of them. O, Goddess, the things they could have done if he’d loved her like a father. But there was too much between them now—too much blood, too much hate, too much darkness. And so each railed against the other, tearing and cursing and gaining nothing at all. All about them, the dark whispered a prayer, a plea, ringing in the dark inside his heart.
The many were one.
THE MANY WERE ONE.
But Godsgrave was being torn to pieces.
The earthquakes were almost constant now, keeping Jonnen on his knees. Lightning split the skies above, waves crashed upon the jagged s
horelines, the red glow of an inferno was blazing in the streets beyond. All Four Daughters had woken at their brother’s fury, battering at his grave in the hopes of keeping him inside it. Jonnen was terrified in a way he’d never known, his whole body shaking, tugging at the bars about him and searching within for some fragment of the steel he saw in her. Turning his will onto the shadows and trying to make them his own, eyes narrowed in concentration.
“Bend, curse you,” he whispered.
And there in the darkness, he caught a flash of gold amidst the crushing gloom. Looking to the broken double doors, Jonnen’s heart stilled in his chest as he saw a pale figure on the threshold, dressed in a white gown, smudged with dirt and blood. Her hands clutched twin gravebone blades, her fingertips stained black. Her eyes were black, too, her face beautiful and pale, long blond braids moving across her shoulders as if they had minds of their own.
“Ashlinn?” he whispered.
Her dark eyes were turned up to the shadow titans, swirling and clashing across the shattered hall. Grip tightening on the hilts of her swords. But the storm of daemons swept over her, past her, through her, whispering with a hundred not-voices.
“… the boy…”
“… THE BOY…”
“… THE BOY…”
She turned to him then. Eyes darker than the place she’d dragged herself from, lips parted as she whispered his name.
“Jonnen.”
A horrifying blow from his sister drove his father down through the floor, into the twisted mekwerk and the cellars beyond. He tore upward like a black spear, wings streaming behind, the pair of them cleaving through the broken levels above with a deafening crash. The gravebone shattered, shrieking glass, splintering timbers, the noise so loud, Jonnen was forced to cover his ears as the entire top half of the first Rib began to shear away from the base. The mighty tower held a moment longer, inertia fighting a ponderous battle with gravity and finally losing. Thousands of tons of gravebone toppled and fell, crashing into the third Rib and ripping it free with an ungodly booooom.
“Jonnen!”
The boy blinked in the blinding dust, opening his eyes and looking into darkness, shot through with the light of a million stars. Ashlinn’s hands were pressed against the bars, trying in vain to bend them.