Isadora

by Charlotte McConaghy

  Ambrose was hacking and slicing with his strange arm blades, annihilating those around him, but there was still so many more of the enemy crowding towards him. Ava flew low on Migliori, firing arrows at the warders, none of which found their marks, but she was pulling the warders’ focus to her, giving the soldiers on the ground some relief from the bolts of heavy magic.

  I searched for Finn, who was on her knees, eyes rolled back in her head, conjuring whatever wards she needed to. They hadn’t started working yet and I didn’t know if she had the strength for it – not while maintaining the veil too.

  We couldn’t keep this up.

  That was when the gate behind me slid an inch or two and someone shouted, ‘Courtesy of the Sparrow!’

  I ordered foot soldiers to open it wide. ‘Fall back!’ I screamed to the troops. ‘Behind the wall!’

  My fighters flooded back through the gates – I intended to turn the tables and lock the enemy out. But the warders intensified their attack, seeing that intent. Kicking my horse forward, I thundered through the oncoming sea of sprinting soldiers, striking down any who weren’t mine.

  Ambrose felled a man and glanced up at me as I rode by. ‘Get everyone behind the wall!’ I ordered him and he nodded, ordering his flank to fall back.

  But the berserkers weren’t going anywhere except forwards into this incredibly uneven fight.

  ‘Thorne!’ I shouted. ‘Get your men into the city!’

  He was blood-soaked and mad-eyed as he ignored me, wading forwards through bodies to where a warder was squeezing the life out of several of Isadora’s soldiers at once. I witnessed the slaughterman storm the warder, lift him like a ragdoll and shake him until his neck snapped. He threw the corpse away like a piece of rubbish. And he laughed.

  ‘Thorne!’

  He heard me at last, peering around until he spotted me.

  ‘We’ve taken the wall. Get your men behind it.’

  ‘No walls for us, lad,’ he called, grinning fiendishly. ‘Not till this is done.’

  I shook my head – he was going to get his men killed. Before I could argue, something caught my eye.

  A warder sent a torrent of wind through the air and slammed it straight into a woman on a pegasis. Ava had been flying overheard, firing arrows into the fray below, but as the wind caught her she was catapulted off Migliori. My lungs caught. It was too high. She couldn’t survive a fall like that. I kicked my horse forwards but there were too many people between us and I’d never make it –

  Something flashed fluidly through the air, mane and tail and wings streaming behind like the end of a shooting star. It moved so fast that it dipped through the air in time to catch Ava as she fell.

  I didn’t wait to see who was riding the unknown pegasis, but turned to the warder who’d sent that wind. Lutius.

  Find your fury. Find your outrage. This was where it lived, inside this man. Kicking my horse through the berserkers, I screamed his name. His head snapped up and he saw me across the distance. Though he was far, I could still make out the flash of his teeth that meant the bastard was smiling.

  I would enjoy this.

  An invisible fist smashed me off my horse and into the ground. My right side scraped hard, skin raw. I was up and running at him, dodging another blow from his mind and spinning around a third. As I reached him he battered me with pain, dropping me to my knees.

  Lutius laughed. ‘I’ve wanted to do this for years, you spoilt, cowardly brat.’

  I rose to my feet despite the pressure slamming my body. ‘You should have been the hardest to fool,’ I told him, ‘but you were the easiest, Lutius. Because you see the worst in everyone, and you hate them for it.’

  He sent weight crushing into me and I hit the ground again, cracking ribs and my elbow, twisting both my ankles. Pain made everything tremble, but I got back to my feet. I could see King Thorne approaching to help. ‘Stay back!’ I ordered him, and something in my voice made him stop. His eyes were red as the blood that drenched him, but as he looked between Lutius and me, he nodded once.

  I swallowed, straightening my shoulders even though it hurt. To Lutius I said, ‘Keep going. Throw all you can at me. You can use that corrupt magic of yours to batter my body to pieces, but you cannot get inside my mind or my soul, and you will never stop me from getting back up.’

  Something flickered through his faded gaze. Something disconcerted, something surprised. He’d only ever known Feckless. He started again, smashing me with wind and earth. I hit the ground again and again, battered in the maelstrom, but each time he paused I climbed slowly to my feet and went for him again – I would never stop.

  And as this became slowly, steadily clear to him, I felt a shift in his attacks. I felt them weaken, felt them lose their aim and focus.

  I smiled. He had begun to fear me.

  Barely able to lift my sword, I walked forwards, one step at a time, until I stood directly before him. He lifted his hands and I felt nothing but a breeze against my face. ‘For betraying your country and handing it to dangerous, mad criminals, your life is forfeit, Lutius.’

  ‘And who is going to take it for you, Feckless?’ he snapped. ‘You’ve spent a lifetime letting everyone around you pay the price for your inabilities, for your inactivity, for your complete lack of responsibility. You’re a child in a man’s body, a frightened little boy who never had the courage to grow up. So who will bear this burden for you?’

  ‘No one,’ I promised. ‘I bear my own burdens now.’ And then I cut off his head with one huge swing of my sword.

  ‘Now!’ Finn screamed abruptly.

  I twisted towards her: she looked like a goddess come from the sky, her skin blue, eyes white, the air around her throbbing with the sheer force of her magic. Every warder tried to attack her, but they were suddenly powerless; she had filled them with fear just as she had once filled me with joy. Thorne gave a wild howl and roared for his berserkers to finish the job. They set to cutting down every one of the impotent warders and I knew the battle was over.

  But Lutius was the first creature I had ever killed. And no matter how deserved or how necessary, the feel of this death left a mark on my heart I knew I would never entirely heal from. I understood, for the first time, the kind of weight Isadora must carry with her every day, and as I realised this I knew something else: I couldn’t let her be the one to kill the Mad Ones. That was my responsibility.

  So even though my body was bruised and battered, some of it broken, I hauled myself back onto my horse and I rode as fast as I had ever ridden back to my city.

  Ava

  My first thought when I opened my eyes was that I had died.

  Because I was lying across the spine of a flying pegasis that was not Migliori, and I was in the arms of a person with long, black hair, golden eyes and dimples when he smiled.

  ‘Sorry I’m late, petal,’ Avery said. ‘I had a long way to come.’

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Isadora

  The Mad Ones stole emotion. They fed off it. But Penn created it.

  As his peculiar brand of power reached out and took hold of their souls, Dren and Galia were filled with terror. They fought it, sent waves of their own magic at their son, but he was stronger than even I’d imagined and with sheer force of will he stopped them from gaining control of his mind.

  Dren was clutching one of my knives and staggering for his son. I cracked him hard over the back of the skull and he dropped, unconscious. So Penn only had to deal with his mother. Galia was utterly distraught, sinking to her knees under the tumult of fear.

  ‘Penn,’ she wept, ‘all I ever cared about was you. Your safety. We came back for you. My boy.’ She was really sobbing now, the words tearing from her with a raw kind of honesty I hadn’t expected. ‘I love you,’ she gasped desperately, ‘only you, just you, my son, my boy. Penn. I’m so sorry. We’ll leave. Go far from here and never come back. I won’t … I need to protect you. It’s all that’s ever mattered.’

  As Penn s
tared at his mother writhing in fear, I saw tears fill his eyes and make steady tracks down his cheeks. ‘I can feel your love,’ he told her in a whisper. ‘And I’m the sorrier for it. The sorrier for it. The sorrier for it.’

  Pity twisted my heart for the wretchedness of it.

  ‘I always loved it when you did that,’ Galia whispered. ‘And the counting. Do you still count, my love? My favourite sound in the world.’

  Penn closed his eyes.

  I noticed, too late, that Dren was no longer unconscious. He flicked a wrist and smashed Penn over the head with a blunt fist of magic.

  Penn hit the ground woozily, but before I could get to his side Galia gave a terrible scream of rage. ‘How dare you?’

  She rose and snatched the heart of her husband, wrenching it out through his chest.

  ‘Ma!’ Penn cried, shocked.

  Her enraged gaze found her son. ‘No one harms you.’

  Penn closed his eyes and regained control of her. The second he coated her in fear, her face twisted out of its fury and into something pathetic. Moaning, she sank to her knees and begged: ‘Please.’

  I was already moving to her. Knowing Galia was too powerful to contain for long and she had already proved that she couldn’t be imprisoned, but I didn’t want Penn to do this. He shouldn’t have to. So I snaked my arm around Galia’s neck, placing my dagger at her throat.

  ‘Don’t!’ Penn shouted. ‘Izzy, I have her!’

  I shook my head. They will hate you for being ruthless, but they will be alive because of it.

  ‘Give me my power back, Penn,’ Galia was shouting. ‘Please – she’ll kill me!’

  Penn was trembling with fatigue, his skin pale as death. He sank gracefully onto one knee. ‘I have her. I have her. I have her,’ he chanted under his breath, draining her further and further.

  I swallowed. Do it. I had to do it. This sweet boy could not be allowed to kill his mother and I had throbbing Marks on my arm.

  ‘Hold on, hold on, hold on,’ he begged me, and then the woman in my arms was begging too, and it was a nightmare, it was all the ugliness inside me begging as well, begging me not to do this. What would I be afterwards? It’s just one more, I told myself, screamed it within my heart. One out of so many. How could it possibly make a difference?

  Only it would. It had already. I could feel it, this swelling tide.

  She is the reason you are even capable of killing her! She had done this to me, made me like this, she and all her kind. It was her warder magic that bound my cage and taught me to kill.

  They are not the bars of your cage.

  The words found me and slipped inside, and suddenly I knew. He was right. Dren and Galia weren’t the bars of my cage, nor were warders of any kind. I was the bars of my cage; I made them with blades and blood and I strengthened them every time I took a life.

  ‘Let her go, Isadora,’ a voice said, and I wrenched Galia around to see Falco. He was bruised and bloody and moved with pain, but he was here.

  ‘She has to die,’ I breathed. Didn’t they understand? Didn’t anyone? ‘She’s too dangerous, Falco.’

  He said again, ‘Let her go. I’m going to do it this time.’ He came closer, holding my frantic gaze and I could hardly breathe, could hardly see, except I could hear his voice and the calm of it soothed something violent in my chest. ‘I’m going to do it, my love. You don’t have to. You’re free.’

  And I was. I was abruptly, finally free of the cage. I didn’t have to do anything.

  My arms dropped and my daggers hit the cobblestones. Everything crumbled around me and my eyes lifted to the sky, the endless open sky, not a roof or a cage but an opening that stretched on and on forever. I took a deep, endless breath of air, the first air my lungs had ever breathed, and my soul reached up and out as it never had before.

  On either side of my spine unfurled a set of magnificent wings, the tawny wings of sparrows, stretching out and out and out.

  ‘Hold on hold on hold on hold –’ Penn was whispering over and over and then he wasn’t. His voice cut off.

  When I looked down it wasn’t to see Falco’s sword in her heart. It was to see that he’d been too late. She was already dead, skin rotten and shrivelled, utterly drained of power by her son, a gentle boy filled with numbers and empathy. A boy now lying on the ground without a soul of his own.

  So I stopped caring about pain or the need to tether myself to my body. I stopped caring about lucidity, or control.

  I would fly, and let the rest fall away.

  My wings lifted me into the air, taking me higher. High enough to meet the endless sky, free at last.

  Penn

  The world is made of numbers. I see every one of them. I feel every one. Some numbers fit inside others, some form patterns, some are breakable and others aren’t. Numbers are infinite and I count them because they make sense of the noise of people’s feelings. The hum. A sort of buzzing, one that gets inside me and makes it hard to breathe. Their hearts flutter or their minds whirl and they give off the hum and it saturates me. They forget how much they feel, but I don’t.

  I can count anything.

  The six soldiers who found me on my way to the city wall and took me to the dungeons instead. The minutes in this prison cell, waiting for the world to die. The forty-three minutes that I am late. The six bars over the window, the one slim moon in the sky. The thirteen screams from beyond the window. The deaths I will be responsible for because I couldn’t get to where I said I would be.

  And then. One Viper at the cage, setting me free.

  ‘I’ve shed my skin. Would that you could, too, Penn. It might see you through this nightmare.’

  But I don’t need another skin. I just need more time.

  I’m forty-three minutes and four seconds late as I sprint from the prison cell in the bowels of the world. And during those forty-three minutes my friends could have been killed a hundred times over. If they have been, it will be my fault, my burden to bear. Because it will have been my two parents who struck the killing blows.

  Even within the maelstrom there are plenty of things to count, even as I use the humming buzzing noise to do what I have never done: to make someone frightened.

  The steps it took to get here, to this broken street: 913.

  The number of breaths Jonah has taken since I arrived: 0.

  The number of times I have felt my mother’s hatred: 100. Multiplied by her fear: 1,000. And again by her greed: 1,000,000.

  The number of times I have felt her love: 1, just now.

  In my body there are two eyes, ten fingers, ten toes and two lungs. There is one mind, one soul, and one heart.

  But it is one heart filled with numbers, each number with a name of their own, a heart of their own. These are the only things I can’t count: the good people in this world. They are countless.

  Count the seconds now. Count the moments that pass as she grows wearier, as she grows older. She is heavy with the weight of greed, the burden of magic. She gave in to that burden long ago, let it crush her into something small, small, too small for a soul to fit inside. So I’ll count the seconds until she is free, until I can use the strangeness of fear to release what hides within her. And I’ll count the seconds until I go, too. I’ll count until I can’t count anymore, can’t count all of my favourite things, like Finn’s stories or Jonah’s jokes or Isadora’s words. I’ll just keep counting, and the numbers will fill me up and quiet the buzzing, and they’ll be gentle and sweet and they’ll fill my one single heart to bursting.

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Finn

  I sat on the steps of the palace, watching as their bodies were gathered up and carried away. I’d come here to this city to get them both out safely, and now they lay before me, dead. My body felt almost as dead as theirs. My heart felt worse.

  I couldn’t follow them into the void because I was doing everything in my power to keep it closed, to keep the sea of dead from pushing through and flooding us all. I was so
weary, and not strong enough to close it properly.

  Not from this side.

  Someone sat beside me and I recognised his smell. Falco put his arms around me and kissed my temple, holding me close. He didn’t say anything, and for that I was grateful. Together we watched Ambrose and his brother lift first Penn and then Jonah into their arms, the boys looking so tiny in those big, cradling hands. The Pirenti kings looked up at us, waiting for Falco’s nod before turning to carry them away.

  A sound came from nearby, a hideous wail. I didn’t realise until Falco pulled me tight against his body that the sound had come from me, from inside me. I ruptured into violent sobs and fell against him. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t bear it. Rested my head in his lap and stared up at the blue sky. ‘Shh,’ he whispered, stroking my face and hair.

  But there was a tug that wouldn’t stop tugging, a scratch and scrape and pull pull pull. ‘They have to go back,’ I whispered. ‘They’re already going. Find Thorne. Find him now. He must say goodbye to his father. I’ll try to hold it.’

  ‘Finn –’

  ‘Hurry.’

  I lay on the warm steps for what felt a long while. I could hear voices and footsteps all around, but I stayed still, watching the clouds and holding the veil closed with every ounce of strength I could muster.

  I thought of my brothers and ached.

  When it occurred to me I sat up dizzily and made my way into the grounds, to somewhere I might watch without being seen. The grass was itchy under my skin but I had no strength to stand. With my back against the wall, I waited. And I realised I should stop thinking about my brothers and start thinking about my husband.

  Osric was wrong when he said we needed control over the magic to stop it from corrupting us. It wasn’t about having or losing control. It was about making peace with the magic. Only then could we have not its corruption or its obedience, but harmony with it and with ourselves. Shame I’d realised this so late. I’d always been a bit slow on the uptake. But if I could somehow make Os understand the truth, he might make a difference to the warders of our future. And that, I knew, would make some of this worthwhile.