He was not afraid.
His courage bolstered hers, whispering of what she could do. Of what they could do, together.
Four. Five. Six.
Sandis ran for the edge of the roof and leapt.
She jumped with human legs strengthened by Ireth’s spirit, and for a moment, she flew on wings of fire.
The beam overhead thinned.
Kolosos was a vision in a wreath of light. She focused on its mouth. Put her arms up, hands pointed, as though diving into a canal.
The heavenly power extinguished. Kolosos’s cry tapered to an end.
Its black, cracked lips began to close.
Before they did, Sandis dived between them.
Ten. Eleven. Twelve.
None of it hurt. None of it could touch her.
She was fully, wholly immortal.
And she had promised.
Her light illuminated the darkness around her. She couldn’t detect a tongue, but Kolosos shook, trying to dislodge her.
She dodged for the dark depth before her, heat building in her shoulders and elbows. Ireth pushed against her naked skin.
Flinging her hands forward, she opened the demon’s throat with a column of flame.
Fifteen. Sixteen. Seventeen.
She leapt, fell. Red surrounded her. Red flesh, red rock, red lava. Sandis swam, attacking Kolosos from the inside out with her fiery limbs, holding her breath deep inside her, unsure whether the amarinth would let her take air from her surroundings. Keeping her pinky hooked around the amarinth’s loop while it spun.
The closer she got to the monster’s heart, the more damage she would do.
Twenty. Twenty-one. Twenty-two.
Even if she didn’t have time to escape.
The red world engulfing her shook, belched, tremored. Fire illuminating her way, she swam deeper through the hollows of Kolosos, cutting through walls and barriers, rending flesh. She reached obsidian bone and embraced it, burning her fire, hot, hotter, until the stone began to crumble.
Thirty. Thirty-one. Thirty-two.
Sandis broke through into another cavity. For a moment she lost her way. Ireth’s fire burned in one direction, so she swam the opposite way, clawing through the darkness, kicking her legs with energy that didn’t wane.
Ahead, something glowed.
It wasn’t the glow of lava or fire, but something soft and gentle, like a dying white ember.
Sandis dug toward it and paused. A tendril of precious air escaped her.
Anon.
He was a shadow, curled around an amarinth already spent, its center glowing with the lives it had stolen.
He was frail, thin, skin too pale and too dark at the same time. His eyes were closed as if in peaceful sleep. The roots of his hair glimmered silver in the firelight pouring from her.
She didn’t dare try to speak. She didn’t think he’d hear her. He dwelled in a place outside her own. Or did they both?
Forty-three. Forty-four. Forty-five.
Her eyes dropped to the spent amarinth. Rone’s amarinth.
Drifting toward her brother, Sandis grasped his hand and linked his index finger through the stilled loop of her own amarinth. She took his from his limp hands.
Fitting her glowing fingers between the still loops, she grabbed the center of Anon’s amarinth, flared Ireth’s fire, and pulled.
Her attempts to wrench the core from its golden cradle sounded like steel crushing steel. Like grinding cogs. Like a distant, terrified scream.
Fifty-three. Fifty-four. Fifty-five.
Sandis blazed white, shouted, and tugged with all her might.
The core came free.
She palmed it, released the Angelic’s amarinth, and ignited.
Fire swallowed her in a storm of pain and fury. Ripping, wrenching, searing her from skin to bone as the power of a god consumed her mortality whole.
Chapter 30
The glass shattered from beneath Rone without a sound. It merely was, and then wasn’t.
Wind whisked about him from all directions, flipping him forward and sideways. His clothes flapped uselessly around him, whipping still-healing burns.
Then his mind snapped into place.
The sky was no longer below him, but around him. White clouds like those of deep winter. The ruined city stretched below. A city that proved hard to see, thanks to all the flipping and spinning. He was falling without descending, marooned in a strange torrent of space.
So he focused on the Innerchord below him and thought down.
Then, since he was a moron, he actually did fall.
He sped past sulfuric clouds, wheezing as their smoke assaulted his lungs. They parted and exposed the face of Kolosos peering up at him. The demon gaped in agony, and its crimson insides filled Rone’s vision as its blackening body ripped in half. He fell through the split, as though he were the cleaver rendering the numen in two.
Ash whipped up through the air like polluted snow as the demon’s body disintegrated, but at its heart burned a ball of fire. Rone recognized that flame even as he hurtled toward it. Recognized it before it winked out and took the form of a naked woman blotched red with burns.
Her name in his throat, Rone streamlined his body and dived for her, reaching to grasp her. His speed increased, but not enough. Not enough!
Debris and ruined cobblestones rushed at him. He squinted against the wind and the sulfur, stretching, reaching—
He grabbed Sandis’s wrist. Pulled her into him as he struck the still-crumbling wall of Kolosos, riding it down like a slide. He dug his heels into the cooling rock, shooting up streams of cinders as he did so. A few feet from the ground, the last bit of Kolosos puffed into ash.
He wiped the soot from his vision. In the distance he heard the murmurings of a thousand voices. Felt the pressure of thousands of eyes. But he didn’t hear it, see it. There was only her.
“Sandis?” He laid her gently among the cinders coating the ground. Ash snowflaked around them. Taking her face in his hands, he pleaded, “Sandis?”
Her shoulders were blistered, her skin reddened as though she’d been left out in the sun at the height of summer. But her chest moved. Her chest moved, and under the soft skin of her neck, Rone felt a pulse. A vibrant, panicked pulse.
Then she gasped, air rushing into her all at once. Rone grabbed her shoulders and pulled her to him, helping her sit up. She coughed violently against his chest. Her hair smelled of sulfur.
“Thank God,” he whispered, holding her tightly to him, burying his face into her locks. “Sandis, thank God.”
“Rone?” she croaked, fingers curling around the folds of his shirt. She shuddered against him.
He pulled back just enough to see her face. To press his forehead to hers. “I’m here. I’m here. Black ashes and hellfire, Sandis. I’m here.” He kissed her cheekbone, her jaw, her lips before lifting his head and taking in the destruction surrounding them. Somehow they’d done it. They’d . . . They’d won.
It was while he tried to digest this idea that he realized he was looking at the destruction through a translucent shield. He blinked, noticing he was looking at a sea people. Thousands of them.
Grabbing Sandis by her elbows, Rone stood and brought her with him, then swiftly removed his jacket and draped it over her bare shoulders.
“It’s them,” he whispered.
Sandis clung to his arms. He put one around her, helping her stand. “Who?”
Rone swallowed. “The Noscons.”
She shouldn’t have been awake.
Once, only once, Sandis had managed to hold on to consciousness after a half summoning. Only for a moment, seconds . . . she wasn’t sure. She’d nearly drowned.
So she shouldn’t be conscious now. Her body was battered. Her burnt skin felt too tight for her body. Nausea assailed her stomach, and a familiar headache pummeled her skull.
But she was awake. Whether from the amarinth, the timing, or a sheer blessing from Ireth, she was—
The No
scons.
She turned to face them, clutching Rone with one hand, holding his jacket closed over her chest with the other. So many of them. Rows upon rows of them encircled her. They were translucent, as though formed of blown glass. Their bodies had little definition outside the markings of their limbs, but their shoulders were defined, as were their faces and hair. Their skin had a bluish hue. Through them she saw the ruined capital. Fires burning. Bodies lying still. Soldiers and civilians creeping from behind teetering buildings.
She leaned hard into Rone. Her legs trembled, and the contact hurt her singed flesh, but he was here. He was here, alive. And she was alive. And—
She opened her right hand. Dust like crushed diamonds fell from her palm.
“Anon.” His name snapped in her mouth. “Anon. Where is Anon?”
She spun, peering through the fallen bodies. She nearly tumbled to her knees, but Rone held her steady.
“Sandis,” he said, his voice strained, “if Kolosos is—”
“No.” She shook her head. “No, he’s here. Anon—”
“Sandis.”
She looked to her left, over Rone’s shoulder. Her name had a light accent attached to it. When she saw no flesh-and-blood people nearby, her eyes alighted on a spirit standing near her, who parted the heavy circle with a wave of his hand. He was an older man, perhaps in his fifties, with a broad forehead and wide nose. Despite his ethereal appearance, his eyes were wise and soulful. Round and deep set. There was something profoundly familiar about them.
“He is here.” The man gestured to the gap he’d left in the circle. Sandis stumbled toward it, Rone beside her.
She didn’t see him at first. The ash had grown heavier and stuck to everything like dust. She brushed it from her hair. Rone sneezed. But as she moved toward the center of the circle, she saw flashes of gold amid the rubble. The plate. Then her eyes caught a glimpse of flesh buried in the ash. She ran to it, stumbling on shaky legs. Her arms were heavy, her fingers slow to bend, but she dropped to her knees in the debris and dug. Rone appeared beside her, moving the rubble far more efficiently than she did.
Hair tickled her fingertips. She grabbed it and lifted her brother’s head through the ash.
“Anon!” she cried, eyes too dry for tears. She pulled his neck free before Rone grabbed him under the arms and hauled his frail body from the cinders. He was so delicate, like a boy crafted from paper.
Sandis’s muscles shook, exhausted, as she helped shift Anon to sturdier ground. The second his head touched down, she lowered her face to his.
The softest feather of breath touched her cheek.
She nearly fainted with the relief. “He’s alive,” she gasped. “Thank the Celestial, he’s—”
Shivers coursed across her shoulders.
“Black ashes,” Rone murmured, his voice light with awe. His eyes had caught on the gold coils looped through Anon’s fingers.
Swallowing against her parched throat, Sandis reached forward and gently pried the amarinth from her brother’s grasp. She then took Rone’s calloused hand in hers and pressed the precious item against his palm.
He met her gaze, eyes wide, hair mussed and peppered with ash. Closing Rone’s fingers over the amarinth, Sandis whispered, “Your father wanted me to tell you he loves you.”
He snapped back. “What? How—”
“I destroyed your amarinth.” Her raspy voice was a sliver above a whisper. “I destroyed it, Rone. This one is your father’s. He—and the Celestial—saved us.”
Deep lines carved Rone’s forehead as he studied her face. “I don’t—”
But then his eyes widened, and his grip tightened on the amarinth and Sandis’s fingers. He mouthed, My father, and released her, holding the amarinth in his open palm. It looked different from his, Sandis thought. Brighter. Resplendent. Rone must have noticed, too. He must have understood. A drop of rain struck one of the gold loops . . . but no, that had come from Rone.
Sandis placed a hand against his cheek. He didn’t seem to feel it at first. He hunched, unmoving, over the amarinth several moments before pushing his face against her touch. Before closing his fist around the amarinth so tightly it had to hurt.
Movement behind him drew her gaze over his shoulder, back to the spectral being with the achingly familiar eyes. He floated nearby, apart from the crowd, watching her. Through him she saw soldiers climbing toward the battleground.
Though the need for rest pulled at her joints, Sandis managed to stand, keeping her eyes on his. Studying his face.
She noticed an absence within her body at the same time a strange, warm recognition slid into her mind.
“Ireth?” She took a hesitant step forward.
The man—spirit?—smiled. “Sandis.”
A dry sob escaped her. She rushed toward him, tripping once. Climbed over an unrecognizable chunk of something. Reached for him.
Her hand passed through his arm.
“My body died long ago.” His accent was unlike any she’d heard before. Rounded and smooth. “But I am myself again. We all are.”
Gooseflesh rose on Sandis’s arms and legs. She looked at the thousands of spirits around her. Even the approaching soldiers gawked at them, unsure. “We are free.” Ireth closed his eyes and smiled. It was, perhaps, the most peaceful expression Sandis had ever beheld. “We are home.”
Rubble crunched nearby as Rone approached. The amarinth was no longer in his grip. His eyes flashed to Ireth.
There were so many unspoken words among them. Sandis didn’t know where to start.
“I imagined you younger,” Rone said. Sadness limned his voice. Sandis reached for his hand. Squeezed it.
Ireth smiled again. “Eat well, Rone. And thank you, for your assistance.”
His tone ignited panic in Sandis. “You won’t stay?”
The spirit shook his head. “My dear Sandis.” He reached for her, but his hand passed through her shoulder. “I have waited so long for you. For someone who would understand. I am forever in your debt, as are our people. We owe many things to you, and to those who fought here. To Hepingya.”
The name rang in Sandis’s ears. Hepingya. The Celestial.
Sorrow and understanding mixed with the other emotions and sensations warring within her. Relief. Fatigue. Hope. Anon.
She glanced back at her brother and waited for his chest to rise before returning her attention to Ireth.
“Thank you,” she whispered. “For your help. For everything.”
“But where will you go now?” Rone asked, searching the faces around them.
“To the world beyond.” Ireth turned toward his people, who nodded. Some smiled; some clasped their hands together; others looked confused. “We’ve been kept awake, trapped, for a very long time. I want nothing more than to rest.” He smiled.
“So it does exist. A beyond.” Sandis clutched her hands to her chest.
Ireth smiled warmly at her. “Some things are not meant to be understood, dear one. Not yet.” His gaze lifted to Rone. “Take care of this land.”
Rone wiped falling ash from his face. “Not much left to take care of.”
Ireth closed his eyes and tipped his head backward. A soldier passed through the wall of spirits nearby and surveyed the damage. He stared at Sandis and Rone a long moment before waving the rest of his retinue forward.
“Hmmm,” Ireth hummed. “Yes, it is still there.”
“What is?” Sandis asked.
Ireth pointed up. “The ethereal plane. It is changed, vacant, but it is there. Your words will carry you there, Sandis, if you want to leave. It will take you where men’s roads cannot.”
“Leave?” Rone croaked.
He nodded. “The words to summon will open the door, and the words to dismiss will bring you back. Merely replace my name with yours. I believe”—he spoke to Sandis—“that if you hold on to him tightly enough, he will come with you.”
Sandis’s heart fluttered. She leaned hard on Rone.
Rone, holding
Sandis close, said, “If Anon is alive . . . I thought there was only one way to kill a numen.”
Ireth considered. Held out his hand. Flakes of ash passed through it. “I do not comprehend even half of Kaj’s sorcery. If you are right, then he is there.” He tipped his head toward the sky, as though peering into the invisible plane beyond it. “He will be trapped as before, if this did not kill him, but he will be harmless. Of this, I am sure.”
Sandis swallowed, unsure.
To Rone, Ireth added, “Take care of her. I delay too long.”
Finally, tears found their way to Sandis’s eyes. “Thank you, Ireth. I’ll never forget you.”
Ireth pressed his hands together and bowed slightly. “And I you. I will see you in the beyond. But take your time meeting me, dear one.”
He straightened and turned toward his people.
Then, in a flash of warm light not so dissimilar from that of summoning, he vanished.
And the other Noscons, blinking like stars, followed him.
Chapter 31
Anon Gwenwig was only sixteen. Sandis had told Rone as much. But the boy had the hair of a man near the end of his life. The tips of his short hair were nearly black, but the rest of the shafts were gray, save right at the root where they bleached white. The toll of so many frequent summonings by a monster too strong for the boy’s body.
Anon was too thin to look natural. Rone hadn’t seen his eyes yet—the boy had already slept longer than the usual twelve to eighteen hours a vessel took to recover from a summoning. Twenty-five hours now. Rone knew, for all the survivors—himself included—had held their breath as midnight approached. But Kolosos hadn’t come. The monster was truly gone, and Sandis had destroyed the amarinth that had powered his rampage.
Rone fingered the new amarinth in his pocket as his gaze drifted to Sandis, who lay asleep on the narrow cot beside her brother. She held him in her bandaged arms, cradling him like a mother would her son. Good. She needed the rest.
Rubbing sleep from his eyes, Rone pulled the amarinth from his pocket. If he tilted it just right, rainbows danced across the diamond-like center.
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