It trembled as it rose out of her palm, floating there for several long heartbeats. None of us moved, none of us spoke.
What is this? I asked Alastor.
I . . . do not know, Alastor said, sounding almost stunned. The elf’s wrath transforms the plant, clearly.
The seedling dropped to the floor.
Where it sat, unmoving.
Flora shook herself, her skin rippling over her form as it softened. The glow faded from her eyes, as did the hard look. As she came back to herself, she seemed almost bewildered. “What’s happening? Did it work wonderfully?”
I stared at her. “Was something supposed to happen just now?”
The ghoul let out a screeching laugh, cutting Flora off before she could explain.
“Elf, your kind never fails to disappoint,” Sinstar sneered. “I’ll make myself a flute with your bones. At least then you’ll be useful.”
“You won’t get close enough to try,” Nell bit out. “Test me, I dare you—”
The trembling began like a creeping nightmare. The silverware and broken goblets jolted at our feet, then danced across the stones. The metal frame of the dome moaned, its joints creaking. The whole house seemed to shift on its foundation, stones popping out of place as it was rocked by a growing roll of thunder.
For one horrible second, I was sure we were all about to be swallowed by the Void.
Except magic suddenly whipped into a tornado of sparkling light around Flora, all but swallowing her.
“Flora!” I called. “What are you doing?”
“I told . . . you . . .” she called out, that echoing tone edging back into her words, “this realm could use . . . more . . . green!”
Her small seedling shot up, rapidly growing as it absorbed the magic. Soon it was the size of a school bus and nothing—and no one—could do anything to stop it. An offshoot curled around the table, crushing the solid metal in its grip like it was only paper. Other vines grew out of it, snaking through the stones, the doors, the walls, strangling anything in their path.
Nell shoved herself up off the floor, grabbing the bundle that was Eleanor holding Nightlock. Toad’s tail snared the three of them and deposited them onto his back.
A piece of the ceiling fell and shattered at my feet.
That was all Toad needed to see. He swept a paw out to hook Flora by her cloak, tossing her onto his back behind the others. The other, smaller changelings clung to whatever part of him they could seize.
“Prosper!” Nell shouted. “Come on!”
The stonework was crumbling, and as each floor above us caved in, more and more furniture and instruments and portraits and weapons rained down.
Sinstar screamed in rage, running toward me through the falling glass and stones.
Toad’s leg was covered in dust; I couldn’t get a good grip on his fur as his wings began to beat and he lifted off the ground. More of the monstrous vines rose from the earth, braiding in and out of each other, destroying everything they touched. Toad was clear of the dome, but my fingers were sliding, I couldn’t hang on—
Nell turned around, trying to climb down over the changeling’s back. Her hand stretched toward me, “Come on! Just a little more!”
“No! You’re mine, thinskin!” The ghoul jumped from the table to the remains of the dome. His claws hooked around my foot, yanking down.
No! Hold on, Prosperity!
The weight of the ghoul was too much. I kicked, but couldn’t shake him—Toad’s fur slid through my fingers, and the last thing I heard before I fell was Nell’s terrified scream.
My world became darkness, dust, and a loud, insistent voice ringing inside of my aching skull.
—ity!
No. I wanted to sleep. I just needed to . . . to rest. . . . My body felt like one big bruise. Inside, it felt as if I’d been hollowed out.
Prosperity!
Not yet . . .
Awaken! Prosperity, awaken now!
Awaken . . . Awaken the singing bone . . . A familiar voice wove through that thought, and bit by bit, the words began to change. To sharpen. I awaken thee, singing bone—no, not singing bone. But close . . .
MAGGOT! I WILL NOT PERISH HERE CRUSHED LIKE A WORM AND NEITHER SHALL YOU! WAKE! UP!
My eyes snapped open. Two things quickly became very clear:
1. I was somehow still alive despite falling back into a collapsing house.
2. There was a massive wall of stone hovering an inch above my face.
“Holy . . .” I croaked out, “crap.”
A flickering net of magic was the only thing keeping thousands of pounds of stone from turning me into a bloody splatter. I was too scared to even blink, on the chance it could upset the careful balance of things around me.
Can’t . . . hold . . . much . . . longer . . . Alastor warned. GET. UP.
Pain sang through me from the top of my head down to a toe that might actually have been broken, but I scrambled out from under the magic. I crab-walked back until I bumped up against the remains of the dining table, cutting my hand on a stray piece of glass.
Alastor let out a heavy sigh of relief as the magic dissipated and the stones thundered down.
“Thanks . . .” I breathed out.
Alastor’s voice was faint. I saved . . . myself . . . do not . . . insult me with your . . . sentimentality.
I looked around. The plant house had shredded Grimhold down to its foundations; we’d fallen into one of its lower levels, but there was only vapor-filled dark sky over my head. The vines covered nearly every surface of its remains.
A few feet away, rubble shifted. I jumped as stones scattered across the fractured ground, rolling to a stop just short of my feet. Alastor sniffed once, then again.
“Jeez, who’s the emotional one now?” I asked him.
Alastor’s presence trilled in me like an alarm. That was not me.
I turned slowly, only to be met with the sight of a howler pulling himself free from the wreckage. The shaggy dog shook the dust out of his coat, his eyes blazing red as he bared his teeth.
I pushed myself off the ground, heart jumping into my throat.
Up! Alastor urged. Climb!
As Grimhold collapsed, it had buckled inward, creating what looked like a staircase for giants. There was nowhere to go but up.
I scrambled onto the broken table, then gripped one of the nearby vines and used it to haul myself up onto the next flat section of stone above me. With adrenaline surging, it was easier to ignore the throbbing pain all over my body.
On your right!
I gripped the vine again and kicked my feet off the stones, swinging left. The second howler wailed as it caught only the edge of the debris. Its claws scored the stone, fighting desperately to hang on.
Breath slammed in and out of me as the dog gave one last whimper before its paws slid down and it fell through the vapor, into the pit below.
The other one nears, Alastor warned.
Even if I couldn’t see the demon dog, I heard its heaving pants. Its smell, like rotting pumpkins, came next. I fought to find my footing against the house’s broken foundation, climbing the vine one hand over the other.
It was the craziest thing, because that whole time, even with the howler bounding from one section of stone to the next, all I could think about was that rope hanging from Peregrine S. Redding Academy’s gym ceiling. The one I’d never been able to climb, even with Coach Tyler screaming at me from below, telling me to engage my biceps.
I sank into the task, walking my feet up the side of the stones.
Finally, my fingers found a ledge—the place where the house had once connected to the maze of steps from the street below, I realized. My legs shook with the last quivering effort it took to half crawl, half push myself onto the flat surface of the landing.
A cold hand clamped over the back of my neck, wrenching me up off the ground.
No!
“I knew that the queen’s roach of a brother wouldn’t let you die,”
the bounty hunter sneered, “like I knew the realms would not be cruel enough to deny our queen the chance to kill you herself.”
Blue blood oozed from a jagged cut down the side of his terrifying face. Up close, his splotchy skin resembled a slowly rotting corpse.
“Listen, Sirsang—” I began.
“It’s Sinstar!” the ghoul hissed.
“Okay, Simsaw,” I said. Panic had drained every useful thought out of my head but the one I needed most of all. That one rose coolly from the depths of my memory, where I’d stashed it years before, back when Grandmother forced Prue and me to take self-defense lessons after someone had tried to kidnap us on the way home from school.
I stopped scratching at his hand and instead reached around, jabbing my thumbs into his eyes.
The ghoul screamed in pain, dropping me to clutch at his face.
Well done, Maggot, Alastor said.
I shoved myself up and ran for the stairs, jumping down them two and three at a time. Sinstar’s steps pounded behind me, picking up speed. The remaining howler let out a sharp bark from somewhere behind us, but the stairs were so uneven, and I was moving so quickly down and down and down to the street, I didn’t look back.
I should have.
The ground began to tremble once more. Loose debris clattered across the stairs, and the sky boomed with a phantom thunderstorm. The realm sounded like it was about to erupt from within . . . or something mammoth was creeping up to consume it.
The Void.
I’d been scared before when Sinstar had grabbed me, but it was nothing compared to the terror that pumped through me now.
Rats fled up the mountain in a thrashing river of crimson. As the quaking intensified, chunks of the towers’ remains smashed down, crushing half of the rats in one bloody go.
Can’t die, I thought desperately, won’t die, can’t die, won’t die—my mind fixated on the words with each step, until I couldn’t even hear Alastor’s frantic cries ringing in my skull. I risked a glance back, unsurprised to find Sinstar closing in, too focused on catching me to take in the wave of pure darkness sweeping in behind him as it devoured Grimhold and the towers we’d already passed.
It’s not stopping, I thought, trying to pump my legs faster. But there was nowhere to go.
I threw one last look over my shoulder as the Void rolled over Sinstar, devouring him with a satisfied growl.
Air swirled around me in a sudden hard gust. Something snapped in place around me, and my feet left the ground.
Dead—I was dead—
“Prosper! Prosper!”
My gaze shot upward at the sound of my name.
Toad had grabbed me between his two enormous front paws. Nell leaned around the side of his neck, shadowed by the dark sky.
“Are you okay?” she called down. “Hold on!”
Toad flew in a wide, smooth arc around the curve of the mountain. A castlelike fortress came into sight, magic fires roaring inside the imposing lanterns hooked along its jagged gates. Rows of skulls clattered and bobbled from where they balanced on the pikes above them.
It was as if the Void saw the magic burning at the same moment I did. As quickly as the stormy force had arrived, it abated. The quakes eased off, but not before one last tremor sent a bolt of power up through the street, fracturing it.
The Void had spilled forward like ink, consuming everything but the back half of the Crown. The fortress sat on the end of a long offshoot of the mountain. There was a deep ravine between the street and where the structure was situated, making it impossible to cross the distance on foot.
A few stones at the edge of the street marked where the old walkway must have stood. With the prison’s facade carved to resemble a screaming human skull, I could almost picture how the bridge must have passed through the circular gate that served as the mouth, swallowing inmates forever.
Skullcrush Prison. It was the realm’s final hope, and it stared down the Void with all the reckless courage that came with being the last of its kind. Enormous glass containers of magic burned bright like gemstones in the sockets of the facade’s skull, its presence the fiends’ only defense against the encroaching darkness.
But the Void was satisfied—for now.
Toad flew low, setting me down in the shadow of a former tower before landing himself.
“Prosper!” Nell said again, sliding down the changeling’s side. “Are you okay? I saw you fall, I was so sure you were dead—”
“I’m okay,” I told her. For now. When the shock of everything that just happened a second ago wore off, I might be on the ground curled into a little ball and weeping, but for now, I was alive and in one piece and the prison was right there. Prue was right there. And we had our blue-slobbering ticket in.
I went to help Flora down. The elf clutched a small bundle of feathers to her chest, the whole of her focus on the wounded changeling. At the same time, Nell wrapped her arms around Toad’s massive head. The CatBat obliged her, purring loudly as it nuzzled her with its face.
“I was so worried about you!” Nell said, her voice tight. “You’re not—you’re not allowed to leave. You hear me? You can’t leave me.”
The last changeling on Toad’s back was Eleanor, still struggling with a squirming Nightlock in her arms. I held up my hands and called to her, “Roll over the edge. I’ll catch you.”
Three weeks ago, I probably would have crawled under a table to hide if you told me that I’d be talking to a spider that was almost as tall as me, and urging it to swan dive into my arms.
I absorbed Eleanor and the hob’s weight with a grunt, landing on my backside. The spider’s pincers gave a little twitter of gratitude as Nightlock snarled, “I demand to be released! I shall scream until an ogre guard comes—”
Eleanor jammed the tip of one of her hairy legs in his mouth, silencing him.
“Can you hang on to him for a few more minutes?” I asked her. The tarantula gave a full-body bob, which I took to be the arachnid equivalent of a nod.
The other changelings had flocked to Flora’s side, circling around where she held Ribbit in her arms, softly stroking her feathered chest. Big, fat tears hung at the corner of her eyes, ready to fall.
“You’ll be all right, fearless friend,” she whispered. “I know you will be. I will be very brave for you, if you will be very brave for me.”
“Nell,” I called, gesturing to the changeling in the elf’s arms. Toad let out a soft, inquiring meow as Nell came to stand beside Flora. When she reached out to lift Flora’s green hands away, the elf spun around, curling over Ribbit protectively.
“I’m not going to hurt her, not even a little,” Nell said. She slid her backpack off her shoulders and set it down in the dust and rubble to search through it.
“Aha, here we go. There is some left,” Nell said, shaking a small red vial.
“What is that?” Flora asked at the same time I did.
It smells like roses. Poison, clearly.
“It’s a healing ointment,” Nell explained. “My mother—my other mom made it, so it’s the very best. There’s no one like her when it comes to the healing arts.”
I shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot. The parrot in Flora’s hands was soaked in blood. Was an ointment really going to be enough to save it?
No. Death creeps ever closer. I can smell the cooling of its blood.
I didn’t want to know what that meant.
“Not just the ointment,” Nell corrected herself, pushing her glasses back up her nose. “I’ve got a spell to work with it. If that’s okay, Ribbit?”
The bird changeling turned its head toward her weakly, then looked up at Flora with its glossy back eye.
“It’s okay,” Flora whispered with a small hiccup. She held the creature away from her body, where Nell could examine it.
Nell unscrewed the cap on the vial and used the dropper to pull out a line of crimson liquid. I was surprised to see her hand shake as she released one, two, three drops over the worst of the ch
angeling’s wounds.
“By the power that is my own, mend this wounded skin and bone. By the power of the moon, grant this needed healing boon.”
I took the vial of ointment from her and returned it to the safety of her backpack. Ribbit didn’t move.
“Is she . . . ?” I began, my heart giving a hard thump in my chest.
Flora screwed her eyes shut and shook her head. “No. No. She would have returned to her natural form. She won’t be able to hold her chosen one for much longer, though, I can feel it.”
A pity.
It took me a moment to realize that there hadn’t been an ounce of sarcasm in Al’s comment. You going soft on us?
I felt him shift inside me, shivering at the thought. I can respect valor and fighting prowess. It is indeed a tragedy to lose a bonny fighter, regardless of the species.
Nell rubbed at her forehead, muttering to herself as she scanned Toil and Trouble, reading and rereading the spell, but I couldn’t take my eyes off Ribbit, or the blood that coated Flora’s skin.
Two words circled inside my head, clawing at me: my fault.
This was my fault.
I’d been the one to take charge, I was the one who had promised we could save the changelings. And I’d failed Ribbit, just like I’d failed Prue.
If I had power—real power—I would have been able to prevent this. Maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing to long for it, magical or otherwise. I could save the people and creatures I cared about. I wouldn’t have to stand around and feel as useless as I did now.
“By the power that is my own, mend this wounded skin and bone,” Nell repeated, moving her hands over the bird. Over and over, she tried the spell, her voice strained with fear. “By the power of the moon, grant this needed healing boon.”
I suppose this is the one thing I shall never understand—the desire to save one another, even at the expense of your own power. But the witchling lacks the moon, Al observed. She has already wasted too much magic.
I shook my head, fists clenching at my side. Don’t underestimate Nell.
The Last Life of Prince Alastor Page 17