by May Peterson
She didn’t have to fill in the rest—for when she’d be stronger. For when she’d regained more of herself. Umber had been feeding her souls for ages, forcing a bond through time. And she would take no more.
Umber’s laughter was like the clatter of knives on stone. “My, you almost sound fond. The sentiment is wholly mutual, I assure you. Why, one observes that you are almost as hungry as I am. No shame in that, my dear, really. You needed willing hearts to let you live again. It was easy enough to satisfy your condition for them—see to it that they became desperate enough to have no choice left but you. Then I cleaned up the dust from your failures. Memories without that spark of desire don’t taste quite the same. But I do it all for you, sweetness.”
He flung a kiss languidly through the air. Kaiwan gestured sharply with her polearm, as if striking it from flight.
I cleared my throat, waited until Kaiwan’s eyes darted back to me. “Kaiwan. Just tell me this. How many times has this moment already happened?”
Hei had tried at least once before, but this story may have played out countless times, with no one to remember but her.
Hei’s attention shifted to me. For the edge of a second, Kaiwan didn’t answer, and I feared the worst. That we’d been trapped in this cycle for millennia, and may always be. Then, she said, “Never. Not this precise moment. But I have been here before, at times nearly the same. It has taken much work to prevent Umber from finding the most disastrous paths through history.”
What? As though Serenity’s legacy had been a dance, she and Umber making moves, his struggle to find another way as she erased his efforts. Because she could remember—
—and so could he. Fuck. Because she rarely rewound time entirely. And somewhere, there must be someone that remembered a piece of what had happened before each mending. Such as the host who’d rekindled Kaiwan’s heart last. And those subjects would be easy prey for Umber, to reacquaint himself with what Kaiwan had removed from his mind. My eyes widened, raw like wounds, as if they would widen forever and never stop, taking in all the endless horrors of what this meant.
How many versions of me had there been? How many lives, bent to this exact purpose?
“So kill him.” Hei fell spontaneously to one knee, the sword downturned in both hands. His face and tone pleaded, beseeching her like a liege. “End it. Take my light. I know I will not fail.”
Peals of glee echoed from Umber, who had taken to fanning his face as if the excitement were overwhelming him. “Dear boy. Such precious, limited creatures, don’t you find, my love?” He beckoned to Kaiwan with one hand as if he expected her to take it, join him in mockery. “As if she has never considered such brutality before. Poor child. How can it be, that even rewound life can so consistently mean such ignorance.” He tsked condescendingly. “Ask yourself why I yet exist, if it were that easy. She cannot merely kill me—she may only undo me, unbind the threads of my passage through time. But reflect—so many strong hearts have I gifted to her, without her knowledge. Precise must be the eye to mark the pattern that would require unweaving in order to pull me from the cloth. And I know for a fact that the witch hesitates to alter time in any way which may destabilize her own being. No, she will not rip me from the tapestry—she is far too cowardly for that. Else she would have done so an age ago.”
Kaiwan’s cold fury turned in its fullness on Umber. So that was how he’d sabotaged her—the same way he did for everyone else. Through lies. Secrets. Shadows. Her power didn’t render her omniscient, and she had to make each temporal revolution count. He was a parasite that was too dangerous to combat directly, lest he take too much of the host with him. Just as I could not have left behind the hope that I might be able to reclaim what he’d drunk from me. Every treasured memory, reduced to a drop of grave-scented wine.
I drew near Hei, helped him to his feet before snaking an arm around his shoulders. He was part of me. They could not have him. “So why did you let us come here? There was no resistance on the way to the seal, after Tamueji’s gambit, so I assume the point of the entire charade was to shepherd us here. Because Hei was your choice since he set foot here. The next candidate to test his soul for Kaiwan.”
At last, at the corner of my vision, Kaiwan wavered. Her face fell to the gem-lit stone at her feet.
Umber, on the other hand, glowed with pleasure. “I had hoped you might put it together earlier, if only to prove it would have changed nothing. No matter. I’m glad you don’t require it to be belabored. Your boy is flagrant, impetuous, foolhardy. In other words, the perfect choice. And if he fails, then she—” he gestured at Tamueji “—will simply have to try after all. I am loath to risk her, as the Watcher of Shadows is a valuable partner beyond measure. But I have waited long enough. No more years of dancing with the witch.”
I glanced at Tamueji as openly as I dared. She looked as if she may as well have been dead.
“And if she is not enough?” Umber spread his arms and wings, the coils of night stretching wide even at the moment of dawn. “I have a city full of souls to spend on my victory. I will be set back, vexing as that may be, I have prepared enough to become inexorable. Kaiwan cannot safely undo my work now. Even if the witch strikes this day from time, it will come again. I have laid too many seeds, too many minds full of the knowledge I need for my success. If I were to mysteriously vanish? The night-streets themselves will turn on her. And she will not have remaining power to prevent every hand that will bear forth her undoing. That her weakness must always return is my greatest weapon. Time favors not her, but me.”
No. Numbness thickened in my veins, weighed down the air I breathed. He couldn’t have planned it that perfectly. It couldn’t be that simple. All color escaped from my vision, as if fleeing in their own primordial terror.
Kaiwan cried out, as if thrown to her limit, and struck the polearm on the floor. Sparks leapt from the contact, briefly lighting her face. Pants of ancient anger fumed from her nostrils.
Check. And mate.
“You should have chosen me.” I heard my own voice before the intent to speak congealed in my mind. Hei turned his gaping, vulnerable eyes to me, and I kissed his head. “You should have just let me be the candidate.”
Umber poured a grin on me that was like poisoned molasses. “Oh, my precious, precious boy. This too you have failed to understand.” The crimson of his gaze was like an ague. “I tried with you already. It is easy enough, to fan a flame through constriction. Take one despairing heart, and rob it of hopes, one after another. Defeat its dreams. Drown it until death is nigh. And almost every time, the last remaining hope will grow, outshine all the others, and leave that heart so rife with yearning that it is nearly certain to survive the wish it must make. But with you, my dear? You were too easily crushed. Your spirit failed before I had properly begun. There is no purpose to putting you to the test. You would not endure.”
He didn’t wield this like an accusation, a blade honed to flay or torment me. It was simply a weightless truth, settling into my skin without force, as casual as snowfall. It was the final proof of my numbness. There was nothing left which would have given a wish strength.
Hei took my face between his hands, directed me toward him. Flames seemed to sparkle in his eyes, passion and desperation and need. “Ari. Stop. The more you listen to him, the more entangled you become. Nothing he says means anything. He let his soul die an eternity ago. Listen to me. If despair would have taken you, that’s not your fault. You shouldn’t have had to bear this. You understand? It’s not your fault. You deserved to live.”
Tears were blurring the world again, painting Hei’s face with chaos. Limply, I found Tamueji, turned my face to her. “Do you still think Kaiwan is the real enemy?”
Tamueji recoiled.
“I may as well be an enemy.” Kaiwan trembled, her arctic composure fracturing. I could not help but imagine the entire earth breaking apart. “I have spared Umber too ma
ny times. But this I swear: no more.”
I hadn’t noticed immediately, but crow-souls clustered at the door, occluding any path of escape. Umber had wrought this moment out of inevitability, scoured a path across finality until every mechanism of the universe was aligned to bring it about. My premonition had been right. All paths led here. The mist had only been the air of warning, hiding the cruelty of what my existence must become.
When Umber spoke again, the lighthearted disdain had flushed from him. Only menace and thirst, the true voice of his ponderous age, came through now. “It is time. She will return my memories to me. I will not be evaded again. And when it is done, I will be restored in full. Even the witch’s memory will belong to me, so that no mind on earth will possess the means to erase me again.”
The crow-souls were moving, circling the room. I seized Hei closer, shielding him with my arms. The last fragment of the picture was falling into place. The godhood must have devoured Umber’s original life too. He had spent eons trying to bring about the only means that would allow him to revive it without taking the test himself. He had been mired here, inundated with a world full of displaced moments of time, an overflow of scattered childhoods, summer days, last breaths, secret hours of the night. Thousands upon thousands of private stars, flecks of consciousness, draining into his abyss. But he had not been able to find his own.
Something told me this wasn’t going to be as simple as waiting for Kaiwan to twine with Hei. It had to be on Umber’s terms.
“This has to be an elaborate joke.” I tucked a wing around Hei; one of the crow-souls tried a clumsy lunge forward to snatch his arm, and I rebuffed it, drawing Hei as close as I could. The saturation of water in his clothes stung. “You want your memories back? Why, so you can revisit your childhood home, and have a wistful sigh? Everyone you deceived, everyone whose life you took, wanted a piece of their life back. Why does it matter for you, when it didn’t matter for us?”
Umber had been pared down to a set of steaming eyes, black wings, and foul intentions. Maybe this was all his own mist, and he was incapable of seeing past the hungers that inspired his impulses. But now, more than ever before, it was plain: everything but this moment was gone. Every ripple of suppressed outrage, the burn of empty places where my soul had once stood, was rising through the numbness. There was a terrifying freedom in knowing that this would either kill me or set me free. That Hei wouldn’t have accepted any other path.
“Do not spend breath on this man,” Kaiwan hissed. “He is dead. He only hopes that I can resurrect him. But nothing remains to hear you.”
“Don’t wound her too greatly.” Umber’s voice slithered, palpable as snares around our ankles. “She and the boy must remain intact. If you kill her, you die next.”
The crow-souls had been focused on me and Hei, slowly tightening like a noose around us, as if this were a game they could afford to play. But Kaiwan’s grip on her polearm trembled, and the sight drew my eye behind her. A table, near her stove. A pitcher sat on it.
Hei spoke into the cavern of my wings. “Ari. Let me go.”
I glanced up, then down at him. Tamueji had not moved, but Umber’s minions were beginning to snarl. The obsidian clarity of Hei’s regard was too much to give up. He was still so young, and had endured so much. I could not let him go. Yet I could not hold him here for long.
“Let me go,” he said again. A gentle smile graced his face, perfumed our shared darkness.
It was time to jump.
Aching, I released him, and opened my wings.
Chapter Thirteen
The room detonated into motion.
It was like a held breath exploding forth, lurid dark shapes becoming blurs. The instant I stepped back from Hei, he became a whirlwind. I could almost believe, in that moment, that his heroism and desperation had given him the speed and grace of the living-again. Lightray spiraled as if he’d grown silver arms, strands of cloth trailing around him as he turned. Heatless blue flames roared at dazzling intervals. He spun and struck without restraint or fear.
I stayed at his back, using my wingspan and bulk to frustrate attacks against him. Many of the crow-souls came directly for me. So many of them, seeming to ignore Hei as they dug talons at my abdomen, face, arms. It may have been thousands of blows, descending like silvered rain. I didn’t see so much as feel the wave of impact. Kicks, scratches, punches narrowly dodged, forcing me back. I could only respond because my body knew it must move. Move, move, and never stop.
The sight that dominated the room was the flagrant red thirst of Umber’s eyes, drilling diseased holes in the world.
He and Tamueji alone did not fight. Where he shone with malice, she emanated numbness like a fragrance. She took in the din without reaction, as if her heart had already been slain.
Kaiwan also joined the battle; one slim crow-soul had cornered her against the wall, angled to try to grapple her. His hesitance to deal any injurious blows must have given her advantage enough, because she was repelling him with her polearm. The blade shivered in an erratic dance, already having punctured wounds in her assailant. He yelped at each strike, steam curling from his blood. Good—of course she would know to wield silvered weapons.
My attention lurched from her to Hei, clouded with a flurry of pain and disruption. I struggled to stay near him, cut off avenues of attack, but when my vision focused, he was trapped between two crow-souls. Lightray dropped to the floor, untouched, the attackers no doubt afraid to touch it. Hei flailed with vigor, cloth tendrils whipping around, but it was almost effortless how they seemed to snare him. In moments, he’d been raised between four hands, ankles and wrists grabbed.
“Kaiwan!” I shouted over the noise, hoping she’d hear me. “The water! Throw the water—hit Hei!”
A split second passed in which she seemed too overwrought by her opponent. But then, barely noticeable, her eyes caught mine. She dove to the side, throwing off the crow-soul by forcing him back a step. With a roll, she came under the table and seized the pitcher.
A kick to the back stunned me for a few moments, and I whirled to trade punches, knocking the crow-soul’s head back. Before I could reorient myself, the sound of splashing struck behind me. A few drops sprayed onto the back of neck and wings. Then I saw. Kaiwan had thrown it dead-on, the pitcher’s contents soaking Hei. And she was rallying, pulling every container of liquid off her shelf, throwing tea and wine and water as quickly as she could. The crow-soul at her side was covering his face, as if too confused by her actions to respond.
Hei was sputtering, continuing to thrash in his captors’ arms. But any liquid should work. I held my breath, tried to push through to him.
In the next instant, the two holding him flinched, one of them crying out. Hei fell to the floor, arms covering his head. A flash of blue slicked over him, as if his clothes were catching flames. One of the captors tried to sweep in and grab hold again, but he gasped at the contact, scurrying back.
“What the fuck?” The crow who had cried was staring at his hands, where mild burns were healing.
“It’s just magic.” Umber’s words were missiles piercing the shuffle. “A trick of the witch. But she has no power left for anything greater. Do not be swayed.”
Something clicked into place. He didn’t know about Hei’s hallowed stone or its virtue to rebuke moon-souls.
I was on Hei then, shielding him with my wings, trying to help him recover. But the thickness of the virtue rolled off him like heat, and I could barely touch him. He twisted in the air and to his feet, Lightray secured in his hands again. He looked ravaged, flustered, and dripping—but hungry. Angry.
Good boy.
“Let’s try this,” he panted, standing. “So you can’t hurt me too much? I have no problem hurting any of you.”
The crow-souls had solidified their circle around us. Kaiwan seemed to be a lesser priority for them, and she was snaking through
her kitchen apparatus, continuing to thwart her opponent with the range of her weapon. Appearing emboldened by Umber’s command, the two around Hei swept in again, a third entering the fray. I was ready this time. As one passed me, I gripped him by the hair, yanking him toward me and using my body weight to force him to the floor. One other had snarled fingers into Hei’s coat, but shouted with the pain that met him. I crushed the bone of one wing against his face, knocking him to his knees under its mass. My talons were out, leaving stripes of blood as I surged forward.
The third tried to catch Lightray from Hei’s grasp, maybe brave enough to try using it. But Hei leaned into the movement, turning so the blade was angled upward. A thrust into the man’s body, and the blade sunk into his throat. His eyes shot wide, blood spurting from his mouth. When Hei forced the sword free, the crow-soul collapsed into a pile.
One of the crow-souls present was the woman who’d been with Tamueji, now divested of her swords. She tore into the gap, talons gleaming. I threw myself between her and Hei, snatching one wrist. Her legs rose to slam into my belly. It forced me to duck, already ravenous for air. But a tail of white slipped around her head like a garland of frost, and she looked up, eyes shooting wide. She knew this technique.
Drawing a painful breath, I turned, concentrated all my strength into a blow to the chest. The impact tossed her back, pulling slack from the cloth. Convulsions rocked through her as she dropped.
“I cannot imagine why now is the time you have all chosen to shame me!” Umber’s tone escalated to a bellow. “It is one mortal boy, and our own spiritless Ari! Are you so witless as this, that you cannot devise a way to subdue them?”