by Traci Chee
Captain Reed lives.
CHAPTER 44
Destiny
Out on the bay, the battle was almost over, and Sefia watched the Alliance warships, one by one, fall to the army of the dead. In the harbor, she could see the Red Hare—the Lonely King’s ship—through the smoke, but the Current was somewhere in the northeast, and she hadn’t seen the Brother in over an hour.
Were they okay?
Had she and Archer acted in time to save them?
Archer stood beside her, motionless except for the flickering of his eerie red eyes. Though they weren’t touching, she could feel the cold coming off him, as if the phantoms had brought the winter and darkness with them from the edge of the world.
“Sorcerer,” one of the tower soldiers called. “Look.”
Sefia turned. To the south, over the last rise of the hill leading to the watchtower, was Tanin. She’d abandoned her Assassin’s garb for a black vest and white blouse, and her dark hair billowed out behind her in the wind. All around her, dozens of candidates were marching on the cliff—blue coats, scarred throats, eyes blazing with the light of battle.
No wonder Sefia hadn’t seen the Black Beauty on the water. Tanin must have sneaked around the south side of the peninsula while Sefia and Archer were watching the bay.
Did Tanin know she’d already lost?
“You know why Archer has that scar around his neck?” Sefia asked the Rokuine soldiers, who nodded. “Those boys are like him, only they didn’t escape. And now they fight for the enemy. Her. Their sorcerer.”
“Can she do what you do?” someone asked.
Sefia nodded. “I’ll take care of her. Just don’t let any of them near Archer.”
The Black Navy soldiers took up positions on the ramparts. They readied their cannons. They waited for Tanin and the candidates to march into range.
“Archer,” Sefia said, hoping he could still hear her while his mind was out with the phantoms on the bay. “Tanin’s coming with the candidates. They’ll be in range in minutes.”
For a moment, nothing happened.
Then, slowly, his head turned. His lips parted.
“Sefia?” His voice sounded thin, as if it were coming from a great distance.
She let out a relieved breath. “Call some of them back,” she said, gesturing to the dead swarming the Alliance battleships in the northeast. “The tower guards will fight, but I’m afraid they’re no match for the candidates. And I—I’m afraid I’m no match for Tanin.”
Archer shook his head. “The dead are too far.” His voice wavered. “They won’t make it in time.”
“Send them back to the edge of the world so you can fight.”
He closed his eyes. His hands went to the Resurrection Amulet, still latched to his chest. But when he looked up again, he looked stricken. “I can’t,” he said. “I think they need to come back to me first.”
They’d have to cross the whole stretch of Blackfire Bay. Would they make it to the watchtower before Tanin and the candidates?
Behind the red glow of his eyes, he looked scared, like the boy she’d found in the crate a year ago, crouched in the moonlight.
Around them, the tower cannons went off. The candidates must have been in range.
She held his cold hands and kissed his cold lips. When they parted, her breath was smoking.
“We’ve done the impossible before,” she said. “We’ll do it again.”
He smiled a smile to break her heart. “Together, we can do anything.”
The first bullets pinged off the stones as she ran to the battlements, summoning her magic. With one hand, she deflected gunfire back at the candidates, who took cover behind jagged boulders, halting their advance. With the other, she ripped the ground out from under Tanin’s feet, pulling it up and over the woman like a wave of earth and dune grass. Tanin winked out and appeared again at the top of the crest, flinging out her hand.
A chunk of parapet broke off and flew backward. Sefia leapt aside as it crashed into one of the tower cannons.
Even at this distance, she could feel Tanin’s smirk.
“Just wait till you see what Archer’s done to your Alliance,” Sefia muttered.
She threw stones, redirected bullets, ducked and dodged and wrenched rifles from the candidates’ hands. Tanin took out their second cannon with a gust of magic. Beside Sefia, the Black Navy soldiers fired and fell to well-placed shots as Tanin and the candidates advanced.
A stray bullet nicked Archer in the arm.
He didn’t even flinch. His shadow soldiers were halfway across Blackfire Bay now, converging slowly on the cliff.
But they wouldn’t get here in time. The candidates were too close.
Desperately, Sefia cast about for a way—any way—to stop them.
And as her gaze raked the bleak terrain, she saw him—Scarza, his silver hair glinting white in the sun—charge over the hillside. Behind him came Frey, Aljan, Griegi, Keon, all of them. The bloodletters! They broke over the candidates’ rear guard, hacking, slashing, all steel and gunpowder.
They must have followed the Black Beauty.
Instantly, the candidates re-formed their ranks and began to fight back.
It was beautiful and painful to watch: blades and bullets and boys all leaping and feinting and calling for blood.
Blinking to dispel the Sight, she ran to Archer, where he still stood facing the bay. The graze on his arm had already stopped bleeding.
He was fine.
She allowed herself a smile.
He was fine.
“The bloodletters are here,” she told him. “Your bloodletters.”
There was a cry from below, and she rushed back to the ramparts. Griegi was on his knees in front of the tower door, blood matting his curls, as Keon stood valiantly over him, fighting off candidates, blades spinning so fast they were like two discs flashing in the light.
Other candidates were hurling grapples onto the parapets, the remaining tower soldiers racing to cut their ropes before the enemy could climb up.
Sefia blinked, preparing to sweep the attackers aside, but as the Illuminated world flooded her vision, the streams suddenly coiled, bunched, and exploded in a burst of light.
Tanin appeared on the ramparts.
Her silver eyes widened at the sight of the decimation on the bay. And narrowed again as she saw Archer, standing with his back to her.
She lashed out, sending a wave of magic in his direction.
Sefia dashed in front of him, taking the full force of Tanin’s blow, which sent her crashing to the ground.
Wiping dust from her cheek, Sefia struck out again, catching Tanin by the shins, and flung a knife from her sleeve.
Tanin twisted as the blade raked her thigh and threw a fistful of powder in Sefia’s face.
White filled her vision. She couldn’t use Illumination if she couldn’t see. Around her, she could hear the tower soldiers grunting and falling. Staggering back, she felt for Archer.
He was still standing. She could still feel the cold through his clothing as she bumped into him.
“Where is it?” Tanin’s raspy voice came from somewhere to Sefia’s left.
It? The Book? It was safe in Aljan’s bunk on the Brother. After all this, Tanin still wanted the Book? Sefia pivoted, trying to keep her body between Archer and Tanin. “It’s over,” she said. “The Alliance is no more. You only have a handful of Guardians left. Give up. Just give up and leave us alone.”
But when the Guard lost the Book, Tanin had hunted Sefia’s parents for fifteen years. Even now, on the brink of defeat, she still wanted it. When she’d lost her position, she’d waited and planned, and when the moment came, she’d killed one of her own so she could be Director again.
When had Tanin ever given up?
“I may not live to see it,” she sai
d, “but the Guard can rebuild. How do you think we survived all these generations? By rebuilding, even when we were at our most broken.”
Sefia swiveled again as her vision began to clear. She swiped at a hazy figure to her left, but there was a rush of air, and Tanin spoke again from her right: “And for that, I need the Book.”
Sefia’s vision sharpened as Tanin raised her arm. She saw the threads of the Illuminated world pull back.
“No!” she cried.
Then there was a burst of blood at Tanin’s wrist.
She cursed and drew her injured arm back to her chest, pulling out the switchblade embedded in her flesh.
Frey leapt up the tower steps, pistols blazing.
Sefia almost laughed with relief as the girl dashed to Archer’s side. “Took you long enough to get up here!”
“Sorry.” Frey made a sour face. “We can’t all wave our arms and poof around like you.”
Sefia really did laugh at that.
Aljan and Scarza raced up to them, and together, the four of them turned on Tanin, who teleported in and out, pushing them back, freezing them in place, swiping aside their bullets. But good as she was, she wasn’t good enough to beat all of them together.
She disappeared as the candidates emerged from the tower steps. The bloodletters raced to push them back.
Sefia rushed to Archer’s side. “It’s almost done,” she said, sending a candidate flying from the ramparts with a flick of her wrist.
He managed a faint smile. “Almost free.”
They were going to win.
They were going to live.
But as she surveyed the smoldering remains of the battle on the bay, the ruined harbor, the smoke rising from Braska’s damaged walls, she spied movement on a nearby cliff, high above the city. A thin figure was crouched over a large iron sphere, tipping in materials from glass vials and clay jars.
No.
“Dotan,” Sefia whispered. The Guard’s master of poisons. The sphere had been in the apothecary the night she and Archer destroyed the Library. She’d wondered what it was for, at the time, but now . . . Curls of smoke began to seep from openings in the metal, winding along the ground, finding the low places in the earth.
Was he going to poison all of Braska? All the children, the ailing, the elderly? Adeline and Isabella were down there, on the ramparts. Sovereign Ianai was down there, directing the battle from the castle.
And no one but Sefia could reach Dotan in time.
“What’s wrong?” Archer asked. On the bay, the dead had almost reached the base of the cliff.
Quickly, she explained what the Master Administrator was doing above the city, and she watched the hope bleed from Archer’s expression.
“Go. Before it’s too late.” He swallowed. “I’ll be here when you get back.”
Nodding, Sefia staggered backward. As she summoned her magic, she saw him cross his first two fingers, one over the other. Gold swirled up the back of his hand, over his knuckles, and in the light of the Illuminated world, their sign blazed like a million stars.
I’m with you.
A declaration. A promise.
“Always,” she whispered.
And with that, she waved her arms . . . and disappeared, arriving on the cliff, where the Master Administrator’s poison was already beginning to roll downhill in slow, undulating coils.
Dotan regarded her with his mismatched eyes. “Your parents took my first Apprentice from me. Now you’ve taken another.”
“Then fight me. Punish me. Not the people down there.”
A wisp of a smile crossed his dark face. “I am.”
Cold gripped her as she turned back to the watchtower.
Amid the fighting, Tanin had appeared behind Archer.
She spun him around.
She reached for his chest.
With a flick of her fingers, Sefia snapped Dotan’s neck. She kicked the iron sphere away from the cliff and the city below. She could hear it rattling and clattering down the opposite slope, streaming poisonous mist, as she teleported back to Archer.
CHAPTER 45
The Resurrection Amulet
As Tanin’s fingers closed around the Resurrection Amulet, she felt a grim sense of satisfaction.
Ever since she found out about Mareah’s death, she’d wanted the Amulet for herself. That was why she’d sent Reed and Dimarion after it in the first place.
She’d wanted to ask Mareah why. Why their oaths had meant so little to her. Why Tanin had meant so little to her that she was able to turn her back and walk away.
But now that she saw what it could really do, well, when she rebuilt the Guard, controlling Kelanna would be easier with an unstoppable army at her command. With an unstoppable army, not even Sefia could prevent her from getting the Book back.
Archer’s red eyes flicked to her as she stood before him, gripping the Amulet. “Please,” he said, in a voice that wasn’t quite his own.
And for less than a second, Tanin hesitated.
She could let him go.
She could accept defeat with grace.
She could give Sefia the happy ending Lon and Mareah had always wanted for her.
But why should Sefia get what Tanin had never had?
Archer’s shadow soldiers were climbing over the tower walls now, their faces hungry . . . and some of them familiar—the First, Stonegold, Erastis, the Locksmith.
She began to pull.
As the metal hooks ripped one by one from his skin, there was a hot searing pain as a gunshot tore through her chest. Whirling, she saw the silver-haired boy by the stairs sling a smoking rifle over his shoulder. Around his neck was a mottled scar. On his lips was the shadow of a smile.
Flicking her wrist, she sent a blast of magic at him. His head struck stone, his rifle falling from his hand, and he crumpled like a rag doll.
Archer was collapsing, the red glow fading from his eyes. The dead on the ramparts were dissipating like trails of smoke from hundreds of candles that had been suddenly snuffed out.
Tanin gasped. She tasted blood in the back of her throat.
She was bleeding.
No.
She was dying. The bloodletter had killed her. The Resurrection Amulet slipped from her fingers, landing with a crack on the stone.
She fell to her knees, and the last thing she saw before her world went dark forever was Sefia, teleporting in, catching Archer just before he hit the ground.
CHAPTER 46
Gone
Sefia appeared just as the shadow soldiers were evaporating.
“No!” The word fell from her lips before she even registered what she was seeing. “No, no, no—”
Archer’s body going limp, arms and legs buckling under him, wounds visible on his chest where the Amulet had been.
She caught him, gathering him up in her arms. “No, no, no, no.”
His head, his hands falling back again as she tried to cradle him to her chest, tried to hold him, tried to bring him back with the force of her denial.
“No, no, no—”
Until, at last, words failed her.
Until her grief bubbled up from her like a spring, hot and endless, spilling from her chin and onto Archer’s upturned face.
Her tears struck his cheeks, each one a letter, a word, a plea.
I love you.
I need you.
Come back.
The unanswered language of grief.
She kissed his forehead, his brows, his lips, desperately hoping that some of the stories were true, that her love would bring him back to her.
It didn’t.
“Sefia,” Frey whispered, touching Sefia’s shoulder. “He’s gone.”
All around her, the candidates were surrendering to the bloodletters. Tanin was dead, shot through the ches
t, her gray eyes sightless.
But Archer was dead too.
On the water, there were a few last bursts of cannon fire, but those petered out quickly, like the last drops of a sudden rainfall.
He’s gone. Faintly, the words trickled down to Sefia. Gone . . . gone . . . gone . . .
“The Amulet,” she said suddenly, casting about for the metal disc. The Resurrection Amulet would bring him back to her. She’d take a shadow of him. She’d take anything.
Anything.
But Aljan knelt beside her, shaking his head. In his hands, he held the shattered pieces of the Amulet.
Gone.
Sefia hugged Archer’s body tighter. “Come back,” she whispered. “Don’t leave me. Don’t be dead. Come back. Come back. Please, Archer, come back.”
But he didn’t.
The war had been won.
His last campaign was over.
And, just as foretold, Archer had died alone.
The End?
No, a beginning.
I always thought it would end in darkness. I thought it would end with grief and unanswered questions and the unbearable emptiness of staring down the rest of your days, knowing you’ll have to endure them without the one person who should have been there to share them with you.
But I should have known—some people are too strong, too resilient, too clever, too resolute to be constrained by something as trivial as fate. Their stories are wild and changeable, like new rivers, carving channels on their way to the sea, altering the very geography from which they first sprang.
Sefia and Archer didn’t beat the Book.
They broke the world.
They shattered the barrier between life and death, and now Kelanna is filled with the souls of the departed, full of ghosts and calming spirits that walk by your side after your friend or your sister or your father has died.
The living don’t know it yet, but they will, soon enough. The dead are all around—on the air and in the water; in reflections, half-seen, by candlelight. They’re frequenting the places they used to love; haunting the people who did them wrong; whispering through trees and dune grasses; bringing good fortune, or ruin, to the ones they left behind.