Winterveil

by Jenna Burtenshaw

  Silas turned away from the ruined city and looked back at Kate, who met his eyes with a look that was as dangerous as it was dark. She reached out a hand, inviting him to the spirit wheel, but he did not move. He feared that she had become corrupted by the veil. Dalliah’s work had already torn her soul away. There was no way to know how much of Kate was left within the shell that she had left behind.

  Kate kept her hand out. Her skin was white with frost, and despite his fears, Silas was sure he could see a glimmer of something familiar in her eyes. The blood connection between them had been overwhelmed by the turmoil overtaking the veil, but it was still there. Silas had to choose between standing and watching Fume fall to ruins around him or taking the hand of a powerful young woman whom he had just attempted to kill. His need to take action overrode everything else. He crossed the room in four strides. Kate clasped his hand in hers, their energies became intertwined, and their slowed hearts began to beat as one.

  Kate could read the lives of all the souls around her. She could have shared their stories and recounted their deaths. Such powerful connections had overwhelmed her in the past, but she had learned how to listen to the shades without sacrificing her own mind, and just like Silas and his crow, she found she could communicate with them without words.

  Kate called out across the half-life, bringing the shades together in a common purpose. One vital aspect had been missing from the manifestation of the half-life on its way across Albion. It was the one thing that the lost souls sought more than any other, and Kate had the ability to give it to them. She was a student of Wintercraft. She had read from the book, learned from it. Now she was putting her knowledge to a dangerous test. Kate called out. The shades echoed her thoughts. And death answered.

  A rush of warm air spread around the tower as a glistening shimmer of silver rose from the floor, filling the room and snaking upward like a creature winding its way up into the light. The current of death formed the same way as a bolt of lightning, pulling energy up from the earth and down from the atmosphere, before enveloping the tower in a glow of energy that could be seen for miles around.

  The current flowed up past Kate’s body and trailed out through the ruined roof. She could feel every soul that was attracted to its power, and the joy they all shared as they passed eagerly into its surging tide. Standing within the current was like becoming weightless. The pressure of her physical body faded away, her mind became unburdened by the troubles of physical life, and she wanted more than anything to let go and allow the current to take her.

  But death had not come for Kate. Unable to claim souls that were anchored so deeply into the black, it washed straight past her and Silas. Kate felt death drift past her rather than accept her, and she felt forgotten. Thousands of shades funneled along the current, streaming smoothly around her and Silas as though touching them might poison death against them, too.

  Dalliah retreated from the wild current in fear and pressed her back against the skulls lined up around the wall. She did not need to fear death, but Silas knew why she was so desperate to stay away from its influence. If her soul did return to her, the current would draw her in instantly. If she wanted to survive beyond that night, Dalliah could not risk being caught within the current when she and her soul were reunited.

  With Kate’s hand clutched around his, Silas was standing right in the center of the current. If Dalliah’s plan worked, Silas would be drawn into death just as easily if he did not move from its path. It would be the release he had been waiting for, the culmination of twelve years of waiting, searching, and studying the veil, when all he had wanted was to be free of it. He had hunted death, tempted it, and coveted it. He had secretly envied every soul he sent into it at the end of his blade. Now it was his turn.

  Dalliah no longer looked as confident about her plan as before. Silas could see her desperation to regain what she had lost and the fear that her one chance to find it might be snatched away from her forever. The veil was out of her control, but she clutched in hope to the words and images it had shared with her. Dalliah whispered those words to herself, taking comfort from them, and Silas heard her voice clearly through the current.

  “The lost will find their way,” she said. “To all those waiting, an end shall come.”

  Beyond the constant stream of souls rushing past him and Kate, Silas sensed two heavier presences that were moving across the city more slowly than the rest. That tower held the only three people in history whose souls had been torn away, and now two of them were coming back.

  Two shades pressed in through the tower walls and slowly circled the floor. Dalliah’s soul moved in and lingered beside her. With her spirit so close, Silas could see her true nature. He saw the twisted wisp of a soul that existed inside her and the ravages of hundreds of years of repairs that the veil had done to her physical body.

  Dalliah’s experiments into the veil had not only involved unwilling souls. She had also experimented on herself by drawing blood, trying to take her own life, and attempting to bind various souls to her own fragmented existence. Every wound had left a silver mark where the veil had healed it. Every drop of blood that had been restored to her was less potent than the blood she had lost. Her body was a patchwork of so many repairs that there was barely anything left that had not been touched by the veil. It was like looking at a living version of the Night Train. Dalliah had been patched and strengthened for so long that she was only a shadow of the living woman she had once been.

  Dalliah’s soul sank into her body like a healing breath. Her skin flushed with life, and she embraced the moment, becoming restored, rejuvenated, and complete once again. Her eyes were no longer lifeless gray but flooded by the darkness carried by the Skilled, with only an edge of blue hinting at what they might once have been. “It worked,” she said quietly as her soul settled, barely believing it herself.

  Silas did not want to care about Dalliah Grey’s fate. Her entire life had brought torment to the people who crossed her path, but her twisted spirit and the ruin that was her physical body told their own terrible story. Dalliah had suffered far more than any soul she had encountered. She had destroyed many lives, but she had been driven by the most primal need a living creature could possess: to become whole again. Now that she had finally found herself, Silas could not begrudge her that release. He could not imagine spending five centuries the way she had: living every day working toward an impossible goal yet giving every part of herself completely to it. It had taken centuries, but her visions had been accurate. The veil had shown her the truth.

  Dalliah held her hand out into the current of death, mesmerized by its call, then withdrew it just as quickly. She had seen her situation through the eyes of only one part of her soul for a long time. Now that she was restored, she could see both sides of her suffering. Her spirit did not want to live on. It was tired and worn from its time in the black. It was ready for death. Dalliah had not anticipated that, and she looked into the current, confused by her sudden compulsion to step into its flow.

  “Do it,” said Silas. “Do not waste your chance.”

  Dalliah looked at him, torn between the years that she had left to live and the call of the unknown realm that she should have entered centuries ago.

  Silas saw her body relax as she made her choice. Dalliah could not resist the call any longer. She took one step forward and allowed her full spirit to rise up and be accepted by the current. She smiled as her soul joined the others. Her body fell gently to the floor, and she was gone.

  Standing there, just a few feet from the lifeless body of a woman who should not have been able to die, Silas recognized the finality of what was about to happen. To not live, to be gone, forever, from the world, was a far more daunting prospect than he had imagined.

  He could feel the welcome draft of his own soul preparing to settle into his bones, and he saw the imminence of his own end. The deep survival instinct that he had neglected for so long stirred within him, beginning to reassert itself.


  Kate held his hand a little tighter. “This is what you wanted,” she said as his spirit closed in, almost within reach. “Was it worth it?”

  Kate’s words immediately claimed Silas’s attention. When he looked at her now, he saw a broken soul. Dalliah would never have found her if Silas had not gone looking for someone Skilled enough to undo what had been done to him. Da’ru Marr had torn his soul to help further Dalliah’s plan; now his actions had led Kate Winters to the same fate. Kate’s spirit was not returning to her. She was going to be left behind, suffering as he had suffered for far too long. Silas had paid the price for Dalliah’s freedom, and now Kate would pay the price for his.

  Silas felt his spirit press against his body and filter through his skin, imbuing his blood and his bones with the spark of life that he had been denied. His lungs breathed freely. He could feel his pulse pumping through his muscles, and the current of death brushed like soft feathers against his skin, stimulating every follicle like fine prickles of lightning.

  Kate let go of his hand as his eyes darkened. His gray pupils filtered back to their natural black, and his irises flooded with a deep iridescent blue. It was a perfect feeling. As his soul returned to him, it felt impossible to ever be without it again, but Kate’s question still burned in his mind. Was it worth it? Dalliah had learned to live with the harm she had caused in the name of her own self-interest. Every cost was worth the success of her final goal. Silas had once believed that any price would be a fair one to reclaim what he had lost.

  Silas was the one who had ordered the wardens to Kate’s hometown before the Night of Souls. He had exposed her mind to parts of the veil she was not ready to see and placed her and everyone she cared about in danger. The last of her family was dead because of the world Silas had pulled Kate into. Because of him, even the Skilled had turned against her, Blackwatch agents had dragged her across the sea, and one of the most dangerous women in Albion had stolen her memories and forced her to send trapped souls into the emptiness of the black. Silas’s crossbow bolt had ended Kate’s old life. His blood link with her had bound her soul into the depths of the veil, and now, despite all that, she was allowing him to pass over into death.

  Silas had been a poison in Kate’s life. His search for peace had been no better than Dalliah’s. He had left behind his own trail of destruction. He had set fires within many lives. He would not leave and let them burn.

  He could feel his soul settling into his blood. Death began to wrap its welcoming light around him, but despite its gentle touch, its calm, and its beauty, he resisted. He moved in front of Kate, pressed his hands to the sides of her head, and fixed his eyes upon hers, exactly as he had done the first time he had helped her see beyond the veil. The blood connection between them flared, and he could feel the tether holding Kate in the black. Silas could share her thoughts, running through the pages of Wintercraft, recalling everything she had to do to restore the veil.

  “It needs a soul,” said Silas, repeating what he had seen upon the remembered pages. “The veil needs an anchor. One soul, bound between the depths and the living world. Give it mine.”

  “No,” said Kate, forcing Silas from her mind. “It is already done.”

  “This is not your burden!” said Silas. “This is my fight, not yours.”

  “You made this my fight! You tried to kill me, Silas. You have what you wanted. Death is here for you. Why don’t you just go?”

  Kate’s eyes were filled with anger but tempered by tears for the things she had seen. Silas knew that she was using everything she had just to keep the veil under control. Arguing with him was a distraction. He could not let her risk herself anymore.

  “You have already given me everything I need,” he said. “I thought my future belonged here, but I was wrong. I am not ready for death. Use me. Offer my soul to the veil. It is the right thing to do, Kate. The best thing. I choose this. Let me fight.”

  Kate was not ready to let Silas cast his spirit away. He was not a naturally Skilled soul. He might not even be able to take her place within the dark. She could not take that chance. Artemis had given his life for her, Edgar had risked his soul, and even the shades in the city had slowed their passing into death, just to help her defend it. She would not risk everything their sacrifices had earned to save her own life, but during the brief moment that she spent considering it, Silas took his chance.

  His soul overwhelmed her. She felt his spirit flood through her, chilling her blood and spreading down into the stone circle beneath them. There, in the black, their torn souls wound together, side by side, until Silas’s spirit moved deeper into the darkness, severing the connection between Kate and the veil and sending her soul rushing back into her physical body. Kate breathed in a full living breath and pushed Silas away. Silas fell back, unconscious, to the tower floor, and the current of death dissipated, leaving the tower room still and dark.

  Fume plunged into darkness. Shades still left inside the city faded from sight as the veil swept up like an invisible curtain, blotting out the half-life all across Albion from the mountains to the surrounding seas. The Winters souls within the tower screeched with frustration until their voices died. Kate did not listen to them. Her soul had been released from the torment of the black, but grief chilled her heart in its place.

  She knelt by Artemis’s side, part of her still holding out hope he might breathe again as she tried calling his spirit back to life one last time. Even with the veil restored, he did not answer. He had already entered death. He was at peace.

  Kate stood up and picked up Silas’s fallen sword. Holding it with the point pressing down into the floor, she stood over him as he opened his eyes. Silas looked up along the blade, his eyes touched by their old, cold gray.

  “You brought me back,” said Kate. “You could have freed yourself, but you brought me back.”

  Silas stood up. Kate held the handle of his sword out to him, and he slid it back into its sheath. “Some things are more important than one man,” he said.

  “I don’t know how you survive in that place,” said Kate. “Every day. Every second. The fear, the pain, and the dark. Why didn’t you go?”

  “My mistakes sent you into the black, but I have lived with the veil long enough to know its ways. I can endure it. I have already taken too much from you. This burden is mine. You have your own to bear.”

  She took hold of his hand. “Thank you,” she said sincerely. “I will never forget what you did, and I will find a way to help you. One day you will be free.”

  Silas covered Kate’s hand with his, then slowly pulled away. Few people had ever touched Silas’s hands in friendship. Kate’s hands were the delicate tools of a healer, born to restore life, while his were stained with the blood of too many deaths: trained to hold a blade and nothing more.

  Silas walked back to the tower door, and as the veil strengthened once again across Albion, he and Kate could feel the energies of the people in the city shifting from fear into relief.

  “The people need something more than the High Council’s empty words to carry them out of this night,” he said. “If you are willing, there is one last enemy for us to face today.”

  20

  RUIN

  Edgar pushed his way through devastated streets touched by the growing light of dawn, heading for the place where he had last sensed Kate while the veil was down. The road was riddled with cracks. The front walls of the houses he passed had been buckled by the force of the ground shivering beneath them, but the most ancient buildings among them stood strong and proud. As newer buildings had collapsed, old ones had been revealed like whales breaking water, standing upon stepped stone platforms that had once raised them above the level of the understreets.

  Any shades that remained in the city had faded from view, and any memories imprinted upon it by the veil were swiftly undone. Towers that had appeared intact returned to their aged state. Ruined houses leaned against each other across the streets, and underground pipes spewed water a
s the night’s true devastation revealed itself. The movement of the spirit wheels had peeled back layers of recent history and let the past dominate once again.

  Edgar stumbled past ancient places that had long been forgotten. He picked his way along paths that had once been pristine but were now scattered with building debris, people’s belongings, and gaping trenches where old paths had been uncovered underneath.

  He coughed in the stone dust, placing his hands on fallen walls as he clambered across them, making his way toward the Winters tower. Silas’s crow flapped nearby, keeping a close eye upon him as it moved effortlessly through the air, and as Edgar passed into a street relatively untouched by the devastation, a voice called out to him.

  “Ed?”

  Tom peered out of his hiding place inside the doorway of an empty house. Edgar took a moment to recognize his face and then hurried to meet him. He picked his protesting brother up in his arms, not caring about his aching muscles or Tom’s futile demands to be put down, scuffed his brother’s hair, and hugged him tight.

  “I didn’t know if I would ever see you again,” he said, finally releasing him. “What are you doing here? Where’s Artemis?”

  “He went up there,” said Tom, pointing up to the Winters tower. “I can’t feel him anymore, Ed.”

  “He’ll be fine,” said Edgar. “He’s stronger than he looks.” He saw the doubt in his brother’s eyes.

  “Death came to the tower,” Tom said. “It took him. I felt it.”

  Edgar rested his hands on Tom’s shoulders. “Artemis kept an eye on you for me,” he said. “Whatever happened, he kept you safe.”

  “I don’t need looking after,” said Tom. “You’re the one who looks like he’s been trampled by a pack of dogs.”

  “Fair enough.” Edgar could not deny that Tom was in a far better state than he was. He smiled and looked out into the street, where people who had hidden from the night’s madness were gradually emerging from their houses.