The Girl at Midnight

by The Girl at Midnight (ARC) (epub)

  “What do you mean, prove myself worthy?” Rose asked. “What, exactly, does that entail?”

  The Oracle sat on the small bench in front of her harpsichord and toyed with the keys, playing a familiar tune. The magpie’s lullaby. The song all little Avicelings were sung before bedtime.

  “The vessel must offer a truly selfless sacrifice,” the Oracle told her. “The ultimate sacrifice.”

  She’d turned to Rose, though the hood of her cloak left her face hidden. “You must ask yourself what you’re willing to lose for all of that power. The firebird will bring about an end to this war, but it might not be the end you desire. There may be peace, or perhaps destruction. Would you lay down your life for such power?” The Oracle turned back to the harpsichord, fingers hovering over the keys. “Or his?”

  Rose didn’t need the Oracle to specify whom she was talking about. She watched as Caius fed a fresh log to the fire and held out his hand for the poker. Rose offered it to him, and he used it to push the log into place. The fire crackled back to life, and Caius settled on the pillows strewn about the floor beside her. She held out the blanket so he could slip underneath it.

  Wrapping his arms around her waist, he dropped a kiss on her temple, nuzzling her black and white feathers with his nose, and said, “How was your trip? Did you find what you were looking for?”

  She smiled at him and knew that she couldn’t tell him. The truth was a burden she had to bear alone. “No. Just another dead end.”

  Caius bumped his forehead against hers, planting a chaste kiss on her lips. “Maybe next time.”

  Rose closed her eyes and breathed him in. “Yes,” she whispered. “Maybe next time.”

  She may have been the firebird’s vessel, but her destiny was her own. If dying by her own hand to unleash it meant that the people she loved would be hurt, then she wouldn’t do it. Another vessel would be born, the Oracle had promised. It may have been selfish, but Rose knew she wasn’t willing to sacrifice Caius or what they shared for the sake of power.

  After leaving the Black Forest, she’d spent two days planting a trail of clues for the next vessel to follow. Let someone else deal with fate. Rose was young and in love and if she had nothing else, she had this moment, snuggled under a blanket with Caius. Their dalliance was dangerous and, one way or another, their tryst would end with her death, either at the hands of her people or his. It was only a matter of time until Rose’s secrets died with her, but the firebird would live on. And like a phoenix from the ashes, it would rise again.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  Echo fell, dagger still clutched in bloodstained fingers, and Caius felt as though he’d been stabbed as well. He thought his heart had died with Rose, in a blaze of Tanith’s doing, but at the sight of Echo’s body, crumpled to the floor like a broken doll, it pounded against his ribs as if it were beating for the first time in a hundred years. Blood seeped, thick and crimson, from Echo’s wound, soaking the fabric of her shirt, and rage and hopelessness, the likes of which Caius hadn’t felt in over a century, boiled in his veins.

  Fire burst forth from Tanith’s fists, racing up her arms all the way to her shoulders, glinting off her golden armor. “Where is it, Caius?”

  The heavy scent of smoke seared his nostrils. No, he thought, staring at Echo’s still chest, willing it to rise with an intake of breath. She looked dead, but he couldn’t be sure. Please. Not like this. Don’t take her the way you took Rose.

  “The firebird, Caius,” Tanith said. “Where is it?”

  “Now you want it?” His voice was salt rubbing at the raw skin of his throat. He could barely see past the smoke hanging heavy in the air.

  “Now that I have reason to believe that it’s real. Yes.” Tanith never had much of an appreciation for life’s little ironies. “There’s no point in resisting, Brother. I have two dozen Firedrakes waiting outside. I’m sure Dorian is fighting bravely, but there are too many of them. You don’t stand a chance.”

  Caius gripped his knives tightly. He had to get her away from Echo. He wouldn’t let himself believe she was dead. Not now. Not here. Not like this. “How did you even find us?”

  Tanith rolled her eyes, though her guard remained up. “I know you, Caius. I had sentries posted all the places I thought you might turn to in your hour of need. Did you honestly believe I wouldn’t think to keep watch on the Oracle?”

  It hadn’t occurred to him until that moment. He’d been so caught up in the chase, in Echo, that he’d been blind to the possibility that Tanith was one step ahead, though, of the two of them, she’d always been the better strategist. He should have known. You fool. You goddamn fool. But all was not lost. Not yet.

  “I can’t let you have the firebird,” he said. “I can’t. I won’t.”

  “Don’t be a fool, Caius.” Tanith drew her sword, its steel glowing red as an ember. It would burn its way through whatever it touched. She stalked toward him, naked blade in hand, picking her way through the mess of shattered stone and warped wood. Her blood would decorate his knives tonight. As strongly as he’d tried to fight it, he had always known, in a deep, dark part of his heart, that this was the only way it ever could have ended between them.

  “I am doing this for our people,” said Tanith.

  “Our people? Ribos was one of our people, as was every Drakharin you killed for standing between you and your delusions. Don’t you dare speak to me of our people.” Angry tears stung Caius’s eyes, already watery from the smoke. “You slaughtered them.”

  “I did what had to be done,” Tanith hissed. “I did what you couldn’t. What you wouldn’t. They were losing faith in you, in the seat of the Dragon Prince. I gave them a purpose, a direction.”

  “Does that help you sleep at night?” Caius circled his sister, never letting his eyes stray from her. He was almost to Echo. Don’t be dead. Please don’t be dead. “Do you actually believe your own lies?”

  “My conscience is clear, Caius.”

  For years, the rift between them had grown, but he had never given up hope that one day, he would be able to cross it, that he would have his sister by his side again as an ally, a friend. Even after what she’d done to Rose, he’d held on to that slim hope, but he could no longer pretend that forgiveness was possible. She’d taken everything from him. He had loved, truly loved, so few things in his life, and Tanith had systematically destroyed each and every one.

  “You won’t win,” he said. “I won’t let you.”

  Tanith squeezed her eyes shut for half a second, flaring her nostrils as she huffed out a frustrated breath. The tip of her sword lowered, just an inch.

  “Don’t do this, Caius. You may not believe it, but you are my brother, my blood, and I don’t want to hurt you. That was never the point of this. Don’t fight me. You have no title. You have no army. Your allies are dead or dying. You have nothing.”

  “No,” Caius said, balancing one of his long knives in his hand. “I have this.” He threw the blade. Tanith raised her sword to deflect it, sending it careering off to the side. He had less than a second to release the other knife, but it was enough. The second blade flew straight and true, burying itself in her shoulder. It drove clean through to the other side, pinning her to the wooden wall behind her.

  Tanith screamed, and fire erupted around her, fueled by her fury. The flames roared with her, filling the room with scorched air. It wouldn’t buy him much time, but it would be enough. It needed to be enough. Caius scooped Echo up, trying to ignore how limp she felt in his arms, and ran, Tanith’s rage bellowing in his ears.

  Smoke and the scent of burning flesh clogged the air. Flames licked at his feet as the traces of Tanith’s power crackled all around him. He stumbled over a pile of rags. The Oracle. Her body, crumpled on the stone floor, was still smoking, robes smoldering with little puffs. The stench of sizzling flesh made his throat seize and his stomach churn.

  Outside, the lake was gone. All that was left was a dried-up crater, littered with bleached fish bones. The
Oracle’s power must have sustained it all, and that power had died with her. A distant part of Caius mourned her and feared for the friends they’d left on the other side of the lake, but he could barely think past the body in his arms. Echo was so limp, so quiet, so small. How had he never noticed how small she was before?

  Caius ran past the dry basin of the lake and the unmoving bodies of half a dozen Firedrakes. Dorian must have fought them off, but Caius couldn’t see past the smoke to look for him or the others. Once he reached a place where he could summon the in-between, he would find them and bring them to safety. He told himself that Echo would blink her eyes open, injured but alive, and she would be okay.

  As soon as he set foot beyond the cave’s entrance, the rocks flanking the now dry waterfall glowing like charcoal embers, he looked up, just in time to see the sky rip open. Great black clouds spewed forth a battalion of Avicen Warhawks, screaming their battle cries into the cold darkness of the Black Forest. Altair. It had to be. He had found them, too. He must have been tracking them. The Oracle’s death had brought down the wards around the forest, their enemies had followed their trail, and the war was upon them.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

  Rising from the dead was not the thrill ride Echo had anticipated. She floated, weightless, in a sea of darkness. The only thing making her aware of the fact that she had a body at all was the pain. It was intense, blinding, and everywhere at once. Slowly, unimaginably slowly, her mind rose to the surface, seeking out the single, weakly glowing speck of light in the distance. Her body shed death like a snake molting. There was nothing poetic about the process, nothing that felt remotely transcendental.

  But no matter how hard and how far she stretched, the light stayed right where it was, distant, unreachable. Her chest was on fire. She wondered if this was what it felt like to drown. It hurt. It hurt so badly that a tiny part of her wished she could have just stayed dead.

  Wake up.

  Again, that voice, but this time Echo knew who it was.

  “Rose?” Echo’s voice sounded, for all intents and purpose, like an echo in her own head. Her life was a pun now. Great.

  Time to wake up, Echo.

  “Where am I?”

  Not where you should be.

  “But … how?”

  No time for that. Your friends need you.

  She’d had enough of this double serving of cryptic. “How do I get out of here?”

  The laugh, crisp and clear, bounced against the walls of her skull.

  You’re the firebird, Rose said, voice as soft as the petals from which she’d taken her name. Fly.

  Oh, Echo thought. She didn’t need to ask how or why or where. She knew, almost as if she’d always known. She stretched her wings, as if she’d been born to do it, and flew.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

  Hearing was the first sense that returned to Echo as she pulled herself up from the muck of death, stubborn and sticky as fresh cement. She heard steel clashing against steel. The bark of trees crackling and popping as they burned. Voices shouting their triumphs and howling their defeats. Her head throbbed with every sound. It was so loud. So unthinkably loud. If she could have moved her hands, she would have clapped them over her ears. Earmuffs. She needed earmuffs, but all she had was a bed of unforgiving pebbles digging into her spine and the nauseating scent of sizzling flesh in her nostrils.

  Rising from the dead sucked. Rising from the dead in the middle of a battle sucked even more.

  Echo cracked her eyes open, and they immediately began to water. Smoke permeated the air along with something else, something she recognized. Squeezing her eyes shut, she grasped at the familiar scent, trying desperately to place it. It was acrid and sharp, like ozone. Her eyes flew open. The in-between. The Black Forest was supposed to be a null zone. Caius had said so. No thresholds could be accessed within its borders. But when she pulled herself upright, willow branches catching in her hair, she saw the hell that the sky had vomited up.

  She had never seen a riot before, but this had to be what one looked like. Warhawks clashed with Firedrakes, limbs and weapons tangled in a bloody mess. Altair, towering above it all like a bronze god, cut his way through the sea of bodies as if they were matchsticks. She caught a glimpse of Dorian’s silvery-gray hair before he was overcome by no fewer than six Firedrakes. He disappeared beneath them, swarmed by his own people. Echo scanned the crowd for a flash of Ivy’s white head or Jasper’s peacock feathers, but all she could see was a mess of broken bodies and fire, everywhere fire.

  Her gaze landed on Caius. He was in the middle of it all, cutting down Warhawks and Firedrakes alike. He’d lost his knives somewhere along the way, and Echo recognized the sword in his hand. The Dragon Prince fighting with an Avicen blade. She hadn’t seen that one coming, but then, she also hadn’t seen herself dying by her own hand and rising from the dead with a strange energy surging through her. It was a day for firsts.

  Caius fought on, sword glancing off a fallen Warhawk’s armor. The Warhawk’s cloak was as white as the others, his bronze armor identical to that worn by his comrades, but Echo would have recognized the set of his shoulders, the curve of his jaw, and those golden speckled feathers anywhere. Altair had led his troops into battle, and Rowan—loyal, brave, beautiful Rowan—had followed him. As if he could feel her eyes on him, he turned, catching her gaze, brows drawn tight over hazel eyes. Rowan shouted for her, but the roar of the battle swallowed his voice, scattering his words aloft on the scorched air. He looked at her as though he had never seen her before, as though she were something new and strange and terrible. Just as Caius lifted his blade, ready to cut down Rowan for good, a crack, loud as lightning, sounded from the mouth of the Oracle’s cave.

  Fire billowed from the entrance as if the cave were belching it out. Tanith stood in its archway, arms upraised as she called flames to do her bidding. She was going to burn the entire forest down around them. Echo felt as small and helpless as she ever had. They didn’t stand a chance against Tanith. They would die here, in the Black Forest, burned to a bloody crisp.

  Cowering behind the drooping branches of the willow beneath which she’d been placed, its green leaves yellow in the light of Tanith’s fire, Echo was seven years old again, hiding from the monsters outside. But she heard Rose’s voice whisper the words she’d spoken as Echo had floated in that black netherworld. Your friends need you.

  She was not seven years old, and she was not alone. She would not hide, not from Tanith, not from Altair, not from anyone. Not if she could help it. Not when her friends needed her.

  Echo summoned every ounce of courage she had and hauled herself to her feet. She expected to feel the sharp bite of pain where the blade had pierced her chest, but looking down, she found that her skin had healed, leaving only the faintest pucker of a scar. Well, that’s a fun new skill.

  She felt the moment Tanith spotted her. They were too far apart for Echo to be able to make out her eyes, but she remembered them, red and furious, even if the memory didn’t belong to her. It was like looking into a distorted mirror, showing glimpses of someone else’s life as though it were her own, when Tanith had brought Rose’s cabin burning down around her. A ferocious thrill of hate cut through her.

  Yes. Rose’s voice echoed in her head. You know what to do.

  Echo raised her hands the way Tanith had. She didn’t question it. She didn’t second-guess herself. She simply held out her palms, summoned the fire she felt burning beneath her skin, and thought, Burn.

  From the corner of her eye, Echo saw Caius turn from Rowan, who was blessedly still breathing, staring at her as if she were something from a nightmare. Caius ran, trying to place himself between Echo and Tanith, but Altair muscled his way through the tangle of bodies to reach him first. His sword arced through the air toward Caius. Time crawled to a stop, and Echo saw it happen in slow motion. Altair brought his blade down, aiming squarely for the center of Caius’s chest. Again, she thought, Burn.

  Flames poured from her o
pen palms, black and white, as crisp and clear as a magpie’s feathers, so different from Tanith’s riotous reds and yellows. The blaze strengthened, first in stuttering pulses, then growing stronger and stronger until it burned as bright as the sun and as dark as night. The violent pounding of her heart was like wings beating against her bones. Power simmered beneath her skin, fighting to be free, but Echo’s body was a cage, and she held the power of the firebird within. She laughed, and her fire surged forward. Flames twisted and twined through the air, colliding with Tanith’s blaze. But Tanith didn’t so much as flinch.

  The black and white flames flickered with Echo’s uncertainty. She poured everything she was, everything she had been, and everything she thought she would ever be into her fire, but it wasn’t enough. Tanith was too strong and Echo’s power was too new, too weak. Tanith’s blaze battered Echo’s until her brilliant black and white flames muddied into a sad gray.

  In the distance, Caius fell to his knees, Altair’s body lay behind him, feathers smoking. He stared at Echo, expression open and raw. Something deep and secret twisted in her gut. Her black and white blaze strengthened, and she felt Rose push inside her mind. Tanith fought back, and Echo fell her to knees, fire dying in her open palms.

  She couldn’t die now, not again. She wasn’t ready. She wasn’t done. She needed to see Ivy one last time, to tell her that she was glad to be her friend. And Rowan. There were so many things she had to say, so much that she owed him. She had to thank him for freeing her, to apologize for Ruby, for betraying his trust, for running away from him. She wanted to tell the Ala she loved her. The last thing Echo heard before she passed out was the rustle of feathers, like wings on a breeze. The black of the in-between surged over the forest, and then there was nothing but silence.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

  The first thing Jasper noticed was the pain. Pain was good. Pain meant he was alive, but it also meant that he wasn’t going to be happy about it. His head throbbed worse than the time he’d tried to match a bar full of warlocks drink for drink. The muscles in his abdomen jumped, spitefully, with every breath he took. He laid a hand against his stomach, and his fingers slid through something warm and wet. Blood. Well then.