But no, no; he couldn’t have. Reyna never taught Longland this. And Reyna knows that Emma Hall is indirectly responsible for Longland’s death. She’s heard the report. She’s seen the injuries, writ in the memory of the dead.
Longland kneels, or begins to kneel; she stops him, catching his arm. Reyna can no longer see Longland’s face, but he bows his head, and Emma Hall lifts a hand to touch his forehead. She is still smiling.
“Merrick,” Reyna says, weighting his name with the whole of her command.
His body stiffens; he turns to look over his shoulder, to meet the eyes of the woman to whom he should kneel. He is hers. He is bound to her. She cannot force him to return the way the dead do—but once he is in her orbit, he belongs to her. His eyes widen, and Reyna realizes that he has run here—he has run past her—without even seeing her. He has looked at, and for, Emma.
Emma, who has the lantern, which she could never have obtained without the consent of Reyna’s mother. Emma is a stranger. She is not of the people. And yet somehow, she has obtained the approval and trust that Reyna was always denied.
The love, she thinks, hating Merrick Longland, hating Scoros, hating everything. Why? Why does it always work this way?
Merrick Longland kneels at her silent command. He kneels, facing Reyna. What Emma will not accept, Reyna demands. He bows to Reyna.
“Kill her.”
He rises. She can feel him strain against the command, against the binding placed upon him. But he is powerless before the Queen of the Dead. He removes a gun from its holster, his hand shaking with the effort.
Even Longland, Reyna thinks. Even Longland, who died because of Emma, would choose Emma if he could. She almost destroys him, then. She will, later. But without a body, he cannot do what needs to be done. He levels the gun and turns to face Emma.
Eric moves then. He moves. Reyna lifts an arm; his chest hits it. She sees that he wants to go—as Longland did—to Emma. And, oh, the anger that rises, then.
EMMA DIDN’T HESITATE.
She didn’t love Merrick Longland. She didn’t even like him. But she understood that when he turned, he would do as the Queen commanded. He didn’t have a choice. Lantern in hand, Emma could see the filaments that stretched from his core to the Queen’s; it was bright, vivid, golden. And it was a chain.
What she had done for Nathan, she now did for Longland—and she did it without hesitation, without terror. She reached for him before he could turn from the Queen; he was standing in her circle. The height of the stairs did not prevent this. The paradigm of stairs faded. She didn’t have to ascend. What the dead needed was not at a lofty, forbidden height. It was here.
The Queen was not.
The circle was proof against death and the way the living could lose themselves in the memories, the fears, and the dying, but Emma was certain it wasn’t proof against knives or bullets. It was ironic that she had spent nights longing for death to sneak in and take her too. It was visceral and terrible, but she understood that it wasn’t death she wanted. It was peace. It was an end to loss and pain.
And she wanted to live.
She wanted life. The only hope of joy in this world was in life; death was endless privation. And she wanted that to change, too. Because everyone she loved now—everyone she would ever love—would die eventually. She would die as well. And this could not be all that waited. This could not be eternity.
She wouldn’t let it be.
She placed her free hand on the back of Longland’s neck, feeling the taut cords of muscles that strained with effort. She could even guess what caused him to make that effort.
“Do it,” he said, his voice the product of clenched jaw and minimal movement of lips.
She nodded.
• • •
His body came apart beneath her hands. She felt it unravel, but this time, she paid attention to how; she saw the moment his body became its disparate elements—not flesh and blood and internal organs, as her own would have been, but the dead. They were older than the victims chosen to house Nathan; almost of an age with Longland’s physical appearance now. They were also two women, two men—their forms so transparent they could be lost in the light.
Or they could have been had the source of that light been anything other than this lantern. She heard their whispers; she knew that was all she would ever hear. But they looked beyond Emma. They looked up, transfixed.
The gun held in their collective, single hand clattered to the floor, forgotten.
She held them. She broke the chains that bound them to the Queen of the Dead, reaching for Longland in the same way. She wasn’t surprised at the tensile strength of his binding; the woman who had created it was here, and she knew more about binding the dead than Emma Hall would ever willingly know.
But it didn’t matter. Emma had closed a hand around Longland, and if the hand no longer held his neck, it held him. She felt a grim amusement at the idea that she and the Queen of the Dead were playing tug-of-war over a former Necromancer. She was probably the only person present who did.
The Queen’s eyes rounded, her brow rising into the momentary folds of her forehead.
“Chase,” Eric said. The Queen’s arm was still level with his midriff, as if this could stop him from leaving her side. She was smaller, finer boned, less well-muscled; all she had was power. She had not bound Eric except in one way: She had left him nowhere to go.
Chase bent and picked up the gun Merrick Longland had dropped.
Emma didn’t turn to look at him; she was watching the Queen of the Dead. She knew, before Chase fired the first shot, that the bullet wouldn’t hurt her.
Given Chase’s lack of verbal response—and the lack of follow-up shots—he’d known, too. He watched as the bullet was absorbed by her body. She hadn’t even stumbled.
“Do you honestly think you can kill me—any of you?” the Queen demanded. Fire burned at the edges of the room, but it no longer raged in the center. “Do you think I would have left myself vulnerable to you?”
“Scoros,” Emma’s ears hurt.
“I make no guarantees,” he replied, as if she’d actually asked a question. He rose on shaking legs. No surprise there; Emma’s were shaking as well. “Do what must be done,” he added softly.
Emma nodded and turned to face what she called a door. It was the only door in the room that mattered to the dead; it was the only one that now mattered to Emma. The dead watched Emma, pressing against it in urgent silence.
Chase drew two daggers.
“Chase,” she said softly. “You don’t think those will make a difference?”
He didn’t reply.
“Don’t leave the circle,” she whispered. More than that, she couldn’t say. She turned her attention to the door.
• • •
It was thick, heavy wood; it seemed scratched and scarred, but only superficially. It was a solid door.
It was a door the dead couldn’t see. What she saw now was invisible to them, except in one way: it was closed. They approached it as if it were a window against which they could find no purchase.
Emma had opened that door once. She had no idea for how long, although not long enough was the only relevant fact. She had strained and struggled to hold it long enough for one four-year-old boy to escape an eternity of afterlife. To do that, she had called the dead, and they had come, in hundreds. In thousands. She had borrowed their power, and she had used it, struggling to give them what she had promised.
Freedom.
“Emma,” Longland said.
And in the giving, she had—for one brief moment—seen peace. She had seen an end to loss and suffering and self-hate and guilt and emptiness. She could not describe it in words. She couldn’t even recall how it had looked to her. But she knew how it had felt.
And she knew, as she struggled, that that was what she needed to feel
. She needed to see as the dead saw, as if she were one of them. Opening the door wasn’t what needed to be done—that was the wrong paradigm. There was a window, a thick, plate of impenetrable glass, laid across the only freedom the dead were promised—and it couldn’t be opened.
She needed to shatter it.
“Emma, dear,” Margaret said, her voice startling in its urgent clarity. “The Queen is unmaking your circle.”
“She’s trying,” Emma countered. “Margaret—I need to concentrate. I’m sorry.”
Silence. Emma thought of warmth.
“Emma.”
She looked at Margaret because Margaret appeared to have stepped in front of her. And Margaret Henney was clearer than the rest of the dead who had also gathered there—clearer, brighter, much more solid.
“Not that way, dear.”
“The door—”
“Yes. It’s here. It’s everywhere. But you cannot approach it that way.”
“How do you even know what I’m doing?”
“I can see it.”
“What is she trying to do?” Chase demanded.
“She is trying to die.”
Emma was offended. “I am trying,” she said, through gritted teeth, “to see what the dead see.”
“Yes, dear. And there is only one way for you to do that. Whatever you feel you must do, this is not the way.”
“I need to see what the dead see to free them.”
“No. You need to see what they saw when they were alive to free them, if I understand everything I’ve heard correctly. And the circle?”
Emma shook her head. “I trust them.”
“Trust who?”
“Helmi,” she replied. “And Nathan.”
• • •
The Queen’s dress shifted in place, wedding white—and complicated train—becoming something metallic, ornate. The crown remained, as did the tight pull of her hair; her eyes glittered.
Chase, knives in hand, stepped between the Queen of the Dead and Emma, placing his back against the latter while she worked. He glared at Eric. Eric, his partner. Eric, his rival. Eric, the reason the Queen of the Dead existed.
He had hated Eric when they’d first met. Of course he had. He’d been sent to deliver a message to Eric. All the pain, the death, the torture—all of it—a message for Eric. Eric was the reason his family had died.
He wanted to kill the Queen. He had dreamed, and daydreamed, about this moment for years. The blades of these knives were a bitch to keep sharp; they were silver. But sharp didn’t matter. What the bullet couldn’t pierce, these blades could.
He was willing to bet his life on it. He’d been waiting so long to make that bet. But Emma had said only one thing: Don’t leave the circle.
He tried not to care. He’d done suicidal things so many times since his family had died, it was practically all his life amounted to. If he killed the Queen, Emma would be able to finish whatever it was she’d started in safety.
No.
Allison would be safe. Michael. Amy. The Old Man. Eric? In some fashion, Eric would be safe. All of the dead would be. His mother. His sister. His father. He didn’t know if dogs counted, but in his opinion, they should.
He could see the dead, with effort. But he had never seen his dead. He had never seen his family. He was certain that they would see Emma. They would see what Emma was doing. They would leave.
And he was fine with that. In every other way that counted, nothing could hurt them anymore.
Things could still hurt Chase. That was the problem with love and affection—once you had it, it was yours to lose. Life could hurt you without ever touching you. If Allison died now, it would kill him. It would do more damage than guns or knives when they didn’t end life.
He wasn’t certain what his death would do to Allison. It had been forever since he’d worried about the effect his death would have on someone else. In fact, this might be a first, because he’d never really thought about death as something that could happen to him or his family, when he’d had one.
“Chase.”
He looked away from the Queen’s rigid face, her newly formed armor, her ringed, cold hands. He met Eric’s eyes.
“Don’t step away from the circle while it still holds.”
“I can—”
“I’ve seen that fire level small villages,” Eric continued, his eyes strangely translucent. “It hasn’t immolated you—or Emma—because of that circle. It’s a power that’s built on the dead.”
“The dead—according to Emma—are already standing on top of her head.”
“Yes. The dead she allows, the dead she welcomes. But she won’t let the fire touch you. And there’s nothing to extend that circle. There’s no way to preserve your life. There’s no point in throwing it away.”
“Eric,” the Queen of the Dead said, her voice like a blade’s flat. “Do you not love me?”
Eric was silent.
“Why did you return?”
“Reyna.”
She didn’t turn. Her eyes would have frozen whole lakes. If her tone implied pain or tears, those eyes were never going to shed them. She flinched when he placed a hand on her shoulder, although given the armor, she shouldn’t have felt it.
“Why?” she demanded, as she looked at Emma.
“Because I want you to leave this place,” he said, voice low. “I want you to leave it with me.”
She looked, again, at Emma. And then she shook her head. “I will never leave this place.” But there was something in her expression—bitter, dark, yearning, and loathing—that spoke to Emma. Because Emma, looking at the door, could nonetheless see the Queen clearly.
She wasn’t carved into it; she wasn’t part of it; the door itself was simple, dark wood. But she was more than a superimposition.
“Scoros,” Emma whispered, “What is this door?”
• • •
Chase shifted the grips on his knives.
They cannot hurt her, boy. He recognized the voice and glanced at the old man. The old man wasn’t speaking. He wasn’t looking at Chase, or even Emma. His whole attention was focused on the Queen of the Dead. His lined, weathered cheeks seemed to glisten with tears. There was no fear in him. No aggression. He sat as if bearing witness. Again. Wait. Trust the magar.
“The magar’s dead,” he muttered. “No one dead stands a chance against her.”
She is not dead; she is new, and she is too young. He spoke of Emma.
“She’ll die.”
Trust the magar.
“Because that worked out so well for you last time.”
The Queen gestured, and Eric flew—almost literally—from her side. Chase saw him strike the far wall and slide. He wondered whether anything was broken. He knew that it didn’t matter. Eric’s body was exceptionally good at healing itself.
He even thought he understood why, and for the first time—ever—he pitied Eric. Plotting against the insane version of the woman you had once loved at a distance wasn’t the same as personally stabbing or shooting her.
Green fire enveloped the room, scorching every square inch of floor except the ones she occupied. He looked across to Eric and then away. The fire was too intense to see through. If she had decided to destroy him, it didn’t matter. She couldn’t destroy Emma yet, and Emma was the only responsibility Chase had now.
“None of you,” the Queen said, “will escape.”
She didn’t bend to the circle, this time. In that armor, bending was probably impossible.
Instead, she lifted her arms slowly and deliberately. She seemed to struggle with the motion, her arms trembling as if she carried weight in her hands. The weight was invisible to Chase, at least to start, but as the movement continued he could see it clearly.
The words that defined the circle in which he was standing were
rising. They were golden; they reflected soul-fire. Some of the words, he recognized; some he didn’t. They trembled as they were dislodged.
Given that they’d been carved into stone, it should have been impossible to lift them; their shapes were the absence of matter. But they rose. They rose in concert, each word legible. Even the misspelled one.
The Queen’s face was stone; if her arms felt weight, she didn’t acknowledge it. Her eyes were the color of the fire that surrounded her. The words rose to the height of her chest in a ring. She brought her hands down in one swift, sudden motion, as if they were blades.
Chase expected the words to break.
They didn’t. They hovered almost gently in the air, Emma Hall at their absolute center.
The Queen’s brows rose, her eyes rounding in astonishment. When they narrowed, they became blade’s edge—glittering with sharpness and the promise of death. She brought her hands down again; the circle rippled, the letters rising and falling as if they were buoyant. But the words they comprised held.
The air was hot with fire, but it chilled as the Queen of the Dead summoned her army: the dead. She had made a citadel, a home, of the dead—but not all of the stones and planks and windows were bound to her. They remained where they had been laid, but their voices grew in strength as the minutes passed.
The bound dead came through the walls. They came through the floors. They flowed like the coldest of winter air. Chase could see them. He could see them without losing his grip on the rest of life.
They circled their Queen, making obeisance in the lap of green flames as if the flames were wildflowers or stalks of densely packed corn. They rose at her regal nod—even armored and armed and in combat, respect clearly had to be received—and turned at once toward the circle of gold and words.
Emma had said that she trusted Helmi and Nathan. Chase had only half understood what that meant until he watched those liminal words. The dead approached them in a wave of motion, reaching for individual letters with a sea of arms, a sea of hands.
They shouldn’t have had any effect on the words, but the words wavered as more and more of the hands of the dead reached them. The letter forms began to sag, to shift; what had been perfectly engraved all caps began to resemble writing, and not the careful, deliberate work of chisels.
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