by Beth Revis
The iron crucible was crudely made, but I could feel its power overtaking me, surging inside my body.
I turned immediately to my sister. “Nessie,” I whispered. My voice was raw and cracked, as if I had been breathing smoke.
She did not move.
I ran to the top of the spiral staircase that led into the foyer, hoping the air would clear my head. At its base, the bodies of the other plague victims lay haphazardly. And above and around them all, the same golden glow that had clung to Ernesta before pouring into the crucible.
“No,” I whispered.
I cupped the crucible in my palm. The truth settled on my shoulders like rain.
I had thought my arm was the price I paid for the power, but I was wrong. Ernesta’s soul had been the sacrifice. These other dead bodies—their souls were still there. Still intact. But Ernesta’s had been ripped from her, imbued into the iron, forced into the crucible.
I ran back to her side.
“Nessie,” I said, my voice cracking. “Come back to me.”
I knew what to do instinctively. I cradled the crucible in the palm of my hand. I saw—now that I knew what to look for, I saw. The golden glow of my sister’s soul bound to the crucible, not her body.
“Come back,” I ordered, and there was power resonating in my voice.
Ernesta’s body did not move.
“COME. BACK.” I ordered again, channeling everything inside of me through the crucible.
Her eyes opened.
FIFTY-FOUR
Nedra
“Nessie!” I cried joyously.
Her flesh was cool, like the iron bead in my hand. She had no heartbeat.
I pulled back.
No life in her eyes.
“Nessie?” I asked, leaning back and looking into her expressionless face.
She blinked.
There was nothing of my sister in this shell of a body. Was this what necromancy was? Raising the bodies but losing the souls? What point was there in that?
Unblinking, she watched me.
I couldn’t stand to look at her expressionless eyes. I had to get out. I ran across the metal landing, heading straight to the spiral staircase. But when I reached the top of the steps, I was stopped short by a wave of power, the sheer force of which hit me like a gust of wind in a hurricane.
From my vantage point, I could see almost all of the abandoned bodies in the hospital. But I could also see the golden glow that clung to them, much like the glow that had enveloped Ernesta when I first raised her. Souls.
But unlike with Ernesta, I could hear these souls. Not with my ears, but in my mind—I could hear every last one of them. And they were crying out.
Help me.
Time. Give me more time.
Bring me back.
Can you hear me?
There’s more I want to do.
Each voice was distinct, each imbued with its own sense of longing. And each voice was directed at me. Just as I could sense the dead, they could sense me.
I remember you, one voice said, and my eyes drifted to the body of the boy on the floor, Ronan.
What do you see? I thought the words, but I knew he understood.
Darkness, he said. And light.
Do you see my sister? My internal voice was urgent, begging. She looks like me.
Nothing looks like anything here.
Ernesta? I called loudly in my mind. Can you hear me?
But as I tried to reach through the veil that seemed to separate me from the voices, I couldn’t get any sense of my sister. I could not find her cries among the others. Now that I’d made my presence known, they called to me even louder, screaming, begging, a long, low moan that sliced through my brain with the finesse of a sledgehammer.
I took a deep, shaking breath, trying to make sense of it all. And in the sound of my exhale, I could feel others, ones I’d not noticed before. Silent ones. They shrank away from me, pulling deeper past the veil.
In the palm of my hand, the crucible pulsed like a heartbeat.
A glimmer of silver caught my eye. I looked to the left, to where my other arm should be. Extending from the remaining bit of my shoulder was a pale, ghostly limb, transparent but bright. I flexed my fingers. Nothing I had read had hinted that my flesh and blood would be taken and replaced with a spirit arm. But I had also never read of someone using a crucible cage they had not made themselves. Perhaps this was payment for not sacrificing enough, or perhaps there was some dark magic Bennum Wellebourne had placed on the burned bones of his own hand. Trembling, I tried to touch this shadow arm with my real right hand. I felt nothing—my fingers slipped through the air—until the ghost arm touched the iron crucible.
That I felt.
I let go of the crucible with my real right hand. It rested in the shadow hand as if that pale mist was solid.
Help us, the voices cried. They were weaker now.
They didn’t have much time.
I held my shadow hand out, the crucible in it small and insignificant looking, and in my mind, I called back to the voices that called to me. I saw the golden mists rise up from the bodies—most, but not all. They swarmed to me, to the crucible, and the light poured inside, swirling like a black hole eating a star.
I felt their souls. I knew each of them in a way I had known no other person—bare and true. My ghostly fingers clenched the crucible—it was both hot and cold at the same time, the temperature so extreme it felt as if it would burn me, and yet I couldn’t let go, even if the hand that clutched it was not real.
In a brilliant supernova of light, the souls shot out of the crucible and back into the bodies of the people they belonged to. They each took a huge breath of air in, their backs arching, then exhaled, sinking back down. None of them breathed again.
And, one by one, they stood.
FIFTY-FIVE
Nedra
The faces of the dead tipped to me.
I could sense each person—dimmer now than when I’d held their souls—and I knew them. I understood their thoughts. Their feelings. There was sadness within them, but also hope. And I knew that hope came from me.
There were three who remained dead. They were the souls that had shrunk away from me. They had not wanted a second life, so I had not given it to them.
But twenty-seven others watched.
It wasn’t a true life.
But it was enough.
Ernesta. I turned on my heel and darted back onto the landing. The shell of my sister stood there. I reached for her unwittingly with my ghost arm, stroking her cheek, and her head tilted into my touch as if she could feel the hand that wasn’t there.
“Follow me,” I said, intending to drag her to the stairs if I needed to. But she moved at my command without my touch, followed me as I raced down the spiral staircase, the only sound throughout the entire hospital our clattering footsteps.
I reached Ronan first. “Did you see her?” I asked, shoving Ernesta toward him. “Wherever you were . . . ?” My voice trailed off.
He shook his head. “No.” And because he could sense my sorrow, he added, “I’m sorry.”
Something shifted in my vision. There was a glimmer of gold inside the boy, shining through his eyes.
“It doesn’t hurt anymore,” he said, standing up on his disease-withered leg. “In fact,” he said in a slower voice. “I don’t feel . . . anything.”
“But you can talk. You can think?”
He nodded.
But Ernesta couldn’t. I scrutinized her, trying to figure out why she was different.
Other revenants drew closer. “Did any of you see my sister? In the other place?” I asked desperately.
They all shook their heads, but there was some hesitation within them. “What?” I asked. “What is it?”
A woman stood from t
he crowd. I had not known her before, but I knew her now—her name, Phee, her three small children, who all died before her, her husband, who killed himself when he saw her blackening hand. She pointed now with her withered fingers. At the crucible I still held.
“She’s there,” Phee said.
My eyes darted between the revenants, the crucible, and my sister.
The golden glow. It wasn’t in Nessie’s eyes. When I’d tried to raise her, the light didn’t sink back into her body. It melted into the iron crucible.
I dropped to my knees, the crucible in my hand. Now that I knew what I was looking for, I could feel it, sense it within the metal. I had given my twin her body back, but I had trapped her soul.
Surely I can get it out. I have to get it out.
I concentrated, forcing my eyes to focus on the unnatural light. It wisped around the edge of the metal. Almost . . . almost . . .
The light slipped through my fingers, snapping back to the crucible. At the same time, the revenants around me screamed as if they were experiencing agony no human should ever feel. They dropped to the ground, their bodies writhing.
“What’s wrong?” I gasped, moving to Ronan.
“I don’t know,” he choked out. “But please, stop whatever you’re doing. It hurts.”
“There has to be another way,” I mumbled, standing.
But I could sense the answer from them all. Their souls had passed through the iron crucible. They had felt her the way I felt them.
And they knew she was past the point of saving.
* * *
• • •
The dead did not sleep. But I was not afforded the same luxury. It felt creepy to claim a former hospital room as my own, so I set up a little nest of blankets and pillows in the tower and let the dark, dreamless night engulf me, my heart keeping steady pace with the ticking clock. Ernesta sat in the center of the floor, unmoving.
When my eyes opened the next morning, I was immediately aware of all my revenants.
Someone’s coming, they told me.
I walked out onto the balcony in front of the clock. The sun was rising over the bay, the water so bright that it was at first hard to see the boat that drew closer to the stone steps leading to the hospital.
I took the stairs two at a time as I raced down. My revenants were all waiting for me, save Ernesta, who I left in the tower.
“Who is it?” I asked.
“My father.” Ronan stepped forward. “And others.”
My mind flashed to Dannix’s anger when he’d assaulted me after his wife’s death. What would he try to do to me when he saw his child turned into a revenant?
As one, my revenants looked to the door. I knew—because they knew—that the boat had arrived. I mentally ordered the others to stay in the foyer as I strode to the door and stepped into the morning light.
Five men and three women were making their way up the stone stairs. They stopped short when they saw me.
“What are you doing here?” I called down to them.
One of the men—Dannix—broke into a run. He stumbled up the last steps. He looked far wearier than when I’d last seen him, his face pulled tight with stress, his eyes rimmed in red. “You,” he said, recognition dawning. “Did you come to help—?” He choked over his own words, unable to continue, then turned and shouted to the others, “She’s an alchemist!”
Dannix stumbled up, grasping my hands. “You came back,” he said, his eyes alight with hope so fierce it was almost painful to see, like looking at the sun. “You came to help treat the ones who stayed.”
My heart thudded in my chest. I couldn’t tell him that his son was dead, not with him looking at me like that. “What are you doing here?” I asked again.
The group of people reached the top steps, and one of the women stepped forward. For the first time, I noticed her pallium. “You’re a priest,” I said.
She nodded. “We came to give the proper rites to the dead,” she said.
I thought of the plague victims who had not wanted to be raised. “Thank you,” I said. “There are three who—”
“Three?” the woman interrupted. “We were told to expect closer to thirty.”
My eyes were on Dannix. I couldn’t voice what had happened.
So I opened the door.
“Ronan!” Dannix screamed, rushing forward. The others were more hesitant, stepping slowly into the foyer. The priest touched the three beads she wore at her throat, a prayer slipping past her lips.
“What is this?” she said, horrified.
Dannix knelt in front of his boy, holding him tightly, sobbing in relief and joy. He had not seemed to realize that his son was not truly alive.
But the others did.
Some backed away slowly, their eyes wide, as if the sunlight would protect them. A few stepped into the shadows, reaching out for other loved ones. They were all, I realized, related to the dead who had been left behind. They’d pooled together their resources and come here to perform the holy rites.
They did not expect the undead to meet them.
“This is . . .” the priest started, horror filling her face.
A revenant stepped forward. I knew through our connection that it was the priest’s mother. The priest’s lips moved wordlessly, though in prayer or curse I wasn’t sure.
“She’s a witch!” one of the people in the group—a heavyset man with dark eyes—shouted, pointing to me. “No better than Wellebourne!”
Dannix leaned back. For the first time, he seemed aware that his son wasn’t alive. “Is it you, Ro?” he asked.
Ronan nodded.
Dannix stood and turned. He dropped to his knees in front of me. “Thank you,” he said with palpable fervor.
“This isn’t right,” the priest said in a low voice, unable to rip her eyes away from her mother.
Footsteps echoed down the stone steps. Almost half the group was running away, back to the boat. With a horrified look in my direction, the priest turned around and chased after them.
Dannix, two other men, and a woman stayed behind. We watched as the others fled.
They would not keep this secret.
“You’re staying?” I asked Dannix and the others.
“I’d rather stay on this island with him than be anywhere else without him,” Ronan’s father said. “If you’ll have me.” He looked down, seeming to remember the way he’d attacked me just after his son’s amputation.
“You don’t care that it’s—”
“Blasphemy?” the woman said. I nodded.
“No,” Dannix said. His hand clutched Ronan’s as if he were afraid his son would disappear again. If he noticed how cold his son’s dead flesh was, he didn’t care.
FIFTY-SIX
Grey
The news sheets had been brutal.
TOP PROFESSOR AT YŪGEN ACADEMY ARRESTED FOR TREASON, they said in bold letters. SECRET HERITAGE OF BENNUM WELLEBOURNE EXPOSED!
What bothered me more were the questions.
“So, did you know?” Tomus asked, putting his breakfast tray on the table and sitting across from me in the cafeteria.
“You’ll have to be more specific,” I mumbled, not looking up. Several more students, emboldened by Tomus’s temerity, sat down as well, not disguising their starvation for gossip.
“Oh, any of it,” Tomus said, rolling his hand. “That Ostrum was a traitor. Or related to Wellebourne.” Tomus leaned forward. “Or maybe you know something about the school’s charity case.”
“I bet that’s why she’s not back,” Salis said haughtily. “She was an accomplice.”
My head snapped up at that, and Tomus grinned, knowing he’d struck a nerve. “Nedra’s not been in school for ages, Greggori, didn’t you notice?”
“Of course I’ve noticed,” I growled. I tried to ignore their la
ughter as I stormed away.
Tomus cornered me before I had a chance to escape the dining hall. We were both deeply aware of the rapt audience straining to listen.
“Wonder if she’s been arrested, too,” Tomus mused. “Your little girlfriend, I mean.”
“She’s not my girlfriend,” I said immediately. Not anymore.
Tomus raised an eyebrow. “Oh,” he said, drawing the word out. “You know, Ostrum was arrested before your meeting time with him. Did you run into him being dragged out in handcuffs?”
“No.” I bit the word off.
“I must admit,” Tomus said, raising his voice so others could hear, “I’m honestly surprised little Nedra hasn’t come sniffing around for Ostrum. I had thought, you know, if you two weren’t an item . . . well, there were all those special sessions . . .”
I knocked Tomus’s shoulder as I tried to move past him, heading to the door. Before I could reach it, however, it swung open.
Two men and a woman strode inside, their bright red coats announcing their position as Emperor’s guards. My stomach sank. They walked straight toward me. They knew who they were after.
“Greggori Astor?” the woman said in a clear, loud voice.
“Yes,” I said, tired. “Do we have to do this here?”
The guard looked surprised, blinking at the rabid attention of every single student in the cafeteria. “If you could come with us,” she said in a softer voice that nonetheless carried throughout the silent hall.
“Let’s get this over with.” I headed to the door, the Emperor’s Guard in my wake.
Outside Yūgen’s gate, horses stomped and snorted, their breath forming clouds around their heads, obscuring the crimson tassels on their bridles.
“Please get in the carriage,” the captain said.