“Is there a back door?” I asked.
“Just windows.”
“I need to watch Lord Tower’s back,” Mayan said. “I’ll make sure nothing takes you from behind. Be careful—the scion isn’t our main target, so don’t take any risks.”
“Don’t tell me my fucking job,” Brand said. “If we let Ashton get away, what’s to stop him from summoning the lich again? Fail-safe five, take point.”
My golem bounded into the lead. It had lost its sunglasses somewhere, and its eyes left orange tracers in the air.
The four of us moved down a short hallway lined with marble busts. I scuffed my foot in a blood trail, wondering how badly Ashton had been hurt. I didn’t have to wonder long. The hallway opened into a huge, circular room with a fountain in its center. Ashton stood on a raised dais opposite us, recarnates spaced in front of him.
“So it comes to this,” he called to us.
“Your last fucking soliloquy?” Brand asked.
“Perhaps. But, like I said, interesting things happen when you find yourself in a corner.”
Sigil spells flared free. Ashton lifted a hand toward the fountain. Pipes ripped upward in a geyser of water. Ashton waved a hand, and the water spun toward him in a cyclone. He ran his fingers through the blood on his belly, then shook droplets into the water. The swirling funnel darkened and steamed. Death magic.
“Freeze it!” I shouted as Ashton sent the cyclone at us.
Addam threw his Frost spell at the cyclone. It glanced off the poisonous water, which spun to a sluggish, then frozen, halt. I sent a lance of Fire forward and shattered it.
“Kill them!” Ashton yelled.
“Fail-safe five,” Brand said.
Recarnates and golem leapt at each other. Brand swapped glances with Addam and me, trying to get us to approach on one flank while he went to another. I swapped a glance right back at him. Brand glared at me, but nodded. He and Addam took the far approach.
I was crossing to the other side of the hall when Ella Saint Nicholas ran into the room.
It was not a graceful run. She wore a dirty, white shift, and a cracked mirror was clasped in her hand like a Disney witch. I tried to grab her, but she wrenched free. She had three silver necklaces around her gaunt neck, and she headed straight at the recarnates while touching one and releasing a spell.
There are things all Atlanteans know how to do. Bad things. Like burning ants with magnifying glasses, but on the scale of young gods. Most kids grew out of that phase before their parents beat it out of them, but in the back of our minds, we all remembered.
The spell Ella let loose tore a hole in reality. It unraveled the souls of the recarnates. She didn’t kill them, or release them. She shredded them. It would take decades before they found the cohesion to properly die. It was their final desecration.
Across the room, Addam watched it happen, and his cry was filled with genuine despair.
“FACE ME!” Ella shrieked at Ashton. “FACE ME!”
Brand and Addam ran at her. Ashton released another spell. I aimed my sabre at Ashton’s head and fired. He scrambled from its path, and the loss of concentration interrupted his spell.
Just as Addam reached his sister, Ella activated a second spell and turned to face the golem. Air whistled as something sliced through it. My golem’s face was ripped apart in great, bloodless strips, from eye to jaw.
“Get him down!” I shouted to Brand, terrified. “Get Addam down!”
A golem is forged from the deepest fires of the earth. Cutting it open compromised the safeguards, meaning that Ella had more or less skinned a grenade.
Brand tackled Addam and rolled him behind the broken fountain. I dove behind a pillar. The golem detonated. The blast wave nearly bowled me over. Through our bond, I felt Brand’s sentience snuffed—alive, but knocked out. A quick glance showed that Addam wasn’t moving— I’d have to hope he was okay; I didn’t have time to check. I climbed unsteadily to my feet but couldn’t see them through the cordite haze.
Ella was crouched behind a Shield. Ashton was, as well. My sabre wasn’t in my hand anymore. I turned around in a dazed circle to find it, dimly aware of my concussion.
Ella stormed toward the dais. Ashton pulled pendants from under his shirt and wrapped his fist around them. The flash-fire release of sigil spells made the air steam. A heartbeat before they began to fling magic against each other, the ground shook.
An inhuman shriek came from every direction at once. I covered my ears and watched as a whipcord of energy raced across the floor. It washed over us, and in its wake my Fire was snuffed out. We’d been hit with a moving null line.
Ashton and Ella hadn’t figured it out. They stood there, pantomiming useless arm swipes, looking puzzled at the lack of response. I picked up a length of rebar that had been severed from the destroyed fountain.
“No,” Ashton said in a small voice. He ran his hands frantically over his emptied pendants. “No.”
Ella had cut her forehead open, and blood covered one of her eyes. “Why did you do it, Ashton?” she begged.
Ashton touched the rings on his fingers; the bracelet on his wrist; a broach on his chest. He was making a desperate, stuttering sound.
“Why?” Ella said, in a voice filled with lucid grief. “I loved him. He loved me. Do you have any idea what that meant? How long I’ve waited for someone to want me? Why did you take him away?”
“You stupid bitch,” Ashton said. There were tears in his eyes. “Do you have any idea what’s happening?”
“Michael’s dead, and everything is over,” Ella said. “I know exactly what has happened. Why did you do it? We would have gotten away with it!”
“You would never have gotten away with it,” Ashton said.
“We would have! My mother wouldn’t have punished us. She would have been impressed with me. She would have approved. She would have respected my strength and resolve and cunning. She didn’t try to stop me, did she?”
“Ella,” I said, and coughed up dust. I couldn’t be sure that all her sigils were empty. “Stop this. It’s not too late for you.”
“It is.” She looked at her feet. “There’s nothing left to care about.”
“TAKE REVENGE!” Ashton yelled. “If you want to honor Michael, then rip that man apart! If he hadn’t interfered, we wouldn’t be here!”
“He didn’t kill Michael. You did.” She looked back up at Ashton, and the craziness was gone. “Why don’t you tear him apart? You don’t have any sigil spells left, do you, Ashton? I do. I can do awful things to you.”
“Ella, listen to me,” Ashton begged. He swept down the dais stairs and, when he was close enough, punched her in the collarbone. It sounded like a bag of branches being swung against a cement wall. Ella grunted and hit the ground. She didn’t get up.
Ashton spun toward me, and I saw it on his face. Ella was right. He had no more spells left.
I stalked toward him. Ashton lifted his arms to protect his head. I prodded the end of the rebar into his gut so that he tumbled backward. I said, “There was a household servant who heard his friend being hurt, and ran toward him, right into the arms of a draug.”
I stabbed at his gut again. “There was another who caught fire, and died while I put him out.”
Now I swung, and took out Ashton’s knee. He crumpled with a howl. I spoke above his shouts. “And there’s a woman whose son worked in the gardens and who probably died when I trapped him outside my defense spell. Do you think there are any remains? Do you think she’ll have anything to bury? Do you feel anything for these people you’ve destroyed, you miserable, useless inbred?”
Ashton started laughing through gasps of pain. “Just you wait until I tell you what I feel.”
I hauled back, ready to crack his head open.
“They planned this,” he yelled quickly. “I think they always knew this was going to happen. I think they put a leash on my neck, and tied it to a post in the ground, and then I went and swung myself full circl
e.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“They wanted you involved. They weren’t helping me—they weren’t repaying an old favor. This was never about my plans with the Hermit, not for them. This is a game board within a game board. This is about you. They knew that you, of all people, of all fucking people on this island, they knew you would get involved.”
“Who are they?” I demanded.
Tears washed clean, hot lines down Ashton’s dirty face. “This is all about you. And that’s why you’re going to do what I ask.”
“That is very fucking unlikely.”
“You’re going to kill me,” he said.
I hefted the rebar, balancing the weight in my hand. “Don’t worry; you’ll die. For what you’ve done, every Arcana will turn hand against you, even your own father. You will not survive this, Ashton.”
“If you don’t kill me now, right now, they’ll get to me. This will never go to trial. They won’t risk my spirit being called back to confess. They’ll send the Sorrowful Mothers after me. They will destroy my soul. Do you understand what I’m saying? They will erase me.”
“You can’t play with my head. Whatever this is, it won’t work.”
“I wore the cat mask,” Ashton said.
I froze.
“I wore the cat mask,” he repeated.
“This is bullshit,” I said, but my voice shook.
“I wore contacts so you wouldn’t be able to describe my eyes. We all wore cheap, black clothing from an American department store. There were nine of us. Everyone seems to get that wrong—perhaps you intend it that way. But there were nine of us, in that carriage house. And I was in the cat mask.”
I almost dropped the rebar. I shook my head.
Ashton gave me a bloody smile. “I was the one who dipped the broom handle in a barrel of road salt, and then fucked you with it until you screamed yourself unconscious.”
My vision filled with black fireflies. I took a deep, noisy breath, but the automatic breathing reflex didn’t kick in. I had to force more air into my lungs.
“Now kill me,” Ashton said.
“This isn’t happening.”
His smile cracked. “I was just as much a tool as you were. We were all just tools. You have no idea what’s at stake. You have no idea who your real enemy is. Kill me!”
“I . . . It . . . tools? What are you . . . ? I was fifteen years old,” I said. The words were hoarse and raw. “I was only fifteen years old.”
There were noises in the corridor. Lord Tower was calling my name.
Ashton said, “Kill me or I’ll tell everything. Have you forgotten what I saw? What I know? I was there. I know what happened. I know the secrets you keep. What will happen when he finds out?”
Just like that, my anger became terror.
It was a very specific fear, one I kept buried in the farthest corner of my brain. It came out like a weed, trailing noxious roots of memory.
“Kill me!” Ashton hissed.
Across the room, Lord Tower called out.
“Gods,” I whispered, and I didn’t know what to do. Lord Tower was here. Lord Tower would find out. I could not trust Lord Tower with this information. I’d lose everything.
“Kill me or—”
“No,” I said. “No, no, you—”
He raised his voice into a shout. “On the night—”
I touched my white-gold ring and unleashed Exodus.
A woman’s voice.
“People say white is a peaceful color,” she tells me. “The color of silence, and rest, and emptiness. People lie. Ask anyone who’s ever been caught in a killing blizzard. Or watched the static on television screens following a nuclear blast. Or stood in the path of that spell of yours. That Exodus was quite the loud, blank mess, child.”
All around me, whiteness. It flows and groans, a current of sensation leading into the ineffable distance.
“You’re enjoying oblivion far too much,” she says.
I ignore her and let the River pull me.
“Stop,” the woman says, and she pins me in place with a force of will.
“Wake,” the woman says, and she throws me back the way I came.
I was in Addam’s arms. He cradled me and whispered my name, and ran fingers through my hair. My bangs were heavy with dirt and oil.
One of my ears wasn’t working. My chest hurt. I looked down and saw that blood had dried to a tacky mess alongside deeply sunburned skin. I’d been healed recently.
My Companion bond stirred sluggishly. With unerring accuracy, I turned my head so I could see Brand. He lay in the dirt not far away, dazed and barely conscious. Addam’s jacket was wadded under his head.
“You’re back,” Addam whispered.
I opened my mouth to ask him why it was so dark, and coughed up blood. Addam rubbed his hands over my chest in small, smoothing circles until I gagged myself silent.
I tried again. “Where’s Ashton? . . . Why is it so dark?”
“Ashton is gone.”
“He got away?” I rasped.
“No,” Addam said. “He’s . . . gone.”
“You vaporized him,” Lord Tower said. “Along with several rather important pillars.”
I craned my head back. The room was dark, except for someone’s cantrip light. The roof seemed so close that I could touch it. “Are we in a crawlspace?” I asked, confused.
“We are not,” Lord Tower said. “My Shield is holding the roof from our heads. I’ll need your help to get it off us, once you catch your breath.”
“Well, shit,” I coughed.
Lord Tower whispered a cantrip, and three more balls of light lit the space between us. I could see the Tower’s face now, and I knew that look. He wanted to see my reaction for himself.
“What happened?” he asked.
“I already told him,” Addam said. “Ashton was about to use forbidden magic. You saved us.”
Not only was Addam a very bad liar, but the fact that he even tried to lie made me think he hadn’t been all that unconscious in the end.
Before I had time to worry, Brand began coughing, too. He said, “I had the weirdest fucking dream. You were swatting a fly with a sack of nitroglycerin.”
“Nitroglycerin the heart medication, or nitroglycerin the explosive?” I asked.
“You really want me to come over there and explain my metaphor?”
“Yes,” I said, and I was being honest, because I wanted to see him move and know he wasn’t hurt.
His gaze softened.
“I’m okay, Rune,” he said. “We’re okay.”
EPILOGUE
A week passed.
I was still jumping at shadows. Battle adrenaline had a way of working itself into your muscle memory. It was tough to let it go, even in the narrow comfort of Half House.
Ella Saint Nicholas was in custody. I was called to give carefully edited evidence to the Arcanum. For reasons which were my own, I protected Geoffrey and Michael from the worst of it. Michael would be remembered as a dumb bastard manipulated by Ashton. Geoffrey was required to offer the Arcanum a Vow of Redemption. He’d be watched for the rest of his life, but he wouldn’t be executed.
Ashton’s minimal remains were buried in a potter’s field. I hadn’t heard from Strength’s people, which made me nervous, since I killed their heir scion. But I heard through Addam that Lord Strength was accepting the shame of his son’s actions, not excusing them.
Could Ashton’s spirit be raised for questioning? I didn’t know. One crisis at a time.
I hadn’t heard from Lady Justice either, but, then again, I’d gotten her daughter arrested, had dragged her son into the Westlands (where people died, and he lost about a million dollars’ worth of sigils), and wasn’t able to keep another son out of a coma. I wasn’t holding my breath for a gift basket.
Addam spent nearly every waking moment by Quinn’s bedside until Quinn woke up. Addam’s other brother, Christian, stabilized. With Geoffrey’s help, th
ey determined that Ashton had poisoned him with a rare herb, and they were able to develop an antidote.
Brand and I went to a mass funeral in the Westlands for the Moral Certainty staff who lost their lives in the siege. I held an old woman’s granddaughter—the little girl I’d sensed in the dumbwaiter—while the woman keened over her son’s coffin.
Ciaran faded back into the woodwork. Our partnership had been strange and brief and wholly unexpected. I made sure he was compensated by Lord Tower, and hoped I’d have a chance to thank him personally.
Addam’s assistant, Lilly Rose, baked cookies and offered to give us a kitten. Brand told her I’d once killed a cactus, but baked goods were acceptable.
Lord Hierophant sent me a water bill for my emergency stay in his mansion, along with a politely worded threat not to mention anything I saw. Such as a clay soldier? I tucked that tidbit away against future need.
As for my own golem, there was no word if Lord Tower replaced it.
Lord Tower himself had been quiet. A large check was messengered over, but he hadn’t spoken with me personally, or raised the question of what happened with Ashton. As far as Lord Tower went, that meant he was on the hunt. But there were some secrets I’d kill to keep. I had to trust that Lord Tower would respect that boundary if I confronted him with it.
There were a lot of other remaining questions. The events of last week hadn’t left me with loose ends, so much as a hundred different knots.
But such was life. I’d cope.
“Max,” I said from the doorway of the guest room.
He squeezed his eyes shut and pretended to be asleep.
“Brand hasn’t made you listen to the recording yet?” I asked.
Too curious for his own good, Max cracked an eyelid. “What recording?”
“Of you sleeping.”
“Why does Brand have a recording of me sleeping?”
“It’s one of his training exercises. He’ll make a recording of you sleeping, and then you have to practice breathing like you do when you’re asleep. That way, if you get kidnapped, you can fake being unconscious.”
“I think you’re joking,” Max said uncertainly.
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