by Lana Popovic
In the middle of her vineyard, Jasna kept a wide circle clear of grapevines, its boundary defined by inlaid stones. Another flat-topped stone stood at the center as an altar, covered with a red linen cloth and the tools of Jasna’s craft.
Red and white taper candles flickered on either side of a bouquet, bloodflowers and carnations bound with scarlet thread next to a polished antler rack. A dish of water and one of salt sat in front of them, a glazed clay chalice of red wine to the left. In the center, a smoking censer wafted dragon’s blood and myrrh. Eleven blades with handles hewn from different kinds of wood were arranged around the altar.
It was strange to see magic that relied on tools for purpose instead of beauty, and for a moment I wished everything wasn’t so dire. The idea that I might never learn their use filled me with yet another, more wistful harmony of sadness.
If we lost tonight, we’d lose so much.
Ten men and women had come at Jasna’s call to stand with us. They wore crimson robes belted at the waist, while those of us who belonged to Mara were in flowing white.
Niko and Luka both stood with Jasna’s coven, Niko shooting anxious glances at me over her shoulder. She hadn’t wanted to be away from me—what if I needed her? But she would be safer there, and for once I refused to rely on her like I always did.
Jasna stepped into the clearing first, carrying the bristly broom from above her fireplace. The besom, I’d heard her call it. Her graying hair was loose, undone from its braid and rippling down her back. A bronze circlet sat on her brow, two crescent moons pressed back-to-back. She walked slowly around the circle, sweeping the broom back and forth, humming something wordless and lilting.
A song that pulled at my marrow, one to which I almost knew the words.
Once she made a full turn and knelt to face the altar, her coven formed a circle around her, each of them drawing the knives. Led by Mara, we followed like Jasna had asked us to do—ringing them in until we formed three concentric circles.
Jasna lowered her blade into the salt and then the water, murmuring an invocation under her breath. She sprinkled some of the crystals into the water bowl, stirring it with the point of her blade. Two of the others came up beside her, and she passed them the salted water and the smoking censer. Together the three walked around the circle, stopping at each cardinal direction.
Greeting them with elements.
We all turned like compass needles toward a magnetic lode, following their progression. But even if we were just visitors compared to them, I could hear the churning swell of power rise around us like some ancient song. It sounded loamy and dark, redolent of earth. It was potent enough that when the sky above us darkened, I actually thought clouds had come, gathering in response.
It wasn’t clouds, but the shadows of flying things.
Herron had brought hell with him. And then he broke it loose.
The first screeching devil that descended on us looked like a bat sewn from the jellied skins of snakes. It landed with a rake of talons, trumpeting fury and lashing its whiplike tail. Somehow, it had a human head, and even a stringy, Medusa approximation of hair. Behind the viscous features of its face I could see a suspended skull. As if whatever animated it had engulfed a human skeleton like a massive leech.
I’d known I’d be afraid, but I couldn’t have anticipated the breadth of the terror. As its roving, empty eyes settled on me, my voice nearly abandoned me.
Dunja appeared beside me, gripping my hand hard enough to make me gasp. “Come on, baby witch,” she whispered fiercely, giving my hand a shake. “Be our warrior songbird one more time, now that you know how. This nasty thing can’t even hope to touch you while I’m here. And don’t worry for your princess, not this time. She’s safe where she is. As safe as she can be, out here.”
Throwing a desperate glance behind me, I saw that Jasna and her coven had linked hands, Niko and Luka among them. They whirled around the altar, hair and robes flying. The rest of us faced outward, like their shield.
They’d feed us their own power while we fought, girding us with their will.
If they could do that for us, the least I could do was my part.
And we needed every gout of strength that I could muster for us. More and more of the devils landed in our midst, crashing through the grapes. Their chimera bodies made no sense, beyond equipping them to mutilate. Some had merged into hydras, while others waved crab pincers or gnashed insectile jaws.
And all of them trailed oily streamers of that slick darkness around them, so much deeper than the night.
No wonder he called them the lightless. Our world didn’t know this kind of dark.
But this time, I did know how to sing my full will for my kin.
Forcing breath into the bellows of my lungs, I plunged backward into my sharp-toothed cavern and began to sing my stony will. Singing the world toward what I wanted it to be.
“RISE UP, RISE UP, DEFEND YOUR BLOOD!
LET LOOSE YOUR GLEAMS PROTECT YOUR KIN!”
Seleni’s shadow army burst into life, like papier-mâché mannequins growing velvety flesh and blood. I could barely see them as they rushed by me, but under their smooth skin they felt like solid slabs of muscle. They followed her puppet-master lead, scaling one of the beasts and bringing it down in a tangle of wire, vines, and leaves. And Kisuna’s winged swarms buzzed all around in a sinister hum.
I couldn’t keep track of everything, with my every last cell straining to sustain the song. But I could see Izkara and Naisha wreaking havoc in the forms they’d taken on: one a roaring gryphon with a leathery hide, and the other a winged, feathered snake like some Mayan goddess.
Someone else had turned their gleam into a barrage of magnified crystals. They fell like lacy snowflakes, but ripped and shredded whatever they touched.
And ribbons of Amaya’s gold-and-blue flame streaked all around us, setting the beasts in the vineyard on fierce, bright fire.
Meanwhile, Dunja seemed everywhere at once, a vicious, pale blaze that felled whatever it struck. I saw her snatch one of the devils by its gelatinous head and grind the ballast skull inside to dust with the force of her grip. She didn’t stop until she’d torn the rest of it into quivering black gobs, which dissipated into smoke and then vanished. Every now and then the ground quaked under me, and I knew it had to be the aftershock of her stomp as she brought them down around her like axed trees.
I couldn’t focus on anything for too long, as I stood with hands clenched and head lifted to the sky. Calling on the choral force of my gleam with everything I had, my veins throbbing from the strain.
And in the middle of the fray, I saw Herron find Mara.
He was just a man, she had said, a man who had swallowed demons. Maybe she had meant that he’d once been a man. But now he was something far past that. He rose above the ground, aloft on writhing black. It held him up like a whirlwind, or a spectral exoskeleton. He flung out almost teasing tendrils of it at Mara—but each of the blows that landed cut so deep I could hear her stifled shrieks.
Her roses thrashed around her, drenched and backlit by the blinding light she was shedding from within. But even brilliantly alight with the gleam, nothing she did seemed enough to fend him off.
“What now, my sun?” he taunted her, flinging out a segmented spear of black like a spider leg. It struck her across the face, snapping back her head. The actual spoken words were guttural, coarse pebbles in his throat. But the echoing black around him thundered their meaning clear. “Is it not time for you to set? This world is not yours but mine and theirs, to suck dry of light like an egg. And I would begin by dousing its second sun.”
She shrieked something back in that same harsh language, as she lashed out at him with roses flung like javelins. Only to be batted down as if she hadn’t even moved. I had the sense of seeing only snippets of their battle, that most of it was happening faster than my eye could follow.
Then Mama appeared from the fray, and I saw that her roses were turning brittle. Petal
s flaked off her like shelled husks.
“Sorai, it’s not enough!” she called out to Mara. “Use me instead. Use all of me!”
Mara glanced back at her, torn—and again, Herron stole the chance to whip her across the face.
“Please, sorai!” Mama dropped to her knees with hands clenched and reaching out. “Let me be of help this time. Let me atone. It’s—it’s what I want.”
Mara nodded once, mouthing something that looked like silent thanks.
Then she began to grow.
Her roses coalesced, took on shape around her like battle armor. As she pulled them like a length of coiled rope from where Mama knelt, they wound around her legs and up her arms. Interlocked and webbing, they grew her floral claws and talons, tapering to points.
And buckling tight like a corset around Mara’s torso, they knit themselves into a thorned and leafy set of wings.
Somehow, with all the wonders that I’d seen, nothing compared to this. My far-mother launching into the star-scattered sky like a goshawk, her hair whipping around her while she beat petal-feathered wings.
I came from her. I came from this. Maybe she wasn’t really born of fallen angels, but she looked like she could have been.
Even Herron seemed briefly awestruck. For an instant I saw just a shadow of the old love he must have felt for her flicker across his face, before everything but malice slid away from it.
Then they dashed into each other like colliding storms, black falling into black.
Twenty-Six
Iris
I ONLY HAD TO TOUCH THE ARROWHEAD’S POINT TO ONE OF the jar’s keyholes, just once. The glass melted away instantly, vanishing like dew, dropping the foul, slick heart right into my waiting hands.
I brought it with me to the nearest seam, beneath the chapel’s back entrance. And from there I plunged into the Quiet with the soul clutched to my chest.
Like all the times before, I knit a cocoon for my own protection, sealing myself inside. The branches and blooms curled tight around me, the stamen at the center. Hold me safe and then deliver me, I commanded it.
Once I was as secure as I could be, spun up snug, I began snaking offshoots outward and away, following the trail of Quiet. It was the seam that sewed together all the disparate parts of the kingdom, Fjolar had told me so many times. That threaded through it like marbling through a cut of meat.
I should have understood what that meant long before I met the Lady, and maybe I had but couldn’t bring myself to face it.
Once the Quiet was gone, the pieces would separate from each other, spilling loose like beads from a snipped necklace thread. What would happen to them, I didn’t know. Maybe they would continue existing by themselves, rolling across the fabric of the cosmos like pearls across a hardwood floor. Or maybe they would vanish like wisps when they parted from each other, without the centrifugal spin of Fjolar’s and my courtship emanating from within.
What it certainly would do was destroy the kingdom itself, and set me and Herron’s soul free as it rattled apart.
A part of me, the part that already mourned Fjolar’s loss, was unutterably sad to destroy such a fantasia.
But most of me could hardly wait, pounding with eagerness to be back where I belonged.
I could feel when my wisteria lanced completely through the Quiet, as the branches looped around to meet each other and splice together into an unbroken circle. The connective tissue of the kingdom was now speared through with my will.
And what I willed was for it to break apart.
It was so much easier than I thought it would be, like blowing on a dandelion. At my bidding, it blew away like wisps of thistledown, and without the kingdom holding me up, my nest and I began to plummet. We plunged into that golden, behemoth world that I’d sunk through like molasses on my way into the kingdom—but this time Fjolar wasn’t with me to seal the breach made by my passing.
Like honey dripping from a comb, the gleam of the world followed me through, brilliant as a breaking dawn—as I tumbled into the wreckage of a vineyard half torn down and entirely on fire, with a winged Mara wrestling a giant of a demon in the sky above.
Twenty-Seven
Malina
THE FLOWERS IN MAMA’S SKIN HAD WITHERED AND CURLED, as if they’d been dried and pressed while still attached to her. I knelt by her side, clutching her hand. I could still hear her, but she was so awfully faint.
Just the fading, high echo of chimes stilling in a dying wind.
“I don’t . . . I don’t have any more to give her,” she breathed through cracked lips as Herron and Mara thrashed above us. Her eyes were so bloodshot from strain that the irises blazed bright green against the red, and her lids quivered like dry leaves. “I’m sorry, my cherry girl. I love you so much, and your sister. Please tell her I love her, and say good-bye for me.”
I couldn’t do this twice. It was too much to ask, of anyone.
“Please don’t go,” I begged, bent over her with our foreheads pressed together, dripping tears onto her face. “I can find Amrisa, she’ll know a way. She can heal you like she healed Mara’s burns, and everyone else, she can—”
“I’m not hurt, sweet,” she whispered. “I’m finally dying, like the already dead are meant to do. It’s all right. I had such sunshine with you girls. Much more than I thought I could have. It was worth it, my cherry girl.” She focused her bloodied eyes on me, and I could see the effort that it took. “You were both worth everything.”
At least this time I was there to see her die.
Iris missed it by moments. She wasn’t there, and then she was, tumbling out of a dazzling, light-soaked breach in the night. The split she left behind hovered, leading to somewhere vast and blinding. She rolled onto her knees on the ground, something held curled to her chest.
For a second she just stayed there, her forehead pressed against the soil and shoulders heaving with shuddering breaths. Then she propped herself up, still on her knees, and assessed the burning terrain around her. Her eyes roamed wildly over the flaming ruin of the vineyard, the writhing tangle of demons and Mara’s daughters pressing them back.
Then she saw me.
“Lina, I have it!” she called out, standing knock-kneed before stumbling over to me. “The soul, I brought it, and I—”
Her gaze finally landed on Mama, and she clapped her free hand over her mouth, her eyes flicking up to mine.
“She’s dead,” I said dumbly. “We lost her, again. And I don’t know what we do with the soul. Mara can’t beat him. She’s done everything she can, and he’s still winning.” I jutted my chin up at the sky. “Look.”
In the air, Herron held Mara pinned against him, arms locked across her chest. She sparked in and out like a light-bulb filament, while his snaking tendrils tore her wings apart petal by petal. They fell over us like ashen rain, dissolving before they landed. She’d scratched him across the face with her thorn talons, but even the ragged welts bled black rather than red.
She was still struggling against him with every muscle, but even from down here, her face was tear-slicked with defeat.
“Oh, God,” Riss breathed. “It’s him.”
And then, “Jovan.”
Then she dropped the soul beside me and took off—straight toward Herron and Mara.
Twenty-Eight
Iris
IT WAS ČIČA JOVAN.
He was here, right below the threshing battle between the demon and Mara with her black-rose wings. Swaying, he stood at its brink—and if he lurched any closer to it, he’d be swept up in their whirlwind and destroyed.
I’d been too late to save Mama—again, to hell with everything—but I could still save him.
He didn’t even have his battle cane, I thought as I sprinted toward him, stricken with terror. How was he even standing up so straight?
“Jovan,” I gasped out as I reached him, my hand landing on his shoulder. “Jovan, it’s me—come, get back—”
He wheeled to greet me, and the words t
urned to sour ash in my mouth.
His eyes were oil in his beloved face. It even dripped from them, in rivulets, across the slack flaps of his cheeks. Blood streaked across it, had dried his white hair into tufts. He looked almost like a carrion bird, with blood and flesh lodged in its beak.
“No,” I whispered, bottoming out with dread and devastation. “Not this.”
He growled low, then shrieked at me, a grotesque, mindless hunger flowing across his face.
“Not that one, pet.” A distorted, glottal voice crashed over us, impossibly loud, enough to pierce through the crackle of the burning battlefield. “That little spy is mine.”
Black snaked around my waist, tightening like a vise. All the breath whooshed out of me as it swept me up and turned me—leaving me dangling in midair with my face inches from Herron’s.
I struggled against the grip, screaming, though even if it let me go the fall would shatter all my bones. We were what felt like a mile above the ground.
The demon peered at my face in slow perusal. His eyes strobed between green and iridescent black, and his face was threaded with pulsing black veins. Dark hair floated around him like ink in water, and he smiled at me, almost sweet, licking full lips.
“I know you, little spy-witch,” he growled, in that hellish, velveteen cadence that came from beyond his words. “Peering at me like a fawn from behind a tree, stealing glances at me like a sprite hiding in a mirror. Thank you for breaking loose my bonds.”
“You took Jovan!” I screamed into his face, enraged and terrified and beyond all reason. I could hear Mara faintly, bellowing something at me, but I didn’t know what she said and couldn’t bring myself to care. Nothing mattered but me and this thing. “You took him, and you killed my mother, and now you’re going to die!”
Amusement flared in his eyes. “Ah, so he was yours, that old man who smelled of light. I thought that it was not quite her scent lingering on him. And I’d very much like to see you try to kill me for them, pretty fawn. For you, I’ll even hold still.”