“What does it matter if they know?” he asked and hesitated. “How will they know of the safe havens?”
“Because they were the Crown’s property—my property—the moment you were arrested, and I’ve been moving folks into them since your trial.”
“What have you done?”
“The Door isn’t really a Door,” I said, stepping toward him. “It’s more like a veil. The Vile won’t spill from it. The veil over our world will be lifted, and suddenly, we will be able to see them and they will be able to see us. They’ll appear in Mori and Drail and Felhollow at the same time, and eventually, everyone will know this was your fault. You spread the word. You’re the villains this time around.”
He laughed, head in his hands, and said, “You know we only kept you around because Old Ivy wanted a healer for Felhollow? She should’ve let me gift you to the Crown. Least the gold we’d have gotten would’ve done some good.”
My wrights, so wrong, so warm, so weighted on my back, curled around my shoulders like the family I didn’t have.
“I’m tired of hearing your voice,” I said, “and all the unsurprising terrible things you say.”
His words. Feast.
My vilewright unfurled from me, peeling from my skin, and Will gagged.
“It’s your arrogance that got you stopped. Know that.”
He mumbled and blood poured from his mouth. My vilewright tittered, its laughter settling over me like searing noonday sun. I grabbed Will’s arm and dragged him to the cave with the Door.
Alistair stood in the entrance. He glanced back, his red gaze falling to Will.
“Ignore him. He’ll be dead soon enough,” I said. “Julian can’t know that the Vile will appear all over Cynlira when he opens the Door. He needs to think that the councilors are still safe and that opening the Door will fulfill their plan.”
“If he opens it, you mean?” Alistair asked.
Will tried to pull away, and Alistair laid the dagger against his neck.
“No,” I said and stepped into the cave. “I don’t.”
Julian, white skin streaked red, stood at the cusp of the Door’s territory where blood and bone dust stained the dirt. Dangling in his hands were my penknife and a small blade carved from the rock shards of his cell. He stared at the Door, head cocked slightly.
“Hello, Lore,” he said softly, with such tenderness and familiarity it made my skin burn. He didn’t know me. He didn’t have a right to that name. “I hoped you would come.”
Hold Will. My blood.
My noblewright created two loops of flowing red about his hands, holding him to the ground. The liquid shifted and hardened to iron. I leaned over Will’s shoulders and turned his head to the Door.
It was only fair he witness what he had wanted for so long.
“So,” I said, stepping into the cavern’s mouth. “You want this to be your legacy?”
“I’m comfortable with dying,” Julian said, back still to me. “Will and I got the word out, so our people will be safe. Cynlira was dying anyway. At least this way, some of us live and can rebuild eventually, and they’ll know it was because of my father and me.”
He glanced over his shoulder, green eyes beacons above the half-moons of his exhaustion. Behind him, the Door opened an inch. My mother’s amber eyes glowed in the crack. Her hand, burned and weeping, scratched at the jamb. Will shrieked. Julian didn’t notice at all.
“And I think the Vile will be happy to leave the two of us alone when I offer them you and that boy.” Julian’s gaze fell on Alistair. “And you know, if I die today, I’m fairly all right so long as I take you with me.”
“Lorena,” said what might have been a voice if not for the odd creaking between the words. Doors opening. Teeth clenching too tight. “Darling, please. Let me out.”
“Shut up,” I said, stepping toward it. “You’re not—”
Pain lanced through my throat. Alistair screamed. Footsteps thundered toward me, then stopped. An arm hooked around my waist, Julian’s arm, and hoisted me up. I grasped my neck. My fingers slipped through the long cut across my throat. Blood dripped between my hands. It abandoned me with each heartbeat. Faster. Faster.
Please, I prayed, but I didn’t know the parts of the throat like healers did. They were never part of funeral rites. My noblewright whined, high and piercing, and Alistair screamed again.
I fell. Julian wiped my penknife on his shirt, blood smearing across his chest. I gagged, trying to think of a way to heal the wound, to close the hole, but nothing came. Spots crowded my vision. Julian pushed me toward the Door.
“Goodbye, Lore.”
Alistair tackled him. They rolled in the dirt, weapons forgotten. Alistair punched Julian in the face, and Julian rammed a knee in Alistair’s stomach, doubling him over. Julian shoved Alistair aside and flailed out with the knife. It cut Alistair’s cheek. He hissed.
Behind them, Will struggled against his bonds. I crawled toward him.
Re-create my damaged flesh.
My noblewright growled and fought, the vagueness tearing it in two.
Use Will’s throat.
Will Chase gasped and choked, and pain gnawed at the edges of my wound. My splintered bones snapped into place, and Will collapsed over his knees. Veins and muscle healed so fast it hurt. I clawed at my throat. I vomited blood and breathed.
“Lorena?” Alistair asked. “What is your plan?”
He had Julian pinned to the ground, one knee on his chest and his knife to Julian’s throat. His gaze dropped to my throat. He smiled.
Julian jammed his knife deep into Alistair’s chest. Alistair looked down, glasses slipping from his face. He touched the knife protruding from the scars where his binding once was, and Julian shoved him off. Alistair crumpled, his vilewright writhing in the red glare of my glasses.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, “but this is my plan.”
Alistair’s head lolled to me, eyes wide, and he laughed. Blood speckled his tongue. The words bubbled and popped in his throat. “I know, but how are you getting out of here?”
I brought my bloody hand to my face and drew my fingers down it. Alistair choked and shook his head. I traced a red line over my mouth.
Then, slowly, he dipped his hand into the wound of his body and smeared Death’s sigil across his face. A hand reaching from an open grave. An invitation. An understanding.
I was a graveyard so Cynlira wouldn’t be.
“Look at you. Different scar, same crown.” Julian shook his head, tears washing the blood from his face, and brandished his knife at me. His eyes never left Will’s corpse. “You really think those folks up there are worth this?”
Cynlira was broken because it had been built on coins and costs, and we’d one last price to pay.
“You child,” I said. “Why is everything about worth with you? People aren’t worth saving because they’re worth something. They’re worth it because they’re people!”
“It’s not my fault they’re not prepared!” He froze, hand fisted at his side. “You’re the one who changed. We made a deal with you, and you went back on it!”
“Your father was a councilor. He was supposed to protect Cynlira. They all were, and they didn’t. If any deal was broken, it was the one they made with the people they represented.”
“You’re punishing people for succeeding,” he said and took another step back. Three steps to the Door. “What are you going to do? Stop me, Lore? Kill me?”
I opened my mouth to answer—truthfully because I had not left—and a breathy laugh stopped me. Julian and I turned to the Door. It began to open.
“You can have them!” Julian gestured to me. “I’ll open you if you take them and let me leave.”
“That’s not how it works. A life isn’t equal to just any life. It’s the intention. You have to make the sacrifice matter.�
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The Door rattled. Whispers leaked through the cracks.
All the lives we’ve taken—the councilors and the courtiers, Alistair and Julian—and the peers who will die soon enough. Take them. Use them. Destroy the Vile’s ability to deny my request.
“You never understood self-sacrifice,” I said and touched the Door. “Let me teach you.”
Take me, and create a contract between the Vile and all of Cynlira.
“Do you really think that fragment of a Noble can bind us?” asked the Door in my mother’s voice.
Julian stumbled back, whimpering.
“No,” I said, “but I think you’ll want to take my deal, because you may be immortal, but we know what to do with immortal overlords these days.”
Whispers built up in the dark behind it. Voices howling, overlapping one another as if scrambling to be heard, until finally a sound like a boot crushing a beetle echoed through the cave. The Door opened another sliver.
“You can have the peerage. You can have all of them except the children, and the wrought won’t try to stop you.” My voice wavered. “But you can only have them if you agree to leave the rest of Cynlira’s people alone for a decade. No deaths. No tricks. No Vile can kill a mortal not part of the peerage. If you disagree, there are hundreds of wrought unbound and ready to fight. They can make your newfound freedom very uncomfortable.”
“Deal,” it said in a dozen voices. “Done.”
And I opened the Door.
Forty-Four
I fell through it face-first but landed on my back. There was no light, only pinpricks of white high above me like distant stars. The dirt rippled beneath me, like water around footsteps, and Julian’s shrieks grew distant as he ran. A pair of hands grabbed my ankles and dragged me away. The dark shrunk, and the stars drew nearer and sharper. I was yanked back through the Door with a groan.
Not the night but a mouth. Not stars but teeth.
Alistair pulled me into his lap, each breath a softer and softer gurgle, and turned my head toward the cavern’s entrance.
Julian stood waist-deep in the dirt. Blood welled wherever the earth touched him, and he tried to turn to me. Alistair’s arms slackened and fell away. His last breath rattled in his throat. I kept his hand in mine.
“Lorena?” called Julian.
He sunk to his chest with a jerk and screamed.
“I’m sorry, Jules,” I said and sobbed because I could remember loving him enough to use the pet name but not why I had loved him once. My hands were red with the death of a boy I could only remember in pieces and the death of one I had pieced together too late. “I’m sorry.”
“Lore?” he whispered. “You remember when we met? The blackberries?”
“I only remember the thorns.”
His last breath left him with a gasp. I slumped.
What were we if not the pieces of loved ones we had lost? A habit here, a keepsake there, and a last sentence lingering in our ears. Every part loved and returned to the earth in us. I was death.
“Don’t be melodramatic,” said a familiar voice. “I’ve met Death, and you’re nothing like them.”
I raised my head. Creek sat cross-legged before me, flowers blooming and worms writhing beneath him. Vines grew from the dirt and into him, twining between feathery tendons and muddy veins, and the gills of a mushroom rippled on the sides of his neck. He cracked his knuckles, and the joints snapped like tinder.
His eyes were Vile red.
“Little Lorena Adler played such a long game,” he said, and his laugh was the sound of rustling leaves.
I swallowed. “I opened the Door.”
“Yes,” he said, picking at his nails, “and it took you utter ages.”
“Were you the Door the whole time?” I asked.
“The thing you call the Door is the weakest of the Vile. That’s why we made it the Door.” He snorted and shook out his hair. “I am one of the Vile Crowns and have dominion over the chaotic aspects of life. You could not devour me so easily and are very lucky I like you.”
“Why—” My voice broke. Pain seared my throat, my chest. An ache pounded behind my eyes.
Dead. Dead. Dead.
So many dead by me.
“I’m a sacrifice,” I said and choked. “I’m supposed to die. I’m ready to die.”
“Not all sacrifices make us bleed. Your sacrifice, the one that binds us Vile to your deal, is living.” He stood, so much taller than Creek had been, and patted my shoulder with a hand too light to be flesh and blood. “Not all the Vile will obey it, of course, but you’re only mortal. Getting most of us was the best you could do. You’re going to live with yourself for a long, long time and help Cynlira recover. Or doom it. We’re not particular.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“We had fun, didn’t we?” He walked from the cavern, life blooming in his wake. “We owe debts, Lorena, and now our payments begin. Once you’re home, I’ll bring you a gift.”
I screamed till I couldn’t.
The sacrifice wasn’t my death. It was me living with these deaths and facing the folks whose loved ones I’d gotten killed.
Maybe they’d kill me.
I crawled toward the mouth of the cave. Moss and mushrooms speckled Julian’s body, but Alistair was untouched. I collapsed atop his chest, and set his glasses over his eyes. His shattered red gaze followed me from the cave.
He had understood. He had probably even guessed I’d have to live with this.
Shadows and sounds followed me, a whispering like wind or waves or rustling leaves. Bruises bloomed on my knees and elbows, and by the time I reached the top of the stairs, screams echoed down the halls. The peers, the ones I’d sacrificed, were still dying, and my wrights were still gone, enacting my will. I struggled toward the sounds of steel and stone clashing. An immortal howl shook the halls. I peeked around the corner.
Hana, face and chest splattered with blood, swept her sword in an arc through a smear of fog hovering in the hall. It split and fell, splashing against the ground. Blood oozed from the stormy flesh.
Four more Vile watched from the rafters and opened doors. A rattling thing with an empty chest dripping stomach acid to the floor drew in last breaths despite its missing lungs, but it didn’t lunge and try to devour Hana or the people she was protecting. A small beast whose ribs were a cage rocked back and forth, and the severed foot and dying rat trapped in its chest squished together. That Vile hadn’t lied; my contract had mostly worked. Hana beckoned the people behind her down the hall.
I tried to call out, but my voice was gone, dead as I had meant to be. I rapped on the floor. Hana spun, sword raised.
“Lorena!” She raced to me and held me up with one strong arm around my middle. “Shit. Shit. Shit. Are you dying? Where’s His Excellency?”
I shook my head and touched my throat. My arms hurt with even that little movement. We wove our way through the halls of the palace to the large church at the center of the grounds, and the nearer we got, the thicker grew the crowd of spawn not attacking but simply watching. We couldn’t and wouldn’t need to live exclusively in the church, but for now, I needed to help with what I could.
Mack and Basil, worse for wear, were at the gate leading into the church grounds. Mack scooped me up in both arms and carried me the rest of the way. Basil fluttered about him.
“Julian?” Mack asked.
I shook my head.
Basil touched Mack’s arm. “I’ll get Safia.”
“No,” I said. “I’ll live. Did it work?”
“Most folks are safe,” said Hana, rubbing her face. “A lot of Vile are just watching us, but the peers who were still in the palace…”
I tapped Mack’s shoulder till he set me down.
He sat in the dirt next to me, hand tight around my wrist. “What did you do?”
I sobbed, and he wiped my face.
The peerage and council were dead. Cynlira had no ruling bodies. Vile walked this world again. We’d have to rebuild completely, but we needed a new system not beholden to birthrights or costs.
“Lorena!” Safia, cheeks streaked with ash, came to a stop on the stone path I’d sat on, and she reached for Hana. A fresh cut on her arm had the bloodless look of a sacrifice. “Something’s coming. No heartbeat.”
“I feel it,” said Basil. “My noblewright’s cowering. It’s never cowered before.”
We made our way to the church gate. Safia stayed on the stone path some steps back. Hana reloaded a six-shooter, and I pointed to the Vile who watched us without attacking. A path of white asters spiraled up from the grass. The Vile backed away from it.
From around the bend came a line of children, each in the same plain dress of a Wallows orphanage, and none strayed from the path. The one in the lead carried a handful of green mums.
They sped up as they saw us. Basil and I darted forward, opening the gate. The first girl stumbled to a stop on wobbly legs, and Mack picked her up. She couldn’t have been older than four.
“We got lost,” she said, sniffing, “but Fran came back for us.”
Basil groaned. “Carlow was reinforcing some bridges over the Tongue so people could make it to Formet.”
“You must be very brave and smart to have gotten all the way here,” said Mack. He gestured to some cuts on her feet, and Basil healed them while the girl was distracted. “What happened?”
Hana and I herded the rest of the kids in the gate, and Safia started fussing over them.
“We were alone,” she said. “Then we weren’t.”
The Door opening.
“Fran made us close our eyes,” said another kid, his brown skin stained with blood that wasn’t his.
“This plan was shit,” called Carlow from the edge of the grounds, and the older kid next to her covered a nearby child’s ears. “We nearly scared the whole city to death with a bunch of Vile showing up and just watching.”
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