But they didn’t understand how hard it was and how loud the voices in her head were when Ashwood wasn’t there to quell them. They didn’t know what it was like to live in the shadow of a brother born with staves, prophesied to lead them to greatness.
Zekia tried so hard to perfect her magic and quiet its screams, but all it did was lead her straight into the head of a boy just as desperate to prove himself as she was.
Stumbling into Wesley’s mind was like a sign, flashing a thousand possibilities across her vision. It sent her Intuitcrafter magic into even more of a tailspin and in every maddening prediction Zekia saw, she also felt with absolute certainty that everything would be okay if Wesley was there.
It was why she’d traveled to Creije to meet him.
And then Dante Ashwood found her.
He opened her eyes to a new way.
He made Zekia realize that there was so much evil ready to swallow the world.
This is what becomes of us.
“You will live to regret waging a war against your Doyen,” Aurelia said. “It will be the end of you and perhaps even the end of us.”
Zekia shook her head.
Aurelia had it backward. Without this war the realms would burn, but with Ashwood to lead them, they would create a world of light. Zekia and Wesley could help unite people under a time of magic.
Just a little blood, to keep the streets clean of death.
Zekia could save everyone else.
And so wasn’t it worth it?
Wasn’t she good?
Wasn’t she deserving of her brother’s destiny?
“Is that your final word?” Ashwood asked.
Aurelia looked at him, her chin high enough to hide her uncertain eyes and draw attention from the shaking hands she kept tucked away in the pockets of her dress.
“The underrealm of Volo will never support your claim as Doyen of Uskhanya,” Aurelia said. “And I will never gather my buskers and underbosses to help prop up your armies.”
Dante Ashwood nodded solemnly. “Then so be it,” he said.
Zekia’s heart pounded.
He turned to her.
“Little warrior.”
She felt him smile.
“Time to fight.”
Zekia bowed her head, like the good soldier that she was now.
This is what becomes of us.
Ashwood had whispered it in her ear when they first met, and then in her mind as an ugly, bloody future churned inside of her like a sickness. A vision of how the realms could turn out if they didn’t do something to stop it.
It was all she could see and taste and smell, even now, years on. The burnt bodies and slickness of Crafter blood on the ground, the skies raining red and the mad, mad humans—the magic-haters who were so scared of them—smiling as everything crumbled to ash and darkness.
It was all Zekia saw when she closed her eyes, or when she looked into the shadows that surrounded Dante Ashwood.
Dark and ash.
Dark and ash.
Zekia wasn’t mad. It was the rest of the realms who had lost their minds. They were mad for not being scared and for not dropping to their knees and begging her and Ashwood to stop it.
Mad, mad, all of them.
“What are you doing?” Aurelia asked, eyeing her.
Zekia swallowed and raised her hand in the air.
Just a little blood. It was what needed to be done.
She looked at Aurelia and when the woman met her gaze, her eyes widened.
“Don’t—”
Zekia brought her hand down and the air cut across Aurelia’s neck as though it were a knife.
The Kingpin of Volo grabbed at her wound, gargling as the blood spouted from her neck. She stumbled forward and Zekia almost shook her head to scream at her not to come near.
She didn’t want to get the blood on her dress. It would stain, like a memory, and she wanted to forget this moment as quickly as possible.
She couldn’t step back, though, because Ashwood was there and he was watching and she was his little warrior.
Zekia counted the seconds until Aurelia finally fell to the floor with a horrible thud and stopped making that stomach-churning gurgle sound.
She counted the seconds until Aurelia’s eyes went blank and her hands fell from her neck.
The blood was dark and quick.
Simran gulped and it was loud enough to draw Zekia’s attention away from the lifeless woman.
“And what of you?” Ashwood asked. “Stand by me, Simran, or I will replace you just like I will be replacing Aurelia. There is not a person in the realms who can stop this war.”
Simran kept his eyes on Aurelia’s body, and though he opened his mouth to speak, no words came. It took him a few moments to realize this and so he simply nodded, unblinking and unspeaking, watching Aurelia’s blood coat the train floor like spilled paint.
“Wonderful,” Ashwood said. “Then together we will go down in history as the makers of a new world.”
Simran blinked and turned slowly to face Ashwood. To face Zekia. His eyes held a look of fear that turned her heart to lead.
This is what becomes of us.
12
WESLEY
Wesley looked to the window.
He could hear the sounds of the ocean below and feel the breeze from the oncoming rain clouds that circled above the high-rise mausoleum, giving the stately dead a view of the horizon that the sandy graves below couldn’t dream of.
This was his window of opportunity.
Literally.
Because Wesley was going to jump out of it.
Just as soon as Zekia came back, which would be in exactly three minutes, like a very predictable and slightly psychopathic clock. Wesley would wait until she untied him—as she always did when she climbed inside his mind, so he wasn’t distracted or brought out of the vision by the chafing on his wrists—and once she did that, he’d use his magic to overpower her and leap to freedom.
As far as plans went, it needed fine-tuning, but Wesley would work on that part after he’d jumped out of the window. All that mattered was that he needed to leave, and despite what he wanted, he couldn’t take Zekia with him.
They’d moved him from Creije to the cemetery shores of Tisvgen after Ashwood had made his deal with the other Kingpins. Creije was becoming too dangerous of a battleground and so now Wesley had to rethink all the carefully laid exit plans he’d formulated back in his city. These shores were new and strange, but the waters of the Onnela Sea below would prove useful.
Not to mention that Tisvgen was closer to Rishiya, and so closer to Tavia and the others.
Wesley shuffled against the wall.
From the corner, the shadow demon snarled down at him, spit stringing from its ghostly jaws.
“What are you looking at, you giant worm? You’re not allowed to kill me.”
The demon growled, as though it could actually understand a word of what Wesley had said. For all he knew, it could. Zekia spoke to the demon the same way she spoke to Wesley: with her mind. The Intuitcrafter magic inside of her churning into the demon’s brain so her thoughts became its, and there was no way it could dream of disobeying her because she controlled its dreams and everything else.
Wesley knew how that felt.
The demon kept its focus on him and whenever Wesley shuffled, it inched closer or bowed its head to get a better look.
Maybe the mind connection worked both ways and it could see exactly what Wesley was planning to do. Maybe his own Intuitcrafter powers were backfiring and laying his soul bare.
“Too bad you’re a watchdog and not an attack dog now,” Wesley said.
The demon stood on its hind legs.
Wesley didn’t blink.
He knew the beast couldn’t hurt him. Zekia had given her orders and they were circling through the creature’s mind over and over and over, like a melody.
The door to the room—to the cell—creaked open and Wesley didn’t need to look t
o know it was her. It was always Zekia and never Ashwood, as though the Kingpin could rarely stand to see his prodigy so weak and useless.
“You look less tired today,” Zekia said. “Did you sleep? I couldn’t sleep a wink with all those people out there.”
By people, she meant the dead.
Wesley turned to her. “It’s not like you don’t deserve to be haunted a little bit, kid.”
Zekia laughed, like Wesley was very naïve and she found it very funny.
“They’re not haunting me, silly,” she said. “Just letting me know that they’re there. Clogging up my head with all the futures they could have had and the things they wanted to be before they died. I don’t mind it so much, but the worst of them are the ones who think they should have lived. Like anyone deserves to die.”
Wesley thought lots of people deserved to die.
Probably both of them included.
“You’re not a Spiritcrafter, kid. You can’t talk to the dead.”
“I didn’t say I was talking to them. They’re talking to me. Or just existing around me and getting their alternative futures all muddled in my brain. Don’t they bother you?”
“No,” Wesley said. “But then again, I’m not crazy.”
Zekia’s smile twitched, but she swallowed whatever emotion she didn’t feel like feeling at that moment and walked toward him. Her dress bounced up and down with her steps.
Zekia always wore a white dress, just as she always dressed Wesley in suits—like he was a doll she’d been given and that she cherished as her favorite toy.
“I could teach you,” she said.
She knelt down next to him.
“Teach me to be crazy? I’ll pass.”
Wesley kept his eyes on her hands, waiting for her to snap her fingers and let the silver slivers of her magic trickle around his wrists and loosen his restraints.
But she didn’t.
Instead she put her hands on her hips and shook her head admonishingly.
“I could teach you to master your magic like Amja was helping me to do,” she said. “When you learn, you can help me and all the other Crafters we’ve found be safe again and for always. The new realm we’re going to build will be so much stronger with you, Wesley. Two Intuitcrafters to lead them would be the best thing they could hope for.”
Zekia really did think that by telling Wesley who and what he was, she’d endear him to her and make him think that they were cut from the same cloth. But telling Wesley he was a Crafter had only reminded him that nobody, not a single soul in the realms, was made of the same dark thing that he was. He was uniquely Wesley Thornton Walcott and the fact that he had true magic just made him even more of a force to be reckoned with.
It made him think of new ways to bring Dante Ashwood down.
Zekia sighed when Wesley didn’t answer.
She tucked her hair behind her ears and then snapped her fingers with a loud huff, like just talking to him was exhausting.
Wesley watched as her magic snaked around his wrists, until he felt a small jolt and the string that bound him dropped to the floor. Almost immediately he felt his magic stir inside of him, nervous and also eager.
It had been starved for so long and, finally, it could sense the time to strike was near.
“Remember how I said you were crazy?”
Zekia nodded. “You say that a lot. It’s a little mean.”
“Yeah,” Wesley said. “Well, it turns out I might be crazier.”
And then his hand shot out and Zekia flew backward into the shadow demon. The two of them collided with each other and then the wall, the demon’s smoky limbs tangled into Zekia’s like some kind of an awful jigsaw.
Zekia made to stand, but Wesley kept his hand firm, pinning her to the floor. He pushed every wish and hope he had inside of him toward her in a tunnel of gray magic.
Just like the one she had tried to use on Saxony back on Ashwood’s hidden island.
The one Wesley had jumped in front of that nearly cost him his sanity.
Wesley summoned every single thought he could muster and launched them at her in a tirade. All of his wants and desires. And then futures, things he hadn’t even realized he knew. Possibilities of what he could become and what Zekia could become and what the world could become.
They flowed through him like he was an endless tap for the destinies of the realms.
Wesley’s staves grew white-hot on his skin, glowing like beacons in the darkness of the room. He hands shook with the energy of them, but he kept his arm out, bombarding Zekia with visions.
She screamed and clutched at her head and Wesley could see the blood start to trickle from her nose. From her ears.
“Make it stop!” she yelled. “Make it stop, make it stop, make it stop! This isn’t what becomes of us. He said it wouldn’t be what becomes of us!”
Wesley didn’t know what she meant by that.
He didn’t even know what he was forcing her to see. The visions flowed through him like a speeding train, too fast for him to catch anything but glimpses, before they crashed into the walls of Zekia’s mind.
He couldn’t stop.
Many Gods, even if Wesley wanted to, he just couldn’t.
His magic was free and it refused to be shackled again, even by him.
He could feel the shadow demon screeching in his mind and trying desperately to claw Wesley out, but Wesley kept his thoughts firm, throwing dream after dream into the demon’s head until its knees shook and it convulsed to the floor.
Zekia whimpered beside it.
Wesley climbed onto the window ledge.
“Don’t,” she said.
Zekia’s voice was gravelly with desperation.
“Please don’t leave me here. I don’t want to be alone again.”
Wesley swallowed and he couldn’t believe that a part of him was even considering what she said.
“Come with me.”
Zekia shook her head. “We can’t go,” she said. “The future can’t happen and if we leave, everything falls to dust and ash.”
Wesley swore.
He couldn’t take her with him.
He couldn’t save her.
“I’m sorry, kid,” he said.
And then Wesley jumped from the window.
Past the rows of bodies and headstones, into the icy water and down, down, down.
13
KARAM
The Shores of the Dead were not a ghostly wasteland.
They did not conjure images of restless spirits roaming the sand in search of purpose or revenge, nor did they make Karam clutch at her pehta’s pendant like it was an amulet of protection.
It had taken them only a matter of hours to get here via the floating railways, across the threads of the Onnela Sea, which coiled between the cities until finally pitching up onto the sand of Tisvgen. The Shores of the Dead, where people came to grieve or bury their loved ones, looking for solace along the water’s edge.
Only, nobody seemed to be looking anymore.
The train had been scarcely filled. With war in Creije, nobody seemed eager to travel, and of the few dozen passengers that had been on the train with Karam and her small group, not a single one had disembarked to Tisvgen with them.
Perhaps they were tired of death.
But the shores gave Karam a peaceful and calming feeling, and the moment she stepped onto the enchanted sands, she felt a quiet in her heart.
The coast was made mostly of white sand filled with glass headstones that glowed under the light of the moon like beacons for travelers. The dead making sure the lost found their way home. A few small monuments were scattered between, child-sized models of the dead, made entirely with coin.
Karam wasn’t sure if it was a kind of symbolism to pay their toll to the spiritlands, or if those people just really liked gold.
“We need to get moving,” she said in Wrenyi to the others. “The Looming Valley will be at least five days’ walk, if we factor in setting up camp along the
way. Once we reach the base, if Ashwood’s people aren’t at the bottom with Wesley, then it’ll be perilous and difficult to climb to the peaks to where the outlook is. I’d say another four days.”
“He could be at the top?” Arjun asked, incredulous. “He better thank me for all this walking.”
“Don’t hold your breath,” Karam said.
“There’s no way to get a train up there?” Asees asked. “I thought Uskhanya had the best railway system in the four realms.”
“There are no lines to the Looming Valley,” Karam explained. “And if Nolan was wrong and Wesley isn’t here in Tisvgen, then the mountain range is the only way to cross into Creije unnoticed. If Wesley isn’t here, then he’ll be there.”
“Five days to the base, another four to climb, and then more time to cross into Creije if needed. Not to mention the time it will take to actually save Wesley once we find him,” Asees said, with a long sigh. “Now I wish that I had stolen that bottle of Cloverye from Tavia.”
“Don’t worry,” Arjun said. He pulled a glass bottle out from his backpack. “I took care of that.”
Karam shook her head. “You two have been spending far too much time with buskers,” she said.
Arjun laughed and then looked up to the sky and let out a low whistle.
“Forget about walking for a moment,” he said. “By the Indescribable God, would you look at that eyesore?”
He pointed to the skies with his sword.
Karam looked up.
Above them was a mausoleum, unlike any she had seen. It stretched to over fifty floors and she knew it hosted only the richest of the Uskhanyan people, allowing them to stay in their lofty towers and look down at the less fortunate in death, just as they had done in life.
It was her least favorite thing about the shores.
Karam had never been inside the mausoleum tower before. She much preferred the graves on the beach, caressed by the morning waves, the warm sand, and the pink wildflowers that were enchanted to spring up around them.
She thought she would be more at peace being laid to rest there, closer to the earth, rather than trying to reach a hand out to touch the Indescribable God.
Asees turned to the six Crafters of her Kin they had recruited for this mission.
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