Pipe music fil ed the night, and my body responded to the sound. No. No. I wouldn’t dance.
I couldn’t help but move, my feet leading me in a turn, a leap. And I wasn’t the only one. Falin, his teeth gritted and his hand clenched around his remaining blade, also danced. She’s playing for fae souls now. Only she wasn’t playing. The pipes played themselves, the magic coalescing in the air streaming through them.
“Rianna, why?” I cried as my legs carried me in the dance.
The piper turned, her cloak moving as she tilted her head. Then she pushed the hood back and I wasn’t staring at Rianna’s sunken green eyes and lank red hair but at the face of a stranger. Relief coursed through me, though it didn’t last.
“You should have helped me. Told me how you touched the dead. Opened realities for me,” she said, frowning at me, and I realized with a sick sense of shock that I recognized her more handsome than pretty features.
“You’re the woman from the Bloom. The one who thanked me for releasing you from the endless dance.”
me for releasing you from the endless dance.”
“Yes.” She smiled, but it was a smile cut with sadness and darkened with hate. “Trapping me in the Eternal Dance was some fool’s idea of an ironic punishment, but you freed me and soon nothing and no one wil keep me from my love.”
Her love. The reaper.
Another crack cut through the air from the reaper’s whip, but I didn’t have enough control over my body to cringe, let alone twist to see what was happening. The piper—Edana, that was what she had cal ed herself—closed her eyes, her head tilting back as magic coursed through her and the pipes. No, not just magic. An unstable gap opened behind her, the edges wavering, flickering through planes of existence.
No. She couldn’t merge realities.
But she was.
I struggled against the spel , fought to stop dancing. To stil myself. My body continued twisting and jumping.
Beyond the circle, the gray man and the raver fought the dragon, jerking souls free one after the other, but the construct didn’t shrink. A leap and swirl in the dance turned me away from Edana so I couldn’t see the spreading rift.
But I could see the reaper. His whip snaked outward, wrapping around Death’s neck. Death winced, but grabbed the length of the whip, holding it immobile as the reaper tried to jerk him forward. Death held his ground, not budging.
Then magic slammed into his back.
Death toppled forward, fal ing to his knees. A woman’s laugh twined with the pipe music. I couldn’t see Edana, but I could see the thick black lines of the spel she’d hurled. A spel with lines not only slamming magic into Death but pul ing something out of him as wel .
His essence.
“You’re exactly what we need,” she said, and the dance turned me, bringing her into view again.
turned me, bringing her into view again.
“Stop. Leave him alone!”
She glanced at me. “You’l have your own time to fuel the spel . Be patient.”
I swal owed. Falin and I were both part of the spel now. I could see him in my peripheral vision, stil whole and alive.
The spel holding us was kil ing us slowly. Whatever she was doing to Death was draining him fast.
I have to stop her.
Grave essence leached off the fal en dancers’ bodies, the magic their souls had generated fil ed the air, and Aetheric energy shot through al of it. The gap had spread, the bodies closest to the center of the circle rotting away as the land of the dead touched them. Aetheric energy swirled in the air, dark tendrils wrapping around Edana as if she’d plugged herself into the very fabric of the magic realm.
I forced my shields wider, opening myself to everything, blocking nothing. The chil of the grave rushed into my body, but there was more magic to be had than just grave essence. I drew it in indiscriminately, pul ing power until my skin felt ready to burst. Then I let it explode out of me, hurtling toward Edana.
She wasn’t a corpse, so my power couldn’t sink into her, or jerk her soul free of her body. It slid over her skin, her life and her shields protecting her. No. I had to do something. I had to.
Fred had told me that when the world decayed I’d have to do what was against my nature. According to Kyran, my nature was to weave reality together, but I could also shove it apart. So that’s what I did.
I shoved.
With everything I had inside me, I shoved at the realities converging around Edana. I started at her skin, pushing outward. As it had when I’d been in the shadow court, reality buckled and then moved under my magic’s touch. I poured more power into the effort, thrusting with my magic.
The enchanted pipes slipped out of Edana’s hands as The enchanted pipes slipped out of Edana’s hands as though she could no longer hold them, and the music stopped.