She recalled Lazlo’s surprise at Minya’s fading so quickly. The rest of them slept in their beds every night—or in Sarai’s case every day. They were out of contact with the metal for hours at a time and showed no sign of fading. But then, they weren’t using their gifts in their sleep; Minya was. She had no respite from hers. All those ghosts, she had to be bleeding power every second, but it had never mattered before, because she was always in contact with the metal. The citadel had constantly been feeding her power. And now it wasn’t.
Sarai threw back her head and looked up at the sky, just in time to see the last glint of the seraph vanish from sight. It was gone from Zeru. In desperation, she turned to her father. “Is there any mesarthium in the city?”
“The anchors…” he said, uncertain. He’d been unconscious when the citadel reclaimed them.
Sarai shook her head. “They took them. They’re gone. Was there any somewhere else, even a little bit?” There was urgency and fear in her voice.
“What is it? What’s wrong?” Eril-Fane asked.
But Feral understood, and so did Ruby. Tears sprang to her eyes. Her hand flew to cover her mouth. “Oh. Oh no. Sarai.”
The Ellens understood, too. Stricken, they both looked at Minya. Her brows knit together with ferocity, confusion, and something like dread. She looked down at her hands, which were the color of ash, then sharply back up.
Sarai couldn’t have said how she expected her to react. Minya had threatened her with this very fate, and been willing to see it through. She’d called Sarai a traitor, used her as a puppet, held her soul as a bargaining chip. It wouldn’t altogether have surprised her if Minya shrugged and bid her happy evanescence, as coolly as saying happy birthday.
But she didn’t. The ghosts with their spears trained on Eril-Fane closed in, tightening around him, their weapons raised. “There must be mesarthium somewhere,” Minya said. “Get it!”
Eril-Fane shook his head, helpless. “There was only ever the anchors.”
“You’re lying!” she accused, and the ghosts thrust their spears right up against his throat. His life pulsed there, and the lightest thrust could end it.
“No!” gasped Sarai. Azareen and Suheyla cried out in horror. “There isn’t any more,” Azareen insisted. “I swear it. We would give it to you if there was!”
“My darling, my viper,” said Great Ellen to Minya, with rueful, velvet tenderness. “You’re only hastening it, sweet girl. Don’t you see? The more you use your gift, the faster you’ll use it up.”
Minya froze as the truth of this struck her. Everything was rushing—like wind in her ears, though there was no wind; like racing toward a cliff, though there was no cliff. Suddenly, as though an axis tilted, she experienced her tethers in a new way. Always before, she had been conscious of the emotions pulsing up them, the hate-fear-despair never not assailing her. Now, though, she felt what went out of her and down them: her own strength, her gift, ebbing away by the second—a reservoir that would not refill. She could feel herself emptying. She’d come to think of her ghosts as her strength, the thing that could protect her, and with which she could protect her family. Now that presumption was dead.
She looked at her hands and they were gray. And she looked at Sarai, then around at her ghosts, and what she did next stunned them all.
She let go.
She had always imagined her gift as a fist clenching a tangle of threads. Now she opened it. The threads slipped free. A tremendous weight lifted as she released every soul she’d collected since the Carnage, save three. Sarai’s tether was like a filament of spidersilk, fine and fragile and shining like starlight. Minya clutched it, tight but gentle, as though she could keep it, hold it.
The Ellens’ tethers were different. When all the rest fell away, they remained. They were the first souls she’d ever caught, and she’d done it gasping in the bloody aftermath of the Carnage, when all the screaming and dying was over and she was alive and alone with the four babies she’d saved.
The Ellens’ tethers weren’t fine and fragile. They were tough as leather, and they didn’t rest in her keeping like gossamers that could slip away. They sank into her very self, like taproots. They were part of her, and the Ellens stayed right beside her as the rest of the ghosts—the whole encircling ring of them—simply melted away.
Their faces flushed with freedom. Sarai saw little Bahar among them, and Guldan, the old tattoo artist who had done the most exquisite eliliths. Kem the footman was there, fading. And she saw Ari-Eil, her father’s young cousin and hence her own, and felt a pang of remorse for his evanescence, all the more so when it seemed that a flicker of rue crossed his face, as though he wasn’t ready to go. But then he was gone, they all were, and it was as though a great sigh breathed itself out of the amphitheater, sweeping like a sweet wind past all the Tizerkane, to ebb away in a skyward tide that drew all loose souls with it.
In the aftermath, it was utterly quiet. Minya knew, once more, the silence and lightness she’d felt when Nova took her gift. The crushing weight lifted, and the thrum of hate ceased, but she didn’t feel relief. She felt pure terror.
There was no more barrier between godspawn and Tizerkane. They could all see one another clearly. Minya was overwhelmed by their numbers, their size, their hate. It was the look she knew so well, the one that said: abomination.
She had never felt so exposed, so vulnerable.
At least…not for fifteen years.
Her hearts started to stutter just like they had in the nursery when a stranger appeared in the doorway with a knife, and in the blink of an eye she was right back there, powerless and surrounded by adults who wished her dead. Terror hammered at her. Panic tore at her. Flashes of that day besieged her.
The Ellens, standing on either side of her, both reached out to try to soothe her, but she shrank from them, seeing a strobe vision of faces that were theirs but not theirs, and that scared her worse than anything else. She closed her eyes but the faces followed her into the dark. They were triumphant and vicious, and it was the Carnage all over again, only now it was worse because she didn’t have a knife, and there was nowhere to hide, and the Ellens would stop her from saving the others. Just like they’d tried to before.
The mind is good at hiding things, but it can’t erase. It can only conceal, and concealed things are not gone.
Minya’s memory had a trick spot in it, like a drawer with a secret compartment—or a floating orb with a portal inside it, leading to a whole nightmare world. Now it all blew open, and the truth spilled out like blood.
Chapter 52
Dread Was a Pale-Haired Goddess
Once upon a time, there was a little girl who thought she understood what dread was.
Dread, she thought, was a pale-haired goddess who came to take you away. Away where? No one knew, but if it were nice, surely she’d smile when she came for you.
Korako didn’t smile. Nor was she cruel. She was barely there. Her voice was low and her touch was light. Her eyebrows looked white but weren’t. She was the goddess of secrets, and on the day that Minya learned what real dread was, she was keeping a secret of her own.
Her gift had come. It took the form of an awareness of something passing within reach. She didn’t know what, but by the third or fourth time she felt it, she knew she could grab it, keep it. She just knew, but she didn’t do it. She ignored it as best she could. To be seen with a faraway, puzzled expression was as sure a sign of gift manifestation as doing actual magic. The goddess’s spies would go and tell—Minya’s been seen thinking! Then Korako would come with her low voice and light touch, and it wouldn’t matter that she wasn’t cruel. You might even imagine she was sorry, but that didn’t matter, either. It wouldn’t stop her from taking you.
Kiska had been gone for three weeks. They couldn’t play the dizzy game now. None of the others were strong enough to hold the other side of the hammock. Korako’s spies were watchful. Minya felt their eyes on her all the time. She would be next. She was overdue. When she felt the awareness, she pushed it down deep inside herself.