“He’s in you,” the Dona whispered. “O, Daughters, he’s in you.”
Mia’s hands were shaking. The lock wouldn’t budge. Rusted and clogged with grime. Dona Corvere was in the corner, three fingers held up to Mister Kindly; Aa’s warding sign against evil. Mia could hear the chaos above, the screams of the dying, blood thick in the air. Rage filled her then, to see the suffering her mother had been subjected to, the ruin it had made of her. The suns were far below the horizon now, the power of truedark outside swelling in her bones. Unthinking, she raised both hands, face twisted as the shadows trembled. Liquid darkness snaked around the bars, pulling tight. Iron shrieked as it was torn loose from its moorings, the cell peeling open, bars snapping like dry twigs. Mia stepped through the hole she’d made, held out her hand.
“You’re his,” her mother hissed. “You’re his.”
“… mia, we have to go …”
“Mother, come with me.”
Dona Corvere shook her head. Eyes full of horror. “You’re not my baby.”
Mia grabbed her mother’s hand. The woman screamed, trying to pull loose, but Mia held on tight. Binding her in ribbons of darkness, Mia dragged her mother to her feet and out of the cell. Alinne Corvere no longer seemed to recognize her daughter, writhing in Mia’s grip. But Mia clung on, dragging her down the corridors and up the stairs toward the battlements above. The smell of carnage grew thicker, the song of murder rose higher. And when they began to stumble past the bodies, the dona’s moans became screams. Bloodshot eyes squinting in the burning light. Mouth open.
Screaming.
“… she must be quiet …!”
“Mother, stop it, they’ll hear us!”
“Let me go! LET ME GO!”
“… mia …!”
A man loomed out of the darkness ahead, a set of bloody manacles clutched in his fist. Spotting them, he roared and charged down the corridor. Mia turned toward him, flicked her wrist. The shadows unfurled, picking the man up and slamming him into the wall. He dropped to his knees, bleeding and dazed as two more inmates rounded a corner—a pair of boys barely more than teenagers, faces daubed with blood. The darkness roiled at Mia’s command, slapping them about as if they were made of straw. But in dealing with the boys, she’d loosened her grip on her mother, and the Dona Corvere broke free, dashed away down the corridor.
“Mother!”
The man she’d slammed into the wall rose on trembling legs, lurched toward her. Mia threw him into the bricks again, harder than before, and with a wet sigh he collapsed and stayed down. Mia charged after her mother, screaming for her to stop.
All the shadows in the hall whipped forward, streaming ribbons of darkness set to snatch her mother up. But more inmates were coming now, Alinne’s screams drawing them like drakes to bloody water. Mia smashed them aside, stonework buckling.
“Mother, stop! Please!”
Alinne ran on, up a stone stairwell toward the courtyard beyond. One hand shielding her eyes from the torches on the walls, blinding after years of utter blackness. Looking over her shoulder, she moaned as she saw her daughter behind her, the shadows whipping about her like living things. A daemon beside her. Inside her.
“Mother, stop!”
“Away from me!”
The boy appeared from the darkness ahead; some half-starved waif with a sliver of jagged steel in his hand. More afraid than Alinne, most like. But still, he lashed out in that fear, that panic, the blade gleaming red. The dona stumbled. Clutched her breast. And behind her, her daughter screamed.
“NO!”
The shadows reached out as if of their own accord, seizing the boy and his bloody knife and mashing him into the wall, again and again. Mia skidded to a halt at her mother’s side, the woman slumped against the stone, her chest wet and red.
“Mother, no, no, no!”
The girl pressed her hand to the wound, trying to stifle the flow. Scarlet pulsing through her fingertips, almost as dark as the shadows around them. The Dona Corvere looked up into her daughter’s eyes. Light dying in her own.
“Not my … daughter …”
She squeezed Mia’s hand in a sticky, red grip.
Pushed it aside.
“Just … her shadow …”
Alinne’s chest rattled, the light in her eyes slowly dying. The girl knelt there on the stone, the shadows around her twisting and warping. The very structure about her trembling. Masonry cracking. Ceiling rumbling. Blood on her hands. The murder going on about her echoing in her mind, their blood leaking into the darkness nestled between each and every flagstone.
DON’T LOOK.
The girl stood, raven hair flowing about her as if in some invisible wind. Hands in fists. A hundred shadows snaking in the air about her. The walls split and cracked. The ceiling began to sag, to crumble. And just as the brickwork split asunder, as hundreds of tons of masonry collapsed, obliterating the stairwell and all within, the girl stepped inside one of those writhing tendrils of darkness
and stepped out from a shadow
five
floors
above.
On the upper levels now. The Descent in full swing. Murderers and murdered. Chaos and blood. Men smeared in the leavings of their butchery, crude weapons or severed limbs clutched in their hands. One saw her, stepping toward her with a death’s head grin. She looked toward him, and the darkness simply tore him apart. Flinging the pieces of him about like an angry child with a broken toy. The walls about her split and buckled. Bricks shattering to dust. More folk came, men and women drenched in murder, only to be ripped apart like rotten rags. The girl stalked the Stone’s battlements, brickwork falling away behind her, tumbling in showers of pulverized mortar and shattered stonework, down, down into the sea.
The Philosopher’s Stone began to list, entire sections of the keep crumbling to dust as the shadows between each brick and stone tore themselves loose, adding to the storm of darkness whirling around the weeping girl. Tears spilling down her cheeks. Face twisted in grief. Her eyes jet black. Too much to hold inside. Too much to bear.
“… mia …!”
A cat made of shadows materialized beside her, shouting over the din of the tortured stone, the dying men, the wailing darkness. The keep split along its outer wall, ramparts collapsing into the ocean below. The thieves and thugs ceased their bloody struggles and cowered in corners or fled back to the cells they’d escaped from. The stones beneath her feet fell away, left her suspended in a web of writhing darkness.
“… mia, stop this …!”
The girl’s whole body was shrouded in shadow now. Ink-black tendrils sprouting from her back like wings, ribbons of razor-sharp darkness springing from every fingertip. Black eyes were affixed across the bay, to the Ribs rising above the City of Bridges and Bones. Home to the Senate of Itreya and all its marrowborn nobility, lorded over by the gloating consul who’d torn her familia apart. Killed her father. Her baby brother. And now her mother, too.
The girl shook her head. Snarled.
“This stops when he does.”
And curling her fingers into trembling fists, she disappeared.
Step.
She was at the bottom of the Stone, among the shadows of the jagged rocks.
Step.
She was across the bay, in the shifting black of the shoreline.
Step.
She stood on the boulevard, looking at the Carnivalé crowd in their smiling masks. Mister Kindly was no longer with her, but rage walked beside her instead, boiled away the place fear tried to take root. She stepped from one shadow to the next, like a child hopping stones across a flooded drain. Folk shivered as she passed. The city around her was blurred and indistinct; just dim silhouettes against a deeper dark. But the night skies above were bright as sunslight. Stars strewn like diamonds across a funeral shroud. The shadows sang to her. Held her tight and wiped away her tears. An aching in their bellies. A wanting on their tongues.
Hungry, she realized.