The Bone Palace

chapter 21


This might not have been the best plan,” Ashlin muttered, squinting into the eddying darkness. Her hair shone red in the unnerving light, dark with sweat at the nape. The sheen on her brow could have been blood.
Savedra laughed breathlessly. The ruins had been bad enough with Isyllt beside them; with her gone they were a dozen times worse. She wanted to take the princess’s hand again, but knew better than to interfere with someone holding a sword. The ruby shivered on her finger, tugging her deeper into the fog.
Something sharp and cold clawed her ankle, pricking through the soft suede of her boots. Savedra shrieked and kicked. Brambles, she prayed as she whirled, shrubs or rubble—The ground at her feet was clear.
“What—” began Ashlin, only to shout and jump in turn. “Something grabbed me!”
“Me too.” Sharp unseen fingers tugged at her hair and pinched her arm hard enough to bruise. “Shadows!” Each time she saw nothing, but she heard skittering in the fog, and mocking inhuman laughter.
“Keep moving.” Ashlin’s eyes were wild but her sword held steady. “Isyllt said all they can do is distract us.”
“This is more than distraction,” Savedra muttered, rubbing her arm.
They didn’t dare run, but they stumbled and scrambled as fast as they could. Savedra wept, from pain and fear and frustration, never knowing where the next vicious pinch or bite would come from. She tried to think of Nikos, but soon gave that up for the more immediate concern of not sprawling headlong and being eaten.
The tower appeared so quickly they nearly collided with it. A darker shadow against the sky, till the fog thinned to reveal pale, vine-laced stones. Reliefs had covered the walls once, but time had worn the figures soft and faceless. The ruby sparked with a sullen light as Savedra touched the carven sandstone.
“Here,” she gasped. “She’s here.” She held out a hand to Ashlin; her grin made her face ache. “Come on!”
The door was only a few yards away, a dark hole in the wall. She turned toward it—and walked straight into the shadow that detached from the wall to envelop her.
She screamed, short and shrill, before the blackness filled her mouth and choked her. Cold and clammy and slick as oil, it sank icy hooks into her flesh, a hundred pinpricks that stole her warmth and drained her strength. It coated her tongue, rolling slowly down her throat, and she couldn’t breathe, let alone fight—
Someone was shouting. She didn’t think it was her. Not Ashlin’s panicked cries but a man’s voice, over and over, the same command. She didn’t understand it, but the darkness must have: It peeled away, and a sudden blaze of violet light blinded her.
She lay on the broken stones, skirt tangled around her legs. Her lungs ached; her throat burned; her skin felt scoured raw.
Ashlin knelt beside her, easing her up and cradling her head against her armored breast. “Ma chara,” she breathed, stroking Savedra’s brow. The moisture that smeared under her touch was thicker than sweat. “Ma chrí. It was all over you, on your skin. I couldn’t cut you free—”
“I’m all right.” She coughed around the words, tasted blood and mucus. Pinpricks of blood glistened black on her hands—more streaked her fingers when she rubbed her face, and her dress clung wetly to her skin. She found no wound—the monster had sucked it from her pores. “What happened?”
“He saved you.”
Savedra looked up to see Varis leaning against the wall, pale and cold-flushed and ghastly beneath a cloud of witchlights. His jacket hung open, shirt unbuttoned to reveal the ugly marks on his throat.
“I thought it was the mimikoi toying with me when I heard your voice,” he said. “I decided they wouldn’t show me the princess.” He gave Ashlin a sardonic bow, and his knees buckled as he straightened.
“Uncle!” Savedra fell forward when she tried to stand, and crawled to him across the frozen ground. Her anger was nowhere to be found. “You’re hurt.”
“Just weak. I didn’t expect a banishing.” He stood, lifting her unsteadily with him.
“Was that one of Phaedra’s pets?” she croaked.
“No. An old horror, a remnant of the Hecatomb. I’m sure her magic fanned its appetite, though.”
Her hands tightened on his shoulders and she flinched from the starkness of bone. “She took Nikos.”
He nodded, leaning against the wall again. His skin was translucent in the lilac glare, veins dark and ugly. “I know. I tried to stop her.” He laughed bitterly. “Saints know I’d see all the Alexioi dead, but not like this.”
“What happened?”
“She sent me away. I’m lucky that’s all she did. What they intend is madness and worse, but”—he shook his head—“I’m not powerful enough to stop them. If Kiril—” He shut his teeth tight on that thought, and didn’t finish it.
“I won’t leave Nikos here.”
She expected refusal, but he studied her in silence. His knuckles brushed her cheek, soft as a benediction. “If he deserves even a fraction of your devotion, he’s a better man than I could ever have been.”
She laid her hand over his; blood stuck their skin together. “He’s just a man, but I love him. I love you both.”
She glanced over her shoulder, where Ashlin stood guard against the night, watching the fog to give them privacy. A path unfolded before her, but it was a dangerous one, and it wasn’t only her life she risked. But she couldn’t rescue Nikos only to see Varis executed. Sorcery and debt weren’t the only ways to bind—her mother had taught her that as well.
“Go with Ashlin,” she said. “I need you to keep her safe.”
“You can’t possibly mean that. After everything I’ve done.”
“The princess is pregnant.”
“All the more reason, then—”
The words stuck in her tender throat, but she forced them out. “The child is mine.”
That silenced him, and Savedra wanted to laugh as he blinked. “You can’t mean—”
“Funny, Uncle, that’s exactly what Nikos said. Yes. The Princess and I are lovers. She’s carrying my child.”
“And Nikos knows?”
“He’s accepted the baby as his. Need I be clearer?” she said as he stammered. “A Severos bastard stands to inherit the Malachite Throne.”
She had never seen Varis at a loss for words. After several speechless moments he slid down the wall, buried his face in his hands, and began to laugh. The laughter quickly turned to sobs.
Savedra drew Ashlin close. “Go with my uncle, please. He can keep the spirits off you, but he’s weak. Take him to Captain Denaris and get them both out of here.”
Green eyes narrowed. “Don’t try to set me aside.”
“I’m trying to keep you safe! Damn it, Ashlin. I may still lose Nikos. Don’t make me lose you too.”
“I might say the same,” Ashlin replied, but her resolve was weakening. “What am I supposed to do if you die?”
“Hold the throne. Keep the heir safe.”
“Unfair,” she whispered.
“I know. But I’ll ask it anyway.”
In answer Ashlin caught her shoulders and kissed her, hard enough to split cold-chapped lips. “You owe me,” she whispered on a shared breath.
“Lord Varis,” she said, turning away. “Vedra means to coddle us both like blown glass. May I escort you back to the wall?”
“It would be a delight and an honor, Your Highness. I shall do my very best to be coddled.
“Congratulations,” he said to Savedra, wiping away tears and smudged kohl. “You’ve managed a scandal to put all mine to shame. I shall run mad with envy.” He twisted the orange sapphire off his finger and folded his hands around it, eyes sagging shut. “Here.” He took her hand and slipped it onto her right ring finger; it fit snugly—her hands were bigger. “This much protection I can grant you. As long as you don’t attack, no one should be able to harm you. I wouldn’t test it against Phaedra more than you must, though—her power is doubled in the demon days, and she has fresh blood at hand to spill.”
She couldn’t ponder the source, or she’d scream. “Thank you.”
His eyes were colorless by witchlight, and more serious than she’d ever seen. “I can only try to earn your forgiveness.”
“Start by keeping the princess safe.” She kissed his cheek, cold skin against colder.
She watched Ashlin and Varis till the fog swallowed them. Then she stepped into the tower’s black mouth.
Isyllt didn’t have to wait long before she heard Spider’s voice.
“Isyllt.”
He crouched on a broken pillar, a white-marble grotesque. She was so used to his mocking diminutives that the sound of her name in his mouth startled her. He uncoiled and leapt, landing silently before her. The red haze thinned around him. “I can’t let you interfere. You know that.”
Her blade rasped from its sheath. “Haven’t you always wanted to know how it would really have ended between us?” The chill in her voice was only bravado—after everything he’d done, the thought of killing him made her stomach ache. But she couldn’t face him and Phaedra together. Spellfire licked the edges of her blade.
“I wanted us to be friends.” The quiet sadness in his voice made her wonder how many friends he’d had in the catacombs. How many he’d sacrificed to further his plans.
“Spider—” The catch in her voice was real; the lowering of her blade was a feint.
She threw witchlights in his eyes and lunged, swinging the silver kukri. Fabric opened against the edge, and skin below that. He was gone before the stroke bit deeper, his animal hiss echoing in her ears. Isyllt spun, cold fire in her left hand and spelled silver in her right.
Her heartbeat’s advantage was already spent. He moved in a white blur and she staggered, a sudden pressure on her jaw warming to pain. Copper washed her tongue again, mingling with the acrid taste of nerves. Her jaw wasn’t broken; luck, or had he pulled the blow? She turned the stumble into a crouch, rocking on the balls of her feet as she tried to keep him in sight.
Easier tried than done—he moved silently and weightlessly as any ghost, but much faster. She blocked a blow that would have opened her throat, and it felt like dragging her limbs through honey. She was rewarded with the jolt of blade on bone and Spider’s quite audible cursing. He cradled his hand to his chest, black blood seeping between his fingers.
“This is foolish, little witch.”
“It certainly is.” She flung another blaze of light and lunged again. Her shoulder struck his chest and her knife turned on his ribs, slicing through cloth and skin and desiccated muscle. The smell of musk and anise and bitter earth filled her nose.
Spider snarled, fangs shining inches from her face. He tore the knife from her hand; it clattered across the stones, out of reach. His other hand seized her jaw, redoubling the ache from his last blow.
“I would have let you live,” he murmured as he forced her head back. She kicked and clawed, but it was like fighting a statue.
She hadn’t wanted to use the cold, not with Phaedra still to face, but she was out of options. She reached for the emptiness inside her—the Arcanost called it entropomancy, but to her it was the nothing, the chill that ran deeper than death.
“Oh, Spider.”
Isyllt teetered on the brink of the void; Spider froze, his jaw distending like a snake’s as he leaned in for the kill. She knew that voice, like slow-pouring water….
“This is not what we do.”
He dropped Isyllt and spun, fangs bared as he faced Tenebris.
The red fog curled away from her. Shadows deepened in its place, spilling ink-black from beneath pillars and arches to cling to her skirts. They twined her arms and nestled in her hair, pressing against her neck like children. Of her face Isyllt could see nothing, save for the angry glitter of her eyes and the gleam of her fangs when she spoke.
“Did you think we would take no notice of your revolution?”
“Why would you?” Spider spat. “You sleep away the years and do nothing while the mortals keep us locked in the darkness.”
“We are the darkness, little fledgling.” Humor and sadness veined her voice, a warmer current amidst the cold tide. “We are darkness and dust. It may be our nature to hunger for warmth and light, but we must extinguish them or be seared. We are hunters, teeth in the night, not shepherds to keep humans for chattel. The kingdoms of men mean nothing to us.”
“Rot in your ossuaries, then. I want something more, and I’m not alone.”
“Really?” Again the humor, sharper now. “You seem quite alone to me, little one.”
Which is why, Isyllt thought, you don’t use allies as scapegoats. She didn’t say it, though—she didn’t feel like attracting more of Tenebris’s attention.
“I, on the other hand,” the vrykola continued, “am not.”
A pale shape moved in the shadows and Spider recoiled. “Aphra!”
The elder vrykola was slight and fine-boned. She wore grey velvet, yellowed with age and rotting at the seams. Lace snagged and tattered on the broken flagstones. Her hair was the color of old ivory, her skin dull and grey until the light kissed her—then she glittered like raw marble, a statue brought to life.
“Spider.” Her voice was the whisper of dust across cathedral floors, the sound of stone dissolving in the relentless flow of time.
“You’re awake.”
Isyllt had never heard his voice sound so human, threaded with fear and longing and anger.
“Azarné came to us, told us what you’ve done.” She advanced on him slowly, inexorably, one long grey hand rising. “Oh, child. I thought you would fare better than this.”
“I only wanted—” His voice cracked and died. His shoulders slumped, legs wavering as he struggled to stand.
“You wanted the world. And that is no longer ours.” She touched his hair, and he fell to his knees as if she’d cut his strings. Black tears tracked his cheeks.
Stone scraped against Isyllt’s palms as she crawled forward. She hadn’t meant to move, but his weakness and misery were unbearable. He should die fighting—
“Hush, child.” Tenebris’s icy hands closed on her arms, drawing her gently up. “It’s better this way. She is his maker—the unmaking is also hers.” Shadow fingers stroked Isyllt’s bruised cheek, wiped a drop of blood from her split lip. “I’m sorry he hurt you.”
The vampire draped an arm across Isyllt’s shoulders, turning her away from Aphra and Spider. He was crying now, low keening sobs. The sound twisted Isyllt’s stomach. She tried to look back, but Tenebris held her, wrapped her in shadows like liquid silk.
“It’s better if you don’t watch.”
She was wrong—the wet sounds that followed were worse by themselves, mingled with Spider’s soft gasps.
Finally they stopped, and Tenebris drew her shadow-draperies away.
Isyllt turned to see Aphra bending over Spider. Blood shone black on the vrykola’s colorless mouth as she straightened, and on the ruin of Spider’s throat. His head hung against his chest, his hair a spiderweb shroud. He was too pale to show the petrification that took the vrykolos in death, but Isyllt watched his limbs tremble and grow still. Her vision blurred, and she scrubbed away a glaze of foolish tears.
Aphra laid a hand on Spider’s head again, a final caress. Then she twisted. His spine cracked like crushed gravel and his head fell and shattered on the ground. The rest of him toppled slowly after, disintegrating into a glittering drift of dust.
Aphra turned to Isyllt, fixing her with colorless crystalline eyes. “He did care for you,” the vrykola whispered. “As much as he was able.” She turned and vanished into the fog before Isyllt could think of anything to say.
Tenebris lifted the shadow of her face toward the sky. “We will return to the catacombs and take our wayward children with us. They won’t bother you again, at least tonight. The demon in the tower, though, is not of our doing, and none of our concern. Good luck, necromancer.”
And she was gone.
The wind chilled Isyllt’s face; she was crying again. She wiped her cheeks and began searching for her knife.
The climb might have lasted a year, but Savedra knew the tower had no more than four or five stories. Spirits crowded the stairs, scuttling and chirping, but didn’t touch her. The only light was the spark of her rings, orange and blood red. That glow drew her upward, though her heart pounded to break her ribs and queasy sweat greased her palms. The darkness changed as she climbed, greying with the promise of light.
The door at the top of the stairs stood open, lined in gentle lamplight. Savedra stood before it, pressing a sweat-and-blood-slick hand against the stitch in her side. She heard nothing from the other side; she heard nothing at all but the sick pounding of her heart. When her pulse slowed and the pain in her ribs dulled, she drew a breath and stepped across the threshold.
She didn’t know what a haematurge’s lair should look like, but whatever she expected, it wasn’t the disrepair she walked into. No blood or filth, but scattered books and rugs and missing furniture, like a half-vacated house. After the frozen night, the warmth of braziers stifled.
Her breath left in a deflated rush. No Nikos, no demons—where were they? Then a red lump in the corner that she’d taken for cushions stirred, and she jumped.
Ginevra lay in a heap against the wall, her hands bound behind her with heavy rope. The crimson dress was black with grime, the hem snagged and bleeding beads. Her lustrous copper skin was dull and ashen, her eyes hollow, but save for a rust-colored smear across her mouth she seemed unharmed.
Bruised eyelids fluttered as Savedra whispered her name. “Vedra.” The hope in her smile was terrible. “You came.”
Savedra dropped to her knees beside the girl, touching her face with trembling fingers. No fever, at least, and no more chilled than one would expect from sitting on frigid stone. Someone had given her a blanket, but it had slid aside and become trapped under her legs.
“Are you hurt?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so. I’m so tired, though—”
“Yes,” a voice said behind them. “Better if you rest.”
Savedra’s nerves snapped and she leapt like a startled cat. She fetched up crouched against the wall beside Ginevra, her knife flashing in her hand.
Lychandra Alexios stood before her, still gowned in white. Savedra had thought herself prepared, but she moaned at the sight, eyes squeezing shut and the knife falling from numb fingers.
Fabric rustled as Lychandra—Phaedra, she told herself, Phaedra—knelt beside Ginevra. “Sleep. It’s easier that way.”
Now Savedra understood why Phaedra’s voice had chilled her when they met at Varis’s house. Lychandra’s throat, Lychandra’s lips shaping the words, but the tone and inflection were wrong. She forced herself to look again.
Phaedra smiled, and that too was familiar and all the more terrible for it. “Startling, isn’t it? I still catch myself off guard in mirrors. Varis spoke of your cleverness, but I admit I didn’t think you’d make it this far. But not unscathed.” One cold finger touched Savedra’s face, came away pink and sticky.
She held out a long brown hand. Seeing no safer option, Savedra took it, letting the demon draw her to her feet. Her dagger slid from the folds of her skirts and clattered against the floor.
“What are you doing to her?” she asked, looking down at Ginevra.
“Keeping her safe. If she were awake she would only wear herself out with panic.” The sorceress hadn’t let go of Savedra’s hand; she raised it now to study the ruby ring. Identical stones shone on her fingers. Savedra tensed for wrath, but all Phaedra said was, “Wherever did you find this?”
“In Carnavas,” she answered, her mouth dry and sticky. “In your workroom.” At least Phaedra’s demon birds weren’t here now—that was something to be thankful for.
“Ah. I always wondered what happened to it.” Luminous orange eyes moved from Savedra to Ginevra and back again. “Would you like her?”
Savedra blinked stupidly. “What?”
“This body. I thought at first to wear it myself, but we came up with a better plan.” Her gaze softened, the dead woman’s face ghastly with sympathy. “I understand what it’s like to be trapped in the wrong flesh. Varis explained it to me—the cruel trick of your birth. I could fix it. It’s the least I can do for him. I’m not entirely sure how the process would work between two anixeroi,” she said, frowning, “but it would be a fascinating experiment.”
Savedra’s mouth opened and closed again on an unspoken denial. She stared at Ginevra’s slender limbs, her smooth cheeks, the rise and fall of her breast. Beautiful and graceful and feminine, even bound and filthy. Everything Savedra had ever wanted to be, everything she was in her dreams until waking returned her to the truth.
“Is it so simple?” she asked. Would the hijra call it miraculous, or abhorrent?
“It’s not simple,” Phaedra said, sculpted brows pulling together in indignation. “It’s a delicate and complex thaumaturgical process. It’s been my life’s work. But it is possible.”
“It would make me a demon.”
“That’s a broad, clumsy word that the Arcanost relies on too heavily. But strictly speaking, a demon is created from the merging of flesh—living or dead—and a spirit or a ghost. I’m not sure what you would call the transfer of a living soul into a different living body.”
Madness, Savedra would call it. Abomination. Temptation.
Nikos had always said he loved her, not the flesh she wore. Did he really mean that?
“No,” she said at last. “I can’t.”
Phaedra frowned. “You could if you were desperate enough. But never mind. I can certainly find a use for her myself.”
“Please. Where is Nikos? I need to see him.”
“You came to rescue him? How sweet.” Phaedra gestured toward another doorway. “He’s here.”
The adjoining room looked like a mad sorcerer’s laboratory ought—vials and bottles and dishes, books lining the walls and lamps and candles cluttered on tables. In the center of the room on a stone bench lay Nikos. His shirt and jacket were gone, revealing hand-shaped bruises on his shoulders and short, scabbed cuts tracking the vein down one forearm. Savedra’s heart clenched, but he still breathed.
“What are you doing to him?”
“Transfusion. I drain his blood—slowly, of course—and replace it with my own. When enough is replaced, I can transfer my mind and my power with it. I balked at first, about wearing a man’s flesh, but Spider convinced me that was foolish. It’s just another experiment, after all, not to mention the quickest means to our end.”
“And what happens to Nikos?”
Phaedra paused. “He’ll be consumed. Subsumed. Some memories may linger—I collect more every time I do this.” She touched her temple as if they pained her.
“You can’t,” Savedra said. “Please, you can’t. Let him go.”
Phaedra’s eyes flickered toward her. “Can’t I?” she snapped. But her temper died. “Is he anything like his father?”
Savedra shook her head. It took her two tries to manage “No.”
“A pity, then.” She brushed a stray curl off his brow; his eyes flickered beneath pale lids. “Speaking of his father—” She smiled, and it looked nothing like Lychandra. This was a predator’s smile. “I think I hear him coming now.”
Isyllt met Mathiros Alexios at the base of the tower, and came perilously close to regicide when he materialized out of the fog beside her.
“Majesty.” She lowered her knife. His face was ashen and wild-eyed; scratches dripped blood down his cheek and brow, and more blood glistened on his drawn sword. Demon or mortal she couldn’t say.
She thought he might attack her, but his gaze focused. “Iskaldur. What are you doing here?”
“Looking for your son, Majesty, and for the woman responsible.”
“Phaedra.” A whisper, more to himself than to her. She couldn’t keep the surprise from her face. “Yes,” he said with a harsh laugh. “I know her name. I remember her.” His eyes narrowed. “You know.”
No point in dissembling now. “I’ve heard the story.”
Black brows pulled together. “And do you think I deserve whatever fate she has in mind for me?”
“Yes. But she’s a madwoman who’s already tearing the city apart, and Nikos doesn’t deserve to suffer because you were an idiot. Your Majesty.”
Mathiros’s scowl broke and he laughed, harsh and raw. “I should have taken you to the Steppes after all. The horselords would like you.”
“I’ll bear that in mind when this is over.” She gestured toward the tower. “Phaedra is up there, somewhere, and likely Nikos too. Shall we go up?”
She expected tricks and traps, but the way was clear. Past the dizzying taint of the stones, she felt power gathering at the top of the stairs.
Phaedra waited for them, still clothed in white and stolen flesh. Not the gown she’d worn to the masque, but a new one of silver-trimmed velvet. Not a practical color for a haematurge. It didn’t flatter her complexion, but was striking all the same.
Mathiros stumbled on the last step. “Lychandra—”
“No.”
“No.” He dragged a hand across his face; blood smeared from his cuts, welled fresh. “No. Phaedra.”
Isyllt shuddered at her smile. “Yes. You do remember.”
“Phaedra!” Isyllt’s hand tightened on her knife as those orange eyes turned to her. “Spider is dead. You’ve lost your vampires. The palace is warned about you. It’s over.”
The demon blinked. “Even if that’s true, I have the king and the crown prince.”
“And me to deal with.”
Her lips curled. “I can stop the prince’s heart where I stand. But enough threats—go home, necromancer. For Kiril’s sake I’ll spare you.”
“This has nothing to do with any of them,” Mathiros said. “This is between us.”
Phaedra nodded. “Yes. Come inside.”
Mathiros squared his shoulders and stepped into the room. Isyllt, cursing, followed. Magic settled over her, rust-red and sticky, nearly tangible as Phaedra’s power grew. It spread in webs throughout the room, winding around the woman who sprawled in the corner—Ginevra Jsutien, and that was one mystery solved.
“Where is Nikos?” Mathiros asked.
“Here.” She led them to an adjoining room, where Nikos lay on a stone bench. Savedra knelt beside him, murmuring softly and insistently as she tried to help him up. Her hazel eyes flashed white when she saw Phaedra and the king.
“If I—” Mathiros’s throat worked under his beard. “If I surrender to you, will you let Nikos free?”
“I have no desire to harm him,” Phaedra said.
“She’s lying,” Savedra said, her voice cracking. “She means to take his body, make him a puppet to steal the throne. He won’t survive that.”
Phaedra’s eyes narrowed. “Technicalities.” Her stance was relaxed, unconcerned, but she crackled with power. Mathiros, on the other hand, had lowered his sword, shoulders hunched and face twisted. Isyllt had never known him to balk at anything, but against his dead wife’s face and his son’s life in the balance he was shrunken, helpless.
Isyllt sighed. She would have to do this herself.
Kiril rode through the burning city, warded against spirits and men. His diamond ring blazed with the death in the air, but the destruction wasn’t as bad as it might have been. The quarter would be decimated, but the Vigils’ barricades still held, and the thickening snow damped fires and tempers alike. He sensed newly fledged demons, and passed a few—the shambling dead, mostly, opportunistic spirits worming into fresh corpses, still clumsy and dazzled by incarnation. His stolen horse balked, but responded to soothing words and steady hands.
Soldiers and police gathered at the gates of the old palace. One slab of ironbound oak had been broken down, and tendrils of red mist snaked around splintered boards. The commanding officer recognized him, and the man’s face lit with sick relief. All Kiril’s attention was for Varis, however, when he saw the other mage leaning against the wall, sharing a wineskin with—of all people—the crown princess.
Kiril handed his reins to a nervous soldier who needed something to occupy him. The crowd parted for him as he joined Varis.
“Still not very good at taking your own advice,” Varis said by way of greeting.
“No better than you are.” He took the proffered skin, letting cheap wine rinse away the taste of char.
“Mathiros is still in there,” Varis said, more soberly. “So are Savedra and Isyllt and the prince.”
Kiril closed his eyes. There was nothing in those walls for him but grief. Isyllt had made her choice, and not asked for his help. He should have abandoned all of this.
But he was here.
Varis touched his face. They might have kissed, but those days were past. Instead Kiril lowered Varis’s hand, squeezing gently before he let go. They were past farewells and benedictions, too, so Kiril turned without a word and stepped into the darkness of the bone palace.
He knew the path despite the deceptive mist, knew the number of strides to the tower, the number of steps to its peak. His knees didn’t ache this time, nor his traitorous heart. He almost laughed—he could think of more pleasant ways to spend his borrowed health. Maybe Isyllt was wrong—maybe they could have been happy somewhere else, had they abandoned all their oaths and duties.
Too late for might-have-beens now.
He heard shouting as he neared the top and quickened his pace. The air was thick with magic, Phaedra’s and Isyllt’s both, and the metallic scent of fresh blood.
The king and both sorceresses stood in the open first room, stationed in a rough triangle. Blood dripped from Isyllt’s nose and coursed from wounds on Mathiros’s cheek. Blood smeared the king’s sword as well, and Phaedra’s gown was rent across her ribs. The wound hadn’t slowed her. Through the laboratory door he glimpsed Savedra holding Nikos amidst a wreckage of broken glass and drifting notes.
“Phaedra,” he said as she raised her hand for another strike. “No.”
“Kiril!” Her face brightened. The same surprised hope lit Isyllt as well, and the sight was like a fist in his stomach. “You came.”
“To stop this. I can’t let you do this, Phaedra. I’m sorry.”
“Oh, Kiril.” Her lips pursed in a disappointed moue. “Not again.”
Her power hit him like a wave. The weight of it crushed him, while the demon blood in his veins answered her call, burning him from the inside.
She was stronger than the last time they’d faced each other, on another tower so many years ago. Then she had been clever and desperate—now she was a demon, and all the hate and madness that soaked the stones answered her. But Kiril was cannier with time, and knew better than to break himself against her onslaught. Instead he diverted her, twisted the raw red rush of her aside like a stone in a flood, while his defenses co-opted the strength of demon blood and made it his own.
One step at a time he crossed the room, through the bloody tide of magic, and took her in his arms. She swayed against him even as her magic hammered his. Isyllt fought too, flashes of silver-white and bone at the edge of his awareness.
“Let it go, Phaedra,” he whispered. Sticky warmth dripped into his beard, and a dozen scars ached as she tried to reopen the wounds. “This will bring you no peace.”
She touched his lips. “I would have forgiven you, if you’d only asked.”
He readied himself for the last assault he knew would follow.
He didn’t expect her to use a knife.
Isyllt shouted as the blade glittered in Phaedra’s hand, screamed as it slid home between Kiril’s ribs. Her throat ached with the force of it. He stumbled backward, into a wall, and slid slowly to the floor.
Phaedra watched him for a moment, her face grim and sad. Then she turned back to Mathiros. “Where was I?”
Isyllt stood frozen. Phaedra’s magic hung in red rags—now was the time to strike. But she could only stare at Kiril and will him to rise, to shake off the wound.
“Isyllt!” Nikos stood in the doorway, braced between the arch and Savedra’s supporting shoulder. “Stop her!”
A son’s plea. A prince’s command. Isyllt jerked toward Phaedra as the sorceress closed on Mathiros. The king dropped his sword, his face slack with despair. Kiril’s face was grey as ashes, his hand trembling as he reached for the knife. Blood spread shining across his black coat.
“Stop her,” Nikos yelled again.
“No,” she whispered, and turned to Kiril.
She took three strides before something inside her snapped like a kithara string and the force of her broken oath crushed her to her knees. Her vision greyed; the air in her lungs thickened and burned. She crawled, dragging useless legs behind her. Nikos was screaming. Mathiros was screaming. She ignored them all and crawled to Kiril’s side.
Her magic filled her like shards of glass; it would slice her to the bone if she seized it. But her death-sense remained: As soon as she touched him, she knew the wound was mortal. The blade shuddered with his heartbeat when she touched the hilt. A scalpel, a tiny thing, but it had found its mark.
“What do I do?” she asked, touching his face with trembling fingers. “What can I do?”
“Forgive me.” A bubble of blood burst on his lips. “Pull the knife out and let me die swiftly. Or leave it in, and let me spend a few more moments with you. Whichever option seems best to you.”
She cradled his head in her lap. Tears and blood dripped off her chin. “I’ll kill her,” she whispered. “I swear it.”
“Don’t.” His hand groped for hers, clung tight. Already cold, but some strength remained. “No revenge. You see what it does to you. But yes, you should stop her. It would be a mercy.” Each word was softer than the last. His dark eyes began to dim.
“You don’t have to die,” she whispered, lowering her head. Her hair and her tears fell over his face. “Not truly.”
“And become a demon? Undead? Could you stand the sight of me?”
She sobbed at the thought. Cold and empty, forever, dead and undying—
“I love you. Always you.”
“I knew it would be you—”
The words faded into a long rattling breath and the last spark inside him guttered. Death surrounded them, an owl-winged shadow reaching for Kiril. Isyllt flung herself against it, scrambling for power that sliced and crumbled at her touch.
She followed him into the dark.
The dark would not have her.
Savedra didn’t watch Mathiros die.
Nikos tried to intervene but his knees gave way, dragging them both to the floor. She pulled his head against her chest and buried her face in his hair, whispering meaningless sounds to drown the wet noises coming from Phaedra and the king.
When she opened her eyes again, Mathiros hung like an empty husk in Phaedra’s hands. Blood coated him, dripping from his fingers to dapple the floor. More slicked Phaedra’s hands and mouth. As Savedra watched, the red stains vanished into her skin—the splatters on her white gown remained. When the last drops were gone, the sorceress let him fall. Her face crumpled as she stared at the sunken corpse, exultation fled.
“How does it feel?”
Savedra started, scarcely recognizing Isyllt’s voice. The necromancer still knelt by Kiril, her face a half-mask of blood beneath the shroud of her hair.
“Was it worth it?”
“For a moment,” Phaedra said, almost too soft to hear. “For a moment it was. Now… it doesn’t matter now. It’s done.”
A spark of steel caught Savedra’s eye. Ginevra was awake, bound hands groping across the floor for Savedra’s knife. If Phaedra noticed the movement, she gave no sign.
“Now what?” Isyllt asked. Her eyes flickered—she noticed, and was trying to keep Phaedra distracted.
The demon stared at her hands, clean of blood. “Now I finish it, I suppose. I don’t want to wear this flesh anymore.”
“It won’t be different in anyone else’s,” Savedra said, finding her voice at last.
Phaedra turned. “It will, for a time.” Behind her, Ginevra had finished sawing through her bonds and chafed her raw wrists, jaw clenched against any sound of pain.
“Mathiros is dead,” Isyllt said. “Spider is dead. Kiril is dead.” Her voice was too hollow to crack. “You have your revenge, but your plans are ruined.”
“Perhaps you’re right. I only wanted—” Phaedra shook her head. “I don’t know what I wanted. Rest, perhaps.” She glanced at Savedra and Nikos. “Keep your prince. The other is all I need.”
At last she turned toward Ginevra, in time for the girl to launch herself off the floor, knife in hand.
Clumsy and slow, but Phaedra only gaped as the blade flashed toward her, rocked back as it struck her face. Ginevra fell, wan and sweating, and Phaedra stumbled back, one hand clapped to her cheek.
“You—” She pulled her hand away, and blood glistened on her palm. Mathiros’s blood, Savedra supposed. The slice laid her cheek open to the bone; flesh gapped as she spoke. Dark rivulets ran down her chin to stain her bodice.
“Dead flesh doesn’t feel pain,” she told Ginevra. “I’ll be more careful when I’m wearing yours.”
Ginevra’s grey eyes were dark with pain and hopelessness, but she gave Savedra a fleeting smile.
“I find,” she said softly as Phaedra walked toward her, “that I’m tired of being anyone’s pawn or plaything.” She turned the knife. Savedra’s lips moved as she understood, too slow to stop it.
The blade flashed one last time, as Ginevra drove it into the soft flesh beneath her chin.
Savedra screamed as Ginevra fell. Phaedra shrieked in rage. Isyllt breathed a name.
“Forsythia.”
A whisper was all the dead needed. Her ring sparked and the ghost appeared beside her, translucent and wild-eyed.
Isyllt reached for her magic as well, for the biting cold that gave her strength, but it fell to ashes at her touch. Her power would return, Kiril had said. She could endure this. But for the moment she was useless.
“What’s happening?” Forsythia asked, watching Phaedra kneel in the spreading pool of Ginevra’s blood. “Is that—”
“That’s her. I need your help to stop her.”
Transparent hands knotted in her skirts. “I can’t. I can’t.”
“You can.” Isyllt levered herself off Kiril’s shoulder, trying not to think of the cooling flesh beneath her. “You’re the only one who can. If we don’t she’ll do this over and over again.” She touched Forsythia’s shoulder, numbing her fingers to the bone. “I’m too weak to do it alone.”
The ghost straightened. “What do you need from me?”
“Possess me.” Her jaw wanted to lock on the words. “Wear my flesh. I can’t use my magic, but maybe you can.” Her voice shook. “It might destroy us both.”
Forsythia smiled crookedly, an echo of her mortal beauty. “I’m already dead, aren’t I? What do I do?”
Isyllt cupped the dead woman’s face in her hands, drawing her close. “Come inside.” Her defenses, already shaken and cracked, fell away, leaving her bare.
It was as cold as she’d ever imagined. Colder. Painful, too—shudders wracked her, muscles cramping and contracting, pulling her into a fetal ball. Fingernails cracked as she clawed the stones.
The pain ended, but the cold remained. With it came a fierce strength and hunger. All her aches and scrapes and fatigue faded away; she was strong again. Alive. Colors dizzied her, the texture of stone and cloth and the weight of her hair against her neck overwhelming in their intensity.
Focus, she whispered, before Forsythia grew drunk on sensation. We have to stop her before she recovers.
“Phaedra.” She felt her lips and tongue shape the sound, but control wasn’t hers. Dried salt and blood and mucus cracked and flaked as she moved. The air reeked like a slaughterhouse.
The sorceress rose, blood sticking her gown to her knees. Her hair fell in stormwrack swags around her ruined face. Her eyes burned.
“I’m sorry for Kiril,” she said as Isyllt tried to stand. “I never wanted that.”
“I’m sorry too.” She—they—gained their feet, and took a halting marionette step. In time she-and-Forsythia would be as strong and graceful as Phaedra, but they didn’t have that time. Was this how it always felt? The boundaries of host and possessor slowly blurring? Too slowly—she couldn’t teach Forsythia how to use the magic she’d studied for decades in only a moment.
“You can’t stop me,” Phaedra said. “You know that, don’t you? You can barely stand.”
Another awkward step, then another, and they were close enough to touch. Had Phaedra struck her, Isyllt would have been doomed, but she only watched, her demon gaze dimming with grief.
She cupped Isyllt’s cheek. “You loved him.”
“More than anything.”
“I know what it’s like to lose that much, to live with the loss.” She leaned her forehead against Isyllt’s, cold breath drifting over both their faces. “I can take the pain. It would be a mercy.”
“Yes,” Isyllt whispered. “Mercy.” She had no anger left, no strength, but she could do that much.
There. She tugged Forsythia’s attention to the cold place she carried beneath her heart. That’s where the nothing lives. Release it.
She pressed her cheek to Phaedra’s ruined one; the woman’s hair tickled her lips. “Take everything.”
Phaedra cradled her face in cold hands and magic crawled over them. Isyllt expected pain, but none came, even as beads of blood welled from her pores—that was a relief, at least. The blood rolled toward Phaedra, sinking into her skin.
The empty place opened and the nothing poured out with her blood. Forsythia didn’t have the knowledge to control it, and Isyllt didn’t have the strength. They didn’t need to. Phaedra drank it down.
She realized her mistake a moment later. She pulled away, but Isyllt caught her hands and held her. The world dulled around the edges, but she had a demon’s strength.
Phaedra rallied her magic, but it unraveled beneath the tide of entropy. Brown skin bruised and bled as the sorcery that kept it fresh dissolved. Stolen flesh sank, shriveled, cracked.
Isyllt knew she had to stop or the nothing would take her too, but she was too cold, too tired, and the emptiness soothed her with promises of dark and quiet. Phaedra’s wrists snapped in her grip, disintegrating like snow and ashes. With nothing to lean on, Isyllt fell.
As she crumpled, she heard Forsythia whisper farewell.