I desperately glance around for Ling. Where is she? Why does Kofi—
“Ling didn’t make it.” There is so much sadness and frustration in Jonah as he tells me this.
I’m going to kill every last one of these sick assholes I can get my hands on.
Mac cracks his neck; he’s limping, too. “They’re still clustered on the eighth floor?”
Kofi glances down at the screen; I’ve split it so there are six areas viewable at once. “Not so much clustered anymore, but yes.”
“Where is the fucking Guard?” Mac asks Jonah. “Why are they not in here with us?”
As the Great Hall is now mostly silent, explosions outside provide our answer. Distant shrieking is quickly masked by thunder.
Mac punches the wall. “How many of these things are there, anyway?”
My husband takes a deep breath before he looks up from the monitor in Kofi’s hands. “Kofi’s right. We better get moving before we lose any of the foothold we just gained.”
I wonder for a tiny moment if Mac and Kofi have had enough—if they’re ready to find a rabbit hole out. But these men simply nod their heads as we piggyback into another spoke of a hallway off the Great Hall.
It’s there I get to work making another series of staircases that worm their way up through Karnach’s floors. I think back to the first staircase I had to make this year, the one Will suggested when I combined Kellan’s apartment with ours, and I send out a silent thank-you to my brother for preparing me for this moment.
Enlilkian knows I’m coming. He just doesn’t know which direction now.
Because then we cut a path through one of the offices off the latest hallway to another one. From there, I build us an open elevator that will push us through the first three floors. Then we track another hallway to build another elevator up two more flights. I keep up our game of cat and mouse—Enlilkian must be so proud of me, despite his roars of anger shaking the building, because haven’t I proved to him I’ve learned his lesson well now?
On the last floor, though, we come in from the main staircase, a direction Enlilkian surely must not expect us from by this point.
Jonah ensures the entire time that exhaustion or our injuries do not impede us. We’ve wrapped each other up the best we can, but blood soaks through each bandage. There is not a single one of us who isn’t in desperate need of a Shaman.
And we still have eight more Elders to go.
Ask and ye shall receive, I suppose, because Bios is waiting for us in the office just off the staircase, clapping.
“Oh, fuck me,” Mac whispers.
“Bravo.” Amusement flashes in the first Shaman’s kaleidoscope eyes. “You had my kin on a merry chase, didn’t you? I’m proud of you, little Creator. You too, Empath. You’re doing quite well today, aren’t you?”
Jonah moves in front of me, one hand on my arm.
Bios merely smiles. “My father constantly underestimates you,” he tells Jonah. “Don’t lose sight of that.”
My husband doesn’t say a single thing. It’s funny, this moment—it took weeks for Bios to open up first to me and then to Jonah, to the point where we were the only two Magicals he willingly conversed with. And now here he is, his words coming so freely, and Jonah’s not at all.
But there is no need for his words, not when a sharp squeeze to my arm tells me everything I need to know.
My hand whips out from behind Jonah and takes hold of Bios’ sleeve. My voice is firm; I do not hesitate. There is no place in this moment for sadness or confusion, not when so many people have died or are hurt. “You no longer exist, Bios. You are nothing.”
And then, he is gone. It reminds me of that poem that said the world will end with a whimper, not a bang. Because Bios, the father of all Shamans, the innovator of disease, pestilence, and health—the one Elder who showed me the world wasn’t as black and white as I’d previously thought—no longer exists.
He is simply gone.
It seems wrong, somehow, that someone so critical to the development of the worlds has simply ceased to be. That the death of this being—less of a monster and more like a man than I could ever imagine—should’ve been more, meant more, shown more. Later on, when we’re not under siege, I’ll find time to mourn him in some way, even though this was exactly what he asked of me.
Somewhere on the same floor we’re on, Enlilkian’s anger turns volcanic. All of the remaining beautiful stained glass windows around us fragment in a rain of sharp, dangerous rainbows, but before they can tear us up, Kofi’s winds send them flying in all directions.