Valchior. The statue of the King still lay on its side, still unbroken, still with his soul drifting from the wound in his eye, a delicate tendril of smoke that paused and collected in the air instead of rushing straight for Solmir like the others. His voice was weak, but there was a note of triumph in it.
Dread curled cold in Neve’s stomach. The key tangled in her hair sped slightly in its pulse, as if in concert with her own racing heart. “He can take it.” A lie, one proven by the monstrous thing Solmir was becoming before her eyes, but she said it anyway, like she could make it true.
“He’s fading,” Valchior continued, soft and pleased and ignoring her entirely. “That scrap of a soul he’s so proud of can’t stand up to all of ours. The weight is too much for him to carry. It wasn’t so long ago he was as straightforward a villain as you think we are.”
“Not so long at all,” Solmir agreed. And there was blue in his eyes, but it was so faint, and she couldn’t tell if his fanged grin was delighted or sorrowing or somehow both. She couldn’t tell if the voice was his or one of the Kings he caged.
“He will lay waste.” Fainter now, more of Valchior’s soul twisting from his stone body to coalesce in the air, like a storm in waiting. “You think your Wolves can stop him? You think you can? He—we—will be the most terrible thing the world has ever seen. We will make all the gods you’ve killed seem like pets.”
“No.” Solmir shook his head, eyes closed tight, trying to drown out the voices in his head. He pressed his hands to his temples, his claws raking bleeding runnels into his face. “No no no, I won’t, please stop—”
“He’s fading,” Valchior whispered. “All he needs is one more push.”
And the word was a rush, the storm of the last King’s soul overwhelming Solmir in a torrent of shadow. The statue flew apart. Black smoke flowed into nostril and eye and open mouth, a scream tearing from Solmir’s throat as Valchior poured into him.
The Sanctum shook. More bones tore free of the walls and clattered to the floor. Neve stood open-mouthed, filled with godhood and useless power that could do nothing for him, staring at Solmir’s twitching and broken form on the floor.
But when he stood, it was worse.
He was too tall. There were too many joints in his legs. The claws at the ends of his fingers were needle-pointed; so were his teeth. His hair hung loose around a face made even sharper, the planes carved to knifelike precision.
There was no blue left in his eyes.
“Pretty little Neverah Valedren.” It was all their voices now, a chorus of Kings issuing from one mouth. “Who’s never been enough to save someone she loves.”
Then Solmir—what had been Solmir—lunged.
Neve knew with some deep instinct that he was going for her key. His claws swept for her hair; she feinted to the side and turned to run, stumbling on broken rock and bone. He laughed, five voices knit into a single terrible cacophony as one of those unnaturally jointed legs reached out, hooked her ankle. Neve crashed to the floor, biting her lip bloody as her chin hit the stone, the breath knocked from her lungs.
Then he was on her, crouched over her back, balanced on claws that stood like prison bars on either side of her head. She tried to flip over, throw thorns around his neck like she’d done so long ago, but the power wouldn’t solidify; he batted tendrils of her meager attempt away.
“Neverah, Neverah,” the voices whispered. “Now to decide if we want to keep you alive, or—”
Something shifted. She couldn’t see his face, but she felt it in the atmosphere, an intangible struggle so intense it imprinted on the air.
“Neve, you have to kill me.” Solmir’s voice, ragged and hoarse against her ear. “You have to open the door and kill me right now.”
Her eyes pressed closed. She reached for the back of her neck.
And the skull of the Dragon finally broke loose.
It fell toward them, so much larger than she’d thought, and Neve wondered what would happen to her if she was crushed by a skull in the Shadowlands where she couldn’t truly die. Solmir rolled them away, his eyes still blue, his claws wrapped around her in an embrace that brought blood.
The skull landed hard enough to cave in part of the stone floor. In the places where it broke, nothing but seething dark, swirling and shimmering like the inverse of a star.
The Shadowlands, dissolving.
Next to the hole it made, Neve and Solmir, positions switched. She straddled his hips in a parody of how they’d been in the prison made of ribs. He looked up at her as the last bit of blue died in his eyes.
“You will lose everything,” Solmir snarled in the voices of the Kings.
And hadn’t she already? She couldn’t return to her life on the surface. She’d already proven herself a vicious queen; didn’t Valleyda deserve more than someone who would twist the political power granted them by nothing but their birth to her own ends? Red was safe with her Wolf, but untouchable, unknowable. And Raffe…
She’d already let Raffe go.
So what was left for her? Nothing but this. Making sure the Kings died and stayed dead. Making sure those who’d been wounded by the life she’d led had a place to heal.
She’d been willing to doom the world for her sister. Was this so different?
“Not if I give it up first,” Neve murmured.
And she leaned down and kissed him.
His fangs stung her lips. His clawed hands came up to her waist, and she couldn’t tell whether it was to throw her off or bring her closer, but she kissed him through it, a real kiss, one that held everything Solmir didn’t let her say and everything she didn’t know how to, one that held everything they’d never have time to figure out.
She felt them flow into her. The Kings’ souls felt like rancid oil poured down her throat, a sickness she could feel herself catching. Slithering voices laughing in her head, foreign things shackling around her heart.
It hurt. Tears streamed down her cheeks. Still, she pressed her mouth to Solmir’s until she felt all that darkness, every scrap of monstrous soul that didn’t belong to him empty out and enter her instead.
Then the only soul Solmir had was his own. Small and withered, maybe, but dearly fought for. Not enough to hold up against the evil of the Five Kings, not yet. But someday it would be.
And now he’d have the chance.
It was the last coherent thought Neve had.
Ringing and shouting and laughing, a clanging storm of terrible sound that she couldn’t escape inside her skull. Neve screamed and clamped her thorn-wreathed hands over her ears, barely conscious of Solmir scrambling out from beneath her, Solmir’s hands on her shoulders.
“Neve!” He screamed it in her face, trying to be heard over the awful din of the Kings in her head and the falling Sanctum, the world collapsing around them. “Neve, you can’t do this, you have to give them back—”
“No!” It came from her and it came from all the souls trapped inside her, five different refusals that made him stumble backward.