She sprang to her feet, yanking the sword free. He made a choking noise. Blood was spilling onto the ground, running across the stone, spattering the Hands of Glory.
“This is for my parents,” she said, and slammed his body as hard as she could against the glass wall.
She felt his ribs snap as the glass behind him fissured. Water began to pour through the cracks. She felt it splatter against her face, salty as tears.
“I’ll tell you about the parabatai curse,” he gasped. “The Clave will never let you know it—it’s forbidden. Kill me and you’ll never learn—”
With her left hand, Emma yanked down the lever.
She threw herself behind the glass door as it swung open, and the current exploded through. It moved like a living thing—like a hand, shaped out of water, formed by the sea. It surrounded Malcolm, and for a frozen moment Emma saw him there clearly, struggling with feeble motions, within a whirlpool of water, water that spilled across the floor, water that gripped him, encircling him like an unbreakable net.
It lifted Malcolm off his feet. He gave a cry of terror and the ocean took him, the current rushing back out, carrying him with it. The glass door slammed shut.
The silence the water left behind was deafening. Exhausted, Emma slumped against the glass of the porthole door. Through it she could see the ocean, the color of the night sky. Malcolm’s body was a pale white star in the darkness, drifting among the weeds, and then a dark, spiky talon curled upward, through the ripples, and caught hold of Malcolm by the ankle. With a quick jerk, his body was yanked down and out of view.
There was a bright flicker. Emma turned to see that the violet wall of light in the corridor behind her had vanished—spells disappeared when the warlocks who cast them died.
“Emma!” There were pounding footsteps in the corridor. Out of the shadows, Julian appeared. She saw his stricken expression as he caught her to him, his hands knotting in her soaked, bloodstained gear. “Emma, God, I couldn’t get to you through the wall, I knew you were there but I couldn’t save you—”
“You saved me,” she said hoarsely, wanting to show him the Endurance rune on her arm, but she was pressed too tightly against him to move. “You did. You don’t know it, but you did.”
And then she heard their voices. The others, coming toward them down the corridor. Mark. Cristina. Diego. Diana.
“Tavvy,” she whispered. “Is he—”
“He’s fine. He’s outside with Ty and Livvy and Dru.” He kissed her temple. “Emma.” His lips brushed hers. She felt a shock of love and pain go through her.
“Let me go,” she whispered. “You have to let me go, they can’t see us like this. Julian, let me go.”
His head came up, his eyes full of agony, and he moved away. She saw what it cost him, saw the tremor in his hands as he lowered them to his sides. Felt the space between them like the space of a wound torn into flesh.
She dragged her gaze from his and looked down at the ground. The floor was awash with seawater and blood, ankle-deep. Somewhere Malcolm’s candelabra floated beneath the surface.
Emma was glad. The salt would dissolve Malcolm’s gruesome monument to murder, dissolve it and pick it clean, and it would be white bones, settling as Malcolm’s body settled to the floor of the ocean. And for the first time in a long time, Emma felt grateful to the sea.
The parabatai curse. The Clave will never let you know it—it’s forbidden—
Malcolm’s words rang in Emma’s ears as she made her way back out into the night, following the others down the damp corridors of the convergence. Julian and Emma walked deliberately apart, keeping distance between them. Exhaustion and pain were slowing Emma down. Cortana was back in its sheath. She could feel the sword humming with energy; she wondered if it had absorbed magic from Malcolm.
But then, she didn’t want to think about Malcolm, the red tendrils of his blood unfurling through the dark water like banners.
She didn’t want to think about the things he’d said.
Emma was the last to step out of the cave, into the darkness of the outside world. Ty, Livvy, and Dru were sitting on the ground with Tavvy—the little boy was cradled in Livvy’s arms, seeming sleepy but awake. Kieran stood a distance away, a scowl on his face that relaxed only somewhat when Mark emerged from the convergence.
“How is Tavvy? Is everything all right?” Julian approached his siblings. Dru jumped up and hugged him tightly—then gasped and pointed.
A loud grinding noise cracked through the air. The gap in the hill was closing up behind them like a wound healing. Diana darted toward it, as if she could hold the pathway open, but the stone sealed shut; she snatched her hand back just in time to keep it from being crushed.