They didn’t.
“She told me recently that she felt like she’d only really begun to understand life as she reached the end of it. I’ve thought about it a lot, and I think, at the root of it all, that was the problem with the gods. Always fighting, always striving to outdo each other, to leave a mark, because, ultimately, nothing they did seemed to matter. They knew the centuries would wash it all away. And they were right, weren’t they?”
“The same is true for us,” I pointed out. “Someday no one will remember us, either.”
“Ah, but that’s not really the point for us, is it?” The rainbow lenses tilted, the changed position allowing me to see the thoughtful eyes behind them. “Whether someone remembers us or not? We’re not gods, waiting in their temples to be worshipped. We’re part of a dynamic, ongoing world, and we have our own immortality through what we achieve, or through the children we leave behind. She will continue through you, as I will.
“Never forget that, Cassie. You’re my child, too.”
*
His child, I thought, fuzzily.
A necromancer’s child.
A necromancer.
Slowly, as if in a dream, I reached out. And grabbed one of the swarming pulses of light. And squeezed.
And watched my hand slowly brighten. It looked like I was wearing a brilliantly colored glove for a moment, next to the dimness of the rest of me. Until another small spirit darted in and began to feed, leeching the light . . .
No, I thought dizzily.
Not the light.
The power.
I closed my hand on it, too, crushing the gnawing thing inside my fist. Like the other, it felt tangible, real. And soft and spongy, like it was oozing up through my fingers for a second.
Before suddenly sinking inside.
My hand brightened again, and I stared at it, mesmerized even with the continued attack. Because it wasn’t only brighter. It was stronger.
I grabbed a small ghost leeching off my breast, and crushed it like the last one. And yes, I felt it, and yes, it was good, and potent, and . . . more. Quickly, before I became too weak to fight back.
Already, it wasn’t easy. The smaller ones were mindless, little more than freed energy, the kind that would turn into sparkles in the air when they degraded a bit more. They hurt in small ways, and gave back in small ways, when I grabbed fistfuls, ripping them off me.
Many of that kind skittered off when I started fighting back, some instinct telling them to flee. But others stayed. Too mindless to know what was happening or too drunk on power to care.
Or too strong to think they’d lose.
And they might be right. Because the ones who didn’t belong here, the hunters, had increased their drain. Trying to finish me off when they realized they had a fight on their hands.
I ripped a huge leech off my side, gasping in pain. It was amorphous, too busy feeding to manifest features, and plump and bright with stolen energy. My energy. I felt it rake me with claws, snarling and thrashing like a wild animal as I fought it, with my back against the wall.
A wall that was suddenly feeling more porous.
A moment ago, it had been hard as glass; now it was more like rubber, giving behind me, but not enough.
The creature in my arms clawed and squirmed, but I was a living spirit, and I was stronger. I hung on, hugged it to me, felt its power begin to seep into mine. Felt life flood back, felt pain, a thousand weeping wounds, felt the barrier give some more, stretching like taffy. But still holding.
I needed more power to break through, but it was a double-edged sword. The more I fed, the brighter I became, attracting attention from the larger fight. A lot of attention.
I stared as a mass of spirits broke away from the main cloud and headed my way. I fought and twisted, knowing it was now or never, and sent a swarm of the smaller things tumbling into the void. A number of the larger ones left of their own accord, sensing that we were about to be overrun. Except for the creature in my arms, which was noticeably dimmer now, having given back much of its stolen energy.
But not so much that it couldn’t grab the fabric of time and rip it open, in a desperate bid to get away.
But not as desperate as I was. I held on, even as it scattered itself, knowing this was my last chance. I felt myself falling, felt my senses return, felt freezing cold. And then I was slamming back into a body writhing in pain, Jonas’ last dose of Tears having been completely stripped away.
The aches and pains of the past, plus a flood of new ones, hit me all at once. I screamed, a sound that echoed in the vastness of the great hall, almost causing the woman holding me by the arms to drop me. Johanna, I realized. And a second later, I realized something else: one of the reasons my body felt like it was on fire was that it was being dragged across burning ice, straight toward—
I rolled and somehow broke her hold, right on the edge of the great gash running the length of the room. The one she was trying her best to shove me into. I stared over the edge as she got behind me, and I saw our reflections for a second in a flood of cold, dark water.
I didn’t know why she thought it would hurt me; the drop only looked to be a couple stories.
But if she wanted me in there, I didn’t want to go.
“What does it take to kill you?” she snarled, struggling for purchase on the ice-covered floor.
Until I suddenly twisted, flinging her off her feet using one of the moves Pritkin had taught me. And then over my shoulder, grasping and fighting to the last, still trying to take me with her. She might have succeeded—except one of my hands had just frozen to the stones. I hung there, half in the gash and half out, clinging on with deadened flesh—
And realized why she’d wanted me down there.
Because the water wasn’t cold; it was supercooled. Some strange alchemy had kept it in a liquid form, right up until she crashed into it. And instantly turned the water into a field of ice, one that crept over her stunned face, freezing the skin, whitening the hair, and icing over the eyes that were still staring up at me in shock and hatred.
“More than you,” I whispered, and rolled onto my back.
Chapter Fifty-six
I just lay there for a long moment, panting and dizzy, staring upward. The room was strangely beautiful from this angle. I couldn’t see the ruin all around me, the broken mosaics and slashed mural, the overturned tables and muddy boot prints. Just snow, clear and white and dazzling, and highlighted every now and again by lightning flashing beyond the ice dome, sending little spots of light spinning crazily across my body.
It was beautiful.