Echo shook her head. “Nothing. There’s nothing there, but I feel…”
She closed her eyes and extended her senses the same way she had in the room that contained the moat that wasn’t just a moat, attempting to detect something the room didn’t want her to see. A swell of magic countered Echo’s tentative exploration. It came at her with such force that she nearly lost her footing. If not for Dorian grabbing her arm tightly to steady her, she would have plummeted face-first into the magma.
“Tanith,” Echo gasped. “She’s here.”
Dorian swore in rapid Drakhar and attempted to position himself in front of Echo, but the bridge was too narrow.
“Where is she?” asked Jasper. “I don’t see anything, but I don’t have your firebird sixth sense.”
It was a good question. There was no one else in the chamber, nor was there a place for someone to hide. All around them was stone and lava. No obstructions. No alcoves. But there was the magic. And if magic could make solid ground look like a bottomless pit, then magic could hide a single Drakharin woman, especially one as powerful as Tanith was with the ku?edra tucked away inside her.
“If there’s going to be a fight,” Jasper said, “we’re—how do I put this delicately—screwed.” He had one hand on Dorian’s forearm. His grip looked tight enough to hurt, but Dorian allowed it.
“Back up,” said Dorian. “Get to the wall.” He began to guide Jasper back to the landing with careful steps lest accident claim their lives before Tanith could.
“Echo?” Dorian called. She didn’t follow them.
Jasper wasn’t wrong. On the narrow bridge, there would be no room to maneuver. The stone landing by the door through which they’d entered was better but only marginally so. Echo felt Tanith’s presence, mingled with the familiar sensation of the ku?edra’s influence. Every person’s magic had a unique aura, and Echo had felt Tanith’s power months ago, in the Black Forest, and then again at Avalon. Only here it wasn’t Tanith’s aura alone.
A presence pulled at Echo, as if beckoning her to step forward, to keep walking the length of the bridge. It felt the way an oil slick looked, darkly beautiful but toxic. The power of the firebird thrummed in Echo’s veins. It surged forward, as if yearning to be free of its mortal cage to pursue that dark force calling to it.
Opposites attract, Echo thought.
The ku?edra and the firebird. The dark and the light. Two sides of the same coin.
“You want my magic?” Echo let the energy slide outward from her core, down her arms, into her hands. It came easily. Painlessly. It wanted out, so she let it flow through her. “Come and get it.”
“Now, now, little Firebird. Sheathe your claws.”
Tanith’s voice appeared before her body did. She materialized at the other end of the bridge, coalescing from a swirl of dark smoke. She looked at home amid the lava and the stone. Her hair fell free around her shoulders, wisps of it defying gravity to halo her face in a golden cloud. She wore a scarlet gown, as dark as freshly spilled blood. It had been a fine gown once, but the hem was in tatters. Her feet were bare, and her calves streaked with blackened veins. Her hands were so thoroughly coated in blood that at first glance Echo thought she was wearing gloves.
Tanith was a horror to behold, but it was her eyes that made a shiver run up Echo’s spine. The irises were no longer crimson, but as black as coal.
Vermilion lips cracked into something too mad to be called a smile.
“I was wondering when you would show up, Firebird.” Tanith took a step toward Echo, her bare feet leaving charred footprints on the stone. “I knew it wouldn’t take long. Lay a little cheese in the trap and snap”—Tanith clapped loudly—“the mouse is caught.”
Echo widened her stance, planting her boots as solidly on the precarious bridge as she could. “I forgot how much you love the sound of your own voice. I can’t say I missed it.”
Tanith blinked at Echo as if she had said something in ancient Greek. “My brother doesn’t know what he has, does he? The love of one”—that smile widened—“no…not one…two, the love of two hearts so devoted.”
“Look, can we just skip the half-crazed preamble and get on with it?” Echo let the fire in her hands crackle to life. “If we’re gonna fight, then let’s get to it. The less I have to look at your ugly mug, the better.”
Tanith gazed at Echo with that uncomprehending stare. Slowly, the black bled out of her eyes. Her brows pinched and her lips turned down slightly. “I have no wish to fight you. Not now.” She looked down at her hands as if confused by the presence of blood on them.
“It’s a trick,” said Dorian. Echo didn’t risk glancing at him, but she was confident he was brandishing his sword, ready to fight.
Echo didn’t buy it either.
“I never meant for this to happen,” Tanith said distantly. Echo felt suddenly superfluous. “I wanted power, but not at such a cost. Not at the cost of his life. That was never my intention.”
A mad laugh bubbled forth from Tanith’s lips. “How strange that it has come to this.”
Her attention returned to Echo. The black capillaries in her eyes had returned and were becoming more prominent. The red of her irises retreated from the encroaching darkness.
“Consider this a gift,” said Tanith. “My first—and final—act of mercy. My goodwill will not last. Not with this beast inside me. It will not be denied. Not by me, not by you. There is only one way forward, and I have no doubt you will not appreciate it.” She frowned again. “But there are some lines not even I will cross, no matter what the beast bids me to do. There may come a day when I claim my brother’s life, but that day is not today.”
With that, she disappeared.
One minute, Tanith was there. The next, she was gone. Not a swirl of smoke was left in her wake. Even the blackened footprints she had left upon the stone were gone. It was as if she had never been there. And maybe she hadn’t.
Echo sent out a tendril of her own magic, feeling for the stain of the ku?edra’s presence that she had sensed before. There was nothing besides the old, thrumming energy of the temple.
“Was that a hologram?” Echo asked. “Like, a magic hologram? Do those exist?”
“I don’t know what a hologram is, but if you mean do magical projections exist, then yes,” Dorian replied. Echo didn’t take her eyes off the spot where Tanith had stood, but she heard the whisper of steel being slid into a sheath as Dorian put up his sword. There would be no fight today. One was brewing, inexorable and imminent, but it seemed they would have today as a reprieve.
Silently, Jasper came up behind Echo. “Did you notice that she didn’t actually reply to anything you said?”
“Now that you mention it,” Echo said, “yeah. It was almost like a recording.”
“Magic voice mail,” Jasper said.
Dorian approached. “That was unexpected. But if Tanith did leave some kind of projection, why would she leave it here?”