It’s not real, he reminded himself. Just a memory. And you are stronger than that. He watched as his sister dislodged Echo and sent her flying halfway toward the roof’s ledge with a single kick. She was stronger than she had been before the ku?edra had twisted her into something monstrous. Echo couldn’t triumph against her if it came to trading blows. Not alone.
Caius tightened his grip on his knives and rushed forward through the flames.
A tendril of black nothingness struck out and wound itself around Caius’s ankle. It lurched back, bringing him crashing to the ground, half his body still submerged in the flames.
It burned.
He flailed blindly at the circle of fire with his knife. The blackness receded, though the orange and gold flames remained unaffected. It was enough. Caius dragged himself forward, trying desperately to block out the agony of his burned legs. He had suffered worse attacks in battle, he reminded himself. Get up, godsdammit.
Echo needed him. He wouldn’t fail her like he had Rose. He would not let Echo become another of his sister’s victims. The cycle ended here.
He pushed himself to his feet. Tanith was standing yards away, staring down Echo, who was only now struggling to control the fire at her call. It blossomed around her balled fists like white and black petals of flame. It was lovely, but nothing compared to the strength of Tanith’s blaze. He’d been right in his prediction; Tanith wasn’t trying to kill Echo. If she had been, Echo would not have lived long enough to throw that first punch. Tanith was baiting her, goading her into expending her energy, like a cat playing with a mouse.
“Tanith!”
This time, she did turn to him. “What?” She sounded irritated, as if he had just disturbed her at her studies.
“This ends now.” Caius willed himself to think past the burns, the new wounds freshly opened, the old ones crying in protest. He approached the edge of the roof, where his sister stood on steady feet.
Tanith stared at him for a beat. Then a wicked smile stretched across her lips. “Yes,” she said. “It most certainly does.”
She raised her arm high above her head. Echo chose that moment to unleash a burst of flame toward Tanith, but it was too small, too weak. Tanith brought her hand down in a slicing gesture, and the ground beneath Caius’s feet split. The sound of rending cement cut through the air with a resounding crack. He had one last glimpse of Echo’s screaming face before the rooftop collapsed in a cascade of stone and steel.
He was falling,
falling,
falling.
—
This is it, he thought. This is how I die.
—
And then he landed. On something soft. He thought splattering across the pavement of Fifth Avenue would have been more unpleasant. But there were sounds all around him: someone calling his name, someone else shouting in agony. Echoing explosions of gunfire and grenades. The roar of a waterfall of stone crashing to the ground.
He wasn’t dead. He was, in fact, very much alive.
He rolled his head to the side to see what had saved him. There was a patch of grass beneath him, perhaps five feet from where he hovered.
“Hey!” The pink-haired Avicen mage who had accompanied them to Iceland stood not ten feet away, her hands extended and quivering with exertion. “You good?”
Violet. Her name was Violet. Her hands were streaked with blood and a cut had opened up just above her left eyebrow. Blood and dirt caked that side of her face, surely obscuring her vision. Caius nodded. “I can’t move, but other than that, I’m good.”
Suddenly, he fell, landing on the grass with an undignified oof.
Violet offered him a hand, which he gratefully accepted. She hauled him to his feet and he bent immediately to scoop up his knives, glad they hadn’t fallen too far from him.
“Where’s Echo?” he asked Violet. Pieces of masonry littered the ground around them. It looked like Tanith’s strike—whatever it was and however she’d done it—had demolished half the building. Echo was nowhere in sight.
Violet shook her head. “I was hoping you could tell me.” Her chest fell and rose in rapid, shallow breaths. “We’re losing. There’s too many of them.”
An endless army, Caius thought. And all it had to do to win was outlast them.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
Screams rang through Echo’s ears, and it took her a moment to realize they were coming from her.
The library’s once-proud facade had crumbled, split down the middle as if sundered by a vengeful god. The remaining outer wall protruded like a row of broken teeth.
The head of a lion rolled to a stop by Echo’s boot. Half its mane had been blown off, and its sightless stone eyes stared up at the wound in the sky. It was Patience, the guardian of the southern side of the library’s entrance. Her sister, Fortitude, remained on her perch on the north side of the steps, her head angled toward Echo. It looked like she was surveying the destruction of her kingdom, knowing there wasn’t a damn thing she could do to save it.
The library had been Echo’s refuge. The first place in the world she had ever felt safe. The first place she had ever belonged. It was her home. And now it was destroyed, blown apart as easily as if it were a child’s plaything, a castle built of hollow blocks, toppled with a finger.
Other voices came to Echo. Other screams. Not far from where she had landed, she saw a flash of vibrant feathers crouching over a still form, their colors as wild and lovely as those of a peacock. Jasper. In his lap he cradled a head of silvery hair, a pale face streaked with blood. Dorian. There was something wrong with his face, something desperately wrong. Even through the cacophony and the chaos, Echo could see Jasper’s hand covering half of Dorian’s face, trying in vain to stanch the bleeding. Then she realized why. Dorian’s eye. Someone had cut it out. Jasper’s body heaved with violent sobs as he begged in a medley of English, Avicet, and broken Drakhar for Dorian to please not die.
Bile rose in Echo’s throat. Nothing had ever hurt like this. Not the dagger she had sunk into her own chest. Not the feeling of her own fire burning her from the inside out. Not the horror of finding the person she’d loved strung up like so much meat.
Your pain will be such exquisite agony.
A sob clawed its way from Echo’s throat. Tears blurred her vision. The fight raged on all around her, but she could not take her eyes from the spectacle of senseless destruction in front of her. Flames flickered around Echo’s fists, scorching the earth beneath her bruised and bloody knuckles. She didn’t remember injuring them. It must have happened in the fall. The abraded skin burned where the fire touched it. Her own body—her own magic—was betraying her. And she couldn’t stop it.
A slow, steady tread crunched over the rubble, advancing on Echo like a predator lazily circling its prey.
“Such a shame, really.” Tanith’s voice was close, coming from somewhere behind Echo and to the left. She could have dug her sword into Echo’s back and Echo couldn’t have lifted a finger to stop her. So great was her pain. So exquisite was her agony. “It was a marvelous library.”
A heavy hand came to rest on Echo’s shoulder. Golden gauntlets dug into her muscles, the armored fingers tipped like claws. Tanith leaned down to whisper her next words into Echo’s ear.