Echo tried to push herself to standing, but there was a weariness in her bones greater than any exhaustion she had ever felt before. It was as if a part of her was missing, as if something vital to her existence had been amputated. There was an ache in her like the phantom pain of a missing limb. She had rearranged herself in the months after the Black Forest, had made room for the thing living inside her body, and now that it was gone, all she felt was a great yawning emptiness where it had once been.
Tanith could not be allowed to claim the power of the firebird, in all its wild effulgence, for herself. She was powerful now, but with the dual powers of light and dark on her side, she would be unstoppable.
We have to seal the rifts, Echo realized. We have to close them off the way they did way back when.
Some power was too great to exist in the world, free for the taking. People—human, Avicen, Drakharin—were fallible things. Easily corrupted.
The power seemed to respond to Echo’s touch, but she had no idea how to control it. It wasn’t as though the firebird had come with an instruction manual. That would have made her life much easier.
Echo finally got to her feet, thoroughly winded. How the hell she was going to battle a centuries-old warrior halfway to becoming some kind of unstoppable demigod was a perfectly valid question, considering that it was taking every ounce of her strength to simply remain standing.
The sound of gunfire cut through the bubble of light and magic and shadow that had formed around them. Then shouts and the far-off roar of a dragon. Time may have felt as if it had stopped for the two of them, but the world had kept on spinning and the fight had continued to rage without them.
“Echo!”
She turned, immediately regretting how quickly she’d whipped her head around to find the source of the cry. Clambering atop an overturned car was Caius, his left half awash with blood. It caked the ridges of his leather armor. The blades of both his knives were equally drenched, in blood and darker things.
He ran toward her, skirting his sister, who seemed not to notice his presence—or if she did, she couldn’t be bothered to care. Tanith was drunk on magic, a state of being that benefited them now but would turn detrimental when she figured out what to do with all that power.
When he reached Echo’s side, he stared down at the still-widening rift with horror. “How did that happen?”
“I’m not entirely sure,” Echo began, her voice wavering with fatigue, “but it happened when Tanith tried to steal my power. Contact with it made her stronger, and then”—she waved a hand at the chasm helplessly—“this.”
“How do we close it?” He looked at his wrists as if contemplating how to use his blood to lock it shut, just as the mages had done with the broken seals. But this was far bigger than a broken seal, and even all the blood in his body might not be enough.
“You don’t.” The childlike awe had fled from Tanith’s voice, replaced by the bitter malevolence Echo expected from her. Tanith stalked toward them, waves of light and shadow dancing around her form. “It will grow and grow and leave nothing in its wake. Then we can start fresh.” She paused a few feet away.
Caius stepped in front of Echo and slipped into a defensive stance. He gripped the knives tightly, but Echo was close enough to see the slight tremor in his arms. “There is no ‘we.’ Not in starting over. The only thing you’ll achieve is complete destruction. There’s no room for creation after that.”
“You can’t talk sense into her, Caius,” Echo said. The dagger in her hand seemed pathetic next to the long, elegant wickedness of Caius’s blades, but it was all she had. If only she could marshal the free-floating energy surrounding her. “She’s delusional.”
Tanith cocked her head to the side like a curious bird. “There could be a place for you beside me, Caius.”
He shook his head, an expression of unbearable sadness settling on his face. “No,” he said. “There isn’t.”
“Then you’ve made your choice,” said Tanith. She drew her sword from its sheath. She hadn’t bothered using it yet, as far as Echo knew. Perhaps there was a part of her that wanted to meet her brother in a fight that was as fair as she could make it. Fire crackled to life around her, dancing up her gilded armor, snaking around her gauntlets, licking up the length of her blade. “We could have ruled together, you and I. Your passing will be dutifully mourned.”
With that, she sprang forward, a dizzying whirlwind of shadow and flame trailed by a cloud of wispy light.
Caius met her halfway. Their blades clashed. The sound of steel ringing against steel was loud, even in the midst of all the chaos along the avenue. Echo darted out of the way. She was hopelessly out of her depth. Tanith and Caius were tangled in each other, blades locked, moving so quickly that Echo could hardly follow what was happening. She couldn’t tell who was winning, so evenly matched were they in skill. Caius moved with the grace of a dancer, while Tanith preferred to throw her strength into her attacks with all the finesse of a blunt instrument. It was inelegant but undoubtedly effective.
Echo tried to spy an opening she could slip through to aid Caius, but it was futile. Without her magic, she was just a girl waving around a dagger she only barely knew how to use.
And then Echo saw the blackness growing faster, spreading. Reaching.
The fissure opened wider and wider, a mouth demanding to be fed. It inched closer to the spot where Caius and Tanith tussled, locked together in combat.
It was so close to them. Too close.
Echo drew in a breath, and the magic around her rushed into her lungs. She was a vessel; the power was drawn to her. Light and dark. The magic smashed into her with enough force to send her to her knees. Even then, she didn’t stop breathing it in. She drew it into herself, every mote she could reach, and she pushed it out.
The crack in the street stopped growing. Every fiber of muscle in Echo’s body strained to hold the rift together. She couldn’t close it, but she could keep it from getting larger. From reaching Caius.
Echo could not move without snapping the tenuous tether she had on the rift. She could only watch.
A pained grunt escaped Caius as he parried away from one of Tanith’s artless lunges. Blood trickled from a gash on his cheek, a neat diagonal line that ran from cheekbone to chin.
Tanith stepped away from him, one hand coming up to her mouth. Her eyes faded back to red, and an expression of horror stole across her face. “Caius?”
Her voice sounded weak and confused, like that of a lost child. A ruse, Echo thought. It had to be. But Tanith was backing away, shaking her head. When she looked at the tear in the in-between in the ground, it was as though she were seeing it for the very first time.
“Did I do this?” Tanith asked.
Echo didn’t buy it. Not for one second. “Yeah, you did,” she spat, wishing she could get up and wipe that lost look off Tanith’s face with a well-aimed punch. “And you know you did.”
Caius frowned, puzzled. “Tanith?”