His blood had begun to mend the wounds the broken seals had inflicted, but it wasn’t enough. It was nowhere near enough. The universe demanded a more potent power to cage what had been unleashed, to close what had been ripped open.
Caius spoke the words he had heard Echo say, the words of a spell as ancient and as fundamental as the changing of the tides, as the elements that gave life to the natural magic of the world.
“By my blood.”
He felt the ripples of magic those words created. Sensed the electric potential they carried.
The magic swelled in the air around them, a glittering crescendo to the grand finale.
Caius wrapped his arms around his sister. Over her shoulder, he saw Echo kneeling, holding the fabric of reality together with little more than the force of her will. Her hair—as brown as rich soil—tumbled around her face, freed from the ferocity of her fight. Her eyes were rimmed with red, and tears had tracked through the soot and ash on her face, leaving trails of pristine skin in their wake. He could see the plea forming on her lips, and he hoped that she would not cry out for him to stop, to not do what he knew he must. He was only so strong. Oh, how beautiful she was. How brave. It was a privilege to love her.
Caius had indeed always loved the symmetry of stories. He had lost a love and found another. He had lost a sister and found her again. He had lost his crown, his title, himself, and found the role he was meant to play, the piece of the tapestry into which all their lives had been woven. He was but a collection of threads, unable to see the totality of the image until he stepped away from it, but now he saw.
He should have seen it coming. He should have known the familiar lines of his tale, one as old as time itself: a king sacrificed so the rain would come and the crops would grow and the sun would shine and the world would keep on spinning another turn.
The wholeness of his story was laid bare before him, and he knew his story would end just as it had begun.
He stepped back, guiding his sister with him. One step, and his foot felt the ground give way beneath him, drawing them both into the abyss. Another step, and there was only air and darkness.
Caius and Tanith—his sister, his twin, his blood—had entered this world together. And that was how they left it.
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
The pivotal moments in one’s life happened in slow motion. It was the universe’s way of forcing every moment to be experienced in its fullest, most excruciating detail. The speed of objects slowed to a molasses crawl. The air stilled. The earth held its breath.
Watch, the universe said.
Watch him fall.
Watch him take the demon with him.
Watch the darkness follow.
Watch the blackness swallow them up and disappear behind them.
Watch nothing stand in the place where someone had once stood.
Echo watched and felt threads of magic slip between her fingers as the ripped seam in the fabric of the world sewed itself back together because of Caius. Because he had been there and now he was not.
He mended the holes in the world only to tear one open in her chest.
The sound of gunfire rattled against the night, petering out as the shadows broke apart. The sky shuddered, heaving a great sigh as its broken shards re-formed into something whole. The ozone tang of the in-between faded like a bad dream.
Echo couldn’t tear her eyes away from the spot where Caius had stood, where he had offered her one last piercing look before plunging himself and his sister into the abyss, taking the ku?edra with him.
Her heart sputtered against her ribs, an engine that wouldn’t properly start.
Caius was gone.
Caius was gone.
Echo pushed herself off her knees and stood. Her body was still swollen with magic, far too much for any one person to bear. Her bones were as heavy as stone. With unsteady steps, her feet carried her along the fissure still wide-open in the asphalt. But it was a mundane disruption in the topography of the street. A wide crack running the length of Fifth Avenue as far as Echo could see. No shadows leaking onto the cement. No unfathomable black depths threatening to spill over into the world. The avenue was ruined, but it was a normal ruin. It could be repaired with gravel and tar and paint, a scar scabbed over.
She dropped to her knees. Her fingers traced the ragged edge of the pavement as if she could tear the world back open and pull him out. The knowledge that she couldn’t stole the air from her lungs, suffocating her in its terrible immensity.
To be lost in the in-between was to be claimed by the great tracts of nothingness in the void. To be lost in the in-between was to be lost forever.
“Echo!”
She didn’t turn at the sound of her name. She couldn’t shift her gaze from the spot where Caius had been seconds, minutes earlier. Time had become elastic for her.
How long had it been since his hands had been on her hands, lacing their fingers together as they fell asleep in the library of Wyvern’s Keep? How long since his lips had traced a path down her throat from the patch of skin just below her ear to the juncture of her neck? How long since he had played the magpie’s lullaby for her on the piano? Hours. Not even a whole day.
“Echo.”
The voice was closer now, cutting through the shrill ringing in her ears. Hands landed under her arms, trying to pull her up. Echo reached behind her to brush them away, but the owner of the hands was persistent.
“Echo.”
Someone dropped down to a crouch next to her.
“Look at me,” came the voice. A hand gently pressed against her chin, forcing her eyes away from the spot to which they had been riveted.
The Ala gazed at Echo, her raven-black feathers matted with soot and sweat and blood. Her obsidian eyes were unspeakably sad.
“He—”
Echo couldn’t get the words out. Words had a power all their own, and if she spoke the ones she could not say, then they would be imbued with a power she did not want them to have. They would accelerate the moment, solidify its reality. They were a finality to which she was not ready to commit.
He’s gone, she did not say.
But the Ala didn’t need her to say it. She knew. She must have seen. No one understood magic or the in-between like the Ala.
Echo was distantly aware that a trembling had taken her chin. Her vision blurred. Her head swam. She was going to be sick.
The Ala’s brow creased. Wordlessly, she pulled Echo into her arms, whispering soft Avicet words into Echo’s hair as Echo shattered against her, a wave breaking against rocks.
“I’m so sorry, dah re’ain.” “My child” in Avicet. Not a phrase the Ala used often. The power in those words prodded at Echo’s wounds. “But there is work yet to be done.”
Gently but firmly, the Ala pushed Echo inches away, just enough for her to look upon the devastation that remained.
The broken sky had been healed, but all around them was ruin.
“They need you, dah re’ain.”
Echo lurched away from the Ala, falling back against the street, the scrapes on her abraded palms reminding her of their existence. Who needed her? What else did she have to give? She had nothing. Nothing, nothing, nothing.