And then, between one moment and the next, he changed.
His face went smooth, and all the tension vanished from his mouth and eyes, the weight falling from his shoulders. His head tipped forward, the black curls swallowing his face as shadows rolled across his skin. They spread out from his chest, spilled down his limbs, blanketed flesh and bone, and for a moment, he was nothing but a plume of smoke. And then the smoke drew in like a breath, began to shift and tighten, carving out the lines of a body, its edges traced with firelight.
Where there had been a boy, now there was a monster.
Tall, and graceful, and terrifying. The chains crumbled from its wrists, blew away like ash, and when it lifted its head, its black eyes gazed wide and empty, lightless, shineless, matte as the sky on a moonless night. Smoke trailed up over the creature’s head into horns and billowed behind its back into wings that shed curls of fire like burning paper. And there, in the center of its body, cracking through the darkness like a smoldering coal, its heart pulsed with fiery, inconstant light.
Kate’s eyes watered as she stared at the creature. She couldn’t look away. The fire crackled and burned in the cavity of its chest, and its edges—limbs, wings, horns—wavered against the dark, and it was mesmerizing, the way the blaze had been in the chapel that night. A thing made, and then set free. That fire had started with the flick of a match, and this, this had started with a boy.
Leo stepped out of the way, and the creature craned its head toward Kate.
“August,” she said.
But it wasn’t him.
There was no August in its face, only shadow.
No August in its eyes, only ember and ash.
Kate tried to retreat, but under the monster’s gaze, she couldn’t. She was frozen, not from fear, but from something else, something deeper. Her body was no longer listening, not to her. The red light still danced across her skin, and she marveled at the way a whole life could be distilled into something so simple. The way a death could be folded into a touch.
The Sunai took a step toward her. It didn’t move like other monsters, didn’t twitch and shudder like the Corsai, or slither and strike like the Malchai. No, it moved like smoke, dancing forward on a breeze she couldn’t feel. A song she couldn’t hear.
Its hand floated up, fingertips burning. The heat brushed the air before her, and the fear finally caught up. She tried so hard to pull away, to fight the hold of the red light wrapped around her skin. Tears streamed down her cheeks, but she didn’t close her eyes.
“I’m not afraid of death,” she whispered, meeting the creature’s gaze as it reached for her. She didn’t know if August was still inside, if he could hear her, if he would care. “I’m not afraid,” she said, bracing herself for the Sunai’s touch.
But it never came.
The Sunai took another step, but its hand swept toward Leo, its shadow fingers closing around his throat. Leo gasped in surprise, but couldn’t pull away. He fought, clawing at the monster’s grip, but its hold was unbreakable, its strength absolute.
“What are you d—?” demanded Leo, but then the creature’s grip tightened, cutting him off. It leaned in, and whispered something in Leo’s ear, and Leo’s face went from shocked and angry to blank. Not still, or calm, just . . . empty.
Something began to rise to the surface of Leo’s skin, not black like the Malchai’s life or red, like a sinner’s. What came to the surface of the Sunai’s skin, Kate couldn’t process. It was light and darkness, glow and shadow, starlight and midnight, and something else entirely. It was an explosion in slow motion, tragedy and monstrosity and resolve, and it swept over Leo’s skin, and wove through the monster’s smoke, tracing the outlines of a boy-like shape inside the shadow like lightning in a storm.
And then, like lightning, it was gone.
Leo’s legs folded, and the Sunai sank with him, its hand still wrapped around its brother’s throat. The Sunai knelt over the body as it turned to stone, and then ash, and then nothing. Kate stood, the red glow of her soul still hovering above her bruised and bloody skin, but its light was fading as it began to retreat back into the safety of her self.
The Sunai straightened, the last of Leo’s body crumbling away in its hands. A single beat of burning wings, and the ash was gone, and the Sunai lifted its horned head and turned its gaze again on Kate.
It came toward her, crossing the space in two elegant strides. It raised its hand, and Kate closed her eyes at last, and felt the heat of the creature’s fingers, not on her skin, but on the cuffs around her wrists. She blinked and saw the metal blacken and crumble under the creature’s touch.