The Midnight Kingdom, page 58
“I caught you this time,” Nikolas said.
Fin’s lips twitched. Then he surged up and threw his arms around Nikolas’s shoulders, laughter and tears escaping all at once. Nikolas held him as tight as he dared, reveling in that laugh; the same laugh as the boy who had tumbled off a wall one afternoon and straight into Nikolas’s life.
Phos’s scream made them look up. The god was contorting around the arrow, trying to pull it out even as his limbs fought against Julian’s compulsion. His wings stuttered and he dropped to the ground, gold and black threads twisting around him.
Julian leapt off the roof and landed lightly on his feet. He stalked forward with the silent grace of a predator.
“Go to sleep,” he said again, “and dream.”
Rian’s head fell back. His eyes were still a furious gold, but his mouth hung open in a silent scream as above them the maelstrom thundered and threatened.
“Why isn’t it stopping?” Fin asked.
Nikolas’s chest tightened. Even with Phos momentarily hindered, the attack had already been triggered.
They were too late.
XV
Dante!”
He looked where his aunt was pointing. In the stretch of land between the plateau and the volcano, the ground was beginning to crack and tremble. An energy flitted through the air that put pressure on the back of his skull, a familiar, staticky fog.
All around them, thin lines lit up gold.
“It’s working!” Dante knelt at the edge of the plateau. Hands and feet and heads broke out of the forming cracks, bodies crawling out of the ground in various states of decay like tunnel spiders. Some were fresh—as fresh as a year-old corpse could be—while others had eroded to bone and sinew. High-pitched cries rattled out of their slack jaws as they all turned their gazes up at the raging demons.
The sound of three demons battling was that of beasts fighting for dominance. Their abilities ineffective against each other, they resorted to raw, furious strength, too fast for Dante to make out anything beyond Shanizeh’s hands around the baron’s thickened neck and Azideh’s horns piercing his chest.
A flash of red and Shanizeh teleported behind Alma. The baron’s morphed body was thrown down, the crash making the plateau tremble. Marizleh growled, fangs snapping in the air as Shanizeh and Azideh closed in. Shanizeh made an odd, clicking laugh and raised her hand high.
Azideh caught her wrist. “The kill should be mine.”
“You don’t deserve it,” she hissed. And just that like, the two turned on each other, releasing their hold on the baron.
Dante spun toward the refugee, but Marizleh got there first.
The baron-turned-demon grinned at Dante as he captured the young woman in his blue-veined arms. They stood at the edge of the plateau, the refugee still blankly, eerily calm.
“Baron Alma,” Dante said carefully, holding out a hand. “You said you didn’t want to resort to this. I know you are not the demon. In fact, I’m sure we can find a way to exorcise it.”
The baron paused. Then Marizleh took over, grinning wider.
“Our bond is too strong,” he said, using a nail to cut open the refugee’s cheek. “There is no separating me from the Alma line. I grow stronger with each new sacrifice.” He eyed the other demons. “I wonder how much stronger I would become if I killed them…?”
“The circle!” Camilla cried.
Dante glanced down. The golden lines were already beginning to sputter with no sacrifice to activate the portal. The woken dead swayed and shook, seeking absolution.
He closed his eyes and forced himself to be calm, to think, to find the solution that would end up saving everyone.
But there was none.
You have the power to make meaningful change. And you understand that power has consequences.
Dante opened his eyes and looked at the refugee.
“Fall backward,” he said in soft, chiming compulsion.
Her eyes glazed over. Without hesitation, she hurled both herself and the baron over the side of the plateau.
Dante rushed to the ledge as if he could catch her. But both she and the baron hit the ground with a loud thud, and a bloom of scarlet pooled around her head. Marizleh growled and thrashed to standing, blue light prickling all around him.
“You dare—” He was cut off by an emaciated hand grabbing his arm. The dead had reached the base of the plateau, drawn to the one who had lured them to their graves. “Get off of me!”
His brute strength cleaved through the first wave of corpses. But the Alma family had been making sacrifices for centuries, and there were too many to fight off single-handedly. The dead overwhelmed him, bony fingers digging into his flesh. Dante saw the baron emerge for just a moment, eyes wide with terror; then he was dragged back into their ruthless embrace, leaving behind only tortured screams.
Dante put a hand over his mouth and tried not to be sick. The static in the air grew painful, sparking against his skin while Deia’s Heart grumbled.
I’m sorry, he thought. I’m sorry. There was no other way.
Hands hauled him to his feet. “It’s working!” Camilla yelled.
Beyond the carnage, a gaping, cosmic swirl opened within the earth. It glowed black and silver, pulling at his core.
Brailee was calling for him. It was time.
Camilla’s grin was made sharper with the baron’s demise. When she turned to him, the edges of it waned and caution darkened her eyes.
“Azideh!” Dante roared.
His demon brimmed with power. Baring his teeth, Azideh grabbed Shanizeh and slammed her into the ground.
“You vile—animal!” Shanizeh screeched as he pounded her skull against the rocks, raking long, bloody lines down his arms.
Before Camilla could react, Dante sprinted toward them and slid to his knees. “Vecto,” he said firmly, “be still.”
Shanizeh’s black eyes grew round and her mouth fell slack. The red energy that had been rising up to teleport her away faded even as rage brewed on her angular, inhuman face.
“Blood traitor,” Shanizeh growled up at Azideh. The nails puncturing his arms dug in further. “You filthy, faithless beast—”
Azideh smirked. He let all his unleashed energy pour into his fist and smashed it into the other demon. The surface of the plateau cracked beneath Dante’s knees.
Camilla ran toward them. “Shanizeh!”
Dante stood. “Saya, now!”
The corpses that had been climbing the side of the plateau crawled over the lip and darted for Camilla. She struck one down in a blur of red, but like Alma, she was overcome by their numbers. She screamed in fury as the corpses held her down, her arms and legs pinned by weathered bone and tattered flesh.
“Dante!” No matter how she struggled, she couldn’t free herself. “Dante! What have you done? How did you—?”
“What was it you said about putting your family first?” he asked her.
He turned away from her disbelieving stare and called Azideh back to him. So long as Dante commanded Shanizeh with her true name—a name Azideh had whispered into his mind with no small amount of delight when Dante had asked for it—she would stay right where she was.
He leapt from the plateau over the still-churning corpses, landing on the grass that led to the edges of the portal. Brailee and Saya were there to meet him. He gave Saya a thankful nod, and Brailee clutched his arm.
They knelt beside the portal. He couldn’t see much beyond the swirling, shimmering darkness, like the night sky turned to paint, but he sensed an opulent vastness beyond. Nox and Somnus peered in as well, enticed by the call of Noctus.
Dante swallowed, reminding himself that he couldn’t go in. The whole point of the portal was to create an opening for Taesia and the others to get back to Vitae.
“How long will it hold?” Brailee asked.
Dante shook his head; he didn’t know. He couldn’t think about what he’d just done to make this happen. He could only stare at the mesmerizing vortex, silently begging for Taesia to find it, to return home.
All Angelica had ever wanted was to be able to grasp her powers without the use of instruments.
Now that they were rushing through her in tidal waves, she realized why Deia had locked them up.
She scorched white-hot, a star fallen to earth. Still, she longed for more of that intolerable heat, for the sea of lava beginning to flood the crater. The ground beneath her pitched and rolled, the air stinging.
All of it could be unraveled, undone. She could smash the volcano apart and bathe in its remains. Drag the deity from her hiding place and rip her apart. The empire at her back could be broken up and then plunged into the sea.
“Angelica!”
The sound of her own name barely registered. She writhed and spat fire, sobbing as the veins along her lungs blackened.
“Angelica, calm down!”
Those words echoing across years and years and years—
“I will not,” she shrieked, “calm down!”
Vents opened along the ground, spitting lava. There was a cry of surprise, a deep satisfaction in her marrow.
“All right!” the voice yelled. “Just stop hurting yourself!”
But she wasn’t hurting herself. She was fulfilling her every want, flooded with a god’s might and stepping into her role as heir, as—
—as her heart began to char, the water in her body boiling, scalding, killing her from the inside out.
With her third eye open she could peer through the veils of her elements at those who had gathered around her. They stood on burning ground and protected their faces from stray embers with their arms, risking themselves for the chance to speak to her.
“Angelica,” Eiko called. “We have to— You said we could go home, we need to go home.”
A pair of familiar dark eyes met hers through the flames.
“Angelica,” Cosima whispered. “Come back to us. Please.”
Each breath was a struggle. She longed to plunge her senses to the bottom of the sea, or deep under the magma chamber, escaping somewhere cool and dark where she could not think or be.
“What even is home to you?” she demanded of Eiko in a voice like crashing thunder.
“Home… home is wherever my family is.” Eiko’s tears gleamed like gold. “And that includes you.”
Blood trickled from the corners of Angelica’s eyes. Her fingertips began to crumble into ash.
“You can control it!” Eiko cried. “I know you can!”
But the fire was in every molecule of her being. Without it, she was nothing.
She fell to her knees.
“Angelica!” Cosima yelled. “Listen to me—you’re stronger than your god could ever hope to be! So prove it!”
Fingers digging into basalt, blood trapped in her throat. The third eye blazing on her forehead leaked black liquid, falling to the ground and sprouting yellow flowers where it landed.
Hypericum flowers.
Angelica stilled. Then she grabbed the obsidian dagger and sliced it across the meat of her thigh.
The pain gave her a rush of clarity. Gasping, she looked up at the smoldering, blackened sky, the destructive pillar of ash on its way to blanket Hitan. Yvri and Kenji had managed to close the crater wall, the ex-Gojarin now flying toward them on the wyvern’s back. The flowing lava had parted around Angelica and the girls, giving them a wide birth even as it splashed at the edges of the crater, as if Angelica had encompassed them all within a protective bubble.
You just wanted to be strong.
Not to conquer or destroy, but to save those who mattered most.
Taking the deepest breath she could, Angelica pushed back to her feet and held her hands toward the sky.
The wind that blew over the crater was cold and strong. The lava’s surface began to harden, the ash cloud pushed in the opposite direction, toward the uninhabited Sanatsu Peaks. The sea was rocking from the volcanic blasts, forming the first waves that would eventually crash into Parithvi’s coast. Angelica grasped them and forced them to temper, the taste of salt splashing across her tongue.
The power was brilliant and electric and alive, dancing along her hands and through her hair, until she was as light as the wind itself.
Far, far beneath her, she sensed the shape of the tectonic plate that ran across northern Azuna, down the Arastra Sea, and along southern Vaega. The line connecting Mount Netsai to Deia’s Heart.
Her third eye started to close. The fire that surrounded her diminished, allowing her to finally locate the threads of aether all around her. Leftover quintessence that had spilled into Vitae from the Cosmic Scale so long ago.
Yvri landed next to her, and Kenji slid off his back to gather Asami and Akane to him. The wyvern lowered his head to level his gaze at her.
I see you have taken some of the progenitor into yourself. Like a child refusing to be birthed without its womb. Do you think that was wise?
Angelica lifted her bloody dagger in answer, and he snorted.
Why your kind is so violent, I will never understand.
Yet, he allowed her to reach up and press a hand against his side. She closed her eyes and delved deep into the earth’s mantle, trying to ignore the siren call of bubbling magma, making sure the others were protected from its heat.
There—a faint, long thread. And on the other end came an insistent tug.
Angelica opened her eyes and met Kenji’s. “Where I’m going won’t be suitable for Asami and Akane.”
The ex-Gojarin looked at the empresses. They met his gaze with trust. He exhaled unevenly.
“I’ll take them away on the sorankun,” he decided. “Somewhere they can be hidden and safe.”
Asami signed something to her sister.
“She wants to tell the people the truth of what happened,” Akane said. “I do, too.”
“You will,” Angelica told them. “But wait until you make sure Nanbu won’t retaliate. Gather and grow your allies.” She thought back to the Camellia Chamber. “You should go to the earth state. Takenaka might be able to help you.”
“I like Bushan Takenaka,” Akane agreed quietly. “She and Nanbu rarely got along.”
Asami hurried forward, looking like she might hug Angelica if it weren’t for the flames between them. Swallowing, the girl bowed instead.
“Thank you,” Asami whispered, and only the air quivered.
Angelica inclined her head. “Remember to be as loud as you want to be.”
Asami smiled even as her eyes shone. She and Akane turned to Eiko and embraced her, also murmuring their thanks.
Angelica waited until Kenji and the girls had mounted their sorankun to hold out her hand. Cosima didn’t hesitate; she stepped through what remained of Angelica’s layers of fire, unhurt and unburned, and clasped it. Eiko did the same, her hand over the two of theirs.
“I said I would bring you home, and I will,” Angelica said to them. “But we need to make a stop along the way.”
Keep going.
Jas’s spirit may have been gone, but Risha held the last fragment of him near her heart as she clutched Samhara and ascended the stairs to the Noctus portal.
Keep going, and don’t look back.
Don’t look back at the flower-riddled corpse of Valentin, or the realm her body both longed for and despised.
She had to keep moving, to the only doorway available to her, and hope that it would eventually lead her home.
Her heart raced and her legs screamed. In her hands, Samhara bristled an outraged crimson as one of the blades flared into a glassy shine. Valentin’s face appeared there, contorted with rage.
“You little bitch,” he growled. “Release me!”
“Into what?” Risha panted. “Your body’s plant fodder.” Jas barked a laugh in the back of her mind.
“Thana will find me a new one. I’ll—”
Risha send a jolt of energy into the weapon, and he disappeared. But at the mention of Thana, she sensed the air prickling around her in warning, her god’s eye turned on her.
Look at what you’ve done to my minion, Thana whispered, almost right into her ear. Risha flinched. Where do you think you’re going with my crux?
Crux?
Risha stumbled onto a rise made of dark rock, surrounded by intricate stone lanterns. Here the void was practically writhing in pain, a riot of lost souls congregating over the shadowed stepwell before her.
She didn’t have time to ask questions. She ran for the stepwell.
It was a circular depression in the ground, with rings of steps engraved with glyphs and symbols leading to a flat basin. It was here where Noctan souls would be conveyed to Mortri, to ascend into a new realm and answer the call of the Praeteriens to join its current.
Risha nearly tumbled down the steps and skidded her knees at the bottom. She barely felt it—didn’t even feel the pain at her shoulder anymore, Jas already at work repairing the wound Valentin had left—and turned her whole focus inward to her power.
She leaned her head back as it flooded her. Dizzying and immense, dark and dulcet. Every unknown in the world turning clear as crystal, every minor note turning major. Valentin’s energy acted as a conduit through Samhara, the bones thrumming with impatience to be used.
It won’t be that simple to abandon me.
Following Thana’s words was a strange, wet feeling around her legs. She looked down to find that the stone of the stepwell was seeping blood, the small pool rising steadily higher and higher.
Risha reached out for the void the way she had during the séance—expanding her awareness outward until she brushed up against a wailing soul.
Come to me, Risha bade it. Come, and I will open the way.
“—came out of nowhere, we couldn’t—”
“—it was so bright, so blinding—”
“—Mama, help, please—”
Risha lifted Samhara, and energy flickered and lashed at her wrists. The blood pool had already reached her waist, flooding the portal with the sole intent of drowning her.
“Open,” she gasped. With one scythe facing the void and the other plunged into the blood to scratch at the stepwell’s bottom, she screamed it again. “Open!”
