“WE’RE FREE,” CINDER said, his voice breaking. He turned to the others and they came together, embracing with a desperate tenderness that they didn’t deserve. Cities had crumbled at their touch. My troupe had burned to nothing on their whim. My parents lay beneath the earth, their songs silenced.
Around us, the mountain wore the scars of what had happened. Several of the standing stones had been toppled, Iax’s creatures clawing them down like trees. Where Haliax had fallen, the ground was stained darker than the night around it. Beneath the trilithon arch, more creatures continued to pour onto the plateau, flowing up to the crater’s rim before spilling over and beyond.
My hands made themselves into fists without my permission. But what was I against the weight of their years? One man with trembling hands and a name no one would remember. One man was nothing.
Then memory stirred, Marten’s dry voice drifting back to me from the depths of the Eld. “Call them the proper way, and they will come.”
I had spent my whole life putting my faith in the University’s teachings. In sympathy and sygaldry and the cold logic of the Arcanum. But the Arcanum was very far away. And Tehlu, if he were anywhere at all, would be closest here. So I stepped forward, drawing the mountain air deep into my lungs.
“Great Tehlu, wrap me in your wings. Protect me from demons and creatures that walk in the night.”
The Chandrian continued their reunion, oblivious.
My voice grew stronger, climbing like flame up dry wood. “Tehlu, in your name, watch over me.”
And still I went unnoticed.
“Tehlu, shelter me from iron and anger. Tehlu, who the fire could not kill, watch over me in fire.”
Cinder’s head turned slightly, his eyes narrowing as he sought my voice.
“Tehlu, who held Encanis to the wheel, watch over me in darkness.” Each word tore from me sharper than the last. “Tehlu, whose eyes are true, watch over me. TEHLU, SON OF YOURSELF, IN YOUR NAME, WATCH OVER ME.”
“Kill him,” Cinder commanded, his voice cutting through the revelry.
They came at me then, Stercus and Usnea closing from either side while the others fanned wide to cut off the ridge. By now, the wind knew my name better than I knew it myself. When I called, it leapt, catching them mid-stride, lifting Stercus off his feet and sending Usnea tumbling across the stone, her mask catching starlight as she rolled. But even as they fell, the others kept spreading.
Light split the world in half.
The first bolt fell like a judgment. Bright as the birth of stars. So bright that for one blinding moment the Chandrian became nothing more than shadows painted against white fire.
Another bolt carved the earth open, spilling fire where it touched. The air itself screamed. Across the plateau, Iax’s creatures shrieked and recoiled from the light, then turned on its source with the blind fury of things that have known only darkness.
Then the angels descended.
Eight figures wreathed in flame and wrath and holy vengeance. With wings that blotted out the stars. With ever-burning swords that made my stomach clench and looking away impossible.
“Time to go,” Denna whispered, grabbing my wrist.
We ran. Behind us, angels screamed war songs that had no words, only fury. Behind us, creatures older than names howled at the stars. Behind us, stone melted and air burned and the mountain shook itself apart. We ran toward the ridge with the singular focus of prey, toward anywhere that was not here.
Cinder stood before us, having moved through space in ways that space should not allow. “You thought you could slip away?” He stalked forward, black eyes gleaming. “Foolish rabbits.”
I called the wind again, throwing everything I had into a wall of air. Cinder planted his blade in the earth and leaned into it, immovable.
He moved again, that terrible speed, but this time his target was not me.
It was Denna.
“No!” I threw myself at him. Cinder sidestepped, caught my arm, and redirected me past him like a man turning a horse. I stumbled, tried to pivot, and the grey blade was already there, the stroke so clean I didn’t feel it at first.
Pain shot through my left hand.
Then a deeper, quieter pain as three of my fingers fell to the ground.
I should have screamed. Instead something cracked open inside my chest, white-hot, and I crashed into him before the scream could form, driving my shoulder into his ribs and sending the sword spinning from his grip. My fist found his face and I felt his nose break beneath my knuckles, heard the wet crack of cartilage giving way, and I hit him again and my ruined hand found his white hair and I drove his skull against the base of a standing stone once, twice, and I was reaching for his eyes when his hands caught my wrists and his strength was not human, had never been human, and he threw me aside and was on top of me, hammering his fists down into my face, and I tasted blood, and my jaw went loose, and through the ringing I heard my own breathing, wet and wrong.
He stopped then, one hand pinning my shoulder, and waited for my eyes to focus. He wanted me to see.
He smiled. The same smile he had worn the day he killed everything I loved.
I raised my ruined hand and drove what remained of it into his face, grinding the raw stumps of my fingers across his eyes. He recoiled, clawing at the blood, and for a bare moment his vision was gone. I tried to roll free but he caught me by the throat and forced me flat, snarling. Behind him, through the red haze, I could see Denna moving low along the ground, circling wide.
Cinder found his sword where it had fallen. He planted his boot on my chest, pinning me to the earth.
The blade rose high.
Then he froze.
Behind him stood Denna, breathing hard, her hand still wrapped around the handle of the knife she had driven into his neck.
“Pity,” Cinder said, his voice conversational despite the steel in his spine. “You would have made a fine apprentice.” And he drove his sword backward.
The sound I made had no words in it. The wind answered what my voice could not, erupting in a gale that tore Cinder from the ground and sent him tumbling across the broken stone.
I was beside Denna in an instant.
“Help me up,” she whispered, clutching the wound as her blood seeped between her fingers.
I obeyed without thought, pulling her to her feet, though closing my ruined hand around her arm sent a white bolt of pain from wrist to shoulder. We stumbled toward the ridge, her weight against me, my blood mixing with hers on the ancient stone.
And yet, I turned. I don’t know why I turned, but I did, and I saw Cinder pull the knife from his neck with no more concern than a man removing a splinter. He tossed it aside and his eyes found mine. I knew then that he would never stop. That his first purpose under a free sky would be to hunt us down.
But as I looked at him, the cracks in my mind opened wide, the world thinned, and I saw Cinder as he truly was, all the way down. I saw the young man he had been in Murella, once considered virtuous. I saw how small betrayals had layered blood upon his hands until he burned down his own people’s silver tree. I saw how that first act had opened a door in him that could never quite close, and how the centuries of torment that followed had made him cruel.
I lifted my ruined hand, blood running in a thin line to the ground. “By my own blood, I bind you. By your own name, let you be accursed.” I spoke a word, and the mountain shuddered to hear it. The long name at the root of what Cinder was, turned against him like a blade reversed. “This is my doom upon you. Your own name will turn against you. You and all who follow you will know no peace. This is my doom upon you!”
Cinder’s face twisted from amusement to rage to what might have been fear. He lunged toward us, only to be met by a burning sword as one of Tehlu’s angels descended upon him.
Denna tugged at my arm, her voice already fading. “Let’s go.”