His tone is so cold my spine ripples.
He turns to the wraith. “How much longer until your underlings are ready?”
“The ones assembled to keep hold of this city are near ready. The rest come with us to Tulla.” The tall dead thing slurs his gravelly words into the breeze, which carries them low and whips them around. “The timing now depends on you, m’lord. And whether your vessel is prepared?”
“She performed as I said she would. We’ll know soon if it took
in the way I require. If not, I’ll ensure she returns for more. Either way, it won’t be long.”
“And in the meantime?” Lady Isobel glares at her father. “Are
you
ready? Because you look like hulls, and I’ll not have us embark before I know you’ve managed control over your host.”
“He grows weaker as we speak,” the wraith interjects, flourishing a long, bone finger through the air at Eogan. A hint of mist follows it before the ghostly thing inhales and pulls the fog toward its hooded face.
I can just make out the shriveled skin and skeletal cheekbones beneath eyes that are glowing a faint yellow. Before I know it the spider serum in my veins has lurched and begun vibrating with that low thirst.
Draewulf shifts and the starlight catches the scowl in his eye. “If your Mortisfaire powers worked the way—”
“It’s not my fault something’s changed his Medien ability.” It’s Isobel’s turn to snarl. “He’s never been able to block me before, and I assure you I will finish it. Perhaps it’s time I pay a visit to—”
“Out of the question,” Draewulf’s voice barks.
“May I remind you that with your own energy being spent maintaining your hold, you are—”
“We knew this would be the most critical. Even now I can sense it breaking,” he growls. “Prepare your guards. Leave me to focus. And you . . .” He glares at the wraith. “Alert me as soon as the army is fully in place.”
“Yes, m’lord,” the wraith breathes.
Isobel purses her mouth and glares. Until Draewulf turns his back on her. She flips around, then heads toward the rock waterfall with the wraith following and disappears opposite our hiding spot.
Draewulf watches them stride away until there’s the distinct sound of a door shutting somewhere. I swear his shoulders sag the slightest bit before he turns and spreads his hands toward the black masses in the distance. He becomes still.
Too still.
After one, two, five minutes my calves are aching and begging to change position. I’m just wondering how softly I can shift when he’s muttering loud enough for me to hear even if his words are incoherent.
Soon they’re so inharmonious and complex, it’s giving the effect of multiple voices. Beside me, Myles rocks forward enough that I can feel the tension rolling off him as Eogan-who-is-Draewulf lifts his robed arms to hold up an object out in front of him, as if performing a type of ritual.
Oh litches.
Myles’s hand is poking my shoulder, compressing hard. Apparently he’s caught on too and worried I might move. He should be.
Draewulf’s fingers are clasped around a large leather pouch, which looks very much like the bag the neighbor of owner number seven used for spells. I asked her about it once, and she told me she kept it full of enchanted bones. I never asked whose bones or what kind of enchantment, but the one time she tried to use them to rid me of my Elemental curse . . .
It didn’t go well.
I summon every nerve of strength I own to keep me rooted to this spot as Draewulf’s voice grows louder. He puts a hand in his robe pocket, pulls out a fistful of powder to sprinkle over the bag, then dumps the pouch’s contents onto the ground. There’s a clatter and a spark and then it looks like the whole thing catches fire. The
smoke from it rises straight, eerily stiff, as it funnels up to the sky. The muttering stops as he watches it. After a moment, he steps into the thick smoke spire and inhales once, deeply.
The faint sound of a leaf being crushed underfoot is my first indication that I’ve moved. I bump into Myles who’s frozen except for his fingers curling into my skin, keeping me still and from giving us away.
“Use your mirage.”
I feel him shake his head just as Draewulf’s gaze darts over.
“He’s weakened.
Use your mirage
, Myles. I’m going to use my ability.”
An elongated pause. Then, “My power doesn’t work against Eogan’s block,” Myles admits in my ear.
It doesn’t?
I glance back at him and almost laugh. So that’s why he hates Eogan so much.
There’s a low snarl, and I turn back in time to catch Draewulf looking over again. Searching our direction with those greenrimmed black eyes.
There’s no way he could’ve heard us, yet he steps out of the bone-incense spire and his eyes are seeking, glowering, and then they’re riveted on me.
Myles fumbles against my foot, and when I slip a hand back to make him stay still, the oaf isn’t there.
What the—? Bleeding fool.
I’m just rising from my haunches when Draewulf growls and, faster than possible, bursts through the low branches. He stops in front of me, inches away, looking furious but also haggard. Beyond haggard. He looks ill.
He studies me, then suddenly smiles and tweaks his head to the side. His expression removes any question in my mind whether
he can see through Myles’s mirage. “Little impotent girls shouldn’t eavesdrop.” He lifts a hand. “Unless they want their mouths sewn shut.” He scrapes Eogan’s short nails against my neck.
I utter a cry at the sting and aim my knee for his stomach at the same moment my hand lunges with my knife. He steps aside and swipes it away onto the grass, as if he can’t be bothered with such silliness, before reaching for my chin.
I shove both hands against his chest and attempt to pull nonexistent lightning from the sky. Instead I’m met with darkness. From inside him.
There’s a flash and one, two, three of the garden lanterns snap out, dimming the space around us as his hand slides to the back of my neck, as if to crack it. He swears in some language I’ve never heard, and that poisoned hunger jolts in my veins, burning my skin beneath his touch as the cold in my bones reacts. Suddenly it’s climbing, clawing, begging to get out of my fingertips to attack him.
He starts murmuring beneath his breath and boring his black eyes into me. I shut mine and push against him and focus on the energy I’m reacting to. On the sensation of power flowing through him. I begin to dig into it, draw from it, imagining I can feel it siphoning off in shallow waves as it whirlpools more and more into the vortex inside me.
I tug harder and the waves grow stronger, until abruptly his murmuring stops and I open my eyes to see Eogan’s body go transparent over Draewulf’s dark shape that’s glued to my hand. And it’s like I’m seeing double. Eogan’s eyes begin to clear.
His hand grips my neck tighter.
Air.
I need air.
The trees around me begin to blur and the shapes of three
wraiths appear, but Draewulf doesn’t even glance over—doesn’t even notice Myles’s mental creations dragging their decaying bodies toward us.
My breath is blurring, my head is blurring, and my ears are rushing as the
thump, thump, thump
of my blood is flailing through my veins to kill him. I scratch at his chest, drawing off his power, but he just squeezes stronger and chuckles until I’m certain my neck is going to break. I hear Myles draw a knife from his spot five paces away, only to see Draewulf swipe his other arm in Myles’s direction, and the lord protectorate goes flying against the rock wall.
“Eogan, please,” I hear my own voice utter, and I narrow my energy’s focus right above his heart. And push.
Draewulf drops his hand and slumps into me.
What in—?
I grab my other ankle knives at the same time I’m choking and gulping and trying to shove him off, to knee him in the gut, but a tremble rips through his body, wavering up his backbone, and this time, when his fingers find my arms, it’s for support, not injury.
Eogan?
He lifts his head and there are those green eyes shining through a face that looks old and weary. “For hulls’ sakes, Nym, can you please stop trying to infuriate the blasted fool. You’re going to get yourself killed.”
I raise a brow and draw in another lungful of air. Clearly his personality hasn’t suffered. “Well, forgive me for trying to save us all,” I choke out.
He stands straighter and eyes me, this time with more lucidity, and breaks into that daft smile that makes my idiot self want to drown in his arms.
I return the grin and for whatever reason feel suddenly shy,
which is why it takes an entire two seconds more for the realization to dawn on me. “Oh kracken, you’re still alive. Did it work? Did I . . .?” My words fumble over each other as I glance at my hands. The shock and excitement numbing my tongue.
Did I separate them?
“Did
what
work?”
“I brought you to the surface!” I clutch my palms that are still shaking with Draewulf’s energy, then swerve my gaze back up at him, my eyes widening along with my smile.
Only to be met by the flash of wolfish black encircling his emerald green.
Oh.
Not quite.
He squints. “What do you mean?”
“I mean it almost worked! I brought you out!” And even if it didn’t work all the way, I can’t help the relief—the exhilaration—the
sheer joy
this knowledge brings.
My powers are nearly strong enough.
His lips curl oddly and he coughs. “So it seems.” I can hear it in his undertone—the exhaustion. The wheezing.
I frown. Eogan’s body gives the slightest shudder and his jaw tightens. He droops and I go to catch him. “Oh hulls,” I whisper, because the look on his face says he may not be dead but something’s more than definitely wrong.
A crack of a stick and Myles steps forward, rubbing the back of his head. His expression as he stares at Eogan says he’s fascinated. More than fascinated.
He looks greedy. Even as Eogan suddenly looks like he’s dying.
I will my abilities to hurry. “It’s Lady Isobel, she’s—”
“I know.” Eogan puts his hand on my shoulder to steady himself. “She’s trying her best to finish it.” He brushes his gaze down
my face until it reaches my lips, where it lingers as he gives a faint smirk. “Thankfully her powers aren’t quite as effective on me as she remembers.”
I put my hand on his chest and begin to press to absorb whatever it is she’s done to him. “I can almost fix it. Let me—”
Eogan’s face caves with pain. He jerks back and pushes my hand away. “What in—?” He slips his gaze down the rest of me until it lands on my other hand—on my gimpy fingers that are no longer curled but straight. Nearly perfect.
His voice wanes. “Nym, what did you do?”
Behind him, I catch the flash of Myles’s silver-toothed grin.
Eogan follows my gaze, and the next second he’s turned and wrapped a fist around Myles’s shirt. “What have you done to her?”
The lord protectorate’s arms go up in defense even as his voice raises an octave. “Only what she asked for, and it was nothing she couldn’t handle.”
“That’s not what I asked.
What did you do?
”
“You know exactly what I did. I reactivated her. Gave her something to actually fight with, to protect herself with.”
Eogan snorts. “Protect herself? Is that what you call it? You bleeding little—”
“Ah ah ah!” Myles tries to shove Eogan’s hand away, and when that doesn’t work, he attempts to straighten his shirt anyway. “I think you’d be thanking me.”
“For what? Giving her a
death sentence
?”
“Perhapsss you’re merely insulted that I was able to give her something you’re not.”
“This has nothing to do with you
giving
her anything,” Eogan snarls. “So you’d better undo it, or I will—”
“You know I can’t.”
Eogan bares his teeth.
“Try.”
Myles wrinkles his lips. “You honestly think
she’ll
go for that? She’s the one who asked for them.”
Without taking his eyes off Myles, Eogan releases him and says in a softening tone, “Nym, please go back to the person who gave them to you. Ask her to undo it. Tell her it was a mistake.”
I shake my head.
He can’t be serious.
“I can’t.”
I won’t.
“Yes, you can. Gowon will give you the money for it if you tell him I commanded it.”
What is he talking about?
“It’s not the money. It’s the abilities. I can help you! I already did—it’s why you’re here now!”
He spins around and stares at me in horror and . . . something else. Fear. “Don’t you see what those abilities will do to you? Don’t you see what they’ve done to him?” He points at Myles, then at himself. “Worse, what they’ve done to Draewulf?”
I freeze. “What do you mean?”
His expression darkens from anger to outright fury, and before Myles can dodge, Eogan’s grabbed him again. “You litched bolcrane—you didn’t even tell her?”
My legs are shaking. “Tell me what?”
He flips toward me and practically chokes out the words. “Nym, what you’ve done by consuming new abilities . . .
darker
abilities . . . It’s how Draewulf came to be who he is. It’s how he changed from being a wizard.”
My breath dies.
Suddenly the roof, the garden, the starry night sky are falling, and my head is spinning as Eogan’s glare turns caustic at Myles. “I will kill you for this.”
“Oh, give it a rest. We both know she needs power if—”
“No, we don’t know—and certainly not the kind given by a
witch! What I
do know
is that this had
nothing
to do with her and
everything
to do with you, and if it is the last thing I do, I will—”
He keeps threatening but I stop listening.
Draewulf changed by absorbing a power like I did?
I swerve my gaze to Myles.
He is gasping and yet rolling his eyes at both of us. “Draewulf went through the procedure multiple timesss—who knows how many over the yearsss, and who knows what kind of experiments he performed to get to what he isss now. It’s not the same thing. It’s not even on the same level.”