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  An elbow struck her forehead, dazing her. One of its hands latched onto Jacaranda’s arm and yanked her to a halt. The other looped around her like a rope, one elbow bending at her neck, the other at her throat. It lifted her off the ground with ease, her struggles like the protestations of a mouse in the grip of a hawk. It didn’t crush her, though it certainly had the strength to do so. Instead it brought Jacaranda closer and closer to that swirling vortex of a face. Eager for her. Hungry for her.

  Devin stabbed and thrust into the monster’s abdomen, and a wordless scream poured from its throat. Nothing, his attacks did nothing, he was slicing stone with a feather, he was cutting a tree with a spoon. Jacaranda would die, and he would be helpless to save her.

  “Aethos creare fulgur!”

  Another plume of fire exploded off Tommy’s fingertips, this one more tightly focused than the last. It bathed the monster’s elbow, causing the inky darkness to shrivel and bleed. The fire roared hotter, Tommy screaming as his strength poured into the spell. The arm severed and dropped to the stone. Jacaranda twisted and struggled at the lone hand holding her, but she could still not break herself free. Devin took a running start and leapt, his sword swinging high above his head.

  For once his sword cut into the monster’s flesh. It wasn’t much, just an inch, but it was enough to splash a small amount of shadow blood across Devin’s body and make the thing release Jacaranda from its six fingers. Jacaranda hit the ground and rolled. Devin retreated as well, shocked by the intense cold seeping through his coat from where the blood landed. It evaporated in an instant, but he trembled at the thought of it striking his bare skin.

  “Doesn’t like fire,” Tommy rambled nervously. “So fire good, face bad, body shots… Devin, I think I know what to do!”

  “Good,” Devin shouted. “Then do it!”

  “All right, but hold it still. I need time.”

  Devin would have loved to hear how Tommy thought they could do just that. He sidestepped another lunging grab, then cried out as the second set of elbows bent at a sharp angle and slammed into his gut. He stabbed at it with his sword in retaliation. The metal slid off it, his only reward a tiny trickle of leaking shadow. Jacaranda fared no better with her daggers. He’d seen her fighting style, and he knew she fought to bleed out her opponents with lethal cuts to various arteries. There was no such hope here. Her cuts meant nothing. At best they annoyed the monster, which swung its twisting, weirdly bent arms at them in constant frustration.

  All the while Tommy spoke as if in a trance.

  “Aethos creare,” he said. “Aethos creare, Aethos creare.”

  A spark of light ignited between his closely cusped hands. His mantra continued, and he widened the gap with each repetition. The fire swelled between his palms, growing with every inch he pulled his hands apart. Devin and Jacaranda attacked with ever-growing ferocity, refusing to allow the creature a chance to stop Tommy’s spell. Devin found it easier and easier to fight alongside her, his familiarity of her speed and skill having grown considerably since their first battle against the songmother way back in the Oakblack Woods. He attacked when she retreated; he held firm when she needed an opening. Despite its incredible strength, they gave the monster no openings, no easy movement. They might sting it like mosquitoes, but by the Goddesses, they were a swarm.

  “Aethos taban secus fulgur!” Tommy screamed, and then, immediately after, “Duck!”

  Devin and Jacaranda dove to either side of the monster. The orb of fire was as large as Devin’s chest, and it passed mere inches from his elbow before slamming directly into the shadow creature. Devin thought the ball of fire would explode, as most of Tommy’s spells tended to do, but not this one. The fire slowed tremendously upon making contact with its oily skin, and then it burned. That hovering inferno drew the rest of the creature into it with a hunger to match the monster’s gaping maw.

  The rest of its chest slipped inside the inferno, then its waist and elbows. They melted as if within the center of a blacksmith’s forge. The creature’s long arms flailed about, reaching for something that wasn’t there. In sank the arms. Up went the legs, drawn into the fire as if gravity meant nothing to that blistering yellow orb. The fire swirled into an infinite vortex, surrounded it, enveloping the chaos, the two mutually annihilating the other so that the orb shrank into nothing and then vanished. Not a single puff of smoke remained of either it or the creature, leaving the room suddenly quiet and dark.

  “Holy fuck,” Tommy said. His curse echoed in the silence. “It worked.”

  Jacaranda sheathed her daggers and helped Devin up to his feet.

  “What was that… thing?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” Devin said. He grimaced from the pain in his shoulder. Goddesses above, that was going to be a lovely bruise. “The First Canon mentions only one creature held at bay by stars that hates fire and light.”

  “Wait. Wait.” Tommy pointed at the vacant spot of air where the monster had vanished. “Are you telling me that scary thing was the fucking void-dragon?”

  “A tiny part of it, maybe?” Devin said. “The stars are supposed to imprison it, but I guess when Tesmarie disturbed the well, it somehow weakened them.”

  “Unbelievable,” Tommy said, not listening. “I slew the void-dragon. I’m a damn hero.”

  Devin slapped him on the chest.

  “Good luck convincing anyone of that.”

  Tesmarie sat looking glum by one of the walls, and Devin knelt down before her to talk closer to her level.

  “Are you all right, little one?” he asked her.

  “I think so,” she said. “I’m just a little cold, but being cold is fine, right? Humans are cold all the time.”

  “That we are, especially in the mountains.”

  She gave her wings a test. They appeared to buzz just fine, at least to his eyes.

  “I’m sorry if you need more time to recover,” he told her, “but that’s time I don’t know if Adria has. Can you tell me more about what you recognized?”

  “I think I can,” she said. The faery flew back to the well, this time far more careful not to touch any part of it. She pointed to the perfectly spherical diamond. “Do you remember the starlight tear I tried to show you from the alabaster village? That’s it, right there.”

  Devin stared at the orb. So that was what Janus had fetched from the forest? The starlight tear was involved in this strange room and its triangular well, but what was the true purpose? For what reason would he need an object that seemed to imperil the very stars that protected the Cradle from the ever-encroaching void?

  “I’d say for now we let it be,” he said. “The last thing we need is another one of those… monsters coming through.”

  “Couldn’t agree more,” Jacaranda said. “But this doesn’t answer where Janus took Adria.”

  Devin shook his head.

  “There must be a door or passageway somewhere in here. All of us, if we look together, I’m sure we’ll find it.”

  And so they searched every inch of the room, the well, and the wall of stars. Devin’s confidence withered with each passing hour. They searched for hidden runes. They scoured the floor for any variation in its smoothness. Tesmarie flew among the stars, tracing lines with her fingers in case another door required her touch. If it existed, it did not react.

  “Damn it,” Devin screamed as he kicked the wall. “Goddesses damn the whole fucking mess of it!”

  He didn’t know what to do. He didn’t know where to go. Adria was here, right here, and somehow she was gone. Helpless didn’t begin to describe how he felt. Instead of answers, he only had dozens more questions to add to his gut-wrenching terror as to what Janus might do to his sister. His frustration was bubbling beyond what he could control, and he felt as impotent before it as he was in this strange room.

  Jacaranda put a hand on his shoulder and pulled him away from the stars.

  “We’ve been here all night,” she said. “Maybe when we come back fresh we’ll
have a better idea of how to find her.”

  Devin glanced at Tommy, who merely shrugged his shoulders.

  “My brain is fried,” his brother-in-law said. “I’m not saying we give up, but I don’t think another two hundred laps around this room will lead us anywhere. Besides, maybe there’s options we haven’t considered.”

  “Like what?” he asked.

  “Like maybe there is no secret door, and Adria never left.”

  Devin clenched his hands into fists and fought back an urge to vomit.

  “Are you saying she was fed to that… thing… we killed?”

  “I’m saying we have to accept it as a possibility.”

  “I don’t have to accept a goddess-damned thing,” Devin seethed. “She’s not dead, you hear me? She’s not dead, she’s not gone, and she sure as fuck wasn’t eaten by that void-creature we killed. Is that clear, Tommy?”

  His brother-in-law took a cautious step back.

  “Sure,” he said. “Whatever you say, Devin.”

  They were all looking at him now, frightened or upset by his uncharacteristic outburst. Shame calmed the frustration twisting apart Devin’s insides.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. He rubbed at his eyes and addressed the others. His bones felt made of glass. His emotions were a raw scrape of throbbing pain at the back of his skull. “All of you, I’m sorry. You’ve helped so much, and I couldn’t do this alone.”

  “You needn’t ask,” Tesmarie said. She tried to smile despite her own clear exhaustion. “And we’ll get your sister back, I know it! Tommy just needs some time to think and puzzle it out.”

  “Sure,” Tommy said, with only a fraction of the faery’s confidence.

  They left through the door of the chamber. Upon their exit the stone smoothed out, the hourglass symbol flared with light, and then the illusionary wall shimmered back into view. Devin watched the change happen and wondered if he’d ever know his sister’s fate. And if he did… would he want to?

  “I need some solitude,” he told the others once they exited the vacant house. “I’ll meet you back home.”

  “Are you sure that’s wise?” Jacaranda asked.

  “It has nothing to do with what’s wise,” he said. “Good night, for what’s left of it, anyway.”

  Alone he walked the streets of Londheim, but in his mind he was far from solitary. A never-ending maw hovered over his vision, swirling with horror and nightmares. He thought of his sister, captive and helpless, confronted by such a monster.

  Sisters, please, he prayed within the tormented echo of his mind. Please, of all the fates, don’t let that have been hers. Don’t do this. Not to her. Not to me.

  Devin’s heavy footsteps echoed long and loud upon the stone, but he did not fear the swoop of an owl or a lurking monster in the fog. Morning wasn’t far, and truth be told, a dark part of him would have welcomed the chance to release his confusion and exhaustion through his sword in a shower of blood and gore.

  CHAPTER 42

  Devin stopped at the gates to the cemetery and rapped them twice with his knuckles.

  “Are you napping again, Willem?” he called when no one came.

  The door to the accompanying shack opened, and out came a man Devin did not recognize. He was far younger than Pyrehand Willem, who had managed the graveyard for the last two decades. Based on the uneven stubble across his chin and the youthful skin, Devin guessed the Pyrehand had obtained his rank within the last year.

  “It’s Jeffrey,” the young man said. He pulled his leather coat tighter across his body and shivered. “And I’m sorry for the wait, Soulkeeper. This close to morning is the hardest time to keep the eyes open.”

  “Where is Pyrehand Willem?” Devin asked, ignoring the excuse.

  The new Pyrehand shoved his hands into his pockets and hunched his shoulders, as if trying to capture every shred of heat released by his body.

  “Disappeared,” he said. “Might have fled east, or maybe an owl got him. It’s hard to tell anymore these days.”

  A pang of loss rippled through Devin’s breast. Willem had been one of his few connectors to the past, a tenable link to his late wife, Brittany. He’d been a good man, and a good friend, during the hard months after. Losing him curdled his already sour mood.

  “May the Sisters watch over him,” Devin said. “I seek a moment of privacy. Consider yourself relieved of your post for its final hour. Eat, sleep, do whatever you wish, but I ask that I not be disturbed.”

  Jeffrey shifted his weight from foot to foot in uncertainty. Cities like Londheim were far too large, and the numbers of Soulkeepers far too low, to deal with the number of reaping rituals necessary every given day. To handle that toll, the church had created the Pyrehands, men and women trained solely in Anwyn’s Mysteries. They did not travel, or fight, but instead were assigned a district and its accompanying pyre and graveyard. They were inferior in rank to a Soulkeeper but still prided themselves in their abilities. Relinquishing their duties to a Soulkeeper was generally seen as an insult.

  “You just want some privacy, yeah?” he asked. “I’ll be here in my home, but I won’t leave until the dawn. Will that suffice?”

  Devin fought back a sigh. The young were always the most ardent sticklers for rules and protocol. Old Willem would have been thrilled with an early end to his post. Once the reaping hour passed, the Pyrehands were little more than glorified babysitters to the dead.

  “It’ll do,” Devin muttered. Jeffrey unlocked the gates, and Devin leaned his weight upon them to open them wider.

  “Pleasant nights,” Jeffrey said before returning to the relative warmth of his tiny home.

  The thin layer of snow crunched beneath Devin’s boots. He passed through the rows with easy remembrance. After a soul departed the body, the remains were burned upon the pyre and the ashes scattered into nearby fields and forests. If the soul remained, though, then it faced the ignoble fate of burial. For the longest time a burial was seen as a rejection by Anwyn, indicating some hidden sin or blasphemy. Some ninety years ago the Keeping Church officially denounced this belief, but many traditions remained, the most prominent being the law against naming or numbering gravestones.

  Every row was identical to the last. Small triangles made of three stones marked the location of the graves, each triangle carefully swept free of snow by the graveyard’s Pyrehand. Without names or records there’d be no shaming of the dead for the failure of the soul to separate from the body. No seeing a name on a tombstone and wondering what they had done in life to deserve their transitory state.

  Devin walked to the seventh marker in the ninth row. Markings might have been illegal, but that had not stopped him from carving a nearly imperceptible groove into each of the three stones that rested above his wife’s grave. He knelt in the snow and leaned closer, confirming his location. The silence of the dead settled over him. So many times he’d come here when his heart was troubled. Devin feared this might be the last.

  He bowed his head and pressed a gloved hand into the snow to rest palm first atop the cold ground. Eyes closed, he let his attuned mind wander. A graveyard was a powerful place. Beneath him dozens of souls awaited Anwyn’s summons to the starry sky. If he held his breath and cleared his mind he sometimes believed he could touch their presence. Their ethereal power would wash over him like the warm, comforting light of a campfire. In rare moments he convinced himself he felt a connection to Brittany’s trapped, restless soul. Other times he swore he imagined it, for surely on some quiet night over the years the goddess Anwyn had called his beloved home. That confusion, of not knowing where her soul lay, was the worst.

  Jacaranda’s footfalls were expertly placed and quiet, and only the unnatural silence allowed Devin to hear her approach. He kept his stance low and his head bowed. Talking was the furthest thing from his mind.

  “I asked for solitude,” Devin said.

  Jacaranda crossed her legs underneath her and sat opposite him in the snow. She’d pulled her hood off her hea
d, and her red hair was dusted with snow. Her violet eyes sparkled in the moonlight.

  “Don’t you remember?” she said. “I’m not compelled to follow orders anymore.”

  Devin put his hand atop the triangle between them. The part of him that was decent and good reminded himself that Jacaranda had suffered just as much as he had, if not more. The petty and wounded part of him wanted to lash out and refuse any comfort and companionship.

  “Why did you follow me?” he asked.

  “I… I don’t know the right way to say this,” she began. “I’m sure it won’t mean much, not with your sister still missing, but… but I want to try, all right? I want you to know I appreciate your coming with me to Gerag’s mansion. Maybe it won’t help, but I hope it does.”

  Devin looked away. He didn’t want her to see his bitter smile.

  “I promised to help you with your revenge that first night you awakened,” he said. “How could I not go? I’d shoved aside your cares to focus on my own for weeks. Don’t thank me for coming. Curse me for waiting so long.”

  “I did not come to curse you. How could I?”

  “Are you sure? The rest of the world’s been happy to shit on me; it only seems fair you join in.”

  Her hand settled on his shoulder. He looked up, expecting hatred or pity on her beautiful face. Instead he saw worry.

  “Devin,” she said softly. “Are you back in the pit?”

  Cold tears struggled at the edges of his eyes.

  “I don’t know,” he whispered. “I feel so worthless. That void-monster would have killed us all if not for Tommy’s magic. When you were in its grip, I was so certain you’d… I feel so helpless, Jac. My gun and swords are meaningless in this new world we’ve awoken into. All my training, all my preparation and sacrifice, and I can’t protect anyone I care for.”

  Jacaranda brushed her other bare hand across the side of his face, tracing warmth upon his chilled skin. She did not cower from his naked emotion. Those violet eyes met his with nothing but compassion.