She had eaten the creature whole.
Eli didn’t remember it happening; she remembered nothing but the fight, the surge of power, the magic of her body that told her she was built to kill. Was there a moment when she had dematerialized and rematerialized inside the creature, tearing it part from the inside? She was more dangerous now than she had ever been.
Nausea roiled through her stomach. Eli leaned over and vomited up a handful of rusted nails.
Then she drew the frost blade and went looking for something else to kill.
THE HEALER
“Wait!”
But Eli was lost to the taste of violence, to the promise of death. Tav pressed their back against Cam’s, circled by three of the monsters. Strange magic sparked and hissed inside the metal husks, black as night edged in fiery gold.
“They’re animated by some kind of spell,” Tav told Cam. “There might be a witch nearby.”
“What’s our strategy if they show?”
“Don’t die?”
“Got it. Great plan, general.”
One of the beasts lunged, a paw studded with razor-sharp gears clawing at Cam. He deflected with the great stone blade that was both a shield and a weapon. The sound of metal on stone crashed over the steps. Cam stumbled back. One edge of the blade had cut a ragged gash in the beast’s side.
To Tav’s horror, the animal was bleeding. The wound dripped black, like ink pooling on the asphalt.
Another darted forward, jaws overflowing with rusty nails for teeth. Tav tried to dodge the attack but felt searing pain as a canine grazed their forearm. Twisting, ignoring the pain, Tav quickly stabbed with the obsidian blade, in case there was an incorporeal trapped in the metal body. The black-and-gold glowing heart of the creature shrunk back at the touch, and the creature let out a ghostly wail, as if Tav had pierced its very soul.
And then Tav knew the truth, and their heart broke with the weight of empathy.
“They’re witches,” they whispered. These creatures had once been the essences of witches, torn from their bodies and housed in skins of iron.
The imprisoned essences, enraged at their captivity and pulsing with pain, lashed out at Tav and Cam, again and again, mechanical claws and teeth leaving maps of revenge in blood.
The mechanical warriors were playing with them, Tav realized, like a cat plays with a mouse. They didn’t want a fast kill, they wanted a long, slow torture. They wanted to draw out their revenge, to punish a world that allowed them to hurt and this human to thrive. They wanted to savour every moment of this half freedom, the same half freedom Eli had shared when she was a shadow assassin, a made-thing allowed to roam the human world; allowed pinches of freedom measured out with breaths and seconds and snowflakes falling on frozen soil. Eli had told them enough, on those late nights when the moon was masked by clouds and a strange moodiness made her willing to talk.
No, this fight would not be quick.
Every second they took to tear Tav to shreds was a moment where these creatures did not have to linger in the dungeons under the Coven where the heavy walls swallowed their screams.
They turned their head in time to see Eli devouring the final piece of essence-infused metal. Fear sparked through their body like an electrical shock. Please don’t die on me, they thought.
A growl pulled them away from the made-girl, and they barely dodged the wicked claws in time. There wasn’t time to worry about Eli. These creatures may not plan to kill Tav fast, but they would maim them if they got a chance.
“We have to go on the offensive,” they said to Cam. “I don’t know how long the Vortex will stay like this.”
Cam brushed a shattered stone from his chest and nodded. “I’ll cover you.”
The next time one of the creatures attacked, Tav was ready. Instead of drawing away, they moved forward to meet it, forcing the knife through the casing and into the very essence of the broken witch inside the metal husk.
Behind them, they heard the enraged yowls of the other two and the sound of stone and metal being rammed into each other. Cam was protecting them from the other attack. Tav wondered how long he could hold out — even granite could break. Even stones could be ground into sand, and underneath each stone was fragile human skin.
They had to make this fast.
Pulling the blade out of the swirling, furious, fiery mass, Tav brought it back down again and again. Tendrils of essence splashed over their body, burning their skin and sending the smell of charred flesh and metal into the air.
The black-and-gold light went out.
Tav had killed one of metal monsters.
They turned around in time to see Eli appear from inside one of the creatures, metal flying like shrapnel. Cam’s blade went up just in time to deflect a piece of ragged metal from slicing Tav’s face.
“Thanks,” they said, voice shaking. “Although I think I’d look badass with a scar.”
“I’ll remember that for next time,” he said, smiling through the sweat and dirt.
The remains of the four creatures littered the asphalt like junkyard scraps.
They had survived the attack.
Why didn’t Tav feel victorious?
Instead, they felt the sucking pull of remorse. These creatures had lived, had felt pain, had been hurt by their own people, and had died in a place that was far from home. The unfairness of it all swept through Tav like a crashing ocean wave, rising again in a sense of righteous anger at the Witch Lord who had turned them all into killers.
“Eli!” Tav pointed the obsidian blade at the assassin. Eli looked up from the corpse of one body, wild-eyed and grinning. “We need the Heart.”
The grin vanished. She nodded and climbed over the debris to reach them. Tav pressed the blade into her hand. “We can do this,” they said.
Eli pressed her forehead against Tav’s, one hand going to her chest, where the Heart began to glow. Soon, her entire body was bright with white fire. Tav, too, started glowing. They were bathed in light, they were invincible, and the rain now felt like a loving touch from a planet that recognized their sacrifice. Nothing could hurt them anymore. Nothing.
Tav focused on the rift, on the first and greatest tear between worlds. Not to close it, but to make it a doorway. They reached out with their mind, mapping the smooth edges of a wound that had been open so long that it had healed that way. This would be harder to heal, but with the power of the Heart, they could do it.
Closing their eyes, breathing life into their own magic, they channelled the power of the Heart that was willingly offered. They could feel the edges of the Vortex start to shiver, to respond to them. Then it began to change, to shift into something else, something full of colour and life. Something with twisting, tangled vines and pink flowers, feathers and chains and plastic and balloon animals — all of the things from both worlds coming together to make one meeting point of power.
Tav’s breath caught in their chest. It was working.
A sharp ache interrupted the flow of magic, which stuttered and slowed. Tav could feel the vines and chemicals and organic and inorganic tapestry start to retreat, turning back to scar tissue. They pushed harder.
Another pain, the shock of separation, and Tav found themselves torn apart from Eli, from the Heart, from the power they needed. They looked up, and saw the Vortex was widening again, a gash in the sky.
“What —?”
A hand gripped their arm.
It was Cam.
“They’re here.”
Twenty-Two
THE HEIR
Kite picked up the rose petal. “My apologies,” she said, and set it back in against the wall. A moment later, it was covered in a protective shield of leaves. “Wait here,” she said. “We’ll find you.”
Glowing bluegreen, hair dancing around her face, Kite flowed down the green chamber, which she saw now was one of the arteries of the Coven. The farther she went, the more hints of decay she saw. Dried orange peels fuzzy with mould. Tree roots sticking out of
the earth, naked and thirsty. Cracks like latticework in stone and glass.
The world needed its Heart.
One petal like a drop of blood nestled in a thicket of thorns; another dried and pressed against a fist of granite. Kite gathered the petals. Then she returned to where the Beast was waiting. He had flattened himself into the shape of a glittering winged snake. Constellations winked along his back.
“Very pretty,” she said. “I hope you didn’t scare her.”
The Beast fluttered his wings like a hummingbird. She petted the smooth skin of his scales. “Thank you for keeping watch.”
She pressed the handful of petals against the moss. A moment later, they, too, were wrapped in leaves and vines and roots thick with earth.
And then a girl walked out of the wall.
Long moss hung around her shoulders, and dirt caked her fingernails. She was missing half an ear, and a few fingers. Her cloudy white eye burned with an inner fire.
“Heir,” said the girl, inclining her head in a small bow.
“Assassin,” said Kite, her hair rippling in welcome.
“How long have I been down here?” she asked.
Kite blinked, and then laughed, the sound of a ship coming home after a long journey, sea spray knocking gently against the bow. “Long enough.”
“Where are the others?”
The Beast rose in the air and began swimming around Kite in frantic circles.
Kite reached out and brushed a fleck of dirt from the girl’s face. “We haven’t found them yet. But we will.”
Twenty-Three
THE HEART
Lightning flashes continued streaking down from the City of Eyes as an army of armoured beasts filled the square. Too many to kill. Too many to fight.
But Eli would try. She couldn’t give up now, not when they were so close.
Not when so much was at stake.
Her sense of self-preservation urged her to run, to disappear, to vanish from their lives altogether. But she made herself stay. She made herself listen to the rain on cement and told herself that an assassin didn’t run from a fight, she revelled in it.
Eli threw herself at the horde, teeth bared, blades ready. With the pearl blade she tore the witch essences from their shells, and with the bone blade she destroyed their bodies.
Smell of iron.
Taste of ash.
The world narrowed to a pinhole. She heard nothing. Felt nothing.
She was losing herself in the carnage. What about Tav? What if Tav needs me?
Who is Tav? The name sounded familiar.
Golden-brown eyes.
Silver earrings glinting in moonlight.
A warm hand against her rib cage.
Eli remembered. She forced through the bloodlust, waking to the roar of the storm and the blood pounding in her head. Tav and Cam were fighting back to back, but their bodies looked small and fragile. She had to help them.
Eli traded bone for thorn, and with a scream of anger, plunged the spiky blade into the earth. This time, it didn’t reject her touch. Vines with deadly spikes grew rapidly toward the enemies that surrounded her companions.
The Heart burned, light pouring through her palms and forehead. Eli looked down — one of her hands was starting to disappear, turning into raw energy. She gritted her teeth and tightened her grip on the blade. Not now. I won’t let the Heart take me.
The ghostly light crept up her forearm to her elbow. She was fading.
The vines were almost there, just a few more seconds —
Her other hand started to flicker, and for a moment she could see through her knuckles. There was a crack in the pavement as a single weed struggled through.
You answer to me. Eli concentrated on the power of the Heart that singed her veins. She channelled that energy into the blade, into the vines.
The blade glowed red, burning her hand like it had before. But this time, Eli didn’t cry out. She refused to let go. She kept her hand on the knife, even as blisters began to rise on her palm. She just needed to hold out for one more second —
The thorn blade caught fire. The vines collapsed into ash. As Eli watched, the blade cracked and began peeling into fibrous strips. Eli dropped the blade, her hand burning. The fibrous mass cooled, the thorns retreating into the jagged edges of a blade. She exhaled. It hadn’t broken. Not yet.
Eli was shaking. She felt a stinging in her eyes. She reached up to rub her eyes and realized her arm had vanished.
Her gaze fluttered around the square, around the scene of chaos. They landed on a boi with purple hair and golden eyes.
The boi looked at her. Their mouth moved, and Eli thought she caught the word Please before the material world fell away.
THE HEALER
Eli was gone.
No, she couldn’t be. They needed her. They needed the Heart.
Eli was gone.
Panic swirled through Tav’s lungs like snow squalls. They could hear Cam gasping for breath. His rock-covered body was taking a beating, and neither of them could hold out for long.
The obsidian blade was slippery with their own blood, and they were losing their grip, missing easy targets. Fumbling, they almost dropped it.
Do it without the blade.
The witch in the forest. The burning tree. Tav had torn them open with a touch.
Do it again.
They sheathed the blade of dark glass. The next wave of creatures came at them, and Tav reached out with both hands.
The first one opened and collapsed, turned inside out by Tav’s magic. They reached for the essence, shuddering at its slimy texture in their hand. They twisted, and opened —
The essence healed, reforming. It hadn’t worked. The essence flowed back into the crumpled machine and the creature stood, unsteadily, on dented feet.
It hadn’t worked.
Tav reached for it again, and this time not even the metal bent to their will.
The sky turned like a spinning top.
A broken sky overhead. Tav tried to move their legs but couldn’t. The adrenalin was gone. The magic was gone. There was nothing left.
“Tav?”
Stones. Granite and limestone and slate. Tav tried to count them. Tried to touch them.
Behind the stones, a bleeding wound in the fabric of space-time. Tav needed to turn it into a door. Tav needed to —
But the Heart was gone, and Tav’s magic had been drained.
Lightning struck the ground beside Tav’s face and sparks showered their body.
The sound of incantations, low and musical, heavy with the smell of freshly ground coffee and burning vegetation.
The Hedge-Witch.
Tav managed to turn their neck, looking away from the hole in the sky to the land underneath their body. Earth. Their home.
Weeds grew from the cracks in the cement, strangling and roping the metal husks animated by hatred and greed. A stamen punctured a metal plate and bloomed into a sunflower, a giant eye surveying the battlefield.
The Hedge-Witch wasn’t alone.
Humans gifted with spells, trained to fight, joined the battle. Tav glimpsed the ghost out of the corner of their eye as two brutal forces came together under a ruined sky.
The Coven’s made-army was outnumbered. Seeds burst and grew into new plant life that choked and killed, and the ghost devoured metal and magic in breathless gulps.
It was over. They had survived.
The remnants of a tortured witch army lay shattered on the pavement. Horror flowed through Tav, thick and dark, like a shadow, leaving them cold and trembling and alone.
They looked up at the sky. The Vortex was closing.
They had failed.
THE HEART
Eli materialized back on the pavement, second-degree burns on her hand and wrist. How long had she been gone this time? What happened?
Then she heard it — wasps. Horror rose in the back of her throat and she bent over, trying to cough up the fear, but nothing came out. She collapsed, ex
hausted, and a shadow fell across her face. Eli looked up at the girl who had been walking through her dreams. A smile like a curse, eyes wild with bloodlust. Two blades — one forged from wings and stingers, the smell of paper nests lingering in the air, the other made from screws and nails and broken glass bound together by rust and force.
Eli opened her mouth to ask — Who? Or maybe, How? But already the blade was descending, and Eli waited for the stimulant of pain or the quiet of death.
The clang of metal on stone broke through the swarm. Cam. Eli’s eyes widened. Cam had thrown himself in front of the sword, its crusted edge scraping on stone and biting into skin. Red seeped through cuts and scrapes on his bare chest and shoulders.
Eli reached for a blade, any blade, but her fingers, slippery with blood, refused to grab a hilt. Again, the blade rose, but Cam stood firm, the stone blade held tightly in his hand, his hair wild and dirty.
The blade fell.
Eli closed her eyes.
Silence.
Eli opened her eyes again. Cam was gone. The made-daughter was gone. She stared up into the sky and saw that the Vortex was closing.
A moan, somewhere to her left. The call of obsidian and leather.
Tav. She stumbled over to them to — what? Offer a hand, a clump of hair, an apology? She didn’t know; she was breaking, she had nothing to offer, no help or words of comfort to give. But still, she came. Still, she made her body move.
As Eli drew closer she could hear Tav repeating one word, over and over, like a spell, a mantra, a swear word, a love poem.
“Cam. Cam. Cam.”
Eli looked up at the glittering lights from the City of Eyes, the other world watching them from the slitted eyelids of the rift the moment before they closed.
“It took him,” she whispered. “He crossed over.”
Tav’s eyes flicked to Eli’s face. “Are you real?” their voice wavered.
Eli reached down to touch Tav’s cheek. “I don’t know.”
The Boi of Feather and Steel Page 9
