Our Dark Duet

by Victoria Schwab

  “Still holding on to that human shell, I see.” The Malchai clicked his tongue. “Leo would have faced me in his true form, monster-to-monster, one-on-one.”

  “I’m not Leo,” said August. “And it’s not one-on-one.”

  Ilsa was on her feet, and the air around her had gone ice cold. He had seen his sister lost, and kind, and dreaming, but he had never seen her angry.

  Until now.

  She had the knife in her hand, and he had the bow in his, and Sloan must have sensed the scales tipping, because he took a single step back but was blocked by the body of a fallen cadet and, in that instant of imbalance, August and Ilsa struck.

  Sloan had to choose. And he chose August. But as the Malchai knocked away the bow, Ilsa moved behind him with a dancer’s grace and slid her knife along the back of his knees. The Malchai snarled and staggered, one leg threatening to fold, but August caught him by the collar.

  Sloan slashed at August’s eyes and leaped back, but Ilsa was there. She kicked out his other leg, and his knees hit the floor. She brought her knife to Sloan’s throat as August fetched up his fallen bow.

  The Malchai bared his teeth. “Tell me, August, where is Katherine? Surely you didn’t leave her with Alice.”

  “Shut up.”

  Sloan laughed. “She doesn’t stand a chance.”

  Surprise flickered across Ilsa’s face, and her grip must have loosened, because Sloan lunged to his feet in a last, desperate attempt at freedom. Ilsa’s knife carved a shallow line along his throat, and August stepped into the Malchai’s path.

  “You’re wrong,” snarled August, driving the steel bow straight up into Sloan’s heart.

  The Malchai swayed on his feet, but unlike Leo, August hadn’t missed, and a moment later Sloan fell, his red eyes widening for an instant before their light went out.

  It stands

  at the center

  of a sun

  burning

  brighter

  and brighter

  with every

  stolen life.

  Kate dived for the knife block.

  Her fingers skimmed the nearest handle before Alice swept the whole thing off the counter. The knives came free, skittering across the kitchen floor, and Kate rolled, taking one as Alice grabbed another.

  “How does it feel,” asked Alice, twirling the blade, “to know that I’m only here because of you?”

  The knife came sailing through the air and Kate narrowly dodged, the blade burying itself in the cabinets. She tried to drive her own knife into Alice’s side, but the Malchai had the block in her hands now, and she caught the blade’s tip in the wood, ripping it from Kate’s grip before slamming the block itself into her ribs.

  Pain splintered across her chest, there and then gone, a burst of light quickly swallowed up by the shadow. She swept up a cleaver, blood singing.

  “To know that all the people I’ve killed—and I’ve killed a lot of people,” added Alice with manic glee, “are dead because of you?”

  The words were meant to hurt.

  “That everything I do, I get to do because of you?”

  But Kate felt nothing.

  “Can you feel it,” goaded Alice, “when I kill them?”

  Nothing but the cool weight of the weapons in her hands.

  “Does it send a shiver through you?”

  “Do you ever shut up?” said Kate, feinting with the knife and then driving the spike down into Alice’s hand, pinning her to the kitchen counter. Alice let out a snarl of pain, but even as Kate moved to cut the Malchai’s throat, Alice tore free.

  They collided, again and again.

  Came apart, again and again.

  Until blood dotted the floor, red and black.

  Dripped from hands and jaws like sweat.

  Alice laughed.

  And Kate growled.

  And they crashed together.

  every scream

  like thread

  like muscle

  drawing it

  together

  until

  at last—

  August pulled the bow free, and let Sloan’s body—what was left of it—collapse to the floor just as Ilsa drew in a sharp breath. It was the closest thing to a sound she’d made in months, and August turned, following her gaze.

  The Chaos Eater was still there, but it was no longer a silver-eyed shadow.

  It was a thing of flesh and bone. August could hear lungs filling with air, and something like a heart beating in the hollow of its chest as a mouth carved its way across its face, and the lips split into a smile, and the smile parted to reveal a voice and—

  I

  am

  real.

  Its voice tore through August like a storm, forcing its way through his head, his chest. It stoked the coal that burned at his core, the darkness waiting to be released, and August clutched at his heart as it flared, the tallies on his skin glowing red.

  He fought

  and lost

  and began to fall—

  toward that darker self—

  away from his body—

  away from—

  Music poured through the speakers, the steady notes of Soro’s song spilled across the lobby.

  They washed over August like a balm, putting out the fire before it spread. He struggled up to his hands and knees and saw Ilsa folded on the floor nearby, the light fading from her stars as the fever left her. To every side, the fighting stopped.

  Weapons slid from fingers, and hands fell away from skin, and assaults dissolved into tableaus before collapsing entirely.

  Light rose to the surface of skin, white at first, and then streaked with red, the crimson glow bleeding through the edges of their souls, staining each and every one.

  The music couldn’t resurrect the dead, but every living soul went calm, enveloped by the Sunai’s spell.

  Only the Chaos Eater moved.

  It shuddered and twitched, struggling to hold its shape, trying to open a mouth that dissolved and reappeared and dissolved again, sealing its voice away. But as it strained against the music, it began to win. Its edges hardened, and the line of its mouth grew firm, and August knew there wasn’t much time.

  The air around the monster cracked and split, dark lines thrown out like shards, the absence of a soul, cold and empty.

  August rose to his feet, forcing himself forward.

  He had reaped a Malchai’s soul, and it had nearly killed him.

  He had reaped his brother’s, and it still fought inside him.

  And as his fingers brushed the nearest shard, he wondered what would become of—

  Something darted past him, quick as air.

  A cloud of curls and a cluster of stars, swallowed up by smoke as Ilsa transformed.

  Between one step and the next, she disappeared, replaced by a Sunai with curved horns and burning wings. A blue light, like the very center of a flame, glowed through Ilsa’s skin as she threw her arms around the Chaos Eater, and the room exploded in silver and shadow, two forces colliding in a way that shook the world.

  August staggered, shielding his eyes.

  When he looked again, the Chaos Eater was gone, and Ilsa stood alone in the center of the lobby floor.

  Our sister has two sides, Leo had said. They never meet.

  August had always imagined Ilsa’s true form as the opposite of her human one, cruel where she was kind, but as he stared into the Sunai’s black eyes, all he saw was his sister.

  And as he watched, the smoke withdrew and her wings burned away, horns returning to red curls.

  But her skin, which should have been smooth and starless, was cracking. Dark lines like deep fissures started on her hands and spread, up her arms and over her shoulders and across her face.

  Ilsa looked up at August, and he saw the sadness in his sister’s eyes right before she broke apart and shattered on the floor.

  Kate stumbled, her vision suddenly blurring, and when it came back into focus, the world was hea
vy and dull, the sharpness lost. Her limbs trembled, and her body ached, and the shadow in her head was gone.

  And Alice was on her.

  The Malchai caught Kate by the throat and slammed her back into the floor-to-ceiling windows. The glass cracked against her spine, the splinters spreading dangerously.

  “What’s the matter?” taunted Alice. “Losing steam?”

  Instead of trying to break free, Kate grabbed her by the collar and twisted hard, tipping the Malchai off-balance.

  It bought her only an instant, just enough time to draw a breath and put what was left of the coffee table—a pile of shattered glass and broken wood—between them. Alice stepped over it with exaggerated care, and Kate retreated one pace, and then another.

  She was running away.

  And Alice knew it.

  Her mind reeled as she tried to piece together a plan with the last of her strength.

  A knife, slick with blood, sat on the counter.

  Alice tsked. “Boring.”

  But Kate lunged for it.

  She almost made it.

  Her fingers skimmed the metal before Alice caught her leg, nails sinking deep into her calf. Kate gasped in pain, an animal sound that seemed to stoke the Malchai’s bloodlust as she dragged her down to the floor. Kate twisted, rolling onto her back and swinging her boot across Alice’s face. The Malchai recoiled, and Kate scrambled up. She tried to ignore the blood running into her eyes, tried to ignore the mounting pain, tried to ignore everything but Alice’s red eyes glowing in the low light.

  She flexed her fingers, too aware that her hands were empty. Halfway between them, an iron spike glinted on the floor, and Alice grinned, daring her to try to get there first.

  Kate knew she wouldn’t—she was too slow without the monster in her head, and she was losing blood, losing strength, losing.

  “I give up,” she said. “You win.”

  The words caught Alice by surprise, which was exactly what Kate needed. She dove for the weapon. Alice moved a second later, but Kate’s hand had already closed around the spike and she turned, meeting the monster as the monster met her.

  Kate drove the spike up into the Alice’s heart.

  And Alice drove her hand into Kate’s chest.

  August sank to his knees on the lobby floor.

  There was nothing left of Ilsa, nothing but a small white pile of dust in a world of red, and he heard himself say her name over and over until the word lost meaning, until his voice faltered and broke. He reached out and drew his fingers through the ash.

  Then he forced his hand to his comm, forced the words from his throat, forced his body to its feet as the music stopped playing and Soro reappeared, dark eyes going wide at the sight of so many stained souls. And moments later, the Night Squads poured in, and the living returned to themselves, and the Compound plunged into shock, and sorrow, and noise.

  August started to retreat, and felt something crack beneath his heel. An abandoned tablet. He knelt to retrieve it, and saw it was still transmitting from the penthouse. The screen was dark, and the shot was empty. There was no sign of Alice. No sign of Kate.

  No sign of life at all.

  The tablet fell from his fingers.

  He ran.

  The elevator doors opened and August sprinted into the Harker penthouse.

  It was a mess of toppled furniture and broken glass, weapons glinting and one window a violent spiderweb of cracks. Blood slicked almost every surface, some of it red and some of it black, and a mound of ash and gore was heaped on the floor, and he barely noticed any of it, because all he saw was Kate.

  Kate, sitting in darkness at the kitchen counter, one arm in her lap and the other resting on the countertop, fingers wrapped around her iron spike.

  She looked up when August came in. The silver was gone from her eyes, replaced by that steady blue, made bluer by the blood on her face.

  “Did we win?” she asked.

  A sound escaped his throat, half laugh, half sob, because he didn’t know how to answer. It seemed so wrong to call it winning when so many were dead, when Ilsa was ash, and Henry was dying, and the Compound was awash in red. But the Chaos Eater was gone, and Sloan was dead, and so he said, “Yes.”

  Kate let out a trembling breath and closed her eyes. “Good.”

  She let the spike roll from her fingers, and he frowned at the sight of her palm, coated with blood. It dripped to the floor beneath her stool.

  “You need a medic.”

  But Kate only shot him a tired smile. “I’m tougher than I look,” she said. “I just want to go . . .” She pushed herself upright, the shadow of pain crossing her face as she started toward him.

  She never made it.

  August was already there when her legs gave way, and he caught her, sinking with her to the floor, and even in the low light, he could see the blood staining the front of her shirt, the way it had when they’d been trapped in the subway car, when the lights had come on and the world had gone from black and white to vicious red.

  “Stay with me,” he said.

  They were her words once—said when he was sick, when he was on fire, when she took his burning hand and dragged him to his feet, and he got up, and he held on—and so she had to now. “Stay with me, Kate.”

  “Do they stay with you?” she murmured, and August didn’t know what she meant because all he could see, all he could think of, was the blood.

  There was so much of it.

  It soaked through her clothes from a jagged, too-dark tear in her shirt, but when August pressed his hands to the wound, Kate shuddered, red light rising on her skin.

  “No.” He tried to pull away, but Kate caught his hand, holding it in place. “Kate, please, let me—”

  “The souls you take—” Her fingers tightened on his. “Do they—stay?”

  And he knew what she asking, and he knew why, but he didn’t know how to answer. He thought of Leo, his brother’s voice in his head, thought of all the other voices he never heard. “I don’t know, Kate.” His voice trembled. “I don’t know.”

  “Sometimes—” she said through gritted teeth, “I wish you could lie.”

  “I’m sorry.” Tears were running down his face.

  “I’m not.” Kate pressed her hand down over his, and he bowed his head, trying to put pressure on the wound even as the red light grew brighter and began to pour through his skin.

  He didn’t want it—didn’t want anything except to give it back, to hold her together the way she’d held him. But he couldn’t. He didn’t know how. He closed his eyes as the light of Kate’s soul flowed through him, strong and bright.

  “I don’t know,” he whispered. “I don’t know if the souls stay with me. But I hope they do.”

  There was no answer.

  August opened his eyes. “Kate?”

  But the room was dark and quiet, and she was gone.

  ELEGY

  He found Allegro pawing at Ilsa’s door.

  It had been three days, and the cat still didn’t seem to realize his sister was gone.

  August knelt down. “I know.” He reached out gingerly to pet the cat. “I miss her, too.”

  Allegro looked at him with sad green eyes, before climbing into his arms and nuzzling beneath his chin. August had clearly been forgiven.

  He carried the cat into his own room, and set him on the bed beside Kate’s tablet. The rest of her things—the iron spikes, the silver lighter—lay in a bag beneath the bed, but it was the tablet he kept returning to.

  It wasn’t locked, and when he first booted the screen, he’d found an inbox filled with unsent messages. Half-formed notes to people August had never met, people Kate would never see again.

  Kate—the name echoed through him like a single, plucked string. There was no voice in his head, no way to know if she was with him. No way to know, but he could hope.

  August sank onto the edge of the bed, the tablet in his hands, scrolling through the messages until he found the one from
Ilsa, the one that read only AUGUST.

  His chest ached.

  He missed them both, in different ways, marveled even through the pain at how different people left such different holes.

  Someone knocked, and August looked up and saw Henry standing in the doorway, one hand braced against the frame. He moved like he was made of glass, expecting with every step to break. But he had not broken yet.

  “It’s time,” said Henry.

  August nodded, and rose to his feet.

  The FTFs gathered at the base of the Seam, black bands circling their sleeves.

  A marker of the dead.

  They were standing before the central gate, Henry leaning on Emily, the Council beside them—Henry said it was important for the FTFs to see the faces of the future as well as those of the past.

  August stood at Henry’s side, and Soro at his, Ilsa’s absence marked by a space between them. August’s violin hung from his fingers—he wanted to play for the bodies on the wall, for the dead and for the lost, for Ilsa and for Kate, and for everyone stolen by monstrous acts; but he would wait until the service was over, and the sun went down, and if the living wanted to listen, to lose themselves for a moment in the music, they were welcome to.

  But for now, no one spoke, no speeches were made, and that was all right. Mourning was its own kind of music—the sound of so many hearts, of so many breaths, of so many standing together.

  The crowd stretched from the Seam to the Compound, a sea of faces turned up toward the wall where the bodies were laid out, two hundred and ninety-eight members of the FTF wrapped in black, like tallies.

  It was a warm day for early spring, the sun cutting through the clouds, and August had his sleeves rolled up, his own tallies scrawled across his skin.

  One hundred and eighty-seven.

  He wouldn’t lose count again.

  Colin stood near the front of the crowd. Despite his injuries, he still wanted to join the Night Squad. He had always been full of stubborn hope.