The Last Life of Prince Alastor

by Alexandra Bracken

  Because they are annoying, Alastor said. But mostly because we have never been able to utilize their limited magic the way we have humans’—they can only control plants, and we haven’t much of those to speak of down here. And they insist on “helping” our enemies. Humans, witches, and changelings alike. Surely they mean to destroy us before we can destroy them.

  That sounded like some circular logic to me. Not everyone acts like fiends.

  Is that so? Then why do so many humans aspire to behave as we do?

  It was an ugly thought, but . . . it wasn’t untrue. It was like the fiends had all the worst parts of humans, and none of their capacity for compassion or change.

  Are elves more human or fiend? I asked, following Flora as she led us through a series of cramped tunnels.

  Neither. They are something else entirely.

  That was the only confirmation I needed that she wouldn’t try to eat me or burn me alive or fillet me like everything else Downstairs wanted to. At least not yet.

  “So . . .” I said as we crept along. “Is the changeling you tried to save—that parrot—is that yours?”

  Flora’s eyes were glowing slits in the dark, and Nell’s magic light was just bright enough to reveal her look of deep suspicion. My heart sank.

  Stop trying to get the elf to like you.

  “Those changelings are my friends. They are not pets. They do not belong to anyone, even the witches who raise them. I’ve taken care of Ribbit ever since she left her witch and flew into my cozy cabin in the wintry woods.”

  “Ribbit left her witch?” Nell repeated incredulously. “Changelings stay within families of witches for generations. They must be the most loyal creatures alive. . . . That witch must have really gone dark side or something.”

  Flora lifted a shoulder in a faint shrug. “Ribbit does not speak of it. It makes her too sad.”

  “So you live in our world?” I asked. “What’s it like for you? Do you see everything in high definition? Can you read my mind? Why don’t humans ever see you?”

  The breath that had been steaming in and out of Flora’s nose eased up, as did the stark lines in her forehead. She stared at the hand I didn’t realize I had lifted again to touch her shoulder. “Erm . . .”

  “Elves mostly live in our world, Prosper,” Nell said quickly. “They take care of nature, but many of them are skilled artisans and craftsmen. There was an elf in Salem who used to make this amazing jewelry. Missy put the glamour on him so he could sell it in the street fairs. I’m actually not sure what happened to him.”

  I was really starting to hate Alastor’s silences. They spoke more truth than his explanations ever did.

  Did you kill that elf? Another, blood-chilling thought occurred to me. Did you make me do it?

  No. But I saw the ghoul who did it. Perhaps . . . do not tell the witchling of it.

  I didn’t.

  Eventually, Flora led us out of the tunnels to what looked like a sewer entrance or storm drain. Nell shook the light out of her fist and climbed up after the elf. Somehow I managed to squeeze through the stone opening, dragging myself onto the cobblestone street.

  Vapors hissed through a fissure in the nearby stones. It was the only sound around us.

  The houses on the third level had all the same dark lines of the old-fashioned stone buildings in the Flats, but the many-stacked floors made the buildings loom over us. All the windows we passed were dark, save for a few with black lace curtains and glowing candles. There didn’t seem to be a trace of magic in sight.

  A faint rumble rolled through the air, sweeping past us. The sound echoed as it bounced off the crooked homes and diagonal walls, stretching itself, growing louder with each second that ticked by.

  “Is that a storm?” I asked.

  It’s likely just lava movement far below us, Alastor said.

  Lava? In addition to monsters and curses and magic, I was also going to have to worry about lava?

  Of course. We have no sun, Maggot. How else would the realm heat itself without warmth rising from fissures?

  So that’s what the vapors were. The cast-off heat from lava. Perfect. Maybe I had breathed in too much and had started hallucinating. . . .

  Only, the rumbling didn’t stop. Something in the thick air began to quiver. It gave the illusion the buildings were swaying, chattering against each other like teeth.

  The rumble became a deafening roar, and then it wasn’t an illusion. The street rocked beneath us, throwing me to the ground and Nell onto her knees. Chunks of nearby roofs smashed down around us, forcing me to roll hard to the right to avoid being crushed. Glass shattered, exploding out of the homes like a vicious ice storm.

  A whip of blue lightning lashed the sky, illuminating Flora’s petrified expression. She crawled toward the edge of the street, where the massive metal-and-stone gate that encircled the step was tearing itself apart.

  The Blood Gates! Impossible! Impossible! Not even the troll armies could take them down!

  Alastor’s terror doubled my own, kicking my pulse up. Pieces of the Blood Gates buckled and snapped, the stone crumbling into dust. As it disappeared over the ledge, that wall of black cocooning the outer wall of the mountain swept forward, devouring the Flats until there wasn’t even a single lantern left to mark where they had once been.

  No . . . impossible . . . My stomach gave a hard twist at the pained disbelief in Alastor’s voice.

  As the aftershocks began to settle and the air finally stopped howling, Flora took in a deep breath and released a soft hiccup. Her face was oddly expressionless as she surveyed the bottomless black that now surrounded the Boneyard like an army laying siege.

  “What was that?” Nell gasped out. “An earthquake?”

  Flora shook her head. “No. It is the Void.”

  Up close, the strange stone huts I’d noticed from the Flats looked almost like toadstools. With their droopy roofs and gritty stones, they didn’t just seem like they’d come from a different time than the other buildings, but an entirely different world. It was no wonder Flora had chosen one as a hideout. The few fiends on this step didn’t give them a second glance.

  Of course not. They’re clearly tombs for the ancient dead. No one enjoys a haunting unless they are the ones doing it themselves.

  “I like what you’ve done with the place,” Nell said finally. Both of us were hunched over to avoid banging our heads on the low ceiling.

  Truth be told, I wasn’t exactly sure what she liked. Aside from a blanket on the ground, a tiny potted sprout, and a fading lantern, there wasn’t much to see, never mind admire.

  Wait.

  I rubbed my eyes, clearing the crust from them. I hadn’t imagined it: along the mud-packed walls and ground, someone had carved swirling vines. The flowers blooming on them were so detailed that when I reached out to touch one, I half expected the petal to feel soft. There was a sun, clouds, mountains, rivers. It must have been Earth, because it certainly wasn’t Downstairs.

  “Wow, those are cool,” I said, leaning in for an even closer look. “This must have taken you a long time.”

  The elf was silent, watching me with those glowing eyes. “I did not make them. Fiends do not understand art, so do not pretend you do. They only see beauty in pain.”

  Not true. I also see it in the gleam of blackpennies, the dark horizon of Downstairs, and the steaming blood of my enemies. Oh! And in hats. A hat of good structure and balance will take you far in this vast eternity.

  “I’m not a fiend,” I reminded her.

  “That is exactly what a fallacious fiend would say—”

  “Flora,” Nell interrupted. “You were going to tell us about the Void. Do you know what it is? What’s causing it?”

  Flora gave me one last long look, then moved to sit on her blanket. She stroked the wilting leaves of her plant. “The Void is the fiends’ punishment for what they’ve done to this realm.”

  Sensing this might be a long story, I lowered myself to sit cross-legged
on the floor, leaning my head back against the wall. Nell did the same, dragging her pack around. She unlatched it, setting out food and water for all of us. Flora gratefully took a bit of water for her plant but did not eat.

  “Every realm has its intrinsic magic, which is the magic the Ancients used to create it,” Flora explained. “It’s a current that flows through everything, binding it all together. It brings up the sun, renews vegetation with passing seasons, and nurtures its creatures. That magic is the deep roots from which everything in a realm flourishes. The Ancients were careful architects and gave their realms no more or less than they needed to sustain themselves.”

  It almost sounded like the Ancients were creating each realm the way you’d build a world from scratch in a computer game. “Even Earth?”

  Flora refused to look at me and instead answered at Nell, as if she’d been the one to ask. “Earth’s magic is in its people, in their shades. That is why fiends can draw magic from human emotions—those feelings originate in the very core of who that person is.”

  This is dull, Maggot. Get her back on the subject of the Void.

  But Flora wasn’t finished. “The human world is a realm, but not one that the Ancients created. They found it in their explorations across realities and decided to use it as a seed world to build other realms. That’s why all the remembered realms connect back to the human world. Its stability makes it a good anchor.”

  That wasn’t at all how Uncle B—how Henry Bellegrave and Nell had explained the realms to me, and judging by Nell’s face, this was truly brand-new information to her as well.

  She may very well be lying, Alastor agreed, a note of bitterness in his voice, but the Ancients loved and favored the elves. They might have the true knowledge that was denied to the rest of us.

  “Wait—but the Ancients gave witches their power and duty,” Nell said. “And witches draw their power from the moon.”

  There was a small tug at the back of my mind at her use of their and not our.

  Flora reached for the lantern, opening its small door. Drawing out a small thread of magic, she stroked the leaves of the small plant.

  Feeding it, I realized, in the only way she could in a realm with no water or sunlight. As the plant soaked in the magic, its leaves perked up and its color deepened from an unhealthy yellow to an emerald green.

  “Did the Ancients create witches,” Flora said, “or did they merely find them and ask for their aid to protect the human realm? It has all been forgotten by time.”

  “But they gave witches the changelings, didn’t they?” Nell pressed.

  Flora nodded. “As companions and fellow protectors, to thank them and to apologize for—” The elf looked up, eyes bright in the dark. “Well, it does not matter. Earth suffers and sickens with malicious misuse by hardheaded humans, but the fiends have done something far worse. They have drained this realm of all of its magic, and so they went into the human realm to steal magic from there, too. It still was not enough to sate their greed. So they dug deeper and deeper into the depths of this realm to find the last traces of magic in its foundations, and took that as well.”

  No wonder they’d been forced to ration magic.

  “The life here has died, and now the whole realm dies with it,” Flora said, her expression hardening. “And for what? To avoid having to sew their own clothing? To power their streetlamps? To move their carts? To have their fun in markets like Neverwoe? The ruling fiends imprisoned the others, forced them into service, and held human shades hostage, making them do the rest—all while the magic stored in their vaults secretly dwindled as the so-called king indulged himself fighting pointless wars, rearranging mountains to suit his taste, filling closets with clothing he never once wore.”

  How dare she! Alastor growled. It is our realm! We can use our magic as we see fit!

  “You know,” Flora said with another glance at Nell, “that once magic has been used, it is gone. There is no hope for this realm now. The Void is the world collapsing onto itself when the last bit of magic in those places goes.”

  That is . . . that is impossible . . . Alastor said weakly. A realm cannot collapse.

  “No wonder they love Pyra,” I said, finally putting all the pieces together. “She’s shaken up the old ways and is the only one giving them hope that she can solve this problem.”

  “She told us that she’s creating some kind of key to open the realm of Ancients—to take their magic,” Nell said.

  Flora sat up straighter. “I do not see how she could create one. A blood key can open a realm otherwise sealed off, but it requires the sacrifice of magic—an act these mercenary monsters are incapable of. The magic they possess inside of them is their life force. All other magic they use and control is stolen.”

  Nell and I seemed to realize it at the same moment. We looked at each other in the dim glow of the hut.

  “She’s already gotten the ‘sacrifice’ of her other brothers’ magic and life forces,” I began.

  “Because she used their true names to compel them to sacrifice it,” Nell finished. “Wow, that’s evil but . . . also kind of genius, I have to say.”

  It is suitably cunning, Alastor admitted. I might appreciate it more, were I not an intended victim of it.

  Nell instantly sobered, though, when something else occurred to her. “Pyra said she’d learned Alastor’s true name from their old nanny, and that she originally only wanted to take Alastor’s magic to manifest her own animal form. She must have given the name to Goody Prufrock or Honor Redding, but the spell didn’t work the way she needed it to. As the Void got worse, her need for Alastor’s power changed. And now she’s realized she doesn’t need a spell at all to compel her other brothers into making their sacrifices. She only needs their true names.”

  “But the spell Pyra asked you to do,” I began, trying to push the image of the storage room out of my mind, “it seemed similar to the one Goody Prufrock tried. You were going to permanently trap him inside of me, right?”

  Nell looked down, and her expression made my whole chest clench. “She needed a way to ensure that Alastor couldn’t escape your body and get away. Now I see she wasn’t going to kill you just to kill him. Pyra needed him trapped long enough to compel him to give up his life force—which is all he has right now, until he’s strong enough to regain his physical form.”

  “Oh, so I wasn’t going to die after all?” I asked. That was weirdly relieving.

  Nell winced. “The extraction probably would have killed you, too. Because of the nature of Alastor’s curse, the two of you are bound together.”

  Yes, Alastor said darkly, but not for much longer.

  Maybe I was imagining it, but the sensation of his anger was suddenly more pronounced, hardening into something with jagged, sharp edges.

  “It does not matter,” Flora said, pushing up to her feet. “They will never open the realm of Ancients, with or without the key. The fiend realm is lost. We only have to make sure we are no longer in it before it collapses completely.”

  “How soon is that?” I asked. Each passing second felt like the last beats of a dying heart.

  The elf made her way to the door of the hut, drawing her cloak tighter around her and her hood up over her sprouts of hair. “Days. Maybe less.”

  The words sank in like a knife between my ribs, but in my head, Alastor spun himself into a thorny knot of denial and rage.

  I can save my kingdom, he said, the words simmering in my ears. And I shall.

  “I’ll go see to the house,” Flora told us, stowing her little sapling in a pocket of her cloak. “I must find us a way in to search for the changelings.”

  “We can take care of that for you while you’re gone,” I offered, “so it won’t get jostled as you carry it around.”

  Flora looked horrified at the thought. “I would never leave such a powerful plant in your hands, cunning creature.”

  I looked between the finger-length plant and her. Twice.

  “I will r
eturn shortly with our way in,” Flora continued. “Fiend, if you touch anything, I. Will. Know.”

  I held up my hands, gesturing to the absolute nothing that was around us.

  “Don’t be too long,” Nell told Flora. “If you can’t find a place to slip inside within a half hour, come back and we’ll all go together.”

  Flora gave Nell a reassuring look over her shoulder. “I promise to take care, Goody Bishop.”

  “Don’t”—Nell began, but the elf had already climbed back outside and was running—“call me that.”

  I leaned my head back against the wall, drawing my knees up toward my chest. I tried to process everything Flora had told us, but another worry wormed its way into me. “Are we sure it’s safe here? Sunburn could track us and we’d be sitting ducks.”

  “You mean Sinstar?”

  “Okay, yes, whatever. Are we okay here?”

  Honestly, Maggot. At least remember the names of your enemies so that you might scream them as you land the killing blow.

  “I think we’re okay for a little while,” Nell said, eating some of the granola. “He’ll lose our scents where we escaped through the mountain.”

  She’d better hope that she’s right, because being incorrect involves being slit from gullet to gizzard.

  I took a long drag from the water bottle, then used a little of it to wipe my face clean. The caked-on grime smeared off, and I almost felt human again.

  Almost.

  My stomach was still tied up in knots; I couldn’t even look at the bag of granola Nell pressed into my hands. That familiar pressure was back, ballooning out from deep in my chest until I couldn’t ignore it anymore.

  I shot to my feet, shaking out the tightness in my arms and shoulders. I knew that I was being stupid and that I needed to rest while we had the chance. If nothing else, my legs and the soles of my now blistered feet were burning from having walked so far. But it was like a swarm of wasps were unleashed inside my skull every time I tried to stay still. Each one stung me with the same painful thought: Prue needs my help.