The Shadow Hour

by Melissa Grey

  That was not one of Tanith’s abilities. It was the kuçedra. It sought to leech the fight from Echo’s body by wearing down her mind. Fear seized Echo, squeezing her until it felt as though she would burst. Where the hell was Altair?

  The plan to let Tanith burn herself out suddenly seemed like a childish fantasy. A fool’s errand that Echo had undertaken, misguided by her own desperate hope.

  Tanith’s voice prickled along Echo’s skin like a rain of needles. “This is hardly sporting of you. Hiding like a mouse.”

  Echo huddled deeper in the rubble, the despair projected from Tanith’s body—too close now—and fueled by the kuçedra practically blinding her with its might. Movement caught her attention, a flash of white against the backdrop of night. White, she thought, like a Warhawk’s cloak. She latched on to the sight, kept it in the center of her vision. The white streak moved along the edge of the ruined courtyard with speed and precision.

  “You are nothing to me, Echo,” said Tanith. “Nothing. Come out and meet your end with some dignity.”

  Nothing.

  That one word was sharp in its ugliness, striking at the part of Echo that was the weakest. The part of her that was still a little girl, haunted by demons that feasted on her fear. Nothing, just like her mother said.

  No. I am not nothing.

  Echo pushed away from the rubble. Tanith’s sickly red eyes widened in surprise, as if she hadn’t been expecting Echo to actually heed her request to come out and play. On the other side of the courtyard, the white form revealed itself at the same moment Echo did. Altair stood on the fallen rampart, his sword arm gashed open and bleeding freely. The blade was steady in his hand despite the pain Echo knew he must be in. Their eyes met across the ruined expanse of the barracks. Grim determination burned in his expression. She had promised him that she would use her power wisely, and he was going to buy her the time to do just that.

  “Dragon Prince!” Altair shouted.

  Tanith spun around, her feet barely skimming the stone beneath her. Locks of her hair defied gravity, undulating around her head like Medusa’s snakes. Strands of gold and black wove together, almost beautiful in their ethereal dance. Sparks rained down from Tanith’s fists, turning the surfaces they touched as black as soot.

  “General.” Tanith rolled the word around on her tongue as if savoring its sweetness. “So nice of you to join us.”

  Altair’s long stride brought him closer, never once faltering even as he navigated the uneven footing. Tanith vacillated between him and Echo, seemingly divided. One part of her kept angling toward Altair, but another appeared drawn to Echo’s presence as if magnetized.

  “Remember what I told you,” Altair said. His eyes were trained on Tanith, but his words were meant for Echo.

  Altair pounced, his sword arcing through the air. Tanith roared, her power surging forward, toward Altair, away from Echo. This must have been how he planned to buy Echo time. With his life. He was just a man. Strong and brave, but just a man. And a lone man could not stand against the dark.

  Tanith’s burst of power sent Altair careening into a half-fallen wall. He struggled to his feet, and with a snarl Echo heard from the other side of the courtyard, he lunged again.

  Tanith watched him approach. She smirked, golden tresses whipping about her face with renewed fervor.

  “He burns so brightly,” Tanith drawled. “Such a shame to snuff him out.”

  The fire Echo expected didn’t come. Tanith flew toward Altair—giving up all pretense of walking—and they collided in a tangle of limbs and armor. They wrestled, so fast that Echo couldn’t follow. Rocks and dirt lifted off the ground, carried aloft on the rising tide of Tanith’s power. She was expending it without realizing it. It leeched from her, wild and uncontrolled.

  Tanith’s energy was not limitless. Expending the firebird’s energy drained Echo of her own. If the kuçedra truly was the firebird’s counterpart, then the physics of it should be the same, Echo thought. All she had to do was let Tanith tire herself out.

  Echo was transfixed by the sight of Altair and Tanith fighting, the latter holding back from unleashing the full force of her power, for some reason. Maybe she was toying with him. Maybe she wanted to see how far she could push him before he broke. Something protruded from Echo’s boot and dug into her calf hard enough to bruise.

  Rose’s dagger.

  She groped for the hilt, feeling along the edge of the scabbard where it pressed against the inside of her boot. The blade slid free, its steel shining in the light of her flames.

  Enu kamalan. It protects.

  Echo sliced open the palm of her left hand. The bite of steel barely registered as her blood welled up in the wound. It smeared over the magpies on the dagger’s hilt as she switched hands and cut open her right palm. The dagger fell from her hand, the white bellies of the magpies stained scarlet.

  Shelter them. Altair’s words rang as clear as a bell. As they sheltered you.

  “By my blood,” Echo whispered, pressing her hands into the dirt. She didn’t know what she was doing, not really, but instinct and improvisation had gotten her this far. Maybe they would get her just a little bit further. She felt the island pulse beneath her as if it were a living thing. And it was, in its way. It breathed through the blades of grass and the leaves of trees. It fed on the sunlight that bathed the petals of its wildflowers and drank deep from the river that flowed around it. It welcomed her blood as it welcomed the rain. Nature had a power of its own. If Echo could join that power with hers, she would be unstoppable. She thought about the wards they’d discussed into the small hours of the night, the theories Violet had mentioned that Echo had only half understood. In her mind’s eye, she built a dome around the island. There was one theory of magic she knew well, for it was the basis of all magic: at the heart of any spell was an intention. If the intention was strong, the spell would be too. Echo poured her intention into the soil and felt the island soak it up.

  I am a sword, Echo thought. I am a shield. Now get the hell away from my people.

  She bled into the dirt, focusing on that thought. There’s always a choice, Caius had told her once. She could choose to be a weapon, or she could choose to be a shelter. She made her choice and poured herself into the soil, binding herself to the island with magic and blood.

  Two harsh cries rose from the spot where Tanith and Altair were fighting. Echo looked up as Altair fell. A hole had been punched through his armor and crimson streaks decorated his breastplate. Beside him, Tanith held something in her hand. Viscous liquid dripped down her wrist, clumping on her skin.

  Altair’s heart. Ripped from his chest as if he’d worn no armor at all.

  Echo’s scream pierced the night, and the island screamed with her. Roots burst from the ground; the fractured stone floor of the courtyard heaved; the trunks of trees buckled and their branches cracked like whips. Tanith cried out as the island rejected her, as Echo willed it to reject her. The shadows receded from the darkened corners of the shattered castle walls and a great weight lifted. Echo pushed with all her might, her hands buried wrist-deep in the earth, her blood pumping into the thirsty soil. Tanith flew up and backward, propelled not by her own wasteful expenditure of power, but by a force that flung her away, carelessly, her limbs as limp as a rag doll’s. She hit the water with a loud splash and disappeared beneath its surface. The river carried her away, and the island sighed with relief.

  Tanith was not dead, Echo knew, but she was gone, and for now, that would have to be enough.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  Dawn broke across the river, sunlight bathing the ruins of Avalon Castle, scattering across the water’s uneven surface. Smoke piped from the angry columns. Morning came, and with it the death toll, reported by the Warhawks who stepped up to fill the power vacuum left by Altair’s death and relayed by Avicen in stunned whispers. Twenty-seven dead, two of them children. Most of them Warhawks, asleep in their bunks when the first wall collapsed, buried beneath feet of stone a
nd charred wood. Those lucky enough to be trapped in the wing of the castle opposite Tanith’s attack were spared. It took hours for Echo and the surviving Warhawks to clear an opening for the others to emerge. They had stumbled out into the feeble dawn light in various states of shock. Ivy had pushed her way through the crowd to fling her arms around Echo. Rowan hovered behind her, his eyes red with sleepless strain. Echo extracted herself from Ivy’s embrace and pulled Rowan to her. Their last fight seemed so small, so petty. She held him as he buried his face in her hair and breathed in the scent of her. Over his shoulder, she saw Dorian and Jasper climb over the maze of debris, whole save for a few bruises. Strangely, none of the Avicen recoiled from Dorian’s presence, though the scales at his temples gleamed in the sun.

  “He helped us,” Rowan explained as he pulled away. “One of the load-bearing walls had started to crack, and he just grabbed people and got them to safety before it collapsed. He saved a lot of lives.”

  “Where’s Quinn?” Echo asked. She was surprised to find that she cared about the warlock’s fate. His was a life misspent on the acquisition of magic and power, but it was still a life. He was their prisoner and they were responsible for him. She didn’t want one more death on her conscience. It was weighted down enough as it was.

  “Save for a few broken bottles, the wine cellar wasn’t damaged,” said Ivy. “He’s shaken, but he’ll live.” Her expression darkened, almost as though she wished she could trade his life for that of one of the perished Avicen.

  Twenty minutes later, the scent of antiseptic stung Echo’s nostrils as Ivy dabbed at the scrapes on her face. They were superficial wounds—nothing serious enough to leave a scar—but Ivy insisted on treating them. After finding the one relatively quiet place in all of Avalon, Ivy had shoved Echo into a rusted metal folding chair in the section of the great hall being used to treat the moderately wounded, refusing to accept Echo’s protests of “No, really, I’m fine. Please go help someone who needs it.”

  Rowan stood behind Ivy, watching the proceedings over the Avicen’s shoulder. As a healer’s assistant, he was useless, but as a sentinel, he was divine. More than one Warhawk had attempted to steal Echo’s attention, but he’d sent them all scurrying away with a stony glare. In the wake of Tanith’s attack, Echo’s status as the firebird—creature of legend, savior of the Avicen—had transformed her into a rallying point. Echo supposed it was one thing for the Avicen to hear about her exploits in the Black Forest, but seeing it with their own eyes was something else entirely. Now everyone wanted her attention. All she wanted was a shower.

  “Ivy, honestly, I’m fine,” Echo said, pushing at Ivy’s fluttering hands. Ivy frowned but relented, ceasing her ministrations and crumpling the gauze in her hands into a tight ball.

  “You say that,” Ivy argued, “but you don’t look fine.”

  Rowan broke his stony silence at last. “You look like hell.”

  “Thanks, guys.” Echo shifted uncomfortably in her chair, the need to flee like an itch under her skin. Every beat of her heart sent a searing heat through her body, as if she’d swallowed the sun. The voices in her head clamored for attention, but their words were drowned out in a cacophony that didn’t feel the least bit human. Or Avicen. Or Drakharin. The presence was alive, but it wasn’t a person. If Echo focused, she felt as though she could isolate the facets of sound that crowded her mind. There was the whisper of blades of grass caressing each other in the breeze. The soft slap of water against a pebbled shore. The whistle of wind between the stems of wildflowers. The sigh of the soil against the castle’s foundations. The island spoke in its own ways, and Echo could hear it just as clearly as she could hear the murmurings of the firebird’s long-dead vessels within her mind. She had tied herself to the island’s defenses, and this was the result. She could feel the pulse of the island with her own heartbeat, a force so wild and inhuman that she felt as though her skin would burst from trying to contain it all.

  “What the hell happened out there?” Rowan asked.

  Echo worried the skin of her cheek between her teeth before answering. How could she summarize the sensation of tying herself to a piece of land, winding its threads with hers in a messy tangle of magic and humanity and earth? “I’m not sure I understand it myself,” she admitted, “but I beefed up the wards the way we wanted to, just…better. And faster.”

  “And Tanith?” Ivy asked. Her white skin was ashen with confusion, worry, and fear. First the Avicen had lost the Nest. Now the sanctity of Avalon had been breached. It was too much, too soon. “Will she come back?”

  Echo shook her head. She wasn’t sure how, exactly, but she knew one thing for certain: Tanith would never be able to set foot on Avalon again. Not as long as there was breath in Echo’s lungs. It was Echo’s will that had propelled Tanith from the island, and it was Echo’s will that would continue to reject the Dragon Prince’s presence. It was old magic, the kind she’d read about in the Ala’s books. Magic fueled by blood and sacrifice and a desire so strong that nothing could stand against it. Echo’s blood in the soil—no, the firebird’s blood in the soil—had guaranteed that the island was hers. Hers to defend. Hers to protect. “She won’t come back. She can’t. I made sure of that.”

  Ivy’s shoulders sagged with relief. “I don’t get it,” she said softly, “but I really needed to hear that.” She began to unwind more gauze from the small pile of supplies on the table beside her, her movements sharper now, more precise. Less weighted down with uncertainty.

  “But the Dragon Prince isn’t dead,” Rowan said. Ivy’s relief had not been contagious enough to spread to him. It wasn’t a question, it was a statement of fact.

  “No,” Echo said. “She’s not. And she’ll try something again, eventually, but I hurt her. Bad. I could feel it, like the two of us were connected. She won’t be back soon.”

  “Still, she will be back. And she’ll come back stronger.” Rowan shook his head, the tendons in his neck rigid with tension. “She’ll be regrouping. We have to do the same.”

  Gods, he sounded old. Old and tired. Echo swallowed back a lump in her throat. The memory of the last time the three of them had been together batted at her heart. There had been laughter and cake in a quaint little pastry shop on a sunny London street. The people they’d been then had no idea what awaited them. She wished, with a fervor that threatened to choke her with its intensity, that she could travel back in time. That she could warn them. That she could stop herself from hunting down the firebird. That she could wrap them all up and keep them safe.

  Regret, she thought, was the most nefarious of emotions. It overwhelmed. It strangled. It was utterly useless.

  Ivy’s hands inched toward Echo once more. She attempted to slide the jacket down Echo’s arms, but Echo caught her friend’s hands in her own to still them. “Ivy. Stop.”

  Ivy shook her head. “You fought the Dragon Prince off, Echo. You’re hurt. You need me to help you.”

  The heat in Echo’s chest scorched her bones as it pulsed with renewed strength. Ivy was right. Echo was hurt. There was something desperately wrong with her, but she didn’t want to let her friends discover what it was. Paranoia coiled its way through Echo’s mind. Ivy had all but confessed that she needed Echo to be strong for her now. They all did, even Rowan, who would never admit it. The Avicen needed a hero, and Echo was going to be that for them. She couldn’t let them see her bleed. Couldn’t bare her vulnerability to their gazes. She would slink off and tend to her wounds on her own. Let them have the fantasy that she was as strong as they needed her to be.

  “Stop,” Echo said again. “There are people who need you more. I’ll be okay.” She offered a small smile that she hoped was convincing. “I promise.”

  Over Ivy’s shoulder, Rowan caught Echo’s eye. He’d always been sharper than anyone gave him credit for. He saw things with an artist’s keen gaze; details that seemed insignificant to others rarely ever escaped his notice. Echo’s words seemed to placate Ivy, who began bundling up
her supplies to go help the wounded, but Rowan was not so easily fooled. His head tilted to the side in a silent question. Echo kept that same small smile plastered on her lips. He looked like he was about to press the issue, but a savior arrived in the form of a Warhawk. Sage.

  Orange eyes flitted between the members of their trio, alight with an acute curiosity. But if the Warhawk had questions, she kept them to herself. “Rowan,” she said, “we need you out there. The remaining Warhawks are divvying up recovery tasks.” She nodded at Echo once before turning on her heel and leaving without a backward glance, trusting Rowan to follow her. He almost didn’t.

  “Go,” Echo said. “Both of you. The Avicen need your help. I’ll be fine.”

  I’ll be fine. It was her new mantra. It was also a raging lie. But it was enough to make them leave her alone, and for that, Echo was grateful.

  —

  Whispers followed Echo through the halls until she reached her bedroom. She locked the door behind her, shutting them out, and let the silence wash over her.

  She took stock of her injuries in the claw-foot mirror in the corner of the room. Angry red scars crisscrossed her skin in thin welts. Unlike the last time she’d faced Tanith, she didn’t find herself miraculously cured, her wounds stitched together by an unseen cosmic force. Her palms still stung. Violet, who had been knocked unconscious, not killed, had wrapped Echo’s hands with strips torn from her own cloak before Ivy had found her. Now time was the only thing that would heal her. Her still-bleeding wounds were a reminder that she wasn’t invincible. But then, neither was Tanith.