Splendor and Spark

by Mary Taranta

  I stare at him, stunned into silence. My mother was a—a courtesan? North once said Merlock would give magic to his favored mistresses. Is that how she first learned magic? It would certainly have granted her access to Merlock.

  I don’t even realize how close Merlock is until he’s right in front of me, his fetid breath warm across my face. “A single prick of a needle,” he says softly. “A single drop of blood, bound tightly in thread. With the right spell, that’s all she needed to unravel my Burn. How long did it take her to cast this? And now look at it. My blood hums in your skin, wasted.”

  The vessel, I realize with a lurch. My mother must have intended to transfer her spell to a vessel—a weapon—to be used not just to hunt Merlock . . . but to destroy the Burn. How else could the spell bare the earth beneath my feet? It was Merlock’s blood, protecting me from his own magic.

  And then, with a wrench of guilt, I wonder, if I had allowed North to remove the spell like he wanted to, would he have been able to recognize it for what it was and utilize it in the way my mother intended? Could I have spared North the poison that tore his expedition apart, that even now is killing him?

  I’m tired of questions and guesses. With a strangled growl I lunge forward, as Merlock opens his hand, spreading his fingers wide. Against my will, my own hand mimics the motion, and the dagger falls to my feet. As I bend to retrieve it, Merlock grabs me by the same shoulder he previously wounded.

  “This does not belong to you,” he says as his fingers sink through the skin above my heart. He twists his wrist, and I feel something fundamental snapping loose inside me. Knots of magic—my mother’s spell—shimmer and crackle around his fingers like a ball of unspooled thread, temporarily connecting us. Agony shears down the side of my body, and I scream as he pins me to the wall, tightening the magic in his fist, pulling at the edges still anchored in my skin.

  North stumbles into view, hands on either side of the stairwell, straining against the spell that has slowed the rest of the room to a crawl. He accidentally kicks the pile of stones, scattering them. “Faris!”

  He stops. Merlock turns. They stare each other down, father and son united for the first time as frayed edges of magic stretch back toward me, eager to find a heartbeat to hold on to. I resist, flattening myself against the wall. Magic this battered will start to rot immediately.

  “Corthen,” Merlock whispers raggedly. That same look he had in Pilch returns, haunted and yearning. “You finally came.”

  North gapes at him. “What did you call me?”

  “North!” I kick the dagger toward him. It teeters on the top of the stairwell and then overbalances, sliding down one tread.

  He retrieves the knife slowly, eyes still locked on his father. “I am not your brother. You murdered him twenty years ago.”

  Merlock seems to startle out of his trance; his flickering memories vanish. “Of course,” he says, more brusquely. “The unsung bastard, home at last, here for his inheritance.” He rips the remaining magic loose from my chest and shoves me aside. I trip over the scattered stones and slide across the balcony, hitting against the weak balustrade. A section gives way and clatters to the floor below, and I totter, half over the edge.

  North takes a step toward me but falters, eyeing his father warily.

  Laughing, Merlock balances the shimmering ball of magic on his palm, then extends it toward North. “Is this what you want?” he asks, and the ballroom transforms around us, dust and age polished away to the gold and glittering marble of its former glory. The chandeliers brighten with hundreds of flickering candles; music begins to play, and the ghosts of dancers reappear in coattails and ball gowns pulled straight from a story I might have told Cadence to help her sleep.

  “No,” North says hoarsely. “I don’t want any of this.”

  Merlock spreads his arms wide, an open target. “No? Then why are you here? Because you know this kingdom deserved to die.”

  “North,” I plead, pulling myself farther back onto the balcony. “Kill him!”

  North is startled by the reminder that I’m still here, and he briefly focuses on me, concern written across his face.

  Merlock drops his arms with a sigh. “You stupid boy,” he says. “You can’t save any of them. And until you realize that, you’ll never inherit your full potential.”

  With a grunt, he spins on his heel, hurling the ball of magic across the ballroom. North lunges forward, dagger raised, but Merlock throws him back with a flick of his hand, slamming him against the wall. The dagger falls, spinning wildly across the balcony floor as Merlock vanishes down the stairs.

  No. Growling, I struggle to my feet as behind me the ballroom explodes, knocking me onto my back again, only this time, there’s no balustrade to break my fall.

  But North is there, hands locked around my wrists, hauling me to safety as around us the walls begin to fall, chandeliers crashing to the floor below, crystal scattering.

  “Are you all right?” he asks, touching my face—skin against skin that burns with our shared infection. Shoving him aside with an incoherent admonishment, I grab the dagger and bolt for the stairwell, nearly pitching face-forward as the ballroom continues to shake itself apart around us. By the time I reach the ground, it’s too late.

  Merlock is gone. And so is our only means of tracking him.

  North joins me, grabbing at my arm as a thundercrack splits the air. The floor buckles beneath us, and we crash into a tilting column. I hug it for balance as an eerie silence fills my head, save for a bright, sharp ringing that echoes in my teeth. The floor cracks down the length of the room and we’re standing on the wrong side. While the hellborne scramble to the far wall, still firmly attached to the castle and the cliffs supporting its weight, the floor where we stand drops several feet, tipping precariously. North and I haul ourselves onto the now-horizontal side of the column to keep from falling backward, toward the ocean below us. Loose debris is already breaking through the veranda doors and sinking into the freezing water.

  Sounds explode around me, crashing and ebbing in undulating waves. Voices spark, but nothing makes sense as the entire castle seems to scream in agony. North leans in, his voice muted despite his proximity. “We have to jump!”

  I shake my head at the enormous crack. “We’ll never make it!”

  “Faris.”

  “He was right there!” I can’t even look at him, I’m so furious. Terrified. Guilty. The floor sags lower, and I tip my head back, fighting tears. Like mother, like daughter: We both plan big but fail to execute. What hurts the most is knowing that, like my mother, I’m leaving Cadence nothing but questions about my intentions, my feelings. Let her hate me as long as she lives, if she could just know I loved her absolutely.

  Is that what my mother asked of me?

  “Corbin!” Chadwick emerges from the rubble and dust on the opposite side of the crack, blood oozing from a wide cut in his thigh. He tosses a braided curtain pull our way, and North catches it. He winds it around his arm before he hooks me around the waist and pushes me to go first. I start to climb, staggering against the sharp pitch of the floor as Chadwick braces against a sturdy column, knotting the pull off before hauling up the slack. When I reach the broken edge of the floor, he has to hoist me past the gap. As soon as I’m on solid ground again, he tosses the pull back to North, who scales up far more quickly than I did.

  “The tunnels!” North shouts as he draws closer, and Chadwick nods grimly in reply.

  Behind us, the hellborne seem to recover their bearings, still led by Baedan. Her eye patch is gone, half her face darkened with freshly spilled blood. Our eyes meet through the veil of haze, and her lips curl back in a snarl of fury.

  “North,” I warn as he pulls himself over the edge of the crack. His eyes widen before Chadwick hauls him up and out of the way of her spell. It hits Chadwick instead, and he stumbles from the blow. I cry out, grabbing for his coat—he’s too close to the edge of the broken floor—but I miss and he loses his balance, free-
falling before hitting the doors of the veranda far below. The weak glass begins to splinter as debris falls around him. He gains his feet, fear bright across his face when he looks up at us.

  He knows. We all do. Even if we had rope to reach him, Baedan’s spell is already at work, smearing his skin as though it were snowmelt on a warm day.

  North begins swearing, one word after another in a string of profanity as he coaxes magic into his swollen fingers, but Baedan is almost upon us and he has to make a choice. Neither one is easy; only one is right. Chadwick can’t be saved.

  With a cry that splinters my heart, North blasts Baedan back into the rubble. Spider-thin lines of poison appear on his face, following the curve of his throat and the line of his jaw. He sags back, breathless, as the remaining glass in the veranda doors cracks beneath the weight of too much pressure. The floor shudders once in warning and then breaks loose of the cliff side completely, rattling the entire castle around us. With a groan, the back half of the ballroom plummets a hundred feet to the ocean below, and Chadwick disappears.

  Eighteen

  NO.

  No. My denial stutters on repeat, rising in pitch until it becomes a scream.

  On hands and knees, North stares numbly at the water churning below us, choked with debris that bobs and eddies in the waves. The floor shifts dangerously again, and he loses his balance, tipping precariously close to the edge. He makes no move to save himself, and I grab his sleeve, and, when that doesn’t work, I grab his face, skin on skin, forcing his eyes to focus on me.

  We have to run.

  North nods in understanding, and we head back for the tunnels, but he’s a ghost, a wraith who floats behind me. It feels like defeat to leave Chadwick behind, but it’s the only way to ensure survival. We can’t fight Baedan face-to-face again.

  Adrenaline takes over as we stumble through the candlelit tunnels, under cracked plaster ceilings and delicate marble arches, untouched by the carnage above. Anger pulses through my veins with every step I take—fury. Merlock was right there and I hesitated, and now Chadwick—

  No.

  He knows how to swim, I reason. Maybe he’ll find something to hold on to, and when the Mainstay sails past—

  NO.

  I am not a child and I do not believe in fairy tales. Chadwick is dead. I repeat it to myself, a cruel mantra that cuts through the haze of my pain and brings a much needed clarity. Chadwick is dead, Merlock is not, and I now have a hole above my heart where my mother’s spell used to be.

  We have failed in every possible way.

  North and I run side by side in silence, but when we reach the rotunda with his father’s stones laid out on display, North skids to a stop. There’s a new one on top, still shining with fresh magic.

  I stare at him, blood echoing in my ears. “What are you doing? We have to get back to the sewers before Baedan finds us!”

  But North doesn’t hear me. Trembling, he approaches the cairn and picks up the stone, turning it between his poison-soaked fingers, which quickly stain the glowing magic black. In an instant he screams, hurling the stone at the wall, overturning the dining chairs. His hands curl into his hair before he straightens, eyes flashing with fire. The poison in his face is spreading, casting shadows beneath his cheekbones.

  “I will kill you,” he says, and it’s eerie, the calmness with which he speaks his vengeance. It still somehow fills the entire room with hate. “Do you hear me, you coward? I will cut your goddamn heart out and I will destroy you.”

  Footsteps pounding down the hall. Baedan.

  “North,” I plead, beckoning him to follow me.

  North stares through me. He notices that his hand is bleeding and gives it a vague look of surprise before a glimmer of remorse overshadows his fury. “No,” he says. “This ends now.” Turning, he starts backtracking the way he came, leaving me to stare after him.

  No.

  “North!” Choking on his name, I crash after him, chasing the flickering path of torches that ignite and extinguish in his wake. But he outpaces me, and the farther I go, the more wild my guesses become as to which way to turn, which way to follow. All at once I’m thrown back to the night beneath Brindaigel, and panic seizes me, bright and overwhelming, pulling me one way even as my head screams to go the opposite direction. Stop, I tell myself. Breathe. Do not make this mistake again; do not get lost.

  I hug myself and close my eyes, stilling my nerves. Slow, steady; one breath, then another.

  Someone grabs me around the waist, and I scream, throwing a wild punch that skids past a bristled jaw and tangles of matted hair. I grab a handful and pull as Kellig swears at me, releasing his hold around my waist. I back up warily as he prowls around me, massaging his scalp with one hand.

  “You’re not leaving without me,” he says. He’s managed to fashion himself a weapon from broken glass, and he levels it at me in warning. I swallow hard; we’ve danced this waltz once already, but there’s a terrifying desperation in his eyes that suggests this will be our last. His addiction has overcome him. He’s shuddering uncontrollably now, teeth bared and his free hand flicking open and shut in a ceaseless pattern. My own trembling fingers inch for Chadwick’s dagger in my boot as voices curve around the walls behind Kellig. Baedan would have split her men up to cover more ground. I can handle a single hellborne on my own. Maybe two.

  But right now my heart races, my mind blurs as I struggle to remember the most basic of facts. There are no draperies on these walls, no gilded furniture or painted ceilings or ornate arches overhead. Instead they are rudimentary, practical: servants’ halls. So going up will take me back to the castle. Going down will eventually lead back to the sewers and the city and possible escape—

  The bridge, I remember with a jolt. How am I going to cross the bridge without North to unlock the gate?

  One thing at a time, most pressing concerns first. The bridge doesn’t matter if I can’t make it there.

  Kellig lurches forward, ready to fight.

  I turn around and run.

  Swearing, he gives chase as I wind more deeply into the servants’ halls, where the darkness creeps closer, more absolute, our footsteps rousing shadows from their sleep. Without North’s blood to light the torches on the wall, I rely on my own failing vision and flashes of light breaking through the ceiling where the castle floors have rotted out. Seeing a door ahead, I veer toward it, fighting with the rusted hinges. Kellig catches up to me, and I swing the dagger wildly—a warning—catching on cloth, on skin, on muscle.

  Kellig sags back, eyes wide with disbelief as viscous blood begins to ooze out of his stomach, coating the hand he presses to the wound. “Wasted move,” he growls. “You have to aim for the heart.”

  Bracing my weight against the wall, I kick him in the knee, and he falls back with a curse that rings to the rounded ceiling. Turning back to the door, I wrench it open and haul myself inside—and hit a solid wall.

  No. No, no, no. This should be a servants’ hall—

  But it’s a service lift. Damp, fraying ropes hang from out of the darkness, connected to some ancient pulley system above, where weak light shines through another broken door somewhere within the castle itself. Kellig is already on his feet again as I scan the slick stone walls for a foothold. The walls are worn smooth with use; there’s no way I can climb them.

  My stomach tightens with a cramp as I grab the rope, giving it a test pull, only to swallow back a scream of pain as my entire upper body ignites from where Merlock tore into my flesh. Sliding the unsheathed dagger into the back waist of my trousers, I bite down on the leather scabbard and ignore the pain, hauling the lift up the shaft, inch by grating, squealing inch.

  Kellig grabs my foot, using my weight for leverage as he leans into the bottom of the lift, forcing it back down. The rope burns through my hands and I fight back sobs, kicking at him with a slurry of prayers and profanity. Torchlight brightens behind him just as he hauls himself in, cramming to fit beside me. He swings the door shut, and f
or a moment we stare at each other in the muddied darkness. But his hunger returns, his desperation, and I slowly reach for my dagger as voices bloom into focus in the hall, two, both male. Not Baedan.

  Fingers locked around the dagger, I close my eyes and hold my breath; maybe Kellig does the same. A moment later the torchlight dims and disappears through the chinks in the doorway, and I sag against the wall, my legs too weak to support my relief.

  But there’s still Kellig to consider.

  “North can’t save you,” I say, and it’s a broken whisper of a plea. It’s a weakness, and I hate it, the way I hate how my hands shake as I clutch the dagger behind my back, laying out the floor, marking my moves. Weighted step forward, swing from the hip, straight through the heart and mind the ribs.

  A choked sob escapes me at the thought of it, but Kellig stands between me and freedom, and I am not dying in the dark all alone. If nothing else, I will die beneath the stars, and nobody, especially not an ugly, cowardly man like Kellig, will stop me.

  “He won’t save me,” Kellig agrees, stepping forward. He curls a hand behind my head, but I hold: steady, wait, breathe. Useless words, a pointless mantra. I’m shaking so hard, my teeth rattle, and I can feel the poison in his skin leaching into mine. “But he’ll save you, which means you’re my ticket out of here, sweetheart.”

  His fingers dig into my hair as I move, burying the dagger into his chest and twisting it hard to the right, the way Chadwick taught me. Kellig howls, slamming back against the door of the lift. It shudders open, and he tumbles out in a tangle of arms and legs and unearthly shrieking that will draw whatever shadowbred monsters we’ve already awoken in these tunnels. I feel them gathering, the air tightening in warning.

  At first, I doubt. Was I too low, too high? Is he still alive?