by Beth Revis
It was too late.
He wrapped his arms around me in a hug I didn’t return. “You’re safe now,” he whispered into my dirty hair. “You’re home.”
I watched a dust mote falling through the lamplight. Did Grey think that this was home? Yūgen? School? Him?
I pulled away, ignoring the hurt I could see in his eyes. I adjusted my bag on my shoulder. “I have to go,” I said.
“Go? Where?”
“To the quarantine hospital.”
“Ned,” Grey said, “didn’t you hear? They closed the hospital.”
“I know that.” My eyes bore into his. “Did you know they left thirty patients behind? Left them to die?”
Grey looked surprised enough that I trusted he hadn’t known. That made me feel a little better.
I moved past him, toward the door, battered and broken as it was. Grey reached for me. It reminded me of the way the others pulled me from the hospital, the way they carried me, kicking and screaming, from my sister.
I jerked away from Grey with more force than was needed.
He stood there in the light, watching me in the shadows, concern etched across his face. “What happened while you were gone?” he asked. He reached for me again, and I let him hold my hand, pull my wrist to the light, see the bruises and scratches from my struggle.
My bag felt very, very heavy.
He pulled me closer. My head tilted toward his. My lips were dry and cracked, but none of that mattered as he pressed them against his, his body holding me gently but firmly, as if I were a bird he was afraid would fly away. I closed my eyes and sighed, letting myself have this one moment. This one kiss. His body felt strong and warm and safe. When he pulled back, I felt myself drowning in his eyes, not in the same gaspy, hungry way as before, but slipping under, just sliding down into darkness where nothing mattered, nothing at all.
His hand supported the back of my head, and I leaned into his touch, relishing it for a moment before finally letting my feet come back to earth.
“Grey,” I whispered. “I have to go.”
He silenced me with another kiss, deeper this time, more insistent. More desperate, as if he hoped a kiss would be enough. Maybe it could be. My arms reached up, sliding up his back, his neck, my fingers twining in his hair. I felt the spark again.
The hunger.
I broke away, gasping for air. “Grey,” I said, more forcefully this time. “I have to go.”
“There’s no one left at the quarantine hospital,” he said. “You can take a break, Nedra.”
I shook my head.
Grey straightened, and I knew he was trying to catch his heart and calm it the same way I was doing with mine. He let his gaze linger on the broken pieces of the room, the shattered glass, the bent pages of books tossed on the floor.
“Just promise me one thing,” Grey said. “Promise me you’re not going off to finish Ostrum’s work for him.”
I met his eyes.
I did not speak.
“Nedra,” Grey said, his voice a warning. “Ostrum’s been arrested. He’ll hang for treason.”
“Without a fair trial?” I snapped.
“Maybe,” Grey said. “Kill the necromancer, kill the necromancy. Worked on Wellebourne.” It wasn’t until Bennum Wellebourne’s body had quit bucking in its noose that the dead army he had raised fell lifeless once more.
Grey’s eyes were pleading. “That’s why you need to quit. Forget everything he told you. Distance yourself from him. Don’t let him drag you under.”
“I will do what needs to be done,” I said. I started for the door again.
“I love you, Nedra, but . . .” I didn’t realize until that moment just how much the “but” canceled out the “love.” Love could not exist when it came with conditions.
Whatever he was going to say died on his lips as the weight of his words fell on him. We had said many things to one another since the day we met, but we’d never said I love you. “Does it really matter what I do if it will stop the plague?” I asked, giving him one last chance. “If it will save people from suffering? From dying?”
“Yes,” Grey said emphatically. “Necromancy is a line you cannot cross.”
I shook my head. “There is no line,” I said.
“I won’t come with you,” he said, taking a step toward me. “If you do this, Nedra, if you choose necromancy . . . I will not follow you into that darkness.”
“Oh, Grey,” I said, shifting my bag on my shoulder. “What do you know of darkness?”
FIFTY
Grey
I watched her go.
She was different now. Something had happened. At her village, at the hospital . . . maybe here, in this ransacked office with shattered glass on the floor, crunching beneath my feet.
Something had happened.
And she had emerged on the other side a different person.
There was something wild in her—I could see it in her eyes. Like a monster caged inside her skull, scratching along the edges for escape.
I listened for her footsteps to fade to silence. She was gone. Out of my reach.
Fear welled up inside me, and I wasn’t sure if I was more afraid for her, or of her.
FIFTY-ONE
Nedra
Stealing a boat was my first crime this night, but it would not be my last.
The water was warmer than the air, and mist rose up like steam, blurring out the waves, the other boats in the bay, and, I hoped, me.
My muscles strained as I maneuvered the oar through the water. The flat-bottomed boat was small—designed to carry two people, maybe three—and the bay was particularly gentle tonight, but it was still rough going. I had not truly slept since the night I turned my parents to ash, and the weight of all that had happened since then made my entire body ache.
The clocks chimed midnight.
The bells rang out, one chime from the tower in the quarantine hospital, one chime from the tower at Yūgen, and then back and forth, twelve each, followed by a resounding silence. I pulled up the oar, resting it on the bottom of the boat. My shoulders sagged.
The emptiness of the world enveloped me.
My hands—calloused and cracked, with blood and ash and dirt caked under my fingernails—rested in my lap, palms up. I was surprised at the first lines of wetness that cut through the grime, my tears gliding between my fingers.
I tilted my face toward the quarantine hospital. The boat bobbed in the water.
I was alone.
I could go back. The thought came to my mind, unbidden and unwelcome.
It’s not too late.
I had carved runes into the dead flesh of my parents. I had stolen a crucible cage created by the worst traitor in all of history. I had taken the horrible, soul-crushing first steps.
But I could still turn back.
My eyes dropped to the water. It was black—cold and unforgiving, but there was a hint of sapphire reflected in its depths.
That blue reminded me of the robes of the alchemists who had fled, of the tincture the potion makers left behind before closing the hospital doors, abandoning those who needed them most.
I picked up the oar, sliding it noiselessly into the water. I pointed the boat back toward the hospital.
I had promised my sister.
I’d promised her I would return.
FIFTY-TWO
Nedra
The boat bumped up against the stone steps. I had no rope, so I hauled it up a few steps, hoping the tide wouldn’t carry it away.
The walk up to the hospital’s entrance felt eternal. I pushed open the heavy mahogany door, not bothering to shut it behind me. Starlight chased my heels.
“Ernesta!” I shouted. My voice echoed, long and loud, fading into nothing. “Nessie!”
I tripped over the first body, my kn
ees crashing onto the marble floor, my palms bursting with pain as I caught myself. I scrambled over the sprawled legs of a little boy, his eyes glazed over with green film, looking up at the ornate ceiling of the hospital, the gilded decorations reflected in his pupils.
Breath was expunged from my body as if I’d been hit in the stomach. I knew this boy. His father had blamed me for his brother’s and mother’s deaths. Ronan. The amputation hadn’t worked; the plague had traveled to his brain.
A thin dribble of deep blue liquid trickled out of one corner of Ronan’s mouth. He was so close to the doors. I wondered if he had tried to get outside, to die under the stars.
“Ernesta!” I screamed. My eyes grew more accustomed to the darkness, and I searched frantically.
No one answered my call.
She couldn’t have gone far. She had been weak and tired when I left her, barely able to remain standing. I ran down each of the wings, shouting for my sister.
I found only death.
The victims left behind had been in the worst shape of all. Legs and arms of the bodies I found were withered and black, so brittle they looked as if they would snap off. Some had taken the tincture; many had not. It was easy to tell the difference, quite apart from the tinge of blue on some of the lips. The ones who chose death on their own terms mostly did so in beds or chairs. They arranged themselves so their bodies were decent, and although many of them slid onto the floors after they died, it was evident that they had been thinking of who would find them, of what condition they’d be found in. Several victims were in beds, their hands folded over their chests as if they were hoping death would be like sleep. I found some in the courtyard, earth rubbed on the bottoms of their bare feet, their three-beaded necklaces clutched in one hand and the empty bottle of tincture in the other.
But the ones who had not chosen death, even when it was the only choice, had defied it to the very end. I found their bodies in the hallways, collapsed against walls. Their faces were slack, but I imagined there was still anger in their empty eyes. Three were in a medical supplies closet, obviously looking for something that might help, something not as final as the tincture of blue ivy.
But no Ernesta.
I ran back to the foyer. I was so tired. My body longed to fall to the floor like the dead around me.
“Nessie!” I screamed.
A cool breeze from above, a whisper of a chill, floated down in answer. My eyes caught a bit of blue—an unopened bottle of tincture resting on the bottom of the spiral staircase that led to the clock tower. My gaze drifted up and up. To the body draped over the steps.
“Ernesta!” I gasped, racing to the stairs. I took them two at a time, but I was clumsy in my weariness, and I slipped and skidded down several steps, the wrought iron burning against my skin as I struggled to stand again. I gripped the railing in one hand, my bag in the other, leaping toward my sister. She had made it nearly to the top. I dropped to my knees on one of the stairs, feeling for a pulse, praying she was still with me. I peeled back one of her eyelids—no green film.
“Ned,” she said, her voice barely there.
“Nessie!” Tears caught in my throat, and the word could hardly escape my lips.
A shadow of a smile passed over her. Her lips moved, but I couldn’t hear anything else. It didn’t matter. I didn’t need her words; I never did. I knew why she had come up here. She had been remembering my stories—she wanted to see the city.
We were closer to the clock tower than to the main floor of the hospital, so I helped Ernesta to stand and carefully pulled her up the remaining steps. Her body was heavy, but my labored breaths sounded so riotously full of life compared to her shallow ones.
“Almost, almost,” I said as we crested the final few steps. Ernesta dropped to her knees, but I coaxed her up again, pulling her closer to the reverse clockface, which cast a warm glow over the tower.
Ernesta lay on the floor so still and quiet, her frame more gaunt than thin, her skin sallow, her still-healing amputation so new that it pained me to look at it. I dropped to my knees beside her.
This plague is necromantic.
It will take a necromancer to stop it.
I pulled Bennum Wellebourne’s crucible cage out of my bag, setting the severed, shriveled hand on the floor beside Nessie.
Next, I needed the iron forged from the blood of a person who loved me. My parents loved me. They loved my sister. They would want this.
I told myself, They would want this.
I carefully held the waterskin of my parents’ ashes over the palm of the crucible cage, pouring the blackened flecks in the center and chanting the runes as they landed. There was far more ash than should fit in the open hand, but as I spoke the runes, the ash swirled in the center, condensing, becoming a hardened black lump. I didn’t stop until all the ash had been poured.
I finished speaking the runes.
In the center of the mummified hand of Bennum Wellebourne was a small lump of blood iron. I reached for it with trembling fingers.
I turned to show the creation to my sister, to prove to her that it had been worth the wait.
But Ernesta was no longer breathing.
FIFTY-THREE
Nedra
“No, no, no,” I said, scrambling over to my sister’s body.
I pressed my fingers against her pulse points, but her heart was silent.
Her skin was already cold.
My empty stomach churned. Had I imagined hearing her say my name? Had I imagined her breath, shallow but steady? Had I, in my exhausted state, pretended my twin was alive as I pulled her body up the stairs? Or had she passed as I knelt beside her, playing with a darker magic than she’d ever dreamed existed?
“Nessie, Nessie,” I begged, tears blinding me so much that I could almost pretend her chest rose and fell, rose and fell again.
It’s not too late.
I turned back to the crucible—not a crucible. Not yet. The iron was made, a hard lump in my hand. But there was still one step left. I dropped the iron bead into the palm of the crucible cage.
A sacrifice.
I grasped for my father’s book, flipping through its worn pages. I remembered what Master Ostrum had said about Bennum Wellebourne, how he’d almost been bled dry. How there needed to be death in the blood.
I found it. My eyes lingered over the runes, but when I opened my mouth to read them aloud, no sound came out. I took a deep, shaking breath and forced myself to begin chanting. Take what you must. Leave me the power. Take what you must, leave me the power. An open promise, a blanket offering.
My mouth kept moving as I crouched over my sister’s remains.
Take what you must, leave me the power.
Ernesta’s body glowed, tiny bits of bright gold flickering over her body, rising like fog on the water.
Take what you must, leave me the power.
I felt the burning in my fingers first, fire traveling up my arm, past my elbow. My nails melted, white hot. I hissed in pain, but kept chanting.
Take what you must, leave me the power.
Anything for her.
My blood boiled. My skin ripped apart as tiny bubbles of red burst through, spilling out over my arm. The veins of my left wrist cracked open, a fountain of crimson spilling over my fingers. I screamed in pain, but through the sound, I did not stop chanting.
Take what you must, leave me the power!
My flesh unwound.
Strings of muscle and ligaments unraveled past my elbow.
My blood, my skin, my flesh was unspooling off my left arm, pulling into the hardened black center in the palm of the crucible cage, wrapping around the iron bead made of my parents’ ashes. My flesh wove between the bony fingers of the hand, around and around, forming a tapestry of gore. Blood hovered like red mist, staining everything.
Take what you must, leave m
e the power.
The chanted words were desperate now, my plea for this to end. The flesh of my arm fell away, leaving only bone.
I flexed my bony fingers, white stained pink with blood. I could identify the carpus, the ulna, the radius.
I had never thought to see the interior of my own hand, exposed and brittle.
Take what you must.
My fleshless hand started to glow with the same golden sheen my sister’s body did.
Each bone, at the same time, without warning, shattered.
I screamed, blinded by pain. My voice shriveled to nothing. The dust of my bones hung suspended in the air, forming the outline of my elbow and arm and hand, and then slowly, slowly, the bone dust swirled down, down, falling over the crucible like rain.
About four or so inches remained of my left arm, less bone, more flesh hanging limply. The muscle sizzled as if being burnt, the stench so sickening I gagged. The skin knit together, raw and pink and thin.
The words of the runes flashed in my mind.
Leave me the power.
I turned to my sister, prone and motionless beneath the illuminated clock. Her body still glittered with a glowing aura I could never describe with words, as if the particles of air were gilded.
Her right arm, amputated. My left arm, taken. We were still, even in this strange space between life and death, mirror twins.
Take what you must, leave me the power. The words were bitter in my mouth now, but still as true and sincere. I would give anything—my other arm, my legs, my heart, my soul—to just get Nessie back.
The glow lifted over Ernesta’s body. The air no longer smelled of blood and burning; it was sweet, but sharp. The bright mist rose higher and higher.
Take what you must, I said in the ancient tongue, just give me back my sister.
The golden light swirled into a stream, the end pointed like a pen tip. It flowed into the iron, wrapping around, hardening, shining so brightly that I had to look away. It formed the bead into a small, hollow cup, about the size of the tip of my thumb. I bent to pick it up, almost losing my balance as I reached out with my right hand, forgetting I no longer had a left one. As soon as I touched it, the crucible cage crumbled to dust.
