He was everywhere but he was nowhere. Every time he flickered into our sight, he vanished only seconds later, leaving us constantly guessing where the next attack would come from.
I felt a raised line in the tile. With shaking fingers, I brushed away some of the dust. I’d found the edge of the trapdoor. It was buried under a pile of rubble.
“We have to move this,” I cried out as I frantically tried to shove away the rubble. “We can escape through here!”
Lev knelt beside me. “Are you sure?”
“Yes!”
We started grabbing chunks of debris and tossing them to the side, but the duke fired another spell at us. I dragged Lev flat to the floor and did my best to shield us with my magic. The spell smashed into my barrier with enough strength that it nearly crushed us.
The blast had the unintended effect of dislodging some of the bigger pieces of debris that were blocking the trapdoor. Gasping for air, we got back to our knees and rapidly worked to move the rest.
“Oh, leaving already?” the duke’s voice boomed above us. “Perhaps you’ve grown tired of my parlor tricks. Let me show you something more impressive.”
The duke teleported over to the pile of alchemic shards. He grabbed a sliver that was as long and as sharp as a sword. Laughing, he plunged the shard into his chest.
The floor rattled. A buzzing energy field enveloped the duke. His eyes were like two white-hot stars blazing out of his skull. He extended his arms and clenched his fist. His veins bulged.
As Lev and I watched in horror, the duke’s body expanded and grew taller. Scales of blue stone pierced through his skin. He was transforming into some kind of mutant. A new, deformed hand grew to replace his missing one. His head grazed the caved-in ceiling. His fists swelled to the size of small trees.
I knew I should keep working to clear the door, but my fingers were frozen with fright. I had never faced anything like the duke.
Lev grabbed my hand. “Keep going,” he urged.
The duke’s voice boomed through the air. “What do you think? I like this form. I feel like I’ve finally found the real me!”
I felt around the edges of the trapdoor. It was almost loose. Lev wedged his fingers beneath it to pry it open.
“Do not ignore me!” shouted the duke.
He smashed his massive fist into the floor next to me. The impact flung me into the air. I tumbled wildly, my arms flailing. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Lev spread his wings and jump towards me.
The duke swatted at me like I was no more than a fly. My feeble magic was just a small cushion when his hand smacked into me, tossing me the other direction.
The duke laughed, enjoying his game.
“Leave her alone!” Lev shouted. He changed direction in midair to catch me as I fell.
“Thank you,” I said with a gasp as Lev’s arms wrapped around me. I smiled weakly up at him to let him know I was okay.
Looking relieved, he smiled back. He flapped his wings gently so that he could lower me to the floor.
Lev stopped abruptly in midair. The duke had stretched out his mutated arms and grabbed him from behind.
The smile vanished from Lev’s lips. There came a horrific tearing sound and Lev’s eyes went unfocused.
We fell. Lev’s weight crashed into me, dragging us both down.
I hit the floor on my back. Lev landed heavily next to me. For a moment all I could see was a blur as my head reeled. Lev wasn’t moving.
“Lev?” I shouted. “Lev? Are you okay? What happened? Answer me, Lev!”
“E-Emma.”
His voice was barely a whisper. The duke’s laughter drowned it out.
My vision cleared. I looked up. The duke towered over us, his deformed body shaking with glee. In each of his hands, he held one of Lev’s wings.
“NO!” I screamed. “LEV!”
I rolled to my side and reached for him. He lay motionless on his back. Puddles of black blood were spreading out behind him like grotesque new wings. The blood quickly reached me and soaked my clothes with its fading warmth.
I grabbed his hand. It was cold as ice. His fingers tried to wrap around mine but they were clumsy. His chest heaved up and down in ragged, jerking movements.
His eyes sought mine out. He looked at me steadily. I couldn’t imagine the pain he was in.
“Emma, please don’t think that I’ve failed you.”
A soul-wrenching sob tore through my chest. I crumpled and laid my head on his shoulder. “You’ve never failed me. Don’t go!”
They were the only words I could think of. Don’t leave me! Don’t die! My mind couldn’t cope beyond that. Every emotion was a new, more painful one.
He reached up with one trembling hand and stroked my hair. “It had to be you or me,” he said. “I chose me.”
An unexpected burst of anger made me lift my head. “No!” I screamed at him. “You can’t do that! You can’t choose this! Just hold on! We’ll fix you! It’s only your wings, Lev. Just hold on!”
“I’m bleeding to death,” he said. “There’s no time left for me. You can still get out of here.”
The anger became rage. I clenched my fists and screamed at him through my tears. “I’m not going back without you! You can’t make me!”
His dark eyes stared into me with unmasked affection. In them I saw all the love I’d always felt for him. He stopped stroking my hair and rested his hand against my cheek.
“Emma, there’s so much left for you to do.”
The duke stopped laughing. He’d grown bored. He tossed Lev’s torn wings aside and made a grab for me.
My grief was so stifling that I could hardly bring myself to use magic. I managed one thin barrier. It kept the duke from grasping me, but I was knocked away from Lev. I watched his life draining to the black puddles on the floor. My own body was battered but I couldn’t feel it. I didn’t feel anything except for my heartache and a new kind of anger that was as heavy as it was powerful.
The duke’s white eyes blazed down at me. “There’s no room for you in my new world, Flute Keeper.” He drew back his spiky arm. His hand closed into a fist.
I squeezed my eyes shut. I could let him finish me. Just let him end it, right here, right now. What was there worth going back to without Lev? He was a part of me. If I couldn’t be whole, why live?
Chloe. Lord Finbarr. The Larues. Anouk. Valory. Noemi. Robyn, still out there somewhere, threatening their lives. Who would stop her?
You have so much left to do.
“Prepare to die, Emma Wren. Tell my son hello for me.”
I knew then what I had to do. I took out my flute.
The duke roared his triumph as he swung his fist towards me. I’d never played the last stop on the flute before. I’d always been scared to because nobody knew what beast it called. I knew only a mysterious description spoken by my ancestors and delivered to me via the fruit of my family tree: This soul shall not be bound as the others, but given freely to the sleeping form that lies within—the Nameless Beast inside all of us.
I pressed the flute to my lips. A high, haunting note blasted through the room.
Something happened to my body. Strange tendrils of warmth streamed from my core. The sensation rushed down my back, through my legs and down my arms to my fingertips. I could feel every single atom of my being exploding with hidden energy. I was made up of a million tiny universes and they were all bursting with light.
All the magic I’d ever felt in myself was amplified until I was made of nothing else. I was no longer a thing, but a force. I was an extension of the air and the fabric of the world. I was every Flute Keeper who’d come before me. I was my father and my grandfather and all the Wrens before that stretching back to the beginning of time.
I looked down. I had no physical body. I was made of light and I was floating high above the floor. In my new form, there were extensions of light that blossomed behind me—my very first wings. I felt them anchoring me in the air, giving me something to maneuv
er with.
The duke’s spiky fist was frozen in mid-swing. He stared aghast at the unfathomable entity before him.
I saw him as a dark void, an unnatural scar in a world made of light. I was a part of the light and so was Lev, who I could see from high above. He glowed like everything else, but his light was growing dimmer.
“What are you?” growled the duke.
His voice sent cracks of darkness racing through the threads of existence. I could see them now. I could trace all the shining lines that broke when they got to him; lives lost, homes shattered. He was a blight. There was nothing left in him that was good. He could only spread darkness and hatred.
Then I saw something else. There was another thread, like the shining sticky silk cast out by a spider. It led from him back into the blackest void where all life and light ceased. Something was waiting there. It was an entity far more evil than the duke, and it had control of the threads of his life. I understood now what Lev was trying to tell him before. He was just a pawn.
“Consider me your angel of mercy,” I said. My voice sounded like the rush a thousand breezes, not unlike the Seraphim. “I have come to cut you free.”
The duke shivered. All the blue spikes on his body rattled. “Silence! Don’t waste my time! I have seen the future. You aren’t in it!”
He swung out his arm like a whip, letting the spikes crack and splinter together. Some of them broke off and flew towards me.
I swept gracefully to one side. I felt the duke’s blow as a cold draft brushing through my wings—a revelation! I was intangible. He could not harm me.
The question was, could I harm him? I had no weight of my own. I experienced everything as fluid motion, but I had nothing to strike with. The only thing I seemed to be able to do was excite the glowing particles in the air. Every life form caused disruptions in the fabric of existence. Every single tiny action caused a reaction. Now that I could see it all taking place before my eyes, I realized I could use it to my advantage.
The duke began to back away. The spikes in his body suddenly appeared to weigh him down.
“Get away!” he said. “Stay back!”
I flowed closer to him, paying special attention to the spikes. I could hear voices in the blue stones. The magic particles inside of them were trapped. They’d been ripped from their rightful bodies, separated forever from a proper existence. They wanted to be free.
My bright wings bathed the duke in light as I floated to him. He cringed. The spikes on his body glimmered. I could hear the particles inside of them screaming, praying, begging to be released. I noticed again the thread that bound the duke to an unseen force. It was drawn tight. I came closer and it began to hum as though it had been plucked.
“Please,” the duke said. “Stay away! Stay back! I’m warning you!”
I reached out with what would have been my hand. It was just another flowing extension of my form. The particles in the spikes vibrated faster and faster, reacting to my presence. I touched the duke’s chest.
The alchemic stones could no longer confine all the tiny, stolen magic particles. They shattered, releasing streams upon streams of light. The duke’s body was vaporized instantly.
The thread that was bound to him snapped. It sent waves through the fabric of existence as all the particles were released back into the atmosphere.
Though the thread was broken, I knew that there was still somebody waiting at the other end. My light couldn’t penetrate the blackness to see to the other side. There was some kind of wall. I could not see it, but I sensed it. It was the barrier between two realms.
“Emma.”
My form flickered again. I swept down to Lev’s side. His light was very, very dim. He was fading fast from the world. Nothing I could do would stop that.
“So you finally got wings.”
His voice was weak. Even in my new form, I felt myself shaking. I longed to pick him up and take him away. I found that if I tried, I could excite the particles of my form enough to make them somewhat solid. I was able to sweep a hand across Lev’s forehead.
He closed his eyes. “That feels warm. It’s nice.”
I let my wings droop down to cover him, enfolding him within my form so that I couldn’t tell where his light left off and mine began. We were part of the same entity, just a big collection of bits of existence wrapped up, one into the other. All the threads of his life were tangled with mine.
But mine kept going, on and on as far as I could see. His were unraveling.
With a gasp, he pushed away from me. I cried out as the cold rushed in to fill the place where he’d been.
“Emma, there’s something I’ve got to do.”
“Don’t talk!” I pleaded. Every word made his light grow dimmer.
He smiled sadly. “I must.” He pushed himself up on his elbows as best he could and stared at the place where the duke had been. “Do you see that?”
He was staring at the void where the mysterious thread still hung in place, broken by the duke’s death. I had thought there was some kind of wall there. However, I now perceived a gap where the shining thread crossed the threshold into our world. Beyond it lay the blackness of the unknown.
With a start, I realized what I was looking at. “That’s the Twi-Realm, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Lev said. His face was calm. “I have one last thing to ask of you.”
I felt myself fading. My form couldn’t last when my emotions were so strong. It made me much too heavy. Pain was a thing for mortals, not an ethereal being of light.
“Anything,” I whispered.
“Take me over there,” Lev said. “Let me enter the Twi-Realm now, while I still have a body.”
I didn’t question him. I didn’t dare, even though the thought of letting him enter the void was enough to sever the flute’s spell. I returned to my normal body with its burden of flesh and its breaking heart.
Lev tried to smile. “There’s the face I’m going to miss. Help me stand.”
He was so heavy. He had to lean on me completely as I took his arm over my shoulders. Any normal person would have been dead after losing so much blood but, as always, Lev was driven by things that no normal person could comprehend.
We struggled forward, leaving a trail of blood as we went. Now that I was back in my normal body I couldn’t see much. I was aware of the void, though. It had its own gravity. I felt it pulling us towards it.
“Stop here,” Lev said.
Stooping under his weight, I took deep breaths. He steadied himself against my arm and then, miraculously, stood on his own.
“This isn’t the end,” he said. “My battles aren’t yet over, and yours are just beginning. We both have to keep fighting. Promise me you’ll keep fighting.”
I swallowed the lump in my throat. I wanted to delay the moment as long as possible, but Lev didn’t have long. “I promise. It’s Robyn, isn’t it? You know her plans.”
“She’s trying to launch the world into chaos,” Lev said. “The duke was just another step towards that. He was evil enough on his own to overthrow Chloe—”
“And Robyn gave him the push to send him over the edge,” I guessed. “But what about this?” I touched the red dagger that he’d returned to me earlier that day.
“When the time comes, you’ll know what to do with it,” Lev said. His knees buckled. He grabbed my shoulder for support. “There’s one more thing. You have the power to lift the curse at Seraph’s Tear. I would have told you before but—” he coughed and sagged heavily against me.
There was no time left to lose and so many questions left to ask. With labored steps, I took Lev closer to the void that led to the Twi-Realm. He shook. He was so, so cold. He turned his head to press his lips to my cheek.
“Liebet Ivern, Emma Wren,” he whispered. “I am yours forever. Always have been. Always will be.”
“I’m yours forever, too, Lev Hartwig, no matter what.”
With his last bit of strength, Lev stood and walked into t
he Twi-Realm.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Somehow I made it down to Chloe’s old room. I was numb. I moved as if in a daze, not sure where I was going, not even really caring.
He was gone.
The castle made groaning sounds. I heard screams outside. Ivywild was leaning slightly. I only noticed it when I walked out to the foyer near the topmost branches of the elevatree.
Nobody tried to stop me. Everyone had evacuated the castle. It was lifeless as a ghost town.
I heard whispers. The Dryads were still in the elevatree.
“Hello?” I called. My voice didn’t want to work.
“Who’s there?” asked a Dryad.
“Just a passer-by. Where has everybody gone?”
“The red capes have gone to attack something on the ground,” the Dryad said. “The servants all left when the castle started leaning. They’re afraid it’s going to crash. Is it going to crash?”
“I don’t know,” I said, walking away.
“Wait!” the Dryad cried. “Come back. Tell us what is happening!”
I ignored her. The mention of a red cape attack on the ground brought me out of my daze. Woodman’s Hall was still in danger.
I walked to my old room, then to my balcony. How many nights had I sat out here while Lev taunted me from the eaves above?
Not now, I begged myself. I can’t think of that right now. I’d never been given time to mourn properly, not for any of my losses. There was always another battle to fight.
I stood on my balcony, watching the panic of those in the streets below. None of Ivywild’s remaining residents could fly. They were all Gnomes or magical weaklings or people who’d had their magic drained from them by the duke.
I resented them all. Why couldn’t they just take care of themselves? What about Woodman’s Hall, for that matter? I was tired. I didn’t want to fight anymore, but I’d made a promise.
It felt like it took a long time for me to reach the bottom floor. A few people recognized me when I emerged from the castle.
“Have you come to save us?” cried a frantic man.
The Flute Keeper's Promise (The Flute Keeper Saga) Page 45
