By the time he’d pulled the rest of his body up, he was dry-heaving into his metal mask. He could feel the ache of his muscles all the way down to his bones as he rolled up and over the building’s ledge. He held his broken wrist hard against his chest.
When he regained his bearings, he surveyed his new surroundings. The small, flat roof he was lying on was cracked and lopsided. There was a concrete smokestack at the far end with a fracture running up its length. Oliver eased himself to his feet on wobbling legs and crossed the roof to look out at the destruction below. Chalky dust was so thick in the air from the last round of earthquakes that it was all Oliver could taste and smell. Moonlight caught on it until the clouds began to blow away and settle, revealing Lindennacht through their haze. Oliver stared at the sight, numbed. Hundreds of buildings in the miles left between him and the edge of the forest had collapsed to some degree. The tenements and factories were cracked and slanted, bearing down on one another in a vast sea of grey stone and splintered wood. Roofs caved in. Streets were blocked.
Nothing was untouched by devastation.
Only after a long moment did Oliver realize that Lindennacht’s sirens and emergency bell were no longer sounding. There were no gunshots echoing over from Quadrant Two, either. He listened for screams, but if they were there, the night must have stolen them away. The winter wind had turned, pushing at his back and carrying only salt. He kept waiting for something, anything, to make a noise, but everything was silent beneath him. There was only the rush and gurgle of seawater as it beat the shore in the distance and bubbled up through the ruins of the city below.
A memory pricked at the back of his mind.
When Oliver had been six—when his mother had still been pregnant with Lana—he’d used to stop underneath the swaying boughs of the linden trees in the forest, in the middle of scavenging blackberries. He’d stopped because there had been a point of time in every trip when it had dawned on him that he could no longer see or hear Lindennacht—a point when he’d felt like the only human in the entire multiverse. It had used to fill him with a thrumming mix of terror and excitement.
Now, it filled him with only terror.
“Lana!” Oliver screamed out into the city, cupping his good hand around his mouth. His heart quivered in his chest like a fly caught in a spider’s web. “Lana!”
He waited, but there was no answer. Not even a groan from a building in the rubble. Oliver gnashed his teeth.
Saints, if you’re listening—if anyone is listening—you help her. You fucking help her. Holy Peytr, sustain her. Mother Kjeveta, protect her. Father Nicholais, empower me, and Lady Liliana, guide me to her. I can’t do this alone. I can’t. Oliver closed his eyes. I can’t lose her, too. I’ll kill anything that lays a hand on her.
He’d buried his mother at nine. He’d buried his father at sixteen. He wasn’t going to let some monster bury his sister now. She was all Oliver had, and she was too good to suffer.
After their father had died, Lana, ten years old and already an orphan, had curled up at Oliver’s feet on the hardwood floor and pressed her rounded cheek to his knee. He’d been sobbing at the dining table, and she’d tried to offer him her lemon and custard roll, signing, ‘Don’t cry, Brother. Please don’t cry.’
His chest clenched at the memory, at how the grey morning had lit up her soft hazel eyes. Right now, he wanted nothing more than to run his hand over her coarse hair again and pull her close. He wanted to fold himself around her like a flesh and bone cage and keep the world from touching her ever again.
Don’t cry, he told himself, and set his jaw. Find her.
Down below the factory he stood on, there was a miniscule gap in the debris where the street was still visible. If Oliver could get to it, he could manoeuvre through the rubble and listen for his sister within it. He could pull her free if she was trapped. He had his pepperbox at his hip to fight off any remaining hollowsouls, and his sister had its match. They would leave Lindennacht together.
When Oliver drew his revolver from his holster, a shadow passed over his body. It eclipsed the building he was standing on in its entirety and moved out to capture miles of Lindennacht at a rapid pace. He looked up instinctively, gun raised, but when he did, his eyes widened. His stomach dropped.
The head of the mountainous wolf was so close now that Oliver could have thrown his pepperbox and hit it if he’d wanted to. The bottom of its jaw was above his head. At this distance, Oliver could see now that the bristles of its black fur were twice—thrice—maybe even four times the length of his body. When the wolf tilted its head on its side, he could see its bared teeth were even longer. They were blackened near the gums with strings of saliva as wide as rivers stringing from between them. He was struck suddenly by the image of the wolf’s skull housing a hundred cities, millions of people milling about inside it.
Oliver thumbed the hammer of his pepperbox, and the wolf’s head dipped down over the top of him. It kept dipping until Oliver’s gun was aimed at the center of its pupil. It was all he could see now. There was no sky above him anymore—only the void of the wolf’s pupil and the fibrous stroma of its rust-red eye at the very edges of his vision. Staring into its blackness was like staring into a hole in the universe—like witnessing a lunar eclipse from mere yards away. There was a depth to it that stole Oliver’s breath. All he could do was look between it and his pepperbox, at how his gun looked like a splinter in comparison. Standing there, he didn’t know why he wasn’t shaking. He felt like he was, but his pepperbox wasn’t wavering.
How do you kill something that could open its mouth and swallow a sea? He half-expected an answer to come to him. When one didn’t, he lowered his pepperbox and took a measured step back from the wolf, his boot sliding through the dust on the uneven rooftop. The wolf’s pupil narrowed, but the beast made no move in his direction.
You can’t kill it, Oliver decided. You run, you hide, or you die. But there is no winning.
He glanced over his shoulder toward the east, toward the ruined city between him and the Lindenfels, in the direction he’d heard his sister scream from earlier. If he could just get down there and tuck himself underneath some slabs of rubble until the wolf wandered off, then he could begin his frantic search for his sister as soon as it was possible.
There was a clear path in the street below the roof. He mapped it with his eyes. He would have to leap off the edge of the building and take his chances. He might break his legs in the fall, might have to drag himself to safety—he might not even survive the impact. But he had to try. He took a deep, steady breath and eyed his route. On three, he decided. He would jump on three.
“Åmnachteş njel’nė,” he whispered, and felt the tug of magic in his gut. He prayed the saints were watching over him. He prayed that his mother’s saint especially, Mother Kjeveta, was cradling his and his sister’s lives in her tender palms. He hoped his parents were looking down on him from wherever they were, too, because failing them wasn’t an option. Losing Lana wasn’t an option.
One.
Two.
He jumped.
When Oliver woke up, he didn’t know where he was.
He was lying on his back somewhere, his head buzzing and metallic. His body was heavy, and his right ankle throbbed. Rotating it, he winced, head falling back against the flat rock behind it. He felt around with his fingers until he recognized the smooth stones under his touch. They were the cobblestones of the street, but they were covered by at least an inch of icy seawater. Oliver realized he was lying in a pool of it. It had soaked through his wool coat, and his teeth were chattering.
I fell, he remembered. I jumped, and I fell.
Behind his eyelids, he could see himself leaping from the building, the wind snapping back the hood of his coat. He could feel his stomach rising up into his throat as he began to sink through the air. And then blackness. It had happened probably only seconds ago, yet it felt like it had been hours since then.
I’m in Lindennacht, he remem
bered. The city is under attack. I need to find my sister.
Each piece of information came back to him in turn. He eased himself up onto his elbows and then hopped to his feet. He ignored how his ankle protested and started down the waterlogged street at a jog, figuring out the right direction to run in as he went.
“I’m coming, Lana,” he said under his breath. Freezing water sloshed around his feet and soaked up to the knees of his pants. “Just hold on. Wherever you are, hold on.”
A gunshot went off ahead, and Oliver froze.
Lana. Her name rang through his skull. It’s Lana.
Oliver threw himself into a sprint and splashed around and over tall hills of debris. He snaked his way through mazes of crumbling buildings. He didn’t care that he’d started to shiver and that the skin of his back had gone numb. His chest was light with hope. The sound hadn’t come from that far away—just from the other side of the collapsed building that was now in front of him. All he needed to do was cross this misshapen blockade of stone.
With his eyes, Oliver searched rapidly for a way around it, over it, or even through it. He could feel fatigue setting in just behind the desperation that was keeping him moving, turning the cogs of his body. He reached for his pepperbox with a sudden, desperate intent to blow a hole through the wall with bullets or magic when a quick, deafening growl shattered the silence, stopping Oliver in his tracks.
The sound was followed by a warm current of air that puffed up against his wet back and sent a chill through him. The air enveloped him completely. It reeked of rotting meat, soured milk, and something sharper. It turned his stomach and made his eyes burn. The icy seawater in the street rose up to his shins and poured into his boots.
When he turned around, the wolf towered miles above, its paws nowhere in sight. Its body blocked out the moon and most of the sky. Its head rose rapidly as it thrust up through the thin clouds of dust that were still churning. A growl rippled through the night like thunder, and then the wolf lifted its paw from somewhere on the other side of Lindennacht. It was a floating mass of land, Oliver thought, as it hovered over the city. Water rained down from it in drops fat enough they shook the ground. The wolf’s paw drifted through the air until it rested over the top of Oliver and everything within a mile of him; then the wolf paused. Its paw eclipsed everything in deep shadow. Oliver was bathed in its darkness.
Slowly, a realization dawned on him, and he stilled.
It’s going to crush me.
The truth of it hung in the air, stole his breath. He was going to die now, at twenty years old—was going to pass into the hands of the saints just like his parents who were buried at the foothills of the Lindenfels. It was over. After everything. With such ease. And he could do nothing. He stared up, wordless, and felt tears well in his eyes, a scream perched behind his gritted teeth. He wondered if his sister was watching this wolf, too.
This isn’t fair, he wanted to yell. I fought. I fought so hard.
Oliver reached up for his throat, where his silver pendant was hidden behind his high wool collar, and swallowed. A tear slid down between his mask and cheek.
“Åmnachteş ne nji beshna,” he whispered, his voice ragged and pleading. His words trembled. “Heqiimeş njel mett znóktinnen ti aanori’nė. Po shem.”
He felt a tug in his gut, his last hope. And then the wolf brought its paw down on top of him and the city.
FORBIDDEN FEELINGS
_______________________________
The stars have seen much murder. They will see much more in our lifetime and in every lifetime that follows, for where there is life, there is strife.
excerpt from Peasant Noneila's monologue, Act II, Scene VI of The King's Game, playwright unknown
THE GRAND REALM OF THE INFINITE
DRAVEN’S LAB, THE NORTH WING OF THE CASTLE OF THE INFINITE ROYAL FAMILY,
MOUNT DRAKIS, LUTANA, CAPITAL CITY-STATE OF THE ONE COUNTRY
“This is it, my darling Athirae! This is it—” Draven was saying at the exact moment his potion exploded in his face.
He tripped back and ripped off one of his gloves, using it to swat at the crimson cloud of smoke suffocating him. It burned his skin like hellfire. He hacked, his lungs staging a revolt, and rubbed his tongue off on the back of his wrist to get rid of the taste of burnt lemons. He cringed when he licked a patch of what had to be pureed deauçoi mushrooms. The dissipating smoke around him crackled until it was gone, and his raw skin stung in fading pulses.
Draven paused, horrified.
Raw skin?
He reached up to touch his eyebrows, letting out a sigh of relief when he found them intact. The relief lasted about two seconds—right up until he remembered his hair. He grabbed at the thick strands hanging about his face that had been too short to fit back into his plait. Now, they were definitely too short to fit back into his plait and singed at the ends to boot. Draven held them up to his eyes as best he could, bottom lip quivering. “I’ve failed you, my sweet, sweet innocent hair. Elegies shall be woven in your honour. Citizens will fast in mourning. A grand service shall be held in your memory. Please forgive me.”
He stroked the strands, summoning tears. Then he rounded on the two individuals in the room who were interrupting his dramatic moment. Beaker was hopping around the laboratory, barking at the remnants of the potion’s lemony smoke. She’d gotten into something again, Draven noted with an unamused glare, as her beautiful white fur was wet and green in places. He turned to his infant sister Athirae next, who was unleashing peal after peal of laughter from where she’d fallen over on the pallet Draven had made for her out of mink fur on the polished marble floor.
“Oh, you think this is hilarious, do you?” Draven said. He circled his stone table, piled high with test tubes, oozing jars he really needed to clean out, and mortars and pestles numbered in the dozens because he had a bad habit of buying new ones every time he went to the markets.
So I’m weak-willed. I’m sure it’ll serve me in life someday.
He tucked his gloves into his apron pouch and picked up Athirae with sweaty hands, hoisting her in the air. Her little tail wagged in excitement. The four fangs poking through her gums were on full display, sharp like a pup’s milk teeth. “Explosions amuse you, eh? Demented little thing.” Draven snorted. “Demented. Well, you are a demon. Depending on the etymological origins of our species name, your laughter may be well-placed, M’ide’kisen.”
Athirae continued to laugh. Her garnet eyes were bright.
With a smile, Draven tucked her into the crook of his arm. He ran his fingers over the smooth skin above her jaw where he had ears and she didn’t, then tweaked one of the furry, too-large ears on the top of her head. They twitched. His parents thought they were wolf ears, but Draven wasn’t certain. He thought fox maybe, though no one in his known family was a fox demon. That hardly mattered, though.
Royal bloodlines were odd, barely studied things—something Draven was excited to one day rectify with extensive research. Vachinte Cosarii III was the first genealogist to document that demons belonging to ancient royal families never behaved quite according to hereditary pattern for some reason. What pattern they did behave according to was the even greater mystery. Outside of a royal family, Cosarii wrote, a pureblooded panther animalus and a pureblooded lynx animalus would have a mixed-blooded child that presented as either a panther or a lynx animalus, the unpresented bloodline staying a recessive gene. Even something as complex as a one-half fire elementus and one-half mermaid mythologus sire and a one-fourth shiftirus and three-fourths morphus dam would have a child that presented as only one of those four inherited bloodlines, the other three remaining recessive. A demon could inherit hundreds of genetic bloodlines from their family line, but they only ever presented as one—and only one that ran in their family.
Inside a royal family, though, hereditary genes meant nothing. Two pureblooded wolves from a line of pureblooded wolves might have a coyote or a fox. They might even give birth to an earth elemen
tus or a drake mythologus. It was a genetic lottery. Traits like eye colour could skip dozens of generations. And, in the case of himself and his brother Kinrae, offspring might break the system entirely and present as nothing. Kinrae had no demonic abilities, no animal markers, no second form, no anything, and while Draven had his horns, he had nothing more than that. Nothing but some fancy head adornments.
Draven had already started penning a book on the subject and wanted to further his research by travelling the Realms of the Infinity like his brother did for royal business. His brother encouraged his interests and his father seemed to care little either way, but his mother insisted he should be doing better things with his time as a prince of the Infinity.
I think working on a coagulation potion qualifies as an important thing, he thought, then looked over at the bubbling mess in his cauldron with a wince. Well, it will be an important thing. Demonic healing was powerful—and quick—but sometimes, death was simply the result of a demon bleeding out before his or her skin could knit itself back together. Draven was on the edge of a breakthrough with this potion. It was his best idea to date, the one with the most applicable use. It could save thousands of lives.
But his mother didn’t see it that way. She’d rather have him learning to clear his throat like a ponce or strangling instruments like Kinrae had a habit of doing. At least that was what his brother’s music lessons sounded like he was doing during them.
A great heir apparent, he is, Draven thought. An even slightly passable musician, he is not.
A Shard of Sea and Bone Page 7
