She spins to the Gates of the Underworld.
She touches our mother’s hand.
21
Ailesse
AS SOON AS MY PALM touches my mother’s, she grips my hand. Her nostrils flare with a deeply inhaled breath. My eyes water. I try to hate her, but I can’t find that bitter space inside me. All my life I yearned for the look of approval she’s giving me now.
“Ailesse!” Sabine clutches my other hand and pulls. “Please let go. This is a trap!”
“I know.” Tyrus’s dark siren song funnels marrow-deep in my bones. “But our mother can break the soul-bond.”
Sabine grounds her feet on the rain-slick bridge and tugs harder. The storm lashes through the long gap in the ceiling. The three Ferriers shout at us. Souls howl, surging nearer. “If that’s true,” Sabine says, “she’s done so through terrible sacrifices.”
I stiffen my jaw and stare into my mother’s glimmering black eyes. “I know she meant to sacrifice me.”
“But she sacrificed thousands of Unchained instead.”
My mouth goes dry. I look back at Sabine. Her black curls are plastered to her forehead. Her face is flushed from all her straining. “What do you mean?”
She exhales, desperate.
A soul crashes into me. I lurch forward. Sabine kicks the man back—Chained. My mother’s grip flashes to my wrist and bears down like an iron manacle. Why hasn’t she stepped through the Gate yet? She said all I had to do was touch her hand.
“Duck!” Sabine shouts. I do as she says. Without releasing me, she swings her staff at the Chained. He’s thrown overhead and barrels through Tyrus’s Gate. My mother bats him in with a flick of her strong arm, all the while keeping her shackled hold on me.
The bridge creaks and groans. Ten yards away, a great sliver of stone breaks off the side. My heart pounds. “Mother, hurry! We need your help!”
“You can’t trust her,” Sabine says. Rain glances off her olive skin, and she secures her grip on my hand. “She didn’t sacrifice you, but she would have if there were no other way.”
“You judge me harshly, daughter.” Odiva’s eagle owl feather and talon epaulettes sway in the strange current surrounding her. “I entered the Underworld to spare Ailesse’s life.”
“Maybe you did,” Sabine replies. “But now you want out, and you have your claws in her again.”
More souls clamber onto the bridge. Sabine’s staff wheels through the air. She hits a Chained, who hurtles through Tyrus’s Gate. “Ailesse, listen to me. Odiva wants to pull you inside. She’s trying to give Tyrus the sacrifice he asked for in exchange for resurrecting my father.”
“No, she needs my help ferrying.” You are my true daughter when it comes to skill and talent, she told me.
“She has no intention of ferrying.” Sabine hurls an Unchained through Elara’s Gate. “I understand now. This is how she’ll break the bond with her own amouré. It’s how she’ll teach you—by killing you.”
I whirl on my mother. Prove Sabine wrong, the look I give her says. But she doesn’t have to admit her betrayal. I feel it in the sinking of my stomach, the rising acid in my throat, the furious, heart-wrenching burning in my eyes. I’ve been such a fool.
“You cannot prevent Ailesse’s inevitable fate, when I have spent more than two years trying,” my mother tells Sabine. “I will not fight Tyrus any longer.”
Sabine’s expression hardens. Her gaze cuts to the ledge at the other side of the cavern. “Hold on,” she whispers. She releases my hand and bolts for the ledge.
My chest seizes. What is she doing?
“No,” Odiva gasps.
Suddenly I understand. She’s going to run off the bridge. And when she does, the Gates will close. She was the one who opened them.
My mother tightens her grip and starts pulling me toward her. I wrest, yank, use every measure of my tiger shark strength. But she’s so much stronger. She always has been. Her albino bear grace bone is aided by four others, while I only have three.
My crutch drops. My knee throbs from the pressure I’m forced to place on my bad leg. My feet slide on the wet bridge, coming closer, closer to the black dust. “No, Mother, please, please, please . . .”
Halfway across the bridge, Sabine looks over her shoulder. “Ailesse!” She jerks to a stop, curses, and races back to me. A Chained is right behind her.
My mother continues dragging me nearer. I cry out. My muscles burn from struggling against her. Sabine catches my other hand. She desperately fights to tug me back. The Chained springs for the Gate to Paradise. Sabine one-handedly fends him away. My mother pulls with more force. I slip another step closer.
Sabine kicks the Chained off the bridge. Abandons her staff. Grabs my hand with both of hers. The tendons in her neck strain as she pulls with all her might. Even together, eight grace bones between us, we can barely resist our mother.
Tyrus’s siren song swells and eclipses Elara’s descant. It drowns out the rainfall, the warning cries of the Ferriers, even Sabine’s shouts and pleas from right beside me.
My realm will be your great adventure, Ailesse, Tyrus’s song sings without words, leaving my imagination to run rampant. His music throws my Light in the darkest shadow. Surrender, surrender. Discover wonder instead of pain.
I lurch another inch toward his Gate.
“Ailesse, no!” Sabine’s feet dig into the ground, but it’s not enough leverage. She’s slipping forward, too. She looks wildly around her and releases one of her hands from me. She grabs a bar of Elara’s near-invisible Gate.
My mother exhales slowly, exultantly. “Well done, daughters.”
An enormous rush of energy blasts through me. My back arches. My head is thrown back. It’s lightning powerful, scorching hot, and freezing cold. It surges through my blood and pounds through my skull and through my limbs and fingertips.
I’m still stretched between my mother and my sister. I grit my teeth and turn my head to Sabine. Her body is taut, also under massive stress. Her olive skin starts to glow with chazoure, and her eyes widen as she looks back at me. I glance down at my arm. I’m glowing, too.
What’s happening?
A high-pitched screech fills my ears. It’s deafening, louder than Tyrus’s siren song. I cry out as it shudders through me, but I can’t even hear my own scream. The grating sound comes from Elara’s Gate—the riot of many souls, their shrieks of pain.
The screeching escalates higher and higher, until it crashes like broken glass. Elara’s realm—her scrollwork Gate and spiral staircase—pulses in flashes of solid silver, losing its translucency.
The silver owl dives in through the gap in the ceiling. She circles me and Sabine, flapping her wings ferociously. It does nothing to stop the madness within me, all around me.
A flood of chazoure souls lashes down the spiral staircase and bursts out from the Gates of Paradise, like a dam has broken. The Unchained purge out of it, but they’re not set loose in the mortal world. They’re sucked into the Gates of the Underworld.
Their onslaught rakes like icy wind through my hair and dress. Shock closes off my lungs. I can barely breathe. My eyes connect with Sabine’s. Her chazoure irises reflect my horror. This is wrong. Evil. These souls are Unchained, but they’re being pulled from a peaceful eternity into the terrors of Tyrus’s realm. Why?
What has my mother done?
More souls flow down the staircase. My mother has me by a death grip. Sabine’s hold is almost as unrelenting. I’m caged between them, connecting both realms of the gods.
“We have to stop this!” I shout at Sabine. “Let go of Elara’s Gate!” I can’t hear myself amid the uproar, but her ears are more graced than mine. She nods, and we both tense our legs to keep purchase on the bridge. She inhales a deep breath and turns to the Gate.
Faintly, I hear Odiva yell something. I can’t make out her words. Sabine’s about to loosen her grip when two unferried Chained swarm close and wrap their fingers over hers. They bind her hand to the scrollwo
rk bar. Sabine struggles against them, but she can’t break their hold. The strain of our channel is exhausting too much of her energy.
The remaining Chained and Unchained who haven’t been ferried yet flee the cavern. The raging chaos has broken their lure to the Beyond.
The souls from Paradise keep coursing, siphoning from Elara’s realm. They scream and plead and cry, but their screeching isn’t ear-shattering anymore. I’m finally able to hear myself when I cry out, “Let go of my hand, Sabine!”
Her eyes fly wide, and she shakes her head. Her glowing curls whip around her face in the rain and wind.
“Please!” My throat burns from having to shout at the top of my lungs. “I can’t allow all these souls to suffer just to save myself.”
Tears chase down her face. “I’m not sacrificing you! That’s exactly what Odiva wants.”
“What if it is also Ailesse’s desire?” our mother asks Sabine. She doesn’t glow with chazoure like us, but the color of the dead flickers over her pale face and neck as the souls are sucked past her. “She has always sought for glory to earn my respect. What better way to do that than by becoming a martyr?”
I whirl on her. “I don’t want your respect. Your crimes are incomprehensible, unforgivable. I’m ashamed to be your daughter.”
The silver owl flies closer, her wing-tip feathers almost touching the black dust. She rasp-screeches at Odiva.
My mother recoils slightly. “Then you should crave respect from the gods,” my mother tells me. “Tyrus desires to join kingdoms with his bride. It is what they both wanted, from the dawn of time.”
“Well, it appears the goddess has had a change of heart.”
Odiva’s lip curls, just a scant movement, but it still radiates extreme power and intimidation. That look used to haunt me, drive me to train harder, become more devout. Now it only infuriates me.
“You’re not my mother anymore,” I bite out as more wailing souls stream by. “I’d rather die than become anything like you.” I throw all the venom I can into my voice, all the years I’ve wasted trying to please her and gain her affection.
Odiva grins, though her eyes shine. It’s hatred, not love, that forms her tears—rage from hurt pride, not a hurt heart. There’s no Light left in her. If she’s alive, it’s because Tyrus’s darkness sustains her from all the souls she’s feeding him. “If death is your wish, insolent child,” she says, “then I will deliver it.”
She applies more pressure on my wrist and pulls harder. The Unchained wail, clawing my arms as they’re swept away. Their onslaught drives me closer to her. My left arm and half of my face and body slip into the black.
I painfully turn to Sabine. Tears scald my cheeks. “Let me go.”
“No!” she cries, vainly tugging harder.
I whimper, all my energy focused on preventing both my shoulders from dislocating. My tears fall faster. I can’t speak anymore. I’m in too much pain. Thank you, I mouth, hoping she understands what I’m trying to say. I can’t even mouth the rest: Thank you for fighting to save me—for always fighting. For never giving up on me.
A sob breaks from her. “I’m sorry,” she says, though she doesn’t stop pulling. Rain and chazoure tears streak down her face.
I shake my head, not wanting her to apologize. She’s been the perfect friend, the perfect sister. I’m grateful she’s the last person I’ll see before I die.
My left leg slides another inch into the black. Sulfurous dust fills my lungs and swims through my vision. Tyrus’s siren song thrums through my bones.
“Ailesse!”
My heart jumps. Bastien.
I turn, struggling to see him. He runs down the length of the bridge, despite the warning cries of the Ferriers. Vaguely, I see the limestone fissure at his feet. For one terrible moment, I fear he’ll fall into the abyss, but then he’s right before me, his beautiful sea-blue eyes filled with horror and desperation. His grabs me and pulls, one hand on my forearm, the other over Sabine’s hand on mine.
A surge of energy ripples through our three joined hands. Bastien doesn’t light up with chazoure, like me and Sabine, but he blanches and looks between the two Gates.
“I see them,” he gasps. His dark hair lashes against his face from the rainstorm and the torrent of souls. “I see the dead.”
22
Bastien
SOUL AFTER SOUL RUSHES TOWARD me, past me. Rain keeps pouring onto the bridge. I fight to stay balanced on the slick limestone. The souls could knock me into the pit at any moment.
Pain throbs behind my eyes, and I strain harder to focus. I blink again and again. The souls glow with a strange color. Chazoure? Ailesse described it to me once. How am I seeing it? Why are she and Sabine lit up with it, too?
I yank harder, desperate to save Ailesse. My muscles burn with a surprising spike of strength. Ailesse jerks three inches away from the black dust and screams out in pain. I startle and immediately ease up my hold. I didn’t mean to hurt her. I could have torn her arm from its socket just now. I’ve never felt so much adrenaline pounding through my body, and I’m strangely out of step with it. I don’t know how to use my own strength properly.
On the other side of the black dust, I find Odiva staring back at me. I swallow. This is the first time I’ve seen her since she jumped through the Gate.
She’s still disturbingly beautiful, with her black eyes and her crown made from a noctule bat skull and the vertebrae of an asp viper. But she’s different, too. More openly vicious. Colder. Even deadlier. Those dark eyes bore into me as she pulls us closer with incredible power. “Pitiful boy,” she sneers at me. “Always following Ailesse into danger like a besotted fool.”
A few crass retorts come to mind, but I keep my mouth shut. She doesn’t deserve to be spoken to. I fix my energy on Ailesse instead. “Hang on,” I tell her. “We’ve got you.”
She slides out another inch. Rain streams off the ends of her glowing hair. Her pained eyes lock on me. “Bastien,” she rasps on the thinnest breath. Somehow I hear it, just like other things that should be too quiet for my ears. The sound of my heartbeat. Higher pitches than I thought were possible. Souls screaming from far away. A new song . . .
It travels out of the Underworld and grows louder. The screams seem to hush. Ailesse’s face fades. I’m only aware of the song . . . then another song that harmonizes with it. They both fight for my attention.
I stagger on my feet. I veer toward Elara’s Gate, then Tyrus’s. My pulse races. I want to—no, I need to—go and explore each realm.
Odiva’s mouth curves. “You hear the music, don’t you, boy, the siren songs of the Beyond?”
Sabine’s hand flinches beneath mine. “Shut it out, Bastien.”
“If you listen closely enough,” Odiva continues, “you will feel the gods’ communion with you.”
No. I blow out a tense breath and do as Sabine says. I struggle to block the sound. I put my energy into tugging Ailesse toward me instead.
“Do you know what I hear?” Odiva asks.
I won’t look at her, so I look at Ailesse. Every muscle in her face, neck, and arms quivers from the pressure she’s under. She says nothing to me—I don’t think she’s able to—but I feel her warning me just the same. I shouldn’t listen to her mother.
But it’s impossible not to.
“Tyrus knows you,” Odiva goes on. “He wants you, like he wants all those with vengeance in their hearts.”
“Mother, stop!” Sabine says.
“Why should I, when I am fulfilling my word to you?” Odiva lifts her chin. “Can you not see what is happening? Bastien is experiencing your graces. I told you I knew how to share them.”
Sabine stiffens, speechless. I’m just as shocked. I’m sharing Sabine’s graces? Suddenly my heightened abilities make sense. They’re why I can see the dead and hear Tyrus’s and Elara’s siren songs. They’re why my strength is so much more powerful than before.
Armed with that knowledge, I fight harder to drag Ailesse away from
the black dust. Together, she, Sabine, and I should be stronger than Odiva. So why isn’t Ailesse budging? I squint past her through the Gate. Several Unchained souls are yanking on Odiva, trying to escape past her. She doesn’t shake them away. She allows them to strengthen her pull against us.
“Tyrus also knows someone else that you do,” she tells me, her voice maddeningly calm, “someone who did not merit chains in his life, though that no longer bears significance. When the kingdoms of the Beyond are joined, all will be Chained. All will give their Light to the gods.”
What is she talking about?
“Keep hold of Ailesse!” Sabine commands me. “My mother is trying to distract you. Don’t—”
“How many years has it been since you have seen him, Bastien?” Odiva speaks over her. “Eight, yes?”
My heartbeat rushes to my head. No—
I turn to Elara’s Gate. Look up. At the top of the spiral staircase, a middle-aged man is being forced downward, step by step, caught in the surge of Unchained souls. My sight reaches far—farther than it has in my life. I see in detail every thin wrinkle on his face, the laugh lines around his mouth, the creases of fatigue on his forehead from long hours of chiseling stone. He’s still wearing the simple tunic and worn trousers I remember him best in, the same clothes he died in. His boots still have scuff marks from when he fell on the bridge after being stabbed in the heart by a Bone Crier.
But now . . . now my father is moving. He’s not lifeless and bleeding out.
He reaches the bottom step too quickly. I’m going to lose him all over again. He hasn’t even seen me. My throat is so tight I can barely speak. I manage to croak out, “Papa!” I sound like a child, ten years old again, shouting for him to wake up and not leave me all alone.
His eyes finally fall on me. His brows lift. Terror leaves his face for a moment. I see myself in him now, the same angular jawline and thick mussed-up hair. “Bastien?”
It’s too much to hear him say my name. I’m laughing, crying.
Sabine shouts something at me. I don’t process it.
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