He Who Breaks the Earth (The Gods-Touched Duology)

Mateo could hardly see, his heartbeat a far-off rumble, like an avalanche that would bury him forever if he didn’t run. Water from the broken walkway swirled over them, deep enough that Mateo felt his father sway as he frantically tried to set Mateo back on his own feet.

Bits of stone and glass from the ruptured tunnel slashed Mateo’s skin as the water swelled up higher into the catacombs. The rush of energy Tual had pushed at him in the tunnel was gone, and Mateo was a hole to nowhere, a break in the fabric of the world fit only to suck away the life all around him.

“Close this off, son! Think of what you want, then take it!” Tual yelled. It almost seemed gleeful despite the danger. “I can share with you. Take from me!”

Mateo could feel the glass trying to repair itself, but it wasn’t growing fast enough. He reached out into the stone, begging it to close off the tunnel before they drowned. The water was up to his chest, splatters on his face making him choke, but Tual’s hands were on his shoulders and a rush of energy flowed into him, his father like a bonfire behind him, brighter than any person had any right to be. Like a god.

The stone creaked.

Water up to his neck.

Tual’s energy tore through him, the stubborn, Basist-made walls refusing to budge until Mateo screamed, Move!

The wall snapped into place in front of him, the fabric of stone trembling. And Mateo could feel it. The wrongness of the wall he’d just made to block the water, the stone contorted and straining to do his will.

The water in the passageway went still as if there had never been a hole leading into the lake, there’d never been anything but this solid wall and a pool of still water, the sudden lack of sound like a new kind of emptiness inside Mateo. The world glimmered around him like something to be undone, power that would all someday drain through him to the nothing on the other side.

“That was perfect—” Tual was all jubilation, his arms gripping around Mateo’s middle to pull him up from the water. Mateo could hardly move, couldn’t help as his father laid him out on the ground, cold, wet stone pressing against his cheek. But then Tual’s hands were on his shoulders again, and another rush of energy burst through Mateo, sending him coughing and spasming up from the floor. He breathed in, his lungs filling in ways they never had after his father’s infusions before.

It was direct. Like when Willow had taken Aria’s life between her teeth and bitten down.

“Lia,” he gasped. “I broke the glass like you said, but I was supposed to get to her before she fell through. We were supposed to get out together so I could protect her from Abendiza—pretend to protect her from you!” His knees buckled, his arms limp as boiled cabbage. He was supposed to be strong. He had been strong.

“No, it was perfect, perfect, Mateo!” Tual was pulling him up from the ground, his voice echoing up the tunnel like a ghost’s warbling cry. “Abendiza went out into the waterways today, so I’m sure Lia’s fine.”

“But how can Lia get back out? The Warlord was right there, and the rest of the people Lia came with were trying to get in. Something happened to Knox… and my sister…” Something else. Someone else. Mateo’s brain was fuzzy with swords and Lia and the blank space where Willow was supposed to be.

The thought of a little girl rippled through him, an unholy smile and a sweet roll sticky in her hand. A little girl Lia had been dragging down the tunnel who’d been shouting his name as if she didn’t want to stab him through the heart…

Aria. Mateo’s breath caught. How could he forget? “Where is Lia’s sister? She was here—”

“Don’t worry about Aria.” Tual pulled Mateo close into a hug, and the thought of Aria melted away. “This is all going to work out. You’re going to go out there and tell Lia what a monster I am and get her to escape with you. Once you’re truly bonded, you’ll be able to bring her home.” The smile sat tired in his voice, stretching out into something hollow and small. “I don’t want you to go, Mateo. I’ll miss you too much.”

Mateo gripped his father tight, like he was the anchor, the one solid thing in his life. Tual Montanne had done nothing but protect him, heal him, save him, and Mateo wanted to go back to that space. To pretend there were no plans to play out, no gods waiting to destroy them, no bones to be dug up. That it was just him and Tual against the world.

But there was too much.

“Willow is gone,” Mateo gasped. “Something happened, and she just left. Right after trying to eat Lia. And she keeps going on about the sword—”

“What do you mean she’s gone?” Tual pulled away, looking at his son.

“I mean one second she was trying to control me,” Mateo wheezed. “Bursting out of me like a monster. You never told me that shapeshifting wasn’t a choice—”

“Isn’t a choice?” Tual’s brow quirked. “I suppose it’s a side effect of using magic sometimes. It can change you. But it can be intentional—as easy as sculpting your face to look rounder or fuller, the length of your spine. Some of those old shifters did it enough that the more extreme changes stuck, or maybe they liked their new forms—”

“No, Willow did it to me. It wasn’t some side effect; she saw Lia and just went berserk. And then something happened with Knox and she went back to him.” Mateo stumbled as his father tried to pull him up, the energy Tual had pushed into him holding. But Mateo could feel it leaking, one drop at a time.

“You’re going to need infusions consistently again. Like in Chaol.” Tual was already nodding as if this were no big thing. A slow burn of anger rose inside Mateo at the memory of the ghost swelling up inside him at the sight of Lia. Lia wasn’t some prey to be eaten, not a quarry to hunt down. Willow had said—Willow had made him believe Lia was nothing more than a bauble to steal for a few moments. A set of clothes to don.

He pressed his hands to his face, the grainy feel of shattered stone rough against his skin, and the memory of death and rot on his tongue. That had been how he was thinking about Lia. Like a hunk of caprenum at the bottom of a tomb. Not as someone of flesh and bone and blood and warmth and wit and—she didn’t belong pinned to a shadowbox and mounted on the wall next to Patenga’s sword in the artifact room. She was fire and sharp smiles and fury and life.

That was why he’d liked her in the first place.

Lia hadn’t even looked at him when she’d come through the window. All she’d wanted was Aria.

And Mateo was suddenly back in that last day in Chaol, staring at his ceiling, wondering how the world could have dealt him a hand where his life depended on a girl like Lia Seystone falling in love with him. She didn’t care that he existed, it seemed. And…

With all the swords and kidnapping and forced betrothals and death, it wasn’t so hard to see why. Mateo’s fingers pressed harder and harder into his skin, human and smooth instead of clawed. Lia didn’t need him, but he needed her. His body had never been his own, but now even his mind was shared space. Willow’s absence was like losing all the bones from his body, but at least it was all him inside there now.

The feel of energy in the tunnel was like salpowder blasts and the full might of Calsta’s sun. It had been burning around Tual like a crown, strong and terrible and too much. Which was when he realized his father had stopped walking, his arm around Mateo limp, and his other hand grasped tight to the dagger at his waist. And he was whispering.

Mateo slowed, horror squirming like worms burrowing deep in Mateo’s stomach when Tual didn’t seem to notice, continuing on down the passage. Muttering to himself with his eyes closed. “Father?”

Tual’s eyes sprang open. “I think… yes. If you’re going to need constant infusions, then I’ll need to show you how to take bits of energy in a controlled fashion. You’ll need a constant source of energy. The Warlord suspects you already so the seclusions won’t be a good idea.” He started up the tunnel, hands clasped behind his back, pausing to be sure Mateo could follow. “…Perhaps the Warlord herself has already provided a source for us to use.”

“An energy source? What do you mean?” Mateo’s legs were still wobbly as he tried to keep up, passing grave marker after grave marker, names sticking in his head as he walked. Alfonso. Gabriela. Ivo.

Tual was practically running by the time he got to the hidden door. He slowed to frown at the shattered latch before pulling it open and striding out into the tower. “We can change the plan a little and have the two of you stay here. I’ll need energy to make that work, of course. She won’t want to believe that I’m someone she can trust. Not after everything. So, we’ll have to come up with a story she does want to believe. Maybe that I’m dead? That she killed me?” He shook his head as he got to the front doors, a grimace on his face. “I don’t like the idea of hiding in my own home, but needs must, I suppose?” Hand on the door, he looked back at Mateo. “How long do you think it will take for the two of you to establish a firm bond? Weeks? Months? A year or more?”

“What are you talking about?” Mateo stepped into the moons’ light, Jaxom and Castor mixed in a grayish puddle on the floor. “How could I bring Lia here? What resource? And the Warlord is here and already thinks I’m a shapeshifter, and if we don’t give her a cure—”

“Oh, I’m not worried about the Warlord.” Tual pushed out through the doors. “And the answer is, of course, what it always has been. Lia will believe what she wants to believe with a little help from me. It would have been too much for me to handle before, but now, with this—” He pulled the dagger free. “I can do anything.”

Mateo’s skin pebbled with cold. “You mean you can make her… not remember. You can—”

“I made her see Aria tonight, didn’t I?”

Mateo’s mouth hung open, his tongue dry. He’d seen Aria tonight. Had none of it been real? The questions about the Ivy King? The game of scales? The screams?

“Lia wanted to find her sister here, so it was easy to make sure she did,” Tual continued. “Just like your family wanted to forget you. All except your sister. Her mind wouldn’t stick.” Tual held up the dagger, staring at the dulled edge. “With the dagger. I can see how to target it, how to shape things. There has to be some kernel of wanting for it to take, but it won’t be like trying to strike one heart with a hundred arrows like back on your island. I messed that one up. There’s still a wave of energy I left behind in Belash Point, taking people who walk through.”

“On Belash Point. My sister…” The darkness seemed to bead on Mateo’s skin, heavy where it touched him. There has to be some kernel of wanting for it to take. What had his father taken from him?

Why had he wanted to forget?

Did he still want to forget? Was that why things were creeping back in through the holes in his mind?

“Why did you make me forget my family?” he whispered. “Everything from before?”

Tual stared at the blade a moment longer, then let it drop. “I didn’t make you do anything. You knew what they were, what they meant to do to you, and you didn’t want it inside you either. You didn’t need it, Mateo.”

“And my sister? You said she was a victim too. That she fought back, that it was her who—” Cracking wood and screams and snapping bones… Mateo closed his eyes, willing for it all to go away. “It was her who killed all those people on Belash Point. I didn’t know before, didn’t even know it happened. Why do I know now?”

Stepping up to him, Tual pulled Mateo close again. “Memories are tricky things, Mateo. But I don’t blame you for not wanting to remember them. For wanting a new life with someone who loves you without the stain of an old one to ruin it.” He pulled back to hold Mateo’s gaze. “You and me. Against the world.”

Mateo nodded shakily. Not wanting to remember. Not wanting to think of any of it. The Warlord and Cath lurking somewhere on the island, the Devoted out there in the trees. Of Anwei and Knox and whoever else was in their crew.

Tual took hold of Mateo’s arm and led him all the way back to the antiquities room, where things of stone, clay, bronze, and steel stared at him like old bones of the past no one wanted to remember, the Warlord removing every last hint she could find. Patenga’s sword seemed to drink in the light seeping through the window, even the moons looking away from the dull memory of Patenga’s blasphemy. It had been an act of violence for the first Warlord to erase the whole Commonwealth’s memory. Even the bad parts.

And, as the image of a little girl with half her hair in braids flicked through his mind, Mateo wondered whether forgetting was really what he wanted.

“So, a story we could tell her.” Tual stared up at the sword. “One to bring all of them here. I’m learning that it isn’t just any caprenum sword, but your specific sword that matters—That boy, the one I killed who didn’t die—does he have it?”

“I don’t know.” Willow was too far away to tell him.

“If he hasn’t brought it with him, then it’s probably still in Patenga’s tomb.” Tual rubbed his hands together. “We’ll need it eventually. But until then, your sister came for me out of some kind of revenge, I guess. Why not give me to her? Tell Lia and the rest of them that you’ll show them some secret way in—the channel is a little straightforward, but perhaps one of the other waterways? Tell them I’m everything they fear and worse.” Tual started for the door, going toward the stairs, gaining speed and excitement as he went. “Some of them will fall in the attack, leaving you and Lia here with Hilaria to cook for you and tuck you in at night—”

“Just the two of us here?”

“And her auroshe. I already put Vivi in a stall while you were all coming down the stairs. Far enough from Bella that she won’t be scared, I promise.” Mateo felt him pause in the entryway, his voice a thing of bright afternoons and cozy evenings tucked away with a sweet roll, charcoals, and a fresh sheet of vellum. “Lia will love it here—it’ll be safe. Away from everything she’s lost. She already likes you, Mateo. It’ll be easy.”

Mateo turned away from the sword, looking out into the light dusting over the entryway of this place he loved, his father crackling with energy on the stairs. Thinking of that last day in Chaol, Lia sitting in his kitchen with a cup of tea on the table before her as if she belonged. How she’d looked among his father’s books and listened when he spoke, answering back with real thoughts and arguments, the two of them poring over the old paintings together as if they fit.

They had fit. And he wanted it again. The idea of Lia being here, not with a sword but with that smile he’d only gotten to see for one afternoon, glowed inside him. He’d show her the beaches where he’d painted, the high rocks on the far side where you could see Abendiza in the deep making ripples across the whole lake. The window where Hilaria left pies to cool as if she didn’t know Mateo would take one, then rearrange the others to cover the gap. The channel with its trick to get in and out, the turquoise boat he’d painted with Tual. They’d walk through the streets of Kingsol, past the shops where he’d bought coats and shoes tooled with silver and pigments and vellum. The glass tunnel—

The tunnel, which had broken to pieces all around Lia, her hair a snarl, sword sharp as the gleam of murder and panic in her eyes. The tunnel where Aria had fallen, the feel of her slippery in his mind.

Willow had done it. She was the dangerous one. She was the one who had hurt… Aria. Even her name was hard to keep hold of, wriggling in his grasp. “What about Aria?” he called before he could lose hold of her, her name clenched tight behind his teeth. “Where is she?”

Tual smiled, and something in Mateo twisted hard for some reason, knowing whatever his father said next was going to be a lie. “Aria’s just fine. You rest. I’ll go pack some things for you—we don’t have much time.”

He ran the rest of the way up the stairs, disappearing in a flare of light as if he couldn’t see the shimmery glass of Mateo’s dream shattering. Because if he persuaded Lia to stay on the island, he wanted the things here to be true.

There’s not one part of you that’s true. The memory of Willow’s cackle was enough to set Mateo walking out the front door to stare out over this place that had been his haven. Which was when he saw it.

The tiny fluttering of gold specks between him and the tower.

Mateo strode down the steps before he could look away from the Warlord lying on the ground, one arm under her at an odd angle as if she’d fallen on it. The sight of her prone with her aura gathered like a swarm of flies made the anger rise in him like a serpent rearing up. He was glad she’d fallen. He was glad—

But then he caught sight of a humanish lump on the ground behind her. Mateo stopped. Not wanting to know, not wanting—

A long blond braid lay limp next to the body. Cath. Not a single spark of gods-touched energy left to dance above what was left of her.

The sun hat he’d borrowed from her was still sitting in the tower by Aria’s bed.

Something prickled up his neck, as if somehow Cath was watching him. Tual had said the Warlord brought them the energy source they needed. Were there more Devoted somewhere nearby, their energy, their souls of lightning and thunder waiting to be taken?

The world needs to change. The old refrain breathed in his mind, waiting for him to take it up. They killed us for centuries, weeding out any last hint that the nameless god still existed. We were going to show them different. That’s why we started looking for tombs, why we entered the Warlord’s circle to help cure wasting sickness….

But that wasn’t why. The feeling of being watched had turned from prickles to knives, the air taut, and the trees too silent, as if every Devoted ever drained was hovering there watching to see what he’d do next. Mateo’s father was the cause of wasting sickness. Entering the Warlord’s circle had been for access to their energy. And all of what Mateo thought he’d been trying to accomplish was a lie.

One thing was certain: now that Tual had his dagger, he could take everything he needed, just like Willow wanted Mateo to do. He wasn’t concerned with hiding any longer.

Turning away from the Warlord’s lingering aurasparks, Mateo froze at the sight of something moving across the bridge. Raised hackles, bloody scales, a mouthful of broken teeth, and eyes just for Mateo.

It hadn’t been Cath or any ghost watching him.

It had been Rosie.

The auroshe’s nostrils flared, and she started toward him—no, toward the two Devoted lying still on the grass between Mateo and the bridge, the Warlord’s softly beating heart an easy prize to claim. Mateo ran to stop her. “Rosie!” he yelled, trying not to think of the stripped bones they’d found on the trail. Of his own bones stripped the same.

Of the eyes on him while he slept, the dead mouse. Aria shuddering as she looked into the woods.

“Rosie!” His heart began to trip, his knees wobbling as he fell before her on the path, the last thing between her and easy meat. “Please,” he coughed, groping for a stone, a bit of dirt to throw, even his drawing supplies gone. “I probably couldn’t stop you, and I don’t know why I think you’re reasonable—” The auroshe slunk past the two Devoted, crooning dangerously. Her black eyes didn’t blink, focused hard on him. “This was a terrible mistake, wasn’t it?” he breathed.

Rosie charged toward him, Mateo’s hands coming up as if that were some kind of defense against fangs. He clenched all his muscles tight and shut his eyes, waiting for her to tear into him. Instead, something knocked into his shoulder, pressing hard enough to knock him out of a crouch onto the ground.

He opened his eyes to find Rosie nuzzling him, little crooning noises coming from between those long, jagged teeth, her inky black eyes closed as she bumped him again like a little puppy.

Hands shaking, Mateo put a palm to the spot between her broken horns, remembering Lia’s hands on his. We’ll call her Rosie. Rosie chortled, jerking back abruptly, Mateo bracing for the feel of jagged teeth against his throat. But the auroshe twisted her long, serpentine neck toward the tower.

The monster watching through the carriage window, Aria had said. She looked just like Lia. They shared the same blood. Was it possible Rosie could feel it and had been trying to look out for her? Staring in her windows at night, watching from the other side of the bridge.

Not just the other side of the bridge. Mateo thought of the bloody mouse on his floor, like an offering from a cat. Aria had found one in her room too.

Rosie keened, throwing her head back and ending in a terrible screech. Aria’s fine, Tual had said.

Mateo stumbled back from the tower, heading for the stables. Harlan would know where Tual had put Aria if she wasn’t in the house. He could visit Bella—Bella always calmed him. But the moment Mateo passed the courtyard, he caught sight of the stable doors cockeyed, something dark lying between them.

And he couldn’t look.

He turned toward the house, suddenly wondering at how empty it had been, the kitchen windows open this late at night. And there was Hilaria inside.

Unmoving.

A terrible cry wrenched free from Mateo’s throat, and he was running, slamming through the kitchen door, and there she was, Hilaria as rumpled and frizzy as ever, facedown in the bowl of blueberries he’d brought from town, a little pile of green ones set aside as if she’d been picking through them in the middle of the night. Grabbing hold of her wrist, Mateo pulled her off the counter, sinking to the floor with her as he felt for a heartbeat. He sat there, afraid to even breathe until he found the slow tick of her heart, as if it had been waiting for a safe moment to come out.

She was alive. Barely.

Someone had borrowed her energy when he came up short.

Something chittered at the kitchen window, and Mateo looked up to find Rosie at the glass. Waiting.

He carefully laid Hilaria faceup on the floor and stood. The first step was hard, but then the others that followed went too quickly. Mateo followed the auroshe across the courtyard to the tower doors. Up the stairs to the tower’s highest floor, Rosie climbing the steps as daintily as a mountain goat kid. He couldn’t breathe, and it wasn’t because of the hole inside him. It wasn’t because of Willow.

Mateo pushed open the door.

And there was Aria. Up where no one would stumble across her by accident.

Rosie gave a horrible screech, slithering toward the bed. It was just as it had been the night before: One Thousand Nights in Urilia bookmarked on the bedside table. A plate of scones, stale, without a single bite missing. A hand of cards on the table, dealt down and untouched.

Glass on the floor from the broken window was scattered across the bed and over the figure lying still under her blankets. Her eyes blank, her mouth open, her skin too white, just as it had been down in the tube when she’d first fallen.

Aria was dead.

Mateo sank to the floor, fingers tearing at his hair. The world fuzzed around him, the chair, the bed, the broken window, the body, the body—

No. Mateo went over it in his mind. He’d held Aria until his father came home, and Tual had done something, some shapeshifter miracle to bring her back. He’d seen her wake up. There had been white powder on her chin, powder like the stuff stuck to her now….

But every moment after she woke up, Aria had been fuzzy in his mind. Shadowed, not quite right. Melting away so Mateo hardly remembered what he’d done, that she was ill, that she was on the island at all.

I deserve to live, Willow had said. The energy she’s taken from Aria was proof she wasn’t waiting for someone else to give her permission.

Was it possible that Tual hadn’t healed Aria with a miraculous herbal tincture? Aria wasn’t a ghost like Mateo and Willow, both clinging to the underside of life like ticks, fat and healthy so long as there were souls to eat.

Rosie chortled, snuffling her way toward the bed, which was when Mateo saw a bulge in the bed skirt, as if something was hidden under the bed. He pulled up the fabric to find a Devoted. Shaved. Scarred. Shriveled. Dead.

There had been bits of aura and energy around Aria that Mateo hadn’t been able to understand all the way back to the caravan down to the island. Energy Tual used to show Mateo the reality he wanted to believe. A reality that didn’t involve Tual kidnapping ready souls to suck. There’d been the wagon with the tarp tied down tight. One abandoned in the road to be picked at by animals once he was dry. The other…

Mateo dry-heaved, unable to look. Not at the Devoted. Not at Aria’s still form, the dusting of white around her mouth, just like the white in the wagon bed. Aria’s fate had been sealed the moment she’d fallen.

He’d known it when he picked her up in the tunnel. He’d known it while he held her slowly dying body, and he’d known it when his father whisked her away and brought her back to miraculously wake.

Mateo had known it and hadn’t wanted it to be true just the way he hadn’t wanted to think about Lia. And so Tual had given him something else to believe. And Mateo had believed it. Because he wanted to.

Rosie’s pointed nose nuzzled against his arm, the auroshe giving a high-pitched whimper. Shaking, Mateo reached out to touch her neck, her hair crusted with dirt. “We have to go,” he whispered.

Knox woke with a gasp. Ice crusted across his face and down his arms and legs, burning with cold. He put a hand to his head, looking around at a velvety darkness that seemed to be all that was left of the world. Pinching his eyes shut, he tried to remember. There had been pain and lights and dark and voices and Calsta crying and Anwei, but now there was nothing. He could breathe, so he wasn’t dead. But it didn’t change the nagging feeling that he was not.

Or rather, that he was no longer.

Calsta promised endless skies after death, but this place, whatever it was, was not endless. Knox stood up and found he had legs, reached out to touch the darkness to find he still possessed arms and hands. The black around him wasn’t exactly shadow. It was tangible, like wool that had been spun into darkness. Soft, but vaguely menacing.

Knox paced the length of the circle of light around him, only it seemed to pace with him, keeping him near to the center. When he looked up, feeling for Calsta’s power, there was no ceiling, and no sky, and none of the goddess’s energy inside him. There were only shadows, or perhaps a star-broken night up there, or maybe it was nothing. A between where all lost things ended up.

“Anwei?” He coughed, choking on the air, which was dusky and purpled, making it hard to see more than a few feet around him. Anwei had left, and it had pulled him apart.

But she wasn’t… gone? There was a thin thread, just one single trail that seemed to point out of this nowhere. The moment he discovered it, the thread ignited, burning like salpowder in his chest.

“Knox?” a voice whispered.

Knox froze, the sound of his name made from bone dust and rot prickling down his spine. It was a voice he knew well. He turned very, very slowly.

The little girl standing behind him hadn’t been there before. She was wearing a white nightgown and a blank stare, both of which Knox thought he should remember but couldn’t. Her hair was dark, her eyes dark too. Lace decorated the bottom of her nightgown that looked so familiar. Like the bits of lace Willow had made for a dress when they were young.

Knox swallowed when the girl stepped into the half-light around him, blinking as if she had been in darkness a long, long time. “You finally came,” she whispered, her voice wet with tears.

The shape of her wouldn’t hold steady in Knox’s mind, this little girl who he’d always thought of as bigger than him, the one he’d found dead, a pockmarked sword shoved through her heart. And he couldn’t hold it in—his arms stretched out to touch her, comfort her, wanting desperately for her to be real….

This was the girl he’d set out to save. The one who’d been so frightened in his mind, crying for her brother.

Tears ran down her cheeks, and she ran toward him, her arms out. “Knox! I knew you’d help me. I knew—”

Which was when he saw the ash-gray claws gripping her shoulders.

Knox fell back a step. The shadows followed Willow toward him, a haze of shimmering nothing that shrouded the rest of the creature holding her tight. She faltered, sagging to a stop when his arms dropped. The bond inside him a thin string of fire pulled so tight he feared it would snap. It was the only warmth in the misty cold.

Willow’s head drooped. “I thought you came for me.”

The claws at her shoulders dug in, and she stumbled, the shadows following, folding over her to turn the nightgown to shreds and her insides to rotting bone. Her face contorted as she fell into shadow, her eyes growing large, her bones growing and shifting. “Are you giving up now, after all this time? They said you had to take your love and then maybe I could… go back out there with you. I want to come out because then maybe they’ll go away.”

“Who will go away?” Knox rasped. His whole body wouldn’t unclench.

“It’s too late, isn’t it?” Her eyes swelled up to twice their size, the pupils narrowing to slits. Her voice lowered just a little, the words slipping out as if they were her own, but all Knox’s hair stood on end at the dissonance threaded through her, a chorus trying to imitate one little girl. “You waited too long. She took the sword, and then she took you.”

Willow stumbled forward into the light, and her eyes went back to brown. Her long braids were suddenly pinned neatly across her head, a beaded headband appearing to hold them in place, then twisting into a clip with jeweled butterfly wings that glittered and flapped when she moved. The nightdress shifted so it was longer, dragging on the floor behind her like a train. “I can think better now that you’re here.”

Knox’s mind raced, only it was the race of something tired and flustered, wanted to shy away from what she was saying. But Knox didn’t know how to shy away from anything, so he looked at it straight on, even the thing hunched behind his sister, its claws threaded through her hair. Willow was in the sword.

Which means either she’s out—he looked around again at the not-room with its not-walls and dusky not-air—or I’m inside the sword too. Anwei walked away from me when I needed her. She severed the bond between us.

She killed me.

And now I’m in a shapeshifter’s sword.

Which means… Alarm trilled through him, remembering every strand of purple that slunk through Anwei’s aura, every sideways look, every lie she told, a smile on her face begging to be believed. Caprenum is how shapeshifters are made. Kill the one you love. Steal their power.

But she’d taken the sword, not stabbed him with it. And their bond, he could still feel the last thread—

The darkness behind Willow shifted, and she moved again, the clawed fingers gripping her shoulders tighter as if she were the puppet and it the strings. Knox braced himself, running through forms, attacks, and training exercises in his head as it observed him from the safety of its shadows with a glint of needlepoint teeth and a glimmer of malice in more than one set of eyes.

But it was Willow there. The girl he’d almost forgotten. His heart tore at the sight of her off-center, the little clip’s wings fluttering madly as the shadow made her reach for his hand. “We’re special, you know. You and me. And it makes them excited.”

“Don’t touch me.” Knox cringed away, reaching across the bond for Anwei. When he concentrated, he could hear her saying his name, as if somehow that would bring him out of this place. But she didn’t appear, and he didn’t leave, the not-walls staying firmly around him. He reached for Calsta. He reached for the sword—

The sword he was inside—

There was nowhere to hide. Willow tipped up her chin to look at him, but it was the thing holding her out, offering her to Knox like a slice of cake.

Knox did not eat cake.

“It’s been so long since you’ve let me talk to you,” she whispered in her own voice, but there were still a few stray discordant notes. She scratched her shoulder as if she could feel the press of claws against them.

“Was it you talking?” he whispered. So many years of raging and crying and begging to be fed, of spurring him on to kill.

She looked down. “I tried to talk. They can’t swallow me like they’re supposed to. I know I shouldn’t be glad you are here, but I missed you.”

“I missed you too.” The words shook as they came out of his mouth, and they were true, so very true. “Who wants to swallow you?”

Willow squinted at him, the same expression she’d worn so many times when they were children and he was annoying her. She waved a hand at the darkness. “Them. There are too many of us alive ones. The dead ones just eat each other, but we don’t fit right. Mateo. You. Anwei. And someone else too who gets so mad that I’m not in here right.” Hope brightened her eyes. “Maybe she’ll get mad at you too because you’re not in here right either. You’re still all light. Lighter than me.”

When Knox squinted, the shape of his sister turned ropy and dark, joining the hulking mass behind her. Was she really here, or was it some kind of trick? A sock puppet sewed together of memories to…

To what? What did the thing want?

“Where’s Mateo?” he rasped, inching back when she reached for him again, her dress growing a collar of pearls. “Is everyone else all right?”

“I don’t know. You were my thread.” Willow’s eyes traced the line of fire inside Knox that led out toward Anwei. She sighed, looking down at her feet. Only, it wasn’t her feet she was looking at; there was a line strung between Willow and Knox, the dim gray of old bone and sorrow.

Was this part of the web he and Mateo had made that pinned Willow to life because her death hadn’t been a real sacrifice? Knox had loved his sister. When he pulled the sword from her body, did his love for her keep her from getting fully trapped inside it? And if that were the case, and if Knox still had a connection like that to Anwei…

If you truly are in the sword like Willow, then Anwei is the one who put you here.

The thought felt poisonous inside Knox. Anwei would never have done this, not on purpose—

But there in his mind he could see the cup she’d given him. The poison. The way she’d taken him down to the hold and kissed him even as she’d waited for him to wink out. And then there was Anwei in the canoe, the last of her fluttering petal disguise gone, nothing left but steel down to her heart. The terrible things he’d said, and she’d said them back.

Then she had paddled away into the night while he fell apart.

The light in him flickered, darkness inching closer around him.

“Don’t!” Willow’s hands came up in a panicked entreaty. “Don’t let it go!” She reached for him—

The air went still, Willow freezing with her hands—were they claws?—stretched toward Knox. The thread between them sparked, and Willow was shaking, tendrils of shadow crawling all over her, making her teeth pointed and her bones stretch, her skin grow fur and scales, then shed.

“Willow, are you all right? What is happening?” Knox stepped forward, then back again, not certain how to help.

The tendons in Willow’s neck began to cord, the muscles in her arms and legs shuddering. One foot slid back. Away from Knox.

Knox’s whole body was ready to fight, but his mind was looking at his sister caught on some creature’s claws. How she groaned, forcing her body to back away inch by inch into the darkness. “I can’t keep you safe,” she muttered, almost too low for him to hear. “I can’t. You couldn’t. I can’t. I can’t.”