Chapter 52 #2
“He glamoured you,” Reid says, catching his breath. Ice that doesn’t melt clutters the floor. There’s no sorrow in his eyes for his brother. “To get you out of the chamber. I didn’t think he could do that anymore. Not after he was exiled.”
Deacon had the ability to glamour hunters all along.
Something no demon in history could do. That first night in Fever Dream, when he’d known I was a hunter. On Valentine’s Day, when he found me in the watchtower. He could have made me do anything for him, at any point. And yet he’d never once used his ability on me.
No wonder his father had thought him the strongest, the most powerful. He had abilities that could only have come from the strange union of harpy and High Thane. The same abilities that surely rendered his blood vital to the Elders. Perhaps Deacon was another creature altogether. I’ll never know—
My heart lurches, breaking, my mind, reeling—
Deacon. Gone.
My body gives out, and I collapse to the floor. I don’t think I can breathe—
The ceiling groans. Bones and skulls dislodge in the passage above us, clattering to the ground. Finn, somewhere in that destruction in the chamber, irrevocably maimed, buried beneath these ruins with no hope of silver. A fitting end.
“We have to hurry,” Reid says to us. “These catacombs won’t stand for long.”
“Wait,” Sophia says, eyes darting back to the room we just escaped from. “The bag.”
“Fuck the bag,” Reid growls, yanking me off the ground. “Caspar’s probably blocked off every other exit down this hall.” The walls tremble and whine, and my heart speeds. Voices of terror carry from above. “We have to move.”
“The ring is in there,” Sophia spits. “I gave Caspar a decoy.”
My mind stalls out. “A decoy?”
“We have to clear the passage if we want to live.” When none of us move, Reid, fed up, takes off down the hall.
“The one from the flea market,” Sophia tells me. “Years ago. I brought it tonight just in case…”
“You can’t go after it,” Peter pants, debris falling into his hair.
“The nexus isn’t as sound as this hallway.
It’s right below the lobby. These tunnels won’t cave as easily, like when they tell you to stand in a doorway during an earthquake.
” I’d never doubted that, even at the end of the world, Peter could whip out his architecture knowledge, but I’m glad to see I was right.
“That room…” We look into the chamber as the ceiling buckles. “Is a death trap.”
But she doesn’t care. Sophia lunges toward the room for the bag before her leg fails her. She cries out as the bone juts farther from her thigh, staining the silk of her dress bright red. Peter holds her up and presses his hands to the wound to stanch the bleeding.
“I can do it,” I tell them, resolve strengthening. As long as I reach the ring, it doesn’t matter if the ceiling caves in on me. What I need to do won’t take long.
Sophia’s eyes water. “Viv, no—”
I bolt for the chamber before they can stop me. And teeter forward when my feet won’t let me pass. Teeth bared, shaking, I fight to get in. Seconds are flying by, but despite every ounce of strength I have, I physically cannot.
“The glamour,” Peter breathes. “Deacon ordered you from the room. For your safety.”
Another chunk of ceiling rains down in the chamber, crushing the ogre’s head like a melon. Even Sophia turns in revulsion.
I’m panting, hands on my knees, as I watch it happen. Watch the determination solidify in Peter’s eyes.
He sets Sophia down on the ground of the hallway, gently, with great care. Tucks her dress over her legs. “Hey,” he says to her, taking her face in his hands. His voice breaks. “Soph.”
She looks up at him, wincing. Dirt and blood smear her face.
“I just…” A small breath. “I love you.”
Sophia’s brown eyes widen. She opens her mouth, but Peter’s already there, pressing his lips to hers. He cradles her face as she threads her blood-soaked fingers through his hair. For a moment, I hear nothing but the thunder of the crumbling building.
When he releases her, they’re both smiling. Even as the city falls.
“I’m sorry,” he says, before he lets her go and darts across the threshold into the chamber.
“No!” She screams as I lunge to pull him back, shock raking through me, chilling my blood—
But he’s too nimble. A strong, formidable force. A hunter. I’d almost forgotten.
We take care of people.
He knows what I know. The Caspian Ring is the only way to close the Chasm. To save lives. And Peter, the only one who can do it.
Sophia crawls on her ruined leg, trying to get to him, but I yank her back inside the tunnel’s archway. I cannot lose both of them. I cannot lose anyone else. “He’ll make it,” I utter.
Her voice is choked. “He has to.”
We can do nothing but watch as Peter climbs over bricks and bodies and shattered clay. I don’t see the bag anywhere in this murky, dim light, even with my eyesight. It’s got to be under something, or someone…
Peter searches to no avail. Seconds pass by. The ceiling groans. Dust trickles down. Upstairs, feet are thudding, a mass exodus from the gala.
“Come back,” Sophia wails. “It’s not worth it. Come back!”
“That’s not”—a near slip, but he rights himself—“what heroes do.”
He’s quoting Deacon. My eyes burn.
The rumbling is growing louder. The feet stomping through the lobby right above his head. Faster, Peter, faster—
Grime coating his forehead and half-buttoned dress shirt, Peter digs through the rubble until he unearths the canvas bag. “Got it!” he calls.
I heave out a sigh. Sophia slumps beside me.
Determination on his face, Peter hoists himself out of the wreckage where the bag was buried and races toward us. It’s only a few feet.
The ceiling creaks and whines. A reckoning. Time is up.
Sophia’s fingers clutch the wall so tightly she cracks the clay. “Hurry!”
He makes it one step, two—
Before a hand shoots up from the debris like a corpse from beyond the grave. It wraps around Peter’s ankle and yanks him to the ground.
Sophia clutches me with an iron grip.
Laughter sounds from below the earth.
“Finn,” I breathe in horror. “No!” I try to lunge for him, but I’m still barred from the room. “No, Peter—”
Peter moves quickly, hurling the canvas bag into the tunnel. It lands at my feet. Our eyes meet once, and I can’t bear the determined acceptance I find in his face. The peace. “Go,” he rasps.
He draws his sword just in time for a savagely disfigured Finn to climb from the rubble.
Finn doesn’t get one word out. His eyes widen in true fear as Peter drives his silver blade through the demon prince’s heart.
If Peter says it’s for his mother or the woman he loves or anyone else, I don’t hear it over the last groan of the disintegrating ceiling.
My breath catches in my lungs as Finn shatters into ash and the entire roof of the catacomb chamber collapses, crushing Peter instantly.
It’s silent save for my stunned heart, still as we’re sealed inside the tunnel.
Sophia’s ragged inhale is a knife through my flesh. The broken wail that follows stabs me clean through.
“Peter,” she cries. “Peter, Peter.” As if she can rouse him if only she screams louder. Her fists slam into the mountain of rubble.
My heartbeat shakes my body. I cannot move.
Reid darts out of the darkness to scoop Sophia into his arms even as she thrashes and moans—even as she sobs hard enough to choke herself—and carries her down the passageway. “Come on,” he screams for me. “I’ve cleared the path. Viv!”
But I still can’t move.
I look past the debris to where Peter just was. Where Deacon’s body grows cold. Two of the people I loved most in the world. Gone.
My plan sounds like a mercy now—a mercy for my ravaged soul. A mercy for all the mortals and lymantrians in Astera who will suffer more and more, suffer as I do now, the longer the Chasm is left open.
I reach for the bag Peter fought so hard to secure. The ring Peter died for.
A death worth something. Damn straight.
My fingers latch around the real Caspian Ring. That undulating syrabraxa held inside, waiting to be wielded. Waiting for me.
I slide it on and point my hand toward the earth.
“Viv,” Reid gasps from down the hall. “What are you—”
I shut my eyes and will the Chasm closed.
The tumultuous, furious way the walls shake and the rubble at my feet rolls is as beautiful as it is horrifying.
I can feel the earth stitching itself back up.
And though I can hear Sophia’s cries as she realizes what I’ve done, and Reid’s heartbroken, hushed words as he drags her free of the crumbling wreck, I cannot move.
I am splitting apart, power draining from every corner of my body, life fleeing from me through the syrabraxa-charged ring as it funnels into the earth’s core. The Chasm…Not just halted as it spreads open, but irrevocably shut. Closed completely.
I weather the storm even as I feel my bones shatter in my body.
As my blood runs cool and slow, like an engine burned to the quick.
I weather it, the syrabraxa’s immeasurable magic coursing through me, through the ring, through the very ground at my feet.
Weather it until I know I’ve done what I had to.
And then I collapse amid the rubble and the agonized screams sounding from above.
My body is still.
But my mind is not dead yet. There’s a strange calm to the chaos. The Windsor above, the underworld below. And the Chasm, sealed for good. I’m with Peter. I’m with Deacon. I’m with my father. Or I will be soon.
A death worth something, I think with my last weak exhale. Fit for a life worth living.
The catacombs fade away, lost to the darkness and the tears on my face.