Chapter Thirty-Six
Trudy’s body collapses in a mangled, bloody heap. Just like that, the Sylk that murdered my brother has been banished. I’ve avenged Owen. I should feel relieved. I should feel vindicated. So then why do I feel like I just gave the Sylk exactly what it wanted?
“This isn’t over,” I murmur, the hair on the back of my neck prickling as I kneel to retrieve both daggers. “That was too easy.”
“‘Easy’ is a relative term, don’t you think?” Titus says, decapitating a possessed Nightweaver as it charges us, tossing a metal star from his pocket without even looking in its direction. “I’d say you make the increasingly difficult task of banishing Sylks look rather easy.”
I catch sight of Gylda, the blond guard, and snag her by the arm as she hurries past. Blood spatters her face and coats her broadsword, but she smiles as if she was just crowned queen of the Eerie.
“Have you seen Will?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “No, but the Underlings are retreating.”
I didn’t notice before, but she’s right. I spot Henry through the dwindling crowd, beyond a cluster of Killian’s wolves that has descended on the last remaining Gore, where Dorothy continues to circle Elsie and Albert.
“Dorothy!” I call out, trudging ankle-deep through the blood and guts and excrement. I pick my way over bodies— pieces of bodies—toward the girl I thought was dead before tonight. “I know you’re still in there.”
Her head swivels on her neck to find me, snapping bones with an audible crack. The Sylk laughs, her mouth stretching unnaturally wide as her teeth transform to sharp points. “Dorothy is dead.” The voice that comes from Dorothy’s mouth lacks any trace of the mild-mannered girl I spent the past few months working alongside. This voice is throaty and dark, the distorted voice of nightmares. “We devoured her.”
Beyond Dorothy, Henry’s face goes slack. Someone supplied him with a bow while I was locked in combat with Trudy, and he aims it at the back of Dorothy’s head, a perfect shot. But he doesn’t fire.
“I can’t,” he mouths to me, tears streaking his scarred face. “I can’t.”
I move closer to Dorothy—or rather, the Sylk possessing her. “Dorothy, I know we got off on the wrong foot,” I say slowly, gaining ground with every word. “But I hope you know that if I could go back, if I could change anything about my time here, I’d try to be your friend.”
The Sylk cocks her head, and for the first time, I think I see some semblance of Dorothy behind those glowing red eyes.
“I would have liked to be your friend,” I say, half-hoping Dorothy can hear me but praying to the Stars that she feels no pain as I launch myself at the Sylk, plunging a dagger into Dorothy’s heart.
The Sylk lets out a bloodcurdling shriek, its dark form dispersing into the air with a hiss, and I withdraw the dagger, black with infected blood. Henry is there to catch Dorothy’s body, kneeling with her cradled in his arms. All corporeal signs of the Sylk’s possession diminish, leaving behind Dorothy’s fingerless hands, her dark brown eyes, and her modest, fangless mouth.
Dorothy—the girl, not the Sylk—coughs up blood, wheezing for breath. “Aster?”
I kneel beside her. “I’m here.”
Dorothy’s mouth twitches, an attempt at a smile. “I would have liked that, too.”
Henry half-laughs, half-sobs, and Dorothy looks up at him, her eyes distant and glassy, blood trickling from her lips.
Weakly, softly, she murmurs, “I love you, Henry.”
A final shuddering breath rattles in her chest, and her body goes limp. Henry buries his face in her neck, his shoulders heaving as he weeps into her blood-soaked hair.
It happens all too quickly, and yet, the world seems to slow as a spark ignites and flames consume the curtain to Henry’s right. Another spark ignites across the dance floor, then another, until fire consumes the ballroom, igniting like a torch. Killian shouts something inaudible over the roar of the inferno. The smoke burns my nose and throat, but I don’t leave Henry. I won’t.
“Henry, you have to stop this.”
I tug his arm, but he doesn’t budge as flames press in on every side.
“Let me burn!” His scream is guttural, his eyes glowing gold. “Let me be with her!”
“Do you really think that’s what Dorothy would want?”
Tears stream down his twisted, scarred face. He throws himself back over Dorothy, his hands on her cheeks. He whispers fervently, choking on his own sobs.
Black smoke fills the ballroom, the stench of cooked flesh roiling my stomach.
I grab Henry’s wrist. “Listen to me,” I attempt to yell, but I can’t hear my own hoarse voice over the crackle of flames as it eats away at the ballroom—destroying any evidence of the massacre here tonight. When someone finally manages to put the fire out, all that will be left behind are charred bones and rumors of a mysterious tragedy that struck Bludgrave Manor. “Call off the flames, Henry. Please.”
“I can’t,” he bellows. “I can’t!”
Can’t. Won’t. It doesn’t really matter. Henry isn’t going to leave this place of his own accord.
“You’ll thank me later,” I say, knocking him over the head with the blunt end of my dagger. He crumples, his body going limp. I loop my arms under his and drag him toward a gap in the flames, heading blindly in the direction of the double doors nearest to us. Henry groans, but he’s too incapacitated to fight back. “Or not.”
I think I’ve almost made it to the exit when a fiery beam collapses, landing directly in my path. If it were just me, I could easily climb over it and make my way to safety. But I won’t be able to lug Henry’s body over it. Not fast enough.
I cough, the smoke filling my lungs twice as fast. I attempt to pull Henry onto my back, but I’m dizzy. So dizzy…
“Aster.” I hear that same distorted voice from before. “Get up, Aster. Leave him.”
I blink, trying to make sense of what I’m hearing. Could this voice belong to the Shifter that’s haunted my every moment, determined to toy with me even now? Could it be that the Shifter is trying to help me escape this fire?
No—it’s just the smoke. I’m confused. I’m… I’m not leaving Henry behind. I’m not…
“Aster!” A different voice comes from far away. “I found them!”
Killian’s voice.
“They’re over here!”
I’m lifted into the air, cradled close to someone’s chest. We break out of the suffocating heat into the clear air. My eyes open slightly, just enough to see Killian dragging Henry onto the east lawn, where Lady Isabelle takes her son into her arms as if he were only a small child. But my vision goes dark, my eyelids impossibly heavy.
Sleep. I just need to sleep.
“Oh, no you don’t, love.”
I’m plunged into cold water before I have the chance to take a breath, and my eyelids fling wide. Titus hovers over me, holding me under the surface of the fountain. I try to wrench myself free of his grip, but the moment I do, he pulls me out of the water and close to his chest. He draws back, his hands finding my face as he searches my eyes.
“It worked.” His mouth parts on a shaky breath. “You’re—”
“Titus!” Killian shouts from across the lawn. My head whips to the right, where I find that Mother, Jack, Annie, and all five of my siblings have made it out, along with Sybil, Boris, Gylda, and Hugh. Thick, dark smoke billows out onto the portico as the fire rages, devastating the east wing.
For a moment, it seems as if Titus doesn’t plan on letting go of me, his grip tightening. But Killian shouts his name again, and he relents, lifting me out of the fountain with ease and gently placing me on the grass.
“This should only take a moment,” he says, a dry smirk tugging at the corner of his lip.
Titus turns toward the east wing, takes a deep breath. He lifts his hands in a fluid motion, and in response, the waters from the fountain rise like a wave. A slight flick of his wrist, and the water shoots across the lawn in a torrent, targeting the flames with keen precision.
I think of what power like that could accomplish at sea—how the very waves would bend to a bloodletter’s every whim—and suppress a shudder.
But it seems his power is limited. The water crashes to the ground, just short of the manor, as Titus roars, falling to his knees. I find myself at his side as he pants for breath, looking up at me with eyes of liquid honey.
“I’m weak,” Titus groans, clutching at his heart. It’s as if I can hear it beating, a frenzied pulse that’s almost tangible in the air around me. “You—you have to try.”
“Try?” I ask, my voice trembling. “Try what?”
“The water.” He coughs, blood trickling from his lip. “You feel it, don’t you?”
I tear my gaze from his to look at the waters of the fountain. I gape at my reflection—at the two gilded eyes staring back at me.
“I knew it,” Titus breathes.
I suppose I did, too. From the moment I learned the truth about the Nightweavers—about their magic. The way the water calls to me; the way blood streamed from Percy’s eyes with only a thought. I reasoned it was part of my curse. But all this time, I had power all my own. A power I shouldn’t have.
I meet Titus’s gilded eyes, as bright as the sun itself.
“But,” I whisper, glad that we are far from the others, who remain clustered together among the rose gardens of the east lawn. “I’m human?”
“Only half,” Titus says softly, his tattooed knuckles brushing a tear from my face. “You’re a Nightweaver, Aster.”