The Minor Fall

CHAPTER 60 Hallelujah

CHAPTER 60

Hallelujah

I groaned.

Something burned in my heart, in my chest, in my lungs, like a bone collector had rummaged through and plucked out all the best parts of me.

Dead. I was dead in that attic.

The pain was my soul being carved from this body, then washed and prepped for its journey home.

Had Bryn made it?

Had Willow?

Had I?

I squeezed my eyes harder and—wait. My eyes. These weren’t my eyes.

I winged them open.

Water droplets collected on the tips of metallic eyelashes with such clarity that they appeared as gigantic bubbles. I looked past them to the electric teals, violent purples, radioactive blues. This isn’t right. Everything sparkled, even the fine drops of mist in the air.

Slowly, I looked down.

My silver skin glistened from the rain and showed every curve of lean muscle. Strands of clear jelly hair pooled over my body and tangled in the grass. A diesel-scented breeze fluttered over my naked body, tightening my nipples, curling my claws into the supple earth.

Though the skin was unbroken, my chest burned with invisible pain. But I almost welcomed it, some last feeling before I didn’t exist.

I flexed my fingers and felt them extend suddenly, whipping out too fast.

Because I was in control.

Not a memory, not an illusion, not a dream I’d slipped into. But me . My body, my thoughts. My lungs that rose and fell around the crack in my chest.

But this wasn’t Ruhaven.

After three tries, I rolled to my hands and knees. Coughed.

The oaks looked different through these eyes—filthy, dirty, invisible black particles clinging to the bark.

I struggled to crawl. Ended up tunneling through soggy grass as easily as butter.

Ireland. I couldn’t be Nereida in Ireland.

But I was.

Fear coiled in my heart, mixing with the pain that was steadily slicing it in two.

Then, a strange sound broke through my daze.

I lifted my head.

Another wheezing cry hiccuped into my left ear. It didn’t register right—the decibels were off, the whole world was too sharp and muffled at the same time.

But I turned toward the sound, seeing the trees whip by because I’d moved too fast again.

My eyes landed on something wooly and dark, the fabric a dense thread with little specks that—

I zoomed out. Focused again.

James ?

Another sob hurt my ears.

I couldn’t focus, couldn’t concentrate with my eyes latching on to every insignificant detail before jumping to the next.

“James?” My voice tinkered in the air, and I could swear I saw the sound of it.

He knelt at the Gate. His mouth moved quickly, a prayer mumbled under his breath. His shoulders shook. Dark tear tracks stained his face.

I called again, my voice distorted. Maybe he couldn’t hear me in this octave.

I started toward him, off balance in this new body. My talons bit into cold dirt, burying themselves in the cutting ivy and velvet moss, sending a thousand tiny pulses to my brain.

“James, I’m here, and Tye, he…”

Wait. What was that? That thing he was staring at? My eyes flicked out, in, out, adjusted.

And finally landed on what lay sprawled before James, pale and naked on the frozen dirt.

My pulse thumped. Died.

And the pain in my heart gave way to something so much worse.

My hands shook violently, my elbows knocking together. Bile burned the back of my throat. Something in me was breaking, some piece of me I didn’t know I had.

“Ye bloody buggering,” James murmured, wiping at tears. But the words weren’t for me. I didn’t exist. Not here. Not anymore. “Ye fecking ejit, ye bloody, ye—ye…” He broke off, pressing the heel of his palms into his eyes and cursing violently.

And as he did, I stared at what had once been Bryn.

My Bryn.

He lay on his back, on the striped blanket he’d always rolled out for us, naked, but for scraps of pleated trousers, a linen shirt. They clung to his waxy skin like Ruhaven had started to pull him home, then spit him out.

His right hand rested in a fist over his chest. Shadows flickered blues over skin that looked like a cruel art sculpture. His hair, the only color left, stirred as the wind blew. The rain had left silver tears over goose-pimpled skin. Dark tattoos stood out in stark relief.

Snap .

The lantern crashed to pieces at my silvery knees. James glanced at it, but not me. Wax pooled between flattened clovers and stones. I crawled over the glass, dragging my heavy limbs through the warm liquid.

My bones felt numb. Even the aching pain in my chest had lowered to a distant throb. I couldn’t feel my muscles. My ears were the inside of a seashell.

I choked on a sob.

Please, please, not him .

This wasn’t possible. It wasn’t. It couldn’t be. Bryn never faltered, never doubted, was never wrong. He—he’d known everything about Ruhaven. Had worshipped the world as much as Nereida.

Ruhaven would never reject him. And he’d never let it.

And he’d never leave me.

When I finally reached Bryn, my body was empty of everything.

I could only stare. And stare, and stare. Time seemed to give up and go home. James was some distant memory. L’Ardoise nonexistent.

“Bryn?” I mumbled through tears. “ Bryn ?”

He stared at the shuddering leaves, frozen, alone—opaque eyes like an endless dead sea.

I tried to check for a heartbeat, to lay my cheek on his chest, but I only passed through.

A ghost. I was the ghost now. A ghost of Nereida. As inconsequential as I’d ever been.

And Bryn was dead.

But Ruhaven hadn’t taken him.

I had.

For a moment, I just kneeled there. Time passed. James no longer sobbed. But something broke inside me, again and again, until the pieces of whatever had shattered were yanked out of me on a choking sob.

It was happening again.

God, this should have been me. Not Willow. Not Bryn. Me who lay here at the Gate, me who died by the Inquitate.

I wrapped my arms around my ribs as uncontrollable sobs wracked my body, the sound like crashing bells on marble. But James didn’t look at me. He heard nothing. Saw nothing.

Because this was my punishment. For choosing Willow. For killing my own mate. For offering everything Bryn was to the Gate like he was garbage.

Clutching my ribs, I tried to hold on to Bryn, to grab his hand again, but my own passed through. Over and over and over.

Eventually, like he could bear my ghost’s attempts no longer, James crawled to Bryn and reached toward the pale hand clenched over Bryn’s chest. James turned Bryn’s fist over, peeled up stiff fingers, and pried out the tiny thing in his grasp.

The opal ring shined pink in dawn’s light on a circlet of meteor gold.

I hadn’t noticed the fine detail before, the gold band carved in the shape and form of a twisted branch, when he’d been pouring his heart out to me on my bedroom floor. When I’d thrown it all back at him and chosen Willow.

“I’ll bury this for ye anyway,” James said stiffly.

While he dug a fresh hole, mist dribbled from the skies, uncaring of the Ruhavens huddled under the ancient oaks. The tractor trumpeted the fields, cows droned a constant hum. Rapeseed was replanted. Life, in Naruka, plowed on.

But my long ears twitched when I heard something behind me, sharp and heavy, like footsteps crunching in L’Ardoise’s snow.

My blood went to ice. My eyes to James.

Back to me, tears fell as he dug with his hands. How long had it taken for me to appear here, as Nereida? Long enough for Carmen. For Tye. For Levi.

And every protective instinct kicked in.

I grabbed for James before I remembered I could do nothing.

But he didn’t look at me, or the shadow slithering toward us and over Bryn’s lifeless form.

I rose slowly, dragging Nereida’s body up limb by limb to face the threat behind me. I could feel its slow breathing whisper across my neck.

My talons slid out. I barely felt the slight tearing of skin as they lengthened and bit into my palms. Teeth pricked my bottom lip. My blood began to pulse rapidly, not as fast as a human’s, but a grizzly rousing from hibernation.

I dug my heel into the ground, spread my hands wide to block both James and Bryn.

And spun around.

Then stopped. Froze.

“ Willow? ” I croaked.

She—I—she was—

I stumbled back. Shuddered and jerked when my heel went straight through James’s back.

Across the Gate, Willow crept toward me, a shadow amongst the bare trees, wearing the outfit she used to lounge in every Saturday morning—coveralls, a striped red-and-white top, and her patched jean jacket with a music note stitched on the breast pocket. With each step, a tiny, jeweled piano thumped against her neck—the one that now dangled from her truck’s rearview mirror. The blonde hair she’d been buried with was gone, replaced by the long, dark mane that had always matched mine. Until it hadn’t.

An Inquitate. And yet…

I bit my lip when my chin wobbled. My eyes burned, my lungs strained, my throat tightened until I was surprised I could draw any air at all.

Was she shorter? I’d always had to look up to her. But no, I was taller now—as Nereida.

“Rowan.”

My legs vibrated. It was her voice. Her exact voice, with all the easy sway and lyrical sound that made you think if she wasn’t a pianist, she should be. It was the voice on the recording of her introducing a rehearsal piece I’d listened to a thousand times over.

“Willow?” I said again, while a tiny person inside me screamed to run. To warn James. To confront this Inquitate before it defiled the Gate.

But my tongue seemed glued to the roof of my mouth, and her old scent of clarinet oil and books was so familiar that my throat swelled in recognition.

“Rowan? It’s me,” she said quietly. Her eyes bent in sympathy.

Warily, I circled the Gate, keeping my ghost between her and the Ruhavens behind me.

“You’re an Inquitate,” I told my sister, my wavering voice betraying my fear.

She stopped feet away, but her face held none of the joy I’d imagined when we met again. “Rowan, I’m so sorry. For Bryn. For leaving you. For wanting to leave L’Ardoise. For not being here with you.”

God, I hadn’t even known how badly I’d wanted to hear that. “ Stop .”

She took another step forward. “Rowan, I’ve missed you so fucking much.”

I blinked against the flood of tears, struggled to keep my hands lifted, ready. I wanted to grab her to me, just hold her for a second. Just once, even if it was an illusion, even if I didn’t deserve it.

But I couldn’t. For James, for Bryn.

“Which are you?” I croaked. “Levi’s? Tye’s? Carmen’s?”

She seemed to struggle with her own tears—something I’d never seen from Willow. “Levi’s dead,” she said.

I raised my arms, hands balled into quivering fists. “You’re a liar.”

She shook her head, dark hair catching on the stitched patches of her jacket. “Bryn killed him. Four days ago,” she said, wetting her lips, her mouth crinkling with all the lines it used to have.

Of course Bryn hadn’t killed him. Not with a cane, not without Sahn.

I shoved my fingers through my hair, the slimy strands the only thing I could touch. Everything that made me was boiling from the inside out. My sister standing before me, my mate dead at my feet, James’s muted cries a dead beat in my ear. And a part of me wanted it to all end.

“Rowan, I don’t have long.”

My gaze snapped back to Inquitate.

“Not nearly long enough to explain, to apologize,” she continued, throat bobbing. “For everything.” Deceptive tears welled in her midnight eyes.

We both watched James slowly rise, murmuring the prayer he’d offered Kazie, then lower the ring I’d rejected into the hole he’d dug.

That’s when she moved.

“ Don’t, don’t, don’t! ” I yelled, my hands passing through Willow as I lunged.

I splattered in the mud, in the weeds and ivy. “Please,” I begged my twin.

Standing next to Bryn, her toes touching one open palm, she stared down at his naked body. His unseeing eyes bore into hers.

“Was it worth it?” she asked hollowly.

“I’ll do whatever you want. Go wherever,” I tried, rising to my knees. “But leave them. Don’t—”

“Tallah trades in energy,” she spoke over me, toying with the piano at her neck. “Bryn wanted to bring something to Ruhaven that wasn’t there before. Me . He upset the balance, and Tallah made up for it. He knew it would.”

My heart beat so wildly, I could barely hear her words. “If you just tell me what you want,” I begged, “I’ll—”

“Ruhaven gave him a choice.” Her dark eyes were like the void, the empty space between worlds. Like my Prayama. “He chose. Me for him,” she said. “For you, Rowan.”

I pressed my hands to my eyes. Lies . He’d never have chosen to separate us, to die with our souls divided between Tallah and here.

Her hair, as black as her eyes, swirled in tendrils of dark smoke. Multi-colored veins pulsed at her temples. At her fingertips, the nails shone with twilight’s last gasp of color. Her skin flickered in and out, stars winking in the night.

On hands and knees, I crawled to Bryn, arched over him, as if my ghost could protect his. “Please,” I begged, tilting my head up at the illusion of Willow. “Not him.”

Her low exhale was like an ancient forest taking its last breath. Then she lifted a hand, hovered it over us, her fingers flickering like a television caught between channels. There. Gone. Twirling. Still.

“I’m assuming you don’t want someone else?” she asked, an eyebrow snaking up, the movement so like my sister that it jolted.

She sank into a crouch, gliding her hands through my head and over Bryn’s sprawled form. I swatted at her fingers, the darkness that pooled at the tips. But I felt nothing. Could do nothing.

James sat beside all of us, watching through empty eyes. If they killed him, too, I couldn’t—couldn’t—

“Willow,” I tried, my lips thick and numb. “Whatever you want, whatever they want, I’ll do it. I’ll shut down Naruka, stop Ruhavens from Falling.”

The darkness seeped from her fingertips into Bryn’s body. “I’m not an Inquitate, Rowan.”

I folded over Bryn, through him, into the wet earth below. Clung to whatever there was left. “You’re not my sister.”

“No,” she said, lifting opaque eyes—two black holes where light didn’t penetrate. Where stars burned and died. “I’m your spirit. You passed the rite.”

Silence rang. “What?”

“That’s what Bryn gave us, what Ruhaven wanted, what Sahn waited eight hundred years for—a Mark that exists outside of laws and trades. Outside of Tallah. The entropic spirit. Entropy. Me. That’s why we were the first twins in the Ledger —one of us was the spirit for the rite we never passed together in Ruhaven. But now you have, Rowan, by choosing me, choosing Ruhaven.”

My heart hammered in my ribs. “Get away from us. Get—” I broke off when James flinched.

His mouth opened to gaping, the cigarette he’d been trying to light dropped from his shaking fingers. He started to rise, staggered, then fell to his knees, his eyes fixed on Bryn’s body.

Willow stood, walking away from Bryn, toward my brother.

I started to crawl. “Wait, please.”

The woods quieted, the leaves barely stirring, the normal hum of critters gone. The breaking dawn speared tangerine rays through the leaves. The light stopped when it struck Willow—no, it bent, twisted, and died.

But a flash of movement drew my attention from her.

To the man who’d been born of and from Ruhaven, lying in the middle of the Gate.

His gears were turning.

Oh god .

I was weeping, rocking, as the marks whirled on his skin. “Willow, what have you done ?”

“I told you,” she whispered. “I don’t need to make a trade. I can bring O’Sahnazekiel with us, without an exchange. That is why O’Sahnazekiel wanted you to return with the spirit of entropy, because it is the only thing that can fight the Inquitate, the only energy not bound by the laws of balance.” Willow stood behind James, her hands settling on his shoulders as she bent down, whispered something that had James’s eyes widening behind thick glasses, his mouth parting in surprise.

She straightened and turned around, casting a glance over her shoulder. “Rowan,” she said, and for a moment—just a moment—that old smile glimmered. “I’m really glad I didn’t have to punch this one.”

My chest caved in.

“No, no, wait—goddamn it, wait!”

But the mist swallowed her, a curtain of cream fog that collapsed in her wake. The sky, with its streaky pink hues and clementine golds crept through the canopy of leaves until Willow was only a vague scent in the air—bananas and clarinet oil and the crisp newness of sheet music.

James turned and looked over his shoulder like he could see my sister. Then he rose on legs that trembled as much as mine and took one hesitant step toward where she’d disappeared. And another.

But for once, I didn’t go after her, because I’d never leave Bryn again.

His body glowed with a hundred tattoos, each burning gold and spinning. The cogs moved over his arm, down his torso, along his inner thigh, to the top of his right foot—like they had when Sahn rescued me in Drachaut, when he’d made love to me in the woods, when he’d teased me after I’d jumped at a butterfly.

My heart pounded—Nereida’s heart pounded—a wild, reckless rhythm. And the pain in my chest dulled for the first time.

Bronze light bled through Bryn’s eyelashes, trickled in thick drops over his cheeks, pooled at the corners of his wide mouth, and ran down his rough jaw to the shallow crevice of his shoulders.

It spilled out his mouth, bubbled up on a gasp. Our thread flared and flung itself out in a forked whip, snapping the earth like electricity searching to be grounded. Sparks shattered before floating up in an invisible vortex.

A cry broke the silence.

Eyes closed, Bryn arched off the ground, skin stretched tight, sweat beading on his forehead. Veins bulged under his neck and ran blue over his bare chest.

“Bryn, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” I babbled, trying to hold him, to help, to ease.

Bryn rolled to his side, his body rippling like an invisible beast lurked beneath.

On a low growl, he dropped his forehead to the earth.

His back split in two, and dappled, silver wings whipped through the forest.

My mouth dropped open.

They sprouted in a rainbow of smoke—pure snow at the wing’s blade, to dappled gray, to silky charcoal, to pink where the sunrise glowed through. The sky parted for them, the trees cowed. His feathers brushed leaves and ivy, branches snapped, even the hawthorn tree bowed and toppled over.

When I looked again, I barely recognized the Norwegian who’d wanted a home in Ruhaven, knowing in my soul, in my heart, that I was looking at Bryn for the last time.

He bunched his fingers, drove his fist into the earth.

I reached for his hand. And this time, mine didn’t pass through. So I held on, our fingers linked, and swore every promise I should have made to him long ago.

I felt the ripple of it—of power, of the new and the reborn, of starting over.

His torso expanded, his shoulders broadened, the muscle knitted in his broken leg, the blackened skin smoothing out to the palest gold, his toes curled into talons deadlier than mine.

Crack . A velvet tail snapped the crisp air, feathers whistling on the end.

Drums bellowed from far-off mountains—the call of Ruhaven, a soaring chorus that vibrated in my very bones.

I stared and stared at him, even as the fangs lengthened, hoping to memorize each detail before he was gone. The soft crease of his eyes, the faint laugh line that hadn’t had time to deepen, the angular nose that would twitch with amusement. The man I’d never see grow old.

And then it was done.

Bryn was gone.

Sahn panted into my palm, skin flickering like a lightbulb about to burst. The short, moonlit locks lengthened into a golden river that tangled with my silver hair. Light crackled and popped around us as he shifted to his hands and knees, head bowed, his back rippling with the effort of lifting his newly formed wings.

When he opened his eyes at last, I knew I hadn’t lost him—the man who’d given up everything for Willow and I, for me.

“ Rowan? God, Rowan?”

I cupped his face in my silvery hands, thumbing away the golden tears that leaked down his shimmering skin, pressing fleeting kisses over his cheeks before I wrapped my arms around him and buried my face in the crook of his neck, as if I could keep his shaking body tied to mine. But I knew we didn’t have long now. I could feel it everywhere, nipping at my skin, the same feeling as when his own world had dissolved between us.

“I did not believe we would have this chance,” he said, his words muffled against my neck.

“Of course we would,” I whispered through my own tears, more certain than I’d been of anything before. “Because you were right—there’s no place your soul could ever go that mine wouldn’t follow.”

I held on to him, held on to every piece of us that never was, and every piece that could have been. The mornings in Norway we might have had, the ship we’d have sailed, the scent of Bryn that had always been full of adventure and secrets. The whisper of his lips at my ear, the feel of his hands cradling my cheeks, the sound of his own promises, as if by mapping each piece of the man, I wouldn’t forget. Wouldn’t forget what we had, what was, what would yet be still.

And when the soaring notes slowed, the melody holding a fermata on the ringing, augmented chord of E major, at last, at long last…

I heard the minor fall.