Chapter 46
Valen
It hasn’t stopped.
Whatever ran together between the two of us back there is still running.
I stretch out a hand, what comes off it is hers as much as mine.
The columns of light are the same ones I walked in under.
Gold, green, a blue. They come down through this chamber, go up past where my eyes can follow, into brightness too thick to look into.
Eleven of them I can count and more past those.
These are the anchors. Every one of them is founders’ work, holding this realm in the position they put it in, they all have a black split running the whole length of them.
That’s Faelan. Centuries of him, worked into the grain of the place like rot coming up through old wood.
Out at the edges the Council is still holding.
Five of them, wings spread wide, locked.
They’ve been in that position since we walked in and not one of them has thrown anything at Faelan.
If one of them lets go long enough to hit him, the whole place comes down.
Nyxiana stands beside me her wings open at full span.
There’s nothing in the light in here that ought to make a color and it comes off them in one anyway.
Her hair is moving in a wind that doesn’t touch my skin.
Beautiful is the first word I reach for and it’s too small for her.
So is every one that comes after it. Magnificent.
Terrible. The kind of thing men used to build churches for.
None of them fit her. I’ve been alive a long time and I’ve never had to find a word for a woman before.
There’s no good reason to be looking at her in the middle of this but I look a moment longer than I have any use for. Then I put my attention back on the columns.
Faelan wrenches a construct out of the warped air between two of them and sends it at us fast and low.
My hum goes out to meet it in the same instant her flame catches the other side.
The thing buckles between them, comes apart in pieces that stop existing before they land.
The column nearest us flickers while that happens.
The split in it thins and the light behind it runs clean for about a second. Then it closes over again.
Killing what he throws won’t finish this.
I could stand here and take every construct he makes for the next hour and those columns would still be his at the end of it.
The moment either of us goes down he starts again with a realm’s worth of architecture in his hands.
I have to take the columns off him, at the same time, instead of one at a time in front of me.
That means dropping every barrier I have.
I’ve had a hand on this thing since the fight started and I’ve got no idea what it does without one.
Nyxiana’s eyes have gone gold. Not at the edges.
All the way through, both of them, dragon fire with no violet left anywhere in it.
She sets her feet beside mine and puts her hands out.
Then looks at me and nods. I haven’t said a word about any of it nut she knows and I open all of it at once.
It spreads out of me in every direction.
Down through the floor, out across the chamber, up past the top of the columns where I can’t see.
It’s the most natural thing I have ever done.
The nearest column takes it first. The black split in it closes from the bottom up and the light behind it comes back clean.
Then the two past it. Then six more. It runs the whole length of the chamber faster than I can follow it, every split closing as it passes.
Faelan feels every anchor lock against him.
He throws the last of what he has, three constructs at once, all of them at me, aimed to arrive before the seal finishes running.
Nyxiana takes all three. Her flame goes out in three directions at once, wings spread wide behind her, and all three burn down to nothing before they cover half the distance.
The last column seals and e very anchor in this realm locks into place underneath me at the same moment.
I have all of them. The hum under my sternum goes quiet for the first time since it woke up.
The Council eases. Bancroft’s wings come down a fraction.
Samuel’s stance comes off the brace he’s been holding for hours.
Faelan is still standing in the middle of the chamber but there’s nothing left in his hands.
Every column in here belongs to me now, he has no hold on any of them.
The light in the columns nearest him starts leaning his way. He holds still and lets it come.
“The founders were criminals,” Faelan says. His voice carries the length of the chamber and he isn’t in any hurry about it. “That part was always true. Whatever the two of you decide to tell yourselves after tonight, it will still be true in the morning.”
There’s no doubt in that man anywhere. I kept waiting for him to break. To look at what he’d done and back off it. He’s going out of this world exactly as certain as he came into it.
Then the columns nearest him bend inward.
They don’t come fast and that’s the part I’ll remember.
The light moves in on him the way water moves into a low place, from every side at once, taking its time, because there’s nothing left in this chamber that can stop it.
He could run, there’s nothing’s holding his feet in place. He looks at Nyxiana instead.
I don’t catch whatever passes between the two of them.
She doesn’t move, doesn’t look away from him, doesn’t give him one thing.
Then he turns his head back, lifts his chin, and the light takes him.
I feel it happen. Every anchor in this realm is mine now, so it’s my hands doing this whether I put them out or not.
He doesn’t make a sound. There’s a man standing there, then there’s light where he was standing, then the light is just light.
Centuries of him worked into the grain of this place, and it takes about four seconds to take him back out of it.
The only sound in this realm since we came through has been him tearing at it.
That stops when he does. What’s left is the way this place is when nobody’s damaging it, which is nothing at all.
I’ve spent my entire life being a lock without knowing it. I want to hear somebody say out loud what just happened to that man.
“Is he held?” No echo comes back. In a room this size there ought to be one.
“No.” Bancroft doesn’t turn his head. “He is unmade. There is nothing left of him in this realm or any other, and there will not be.”
Nyxiana’s wings come down lower than they’ve been all night. Her flame banks down to nothing. The gold drains out of her eyes with violet coming back in from the edges.
Then Samuel speaks. “You chose the harder thing.” He says it to Nyxiana, across the chamber, and he says it like her grandfather instead of like a member of the Council. “It was always going to be the right one.”
Her throat works once. Her eyes, violet again, go bright. She holds them on him and says nothing at all.
Bancroft comes next. “The anchors answer to Valen now. The Council will not dispute that claim. Tonight, or ever again.” He says it the same way he’s said everything since we arrived. It isn’t a welcome and it isn’t thanks. It’s a ruling, and I take it as one.
Gavin shakes out his arms and his wings together, loose after hours of holding. “I’m taking a vacation,” he says to nobody in particular. “A millennium. Possibly two.”
“The seal will hold,” Rainer says.
Bowen comes across the floor. He puts a hand on my shoulder and grips it once, hard. Then he gets an arm around Nyxiana, pulls her into a quick warm hold, and lets her go again.
“Good,” he says.
That’s all of it. He goes back to his brothers.
The hum settles. It’s still in me and it always will be.
I know what it’s for now. Nova. Harper. Kari.
He had a hand on all three of them from in here, a realm away.
It died when he did. There’s nothing pulling on any of them now.
The pressure comes off Ash Hollow. Every night I ever walked that perimeter and however long that valley has been holding a breach with everything it had - every one of them is still on their feet at the end of it. I turn to tell her. She’s gone white.
She’s burned corruption centuries deep out of this place, taken three constructs at once, and she’s still bleeding from the hit she took for me an hour ago. There’s nothing left in her.
“It’s done,” I say. She looks me over before answering, checking whether I’m standing on my own.
“Not all of it.” She’s right. Faelan found that crack, didn’t make it, it’s still there, it isn’t going to close.
What’s changed is that it’s mine to hold now.
There’s the other thing too. Neither of us has said out loud what we are to each other, neither of us is saying it in front of five angels.
Then she sways and I’m there to catch her and get her up off her feet. There’s nothing of her at all.