Chapter 28
Ezra Bright pulled his mother’s body close.
It felt like a doll now. And he? He felt…
everything. He felt the darkness, just as he had in the trenches: that mad grief that had turned everyone else around him inside out.
He sensed every shadow in this room, knew how he could knot them around his proverbial fingers and twist, twist, twist until they hurt as much as he did.
But there was more, now, thanks to Nour.
The usual golden tracery had begun to flare around his arms, only it didn’t stop there.
Light flew through his veins: the understanding of stars, of the hopes pinned on them, and the prayers too.
His mother had used her wings to collect such things, to press them the way a winemaker might squeeze grapes.
These powers had not died with her. No… Ezra could feel the magic taking root in his chest, could feel his eyes burning, not just with tears but with burgeoning masque light.
Everything around him suddenly looked more golden.
Anything was possible. Well, perhaps not anything.
He couldn’t breathe life back into the mummified remains of his mother, but he could howl like a jackal, the way she had over her own brother’s grave.
He could grow fur and fangs and claw his way back into hell…
But then the world would break.
Ezra understood now why his mother had sent him away, why she’d tried to protect him from such a fate, why he’d never fully fit into any of the suits that a Savile Row tailor could sew, why he wasn’t wrong, as George had so helpfully pointed out.
He was just so much more than anyone else in a Mayfair parlor could possibly fathom.
Including Vincent Cain.
The Apex.
The Lion Unbowed.
The knight who knew no end to his quest.
He’d reappeared, slipping out from behind one of the far sphinx statues. He didn’t seem bothered by the battle the Ageless Ones were waging with the remaining dead. His eyes fixed solely on the ivory wand that was nestled between Ezra and Nour.
“At last.” This murmur might have been lost, if Ezra didn’t know how to read the man’s lips so well. “After all this time… I’d begun to wonder if I’d ever find it…”
The magician took a step forward and Ezra curled over what remained of his mother. She felt like papier-maché. Ezra feared the body would fall apart if he moved. So many other things might too…
Vincent paused to take in the sight. Mother and son. Life and death. The Heka-ib between them. He soaked it all in with his oceanic stare.
“Incredible. You were dead. Dead as a doornail.” He held up two bloody fingers. “I checked your pulse myself.”
The thought of this man’s touch no longer warmed Ezra. Violence brimmed between them instead.
“You were dead and now you’re here. Good as new!
” He waved a hand up and down, painting over Ezra’s image as if they were still shopping for a vacation wardrobe.
“With a shiny, fresh face, to boot. Now be a good sport and hand that relic over.” Vincent tried a grin, but it looked too much like the baring of teeth.
“The wand doesn’t belong to you.” These words felt cold leaving Ezra’s lips.
The rest of him had turned to steel.
“Come now, Bright. Finders keepers! We set out to find this treasure together, you and I. If it weren’t for me, you’d still be scribbling notes about winged things in that god-awful suit. Honestly, you should be thanking me—”
“For murdering my sister?”
“I’ll admit that part was unfortunate. You needed a fire lit under you, to find this relic. I knew you might not die for me. You would mourn, yes, but it wouldn’t be anything like the grief that’s fueled me all these years.”
Shadows began to bend and curl around his mother’s husk.
“Grief?” Ezra rasped. “You think I don’t have enough grief?”
“Oh, stop playing the martyr! We’ve won. You’re alive. Death can be reversed. I’ll bring your sister back—fresh as a daisy.”
Ezra looked down at his mother’s undone face. It was the kind of thing that road shows hid behind curtains and charged curious customers for their shock. But he didn’t linger on this decay—he could feel the largeness of Nour inside him. The love that had birthed him twice.
Vincent Cain could never understand.
The Lion Unbowed had never given up anything.
The Apex would never stop taking. Why would he? He’d built an empire on gold-clad bones. To stop would be to let it all tumble.
All the king’s horses and all the king’s men…
Shadows kept slithering in, crowding Ezra with a want so strong he felt his heart cinch. George. Biz. That long-ago king. Kisses under a wing-wheeled sky. Another stolen beneath the Bridge of Sighs.
“What’s the point, otherwise?” Vincent went on, taking another step toward the wand in Ezra’s lap. “All that power and you’re just going to keep hiding it away, like you’ve always done?” His face began to twist. “You have no idea how far I’ve come… how much I’ve sacrificed…”
More images pressed through the shadows.
The stampede of a Crusade—the Lion Unbowed’s banners rising up through clashing swords and dust. This alone was thick enough to choke on.
But the avalanche continued: Diamond mines.
East India ships with bloodied sails. Opium dens.
Bones of the Kingdom of Benin. Hands of the Congolese.
Libraries torched for a single scroll. Villages drowned for dams. All their treasures taken to be locked behind the British Museum’s spotless glass.
To make this man’s masque shine brighter and brighter.
Ezra could see it all now.
Gold. So much stolen gold, to gild his empire.
“It’s not yours, Vincent,” he said, quiet, yet strong. “None of it was ever yours.”
The rest of the knight’s careful armor rusted away. He started rolling up his sleeves with a snarl. “So be it.”
So be it.
Vincent’s masque flashed like a Crusader’s sword.
The air around the pair reverberated—as if a giant drum had been struck, but there was no sound.
Only force. His mother’s body began falling to pieces, trickling out of Ezra’s hands until only her teeth remained.
He could feel the roots of his own molars, and below that, rage.
Yet he held himself still, moving only to catch the Heka-ib before it clattered to the floor.
The wand—it had been made to amplify the magic of its wielder’s heart.
When his mother and uncle had found the tusk on the shores of the Nile all those centuries ago, it had performed a series of childish miracles: turning water into honey, constructing elaborate sandcastles.
That sort of thing. But the relic grew with them, with their desires.
Once upon a time, Ezra had thought he wanted Vincent.
The magician standing across from him still looked like that golden boy from Oxford. Everywhere except the eyes. Those were cold. Cold despite the light that crowned his temples.
Ezra gripped the Heka-ib tight in his fists as he rose from his mother’s ashes.
Their shuts tangled together across the scabbed floor. Shadows filled with secrets, loves, and lies. Pasts too far for any mortal memory to reach. For a long moment the men stood facing each other, drowning in themselves.
Vincent dealt in kings.
But Ezra?
Ezra was born of gods.
When Vincent lunged, Ezra was ready, swinging the ivory wand. The magician’s masque flashed; another pulse of air deflected the blow. Ezra’s arm wrenched back, far enough to etch out the painful shape of his shoulder socket.
The Heka-ib would’ve gone spinning, if not for his death grip.
He swung the wand again.
This time, it got a bit closer to Vincent before his spell caught it. The ivory tusk didn’t bounce off the magic, but stuck. Like a fly trapped in honey. Vincent reached up and grabbed the relic’s sharper end.
Good Lord, he was strong. It was all Ezra could do to keep his hold on the wand. And the shadows? Well, those were still swirling, taunting him with memories of how close he’d let this magician get, before.
Vincent pulled the Heka-ib to his chest.
His gaze pierced Ezra’s.
A challenge.
A dare.
Go on, then…
“We can’t stay this way forever, Bright,” the other man murmured.
His masque glared.
There was a terrible crack of stone as a sphinx broke off its pedestal, brought to life by the Apex’s magic.
The statue moved far more quickly than it should have, considering its weight.
Ezra barely had time to turn before the stone teeth were upon him, sinking deep into the freshly healed flesh of his arm.
Stars filled his vision.
The wand slipped through his fingers. He tried to grip down harder, but the pain doubled. Another sphinx sank its fangs into Ezra’s other arm—both statues stepping back until the scholar was taut between them. His chest went tight. His muscles screamed. Ready to split down the middle.
Ezra tried to summon the same power he’d channeled into the mirrors, but the agony was too distracting.
Vincent knew how to make him bleed. The magician might have already torn him in two, if he wasn’t so enamored with the Heka-ib. He’d managed to wrench the wand out of Ezra’s hands, and he was still twisting it, taking in the many magical symbols engraved into the ivory.
“It felt like this, when I found the Grail.” Reverence laced his voice.
He ran his fingers down to the tusk’s sharpest tip.
“It had grown inside an old yew tree, if you can believe it. I had to hack the whole thing apart to reach the cup…” His eyes were too blue when he stared back up at Ezra.
“I’m sorry, Bright. I need to bring back my king. And I need a body.”
Ezra tried to thrash, tried to rage, as the magician brought the wand tip to the bare skin at the hollow of his throat. It dragged down like a lusty finger, to the point where his top button parted.
Vincent wasn’t going to tear Ezra in two.
The man was gutting him.
And the more Ezra Bright fought, the deeper the sphinxes’ fangs sank. More blood began to rain to the floor.
A giant CRACK thundered through the room.