Chapter Thirty-Six
My gut twists, but there’s little time to think about the fall before we’ve made impact with the ground. A sharp pain shoots up my tailbone, and it feels as if my leg has been ripped in half, but when I blink through the haze of smoke, I see that I’m still in one piece.
With one hand, Henry attempts to hold the fire at bay, forming a wall of flames on every side, and with the other, he struggles to help me to my feet. But it’s no use.
I can’t tell if I’m dizzy from the lack of oxygen or the loss of blood. Probably both.
I hardly feel his touch as Henry hoists me into his arms and carries me through the jungle—the jungle, where the fire continues to spread, not the beach. Why aren’t we headed toward the beach?
“Underlings!” he hisses. “Too many of them. We’ll need to—” He coughs, wheezes. “We’ll need to find another way out.”
He stumbles, his entire body vibrating from the effort it takes to keep the fire from engulfing us.
A few times, the flames lash out and he whimpers, but he never stops moving.
I struggle to force my eyes open, but Henry keeps shouting at me through gritted teeth, urging me to stay awake.
I’m not sure how long he can continue like this.
I can feel the inferno pressing in as Henry taps the last drop of Manan from his veins.
He stumbles, and I know, as we lurch forward, that we may never get up again.
We land in a clearing near a cluster of homes on the outskirts of Ember.
My vision tilts as I throw myself over Henry’s body, checking for his pulse. It beats steadily at his throat.
His eyelids flutter, and he wheezes. “I guess—we’re—even,” he says just before he loses consciousness once more, and a sob escapes my lips like a strangled imitation of laughter.
We’ve escaped the roar of the fire that consumes the Pearl only to be met with a new form of terror in the jungles of Ember.
And we’re not alone.
Bodies litter the undergrowth, limbs strewn haphazardly about the jungle floor. Blood splashes the leaves, sprays the tree trunks, washing everything crimson. At the center of the carnage, a Gore turns to face us, a leg dangling from its jaws.
I unsheathe the dagger strapped to my thigh.
The Gore laughs.
But it doesn’t advance. And a pathetic wail escapes my lips when I see why.
“Child of the sea,” comes a familiar, smoky voice. “We meet again.”
I would recognize the Sylk that killed Owen—the Sylk that haunted me during the months I spent at Bludgrave Manor—by its voice alone. But I’m not prepared to face the host it’s chosen to possess.
Orella stalks toward me, her crown of seashells askew, eyes gleaming red.
“No!” I cry, hot, angry tears burning my cheeks. “Let her go!” I scream. “Let her go!”
Orella cocks her head, a wicked smile curling her lips. “With pleasure.”
Shadows seep from her flesh as the Sylk departs, taking possession of a nearby corpse, and Orella’s body hits the ground with a dull thud.
I lurch to my feet, swaying, and strike at the Sylk’s new host, but I’m unsteady, and it dodges with little effort.
The corpse shakes its head, tsking. “Not quite,” comes the voice of the Sylk. “Keep trying.”
My knee buckles as I lash out, and I barely manage to stay upright. Again and again, the Sylk taunts me, evading my blows with ease. Out of the corner of my eye, the Gore makes its way toward Orella’s lifeless corpse—toward Henry, his chest rising and falling with shallow breaths.
I can’t win this fight, can’t protect them. Not like this. And the Sylk knows it. It wants me to watch. It wants me to feel helpless, just as I did during all those sleepless nights at Bludgrave Manor.
Close by, the screams of the villagers rise above the roar of the flames as the fire draws near. And it’s too loud. The Gore laughter. The screaming. The blood.
The blood.
My mind narrows on the metallic scent, sharp and sickly sweet. It’s everywhere, buzzing with Manan, eager to be tapped. The leaves. The bodies. My hands.
I try to take hold of the Manan, grasping at the invisible threads of gold dust, but I can’t distinguish the Manan in the air and in the trees from the Manan in the blood.
The Gore reaches for Henry.
And I can’t control it. The anger. The fear. The bloodlust.
A blade of crimson slices through the Gore’s thick, leathery neck.
Drip.
Blood falls from a dark storm cloud above, formed by my power as a surge of Manan floods my veins. Drip. Drip. Drip.
The Sylk stumbles backward a step, and through the haze of my vision, I note the sunken forms of the corpses surrounding us. Stars, no. I tried to grab hold of the Manan in the air to form a rain cloud. Instead, have I drained them of their blood?
Henry—I find him in an instant, covered in crimson as it rains down on the clearing. He’s unharmed.
But Orella… she looks so small, her skin ashen. Bloodless, just like the others.
I did this.
I did this.
I—
The Sylk tries to run.
It doesn’t get far. I’m there in an instant, as if propelled by the wind, my dagger thrust into the rib cage of the Sylk’s lifeless host.
“You can’t kill me, daughter of the sea,” the Sylk hisses as shadows seep from the possessed corpse. “I will come back, again and again and—”
“No,” I growl, my voice hoarse. “You won’t.”
The power of the Lightbringer gives me dominion over all creation—the darkness and the light. That which is seen, and that which is unseen. Including the shadows. Including Sylks.
I feel the Sylk’s panic, as tangible as my own heartbeat, when it realizes it’s trapped. The corpse it had inhabited falls to the ground, but the shadow—banished by the Elysian Iron of my dagger—is still here.
Because I refuse to let it go free. Not this time.
I grit my teeth, my voice like venom. “You are bound to me.”
The Sylk howls, the unnatural sound piercing my ears, but I don’t stop.
Thread by thread, the shadow unspools and slips through my fingers, until there is nothing left, and the Sylk’s shriek is lost to the sound of the bloody downpour.
“Magnificent.”
I turn to see Will propped against a tree that, for an instant, reminds me of the old oak from the conservatory at Bludgrave. He smirks, his gilded eyes twinkling with amusement, as blood drips from his eyelashes, his chin, his nose. “If only you could control this power.”
He pushes off the tree, prowls toward me with slow, methodical steps. I point the dagger at him, keeping distance between us, but he presses his chest to the tip of my blade, his expression wild with delight.
“Look at you,” he says, his gaze roving from my feet to my lips, landing finally on my eyes.
“I know you feel it—that raw, untamed power inside you. Do you see what you’re capable of with only a portion of the Lightbringer’s gift?
And you don’t even know how to use it!” He takes another step, and I feel the blade pierce his skin, but he appears unfazed.
It looks like he might even enjoy the pain. “You’re hurt.”
His eyes narrow on my leg, dripping blood onto the leaves, but even with my dagger between us, when he reaches for me, I flinch.
He sighs. “I have no reason to compel you,” he says softly. “I can help.”
“Help?” My voice cracks. “If you really want to help, give me back the Elysian Navigator! Call off this attack!”
He looks up, surveying the carnage with a detached sort of curiosity. “I will call off the attack,” he says, nodding, his eyes sparkling. “But first, I believe you still owe me an answer.”
An answer to his proposal, I realize. He can’t truly think I would ever agree to marry him after everything he’s done? After knowing, now, that he’d influenced my feelings for him—that nothing we shared was real.
I spit at his feet, my body quivering with rage. “No.”
Will cocks his head. Smirks. “No?” He almost laughs, his voice deep and husky.
“But, my darling, I brought you an engagement present.” He sweeps his hand in the direction of the beach, where I know the Deathwail draws closer to the shore by the minute.
“I’d planned to deliver the ship to you after your transformation was complete, but when you ran off like you did, I figured, why wait? ”
“How—” I try to speak but my tongue feels swollen, my head too heavy.
His jaw twitches, but his eyes are alight with a sadistic brand of mischief I never would have thought I’d see in him. “Did you think Eliza was the only one capable of cloaking a ship?”
He exhales deeply. “Join me, and I will teach you. There are no limits to what your power can do, and with my guidance—”
He’s still talking when I see the tattoo on his neck—a whorl of ink that wasn’t there before he revealed himself to be an Underling general. A kraken with ten eyes and fangs for teeth—the symbol of the Deathwail.
I remember what Will said all those months ago, when he asked me about my time on the cannibals’ ship. I felt responsible.
“It was you,” I say, digging my hands in the sand in an attempt to tether me to reality. “The Deathwail is your ship.”
The twinkle in his eyes is unmistakable.
He looks proud in a way that roils my stomach.
“The Deathwail was a weapon to be wielded,” he says, nodding slowly.
He glances at Henry, sprawled out on the ground behind me, barely breathing, and his face falls, if only for an instant.
“Henry’s capture was purely accidental. A mistake they paid for dearly.
But you…” His gaze darkens, resting on my ear, where the X marks my skin.
“They were never supposed to lay a finger on you. They knew nothing of your significance to Morana, only that you were”—he grinds his teeth—“important to me. They thought their little mutiny against me—they thought killing you—would bring them favor with Morana.”