29. Tobin #2
“They released her when you touched her. The system thinks you’re authorised.”
“It’s trying to tear me apart.”
“SilverGate does that to everyone. Give it an order.”
A hand closes around my ankle.
I kick hard and wrench free, but three more rise under me. Pale fingers catch and pull. I throw a strike of silver magic downwards. It dies against the water before reaching them.
Useless.
Hale keeps Asha against him with one arm while fighting off the dead with the other. He drives his fist into a face, but the thing doesn’t react. Its head snaps back. Its hands keep reaching for Leith.
“Do it now,” Hale snarls.
Leith shuts his eyes.
The temperature drops. Cold slices through the chamber and locks every muscle in my body for one brutal second. Black current spreads from Leith beneath the surface in widening veins.
The dead freeze.
Every pale hand stops reaching. The silver in their eyes stutters while Leith’s power forces its way through the suppression current and into whatever binds them below.
“Release,” he says.
Nothing happens.
Blood runs from his nose and drops into the water.
“Leith,” I warn.
His eyes open. They’ve gone black from edge to edge. “Release her.”
The command hits the chamber with enough force to shake the walls.
The dead drop.
They plunge beneath the surface all at once, dragged back into the stone by his current. Silver channels burst along the walls. Cracks race through them as black magic consumes the spell from within.
The pull towards the centre stops.
My magic floods back so violently that silver light explodes from my hands.
I don’t waste it.
I push through the water and seize Asha from Hale. “Hold her level.”
He adjusts his hold on her, and I press my palm to her sternum and drive a controlled current into her chest. Not enough to burn. Enough to force the muscles to react.
Her body jerks.
Silver power snaps through her, precise and vicious. Hale keeps her steady while Leith controls the dead below us with black current still bleeding from his hands.
“Come on,” I mutter. “You don’t get to leave through the wrong gate.”
I send a third pulse into her chest.
Asha convulses and coughs water across Hale’s face.
Relief tears through me hard enough to leave me lightheaded.
She drags in a ragged breath and coughs again, her body bucking between us.
Hale says her name with enough force to make it an accusation.
She opens her eyes. Confusion clouds the blue for one second before fury clears it.
“You drowned,” I say.
Asha wipes water from her face. “That was not fun.”
“You were dead.”
“I’ve been dead before.”
Hale’s arm tightens around her waist. “Don’t say that.”
She looks at him and seems to register the panic he hasn’t managed to conceal. Her expression shifts, losing some of its irritation.
“I’m alive now.”
“That isn’t the fucking point.”
“It’s the only point that matters,” Leith says.
Blood still runs from his nose. The black current beneath the water trembles, and the silver channels along the chamber walls begin to flare again.
His control won’t hold for long.
“We need to get out,” I say. “Preferably before the dead decide authority is temporary.”
Asha coughs again and clutches Hale’s shirt. “A door would be lovely.”
“There.” Leith nods towards the opposite side of the chamber.
A vertical seam has appeared in the wall where one of the silver channels ruptured. Purple light pulses behind it, dim but unmistakable.
The book dropped us into a pit full of dead creatures before showing us where it went. Asha was right. It is a pain.
“We need to cross,” I say.
Hale looks at Asha. “Can you swim?”
“I can rule entire kingdoms.”
“That wasn’t the question.”
She gives him a murderous look, but her grip remains locked in his shirt.
He moves her onto his back and hooks her arms over his shoulders. She clings to him without complaint, which tells me more about her condition than the coughing does.
Leith starts towards the seam. The black current follows him beneath the surface, keeping the dead pinned to the chamber floor. Each movement costs him. Blood streaks his chin now, and his face has gone pale.
I swim beside him. “You need to release the current gradually.”
“Thank you, Tobin. I hadn’t considered not killing myself.”
“Can the dead be killed?”
His stare promises a grim response later.
We reach the seam as the silver channels flare again.
The dead stir beneath us.
“Open it,” Hale says.
“With what?” Leith asks, voice strained. “My winning personality?”
Asha lifts her head from Hale’s shoulder. Water streams from her hair, and her face has gone pale. “Put my marked hand against it.”
“No,” Hale says.
She raises that hand anyway. Gold and purple lines glow beneath her skin, faint at first, then brighter as we approach the wall.
“The gate brought us here,” she says. “It wants me to touch it.”
“It also drowned you,” Hale growls.
“Details.”
I move in before they start arguing properly. “Hold her closer to the seam. I’ll shield her from the suppression current.”
“My magic is back,” Hale says, shifting Asha closer.
She reaches over his shoulder and presses her palm to the vertical break.
Purple light erupts.
The wall splits with a violent crack. Water rushes towards the opening, dragging all four of us with it. I throw a binding around Leith’s waist before the current tears him away, then catch the edge of the doorway with my free hand.
We are shunted through the opening with enough force to rattle bones, and then we hit something.