Chapter 40
Phyllis was on her knees, doubled over in agony, but still, she didn’t move, absorbing every ounce of Tarquinius’s destructive magic without retreating an inch. She held her ground, buying Nocta the time he needed to gather everything into one final, devastating surge.
Tarquinius winced, his face going pale as Nocta’s power slammed into him. His knees buckled, and he crumpled to the stone floor, twitching. The golden prison around Opie shattered and she, too, dropped to the floor as he clutched Excalibur close to his chest and erected a shield around himself.
And then another.
And another.
How long he could maintain them in this state, I didn’t know, but right now, all I could think of was getting to Opie. My pulse thundered in my ears as she met my gaze, her eyes steely.
“Opie?”
“Harlow! I need to speak . . . before it’s too late,” Nocta muttered, his voice weak.
I turned toward him as he dragged a motionless Phyllis onto his lap, tears streaming down his pale face.
I scrambled over to them, dropping to my knees. “Phyllis! I’m so sorry!”
Her lashes fluttered as she reached for my hand and squeezed. “No regrets, dear. Don’t . . . blame yourself.”
I looked to Ellie and she took a step forward, bringing a shaking Fable with her.
“She cannot help,” Nocta said. “And she would likely burn out if she tried.”
Opie knelt in one corner, arms wrapped around her waist, eyes devoid of emotion.
My heart felt like it was going to explode as I tried to figure out where to go . . . who to help first.
“It’s too late . . . for either one of us, daughter.” Nocta pulled Phyllis closer, cradling her against his chest. “We’re beyond healing. I think we have been for a long time, aye love?”
Phyllis managed a weak smile.
“What do you mean?” I demanded.
“I held on until you were ready to take the reins, but I’ve expended so much of my life force keeping my house alive . . . I’m out of time.”
Malena’s harsh laugh echoed across the chamber. Typhon moved closer, but Malena stepped back with a twisted smile of satisfaction.
“Never thought it’d be so easy,” she spat. “Whoever said revenge isn’t sweet obviously never tasted something like this.”
I glared at her, but Nocta’s harsh whisper pulled me back to him. “Harlow, pay attention now.”
I leaned closer, my vision blurring. “Father . . .”
“You must finish what I started. Free magic. End tyranny. Tear down the Weave.” He slipped something into my hand. I took a quick glance at the dark blue card covered in gold designs. A golden egg in the middle. A sword. Dragon. Two words at the bottom. The Path. And the number 23 at the top.
I swallowed hard, my chest tight, clutching the card he’d given me. “How?”
Nocta’s breathing hitched, coughs racking his weakened frame. “You have my journal. Inside lies another piece of the Grym Dunaras.”
“How do I open it?”
“You already know the answer to that, my heart. I showed you years ago . . .”
I opened my mouth again to ask what he meant and then snapped it shut. The bravery rune. It was the bravery rune all along.
“Then, you need to find a man named John Rahl. He’ll tell you the rest.”
“John Rahl,” I repeated, committing it to memory. “I will. I promise. Please . . . don’t go yet. I have so many things I need to ask you . . .”
All these years, thinking he was our enemy, only for him to die right after I learned the truth?
“You will find many of the answers you seek in my diary. And remember, death isn’t the end for us, my child. I will see you on the other side, through the Aetherwoven.”
He smiled and looked down at Phyllis as he tightened his hold on her, pulling her closer in a final embrace. The room shifted, and the fallen bodies of the Neverthorn Nine began to glow.
I watched in stunned silence as their bodies dissolved, the remnants of magic within them flowing together in a riot of brilliant, ghostly energy. It flickered, swirling around Nocta and Phyllis. Where the bodies had been a moment earlier, only lingering streaks of light remained.
Nocta brushed a lock of hair from Phyllis’ face as she lifted a trembling hand to touch his cheek.
“My love . . . I never stopped hoping . . .” Phyllis whispered.
She let out a final, ragged breath and the pair of them dissolved into another stream of light. It danced in the air for a moment, swirling with the one left by the Neverthorn Nine, then blinked out of existence.
I covered my mouth to stifle a sob as Typhon stepped closer, his face filled with sorrow. “I’m so sorry . . .”
I swiped the tears from my face and pushed myself to my feet, a sense of resolve closing over me.
“Harlow!”
Marina’s sharp cry caught my attention, and I jerked around just in time to see the shield around Tarquinius tremble and shake.
One by one, each of the layers shot through with cracks, and then finally snapped.
I looked to see if it was Typhon’s doing, but there was no shadowy dragon coiled around Tarquinius.
“It’s the sword,” Typhon muttered, lifting his hands in preparation to fire as another layer of protection snapped away. “It’s too strong for him to wield. I think we’ve got him!”
He was right. It wasn’t that we’d managed to break through Tarquinius’s shields.
It was that the old man couldn’t control Excalibur well enough to hold them together.
His hands and fingers spasmed as if the weight of the magical blade was too much to bear.
Sweat poured down his wizened cheeks, sliding through the wrinkles like tiny rivers through fleshy canyons.
“Hold!” I called to the others who had heard Typhon, and all stood ready to fire as well. “Hold,” I repeated softly, shaking with the effort of keeping myself in check.
Tarquinius’s gaze flickered from one of us to the next and it was almost as if I sensed his intention before he moved, lifting the sword, abandoning any attempt at defending himself.
He wasn’t going to stay and fight us all. He was going to disappear. We’d lose him and the sword.
“No!” I launched myself at him in a rush, firing rune after rune in his direction, not even giving myself time to use a power boost.
I couldn’t let him get away, not after all he’d done to the people I loved.
Either I was going to kill this motherfucker here and now or die trying.
“I think not, Ms. Daygon, I am quite done with you,” Tarquinius smiled, his eyes so wide and dilated I wondered if he was even seeing me.
I dropped to my knees and slid closer as I pulled on my Quirk and spun my door-busting rune. With a scream, I threw it at him, at the same time that he pointed the tip of Excalibur at me, whipping it hard to the left.
Like he was swinging a baseball bat at my head.
I might as well have not cast the rune for all the good it did.
The power of Excalibur slammed into me. My forward momentum halted completely, and my head snapped to one side as I was jerked off my feet, flying across the room. A blur of faces, over the bodies of the Dwimmers.
It was like getting snatched out of thin air by an unseen iron fist and hurled across the room.
Flashes of my friends.
The horror etched on Opie’s face as she reached for me.
Gary was on his knees, mouth open.
Typhon . . . he was the last one I saw. The others were screaming, shouting.
But Typhon’s eyes consumed me, as if his Quirk had reached into me and taken hold. I would hit the wall so hard, my back would break, my skull would shatter. There would be no time for Ellie to heal me. We both knew it.
He could have bellowed my name, but he didn’t. Typhon whispered my name as if we were side by side, his mouth against my ear, his skin against mine, his hands cupping my face.
“Harlow.”
“Typhon.”
A world was said in only two names. Of all the things that would never be. I couldn’t close my eyes – I wanted him to be the last thing I saw of this world.
The heavy blow against the cement never came.
There was Typhon and then there was a flash of purple, a feeling as if I were passing through cellophane, a thick snick as I hit something soft and oozing, then I was falling, tumbling through shadows and darkness, the smell of sulfur burning my nose, an icy cold closing over me.
This was death? Where was my mother to greet me?
Had I been scammed out of even a good afterlife? Where was my silver lining for everything I’d been through?
I hit something scaled and large, and yelped as my arm was slashed open. “Fuck!”
Well . . . at least my rune gag was gone?
But if I wasn’t dead . . . where the hell was I? Oh shit.
With sudden, horrifying, unreal clarity, I knew exactly what had happened, why I hadn’t hit the cement wall, why I wasn’t dead . . . and worse? Where I was headed.
Tarquinius had sent me to the place where murder and mayhem ruled the day and chaos reigned supreme. Where magic was dark and wild, where there were no rules to contain it or the monsters that lurked.
I hurtled through the Weave like a comet, straight into the nightmare that was Everdark . . .
Alone.