18. Hale
Hale
Ihit the floor beside her before she can fold in on herself.
The sight of her crying splits me open. I can handle blood, pain, rage, threats, all of it. But Asha—Ana—on the ground in front of the body she’s been clawing her way back to, broken by the fact that she can’t take it yet, is a sight I can’t handle.
I pull her against my chest. She fights for half a second, then her fists clutch my shirt hard enough to strain the fabric.
The basin pulses again. Mist rolls over the rim, reaching for her like it wants to drag her back in by grief alone. I throw fire at it. White-gold flame tears across the floor between Ana and the basin, and the mist recoils.
It can learn not to fuck with me.
She shudders. The words hurt her more than the fall through shadow did. I feel it through the bond. It’s loss, fury, and a deep, violent ache that doesn’t belong. It drives fire through my veins until the floor under us glows.
Tobin steps closer to the basin. Magic trembles around his hands, thinner than usual but still precise. “The bridge is unstable. If we retreat now, we can preserve the access point.”
Ana lifts her head from my chest. Her eyes are wet, purple and gold burning through blue. “Preserve it? I’m not leaving me here.”
“You aren’t taking you either,” Tobin says, and for once he doesn’t soften it with arrogance. “Not until we understand what SilverGate will do when your chaos moves fully back into that body.”
“Possibly ejection, or worse,” I mutter.
“It can try,” she growls.
“It can, and it fucking will,” I say, keeping her pinned to me because if she crawls towards that basin again, I’ll lose every scrap of control I’ve got left.
“You’re not fighting an academy corridor or some smug professor.
You’re fighting two realms, a void, a dead-god record, and whatever Yseld left behind. Pick the battle you can win.”
Her fingers dig into my shirt. “Don’t talk sense at me. It’s disgusting.”
“Agreed. So stop making me do it.” I grin down at her, and I see the smile in her eyes, even if she would rather die than admit it. She’s falling for me, and I will wait patiently impatient until she tells me to my face she can’t live without me.
Leith moves to the edge of my fire line. His magic spreads low, testing the mist where it recoils from my flames. The basin answers him with a dark ripple, and his shoulders go rigid.
“It knows her,” he says.
Ana laughs once, raw and vicious. “It had better.”
“No,” Leith says. “Not the body. The Well.”
Tobin’s silver lattice tightens around the basin. “Explain quickly.”
Leith keeps his attention fixed on the mist. “The Well isn’t guarding her body. It’s waiting for her to decide which claim she accepts.”
Ana goes still against me.
“What claims?” I ask, though I already know enough to dread the answer.
“SilverGate. StormGate. The bond.”
“The bond isn’t a claim,” she says lightly. Too lightly.
I look down at her. “Oh, yes, it is.”
Her glare hits me hard enough to make my fire jump. “Don’t sound pleased about it.”
“I’m not pleased the death puddle gets a vote.”
“No one is, dear,” she says with an eye roll and then turns to look at her body.
“I want my body back.” She says it through gritted teeth, tight enough to give her a headache.
She pulls out of my grip, and I let her go, ready to jump into action if she launches herself at her body.
“I want my body back, and I’m done fucking about,” she says to it, getting to her feet.
I follow her, curious where she is going with this. I’ve seen this determination on my mother, and she always gets her own way. It makes me realise that this isn’t a game. Asha—Ana—really isn’t fucking about.
“Give us a way into StormGate,” I say. “That is the only way this ends.”
The basin ripples, and Ana’s body opens her eyes to stare at me. “You love me,” she purrs.
I give a long blink as I sniff back my annoyance. “So?”
“So you are a fool.”
“Maybe, but you are just a shell without her in it.” I gesture to Ana standing next to me.
“You want her back? You want your chaos back? Tell us the fuck how to open the way to StormGate. Now. Or this ends here. SilverGate will destroy her, and you will be suspended in that Well for eternity.” I shove my hands in my pockets and blow out a breath through my teeth.
“Doesn’t sound so fun, but, hey, that’s just me. ”
“Insolent,” she hisses.
“And you are a bitch. Now that we’ve established what we all already know, stop being the cartoon villain and start helping her. Start helping us.”
Ana’s real body stares at me through the mist, and for one insane second, I feel like I’m being judged by the same woman twice.
Not ideal.
The fragile one beside me looks ready to murder me for negotiating with her body without permission. The powerful one in the basin, who is more beautiful than I could’ve imagined, looks ready to flay my soul because I called her a shell.
I regret nothing.
Tobin makes a quiet sound behind me. “That was either brilliant or catastrophically stupid.”
Ana steps forward, gold light flickering beneath her skin. “He’s right.”
I turn my head towards her. “You might want to say that again. Slowly. With admiration.”
“Don’t push your luck, hellhound.” Her eyes stay on the figure beneath the mist. “He’s right. You’re not me. Not without what’s in here.” She taps her chest. “And I’m not me without you. So we can keep glaring at each other, or we can burn this problem to the ground together.”
The body in the basin goes still.
The mist thickens over her face, then thins again. Her eyes burn pure blue now. Ancient, vicious, crowned power stares out at us.
And for one tiny second that I will deny to my grave, I feel fear.
I didn’t really know what to expect from her real form. It wasn’t this. I’ve known powerful people. My mother is the ruler of Hell. But this—her—she is something else altogether.
She is a goddess. Plain and simple.
“He knows fear,” she says with a wicked smile “Keep him. He’s clever.”
“Fear,” I scoff as I baulk at her. “Fucking rude. I’ll give you awestruck.”
“Then you are a liar.”
“The last creature who called me a liar to my face is currently in recovery at home,” I say, making an exaggerated sad face. “Didn’t turn out as well as he’d hoped.”
“Oh, I like you,” she says. “Definitely a keeper.”
“Fucking hell,” Ana mutters next to me. “Why don’t you two get a fucking room?”
“Oh, we will,” I say, turning to her and reaching out to grip her chin lightly. “You will return to your body, and we will fuck until you break me.”
Ana’s eyes go darker, her breath heavier. “Now that’s how you turn me on, princey.”
“See? I know you.” I brush my lips over hers and then turn my head back to the body. “Entrance to StormGate. Now.”
She purses her lips and looks away in mock-annoyance. “I don’t know the exact location, but I’m guessing it’s where I landed when I was exiled.”
“The courtyard,” we all say together.
“No,” I say, shaking my head after a beat and pointing up. “Above the courtyard. You hit the deck pretty hard.”
“The cycle must be right,” the body says, suddenly earnest, which is more terrifying than any threat.
“The cycle?” Ana asks, moving closer, but not enough to make me pull her back.
Her real body’s attention slides to her. “Eclipse.”
She breathes out next to me. “Of course! You fucking idiot!”
“Huh? Use more words?”
“The Eclipse Throne,” she says. “My seat of power.”
“If the entrance is tied to her fall, it may only open during an eclipse cycle,” Tobin murmurs with that look on his face that means he is ten steps ahead.
“Any clue?” Ana asks.
The body shrugs.
Ana clenches her fist at herself in the basin. “I swear to fuck, I’m insufferable.”
“You really are,” I say.
She elbows me in the ribs without looking away.
“If the cycle is soon, SilverGate’s impatience makes sense. It can feel the gate aligning,” Tobin says, although I don’t think he’s talking to any of us.
Leith’s magic withdraws from the mist and coils back beneath his skin. “Which means Yseld can feel it too.”
“Which means shit is about to hit the fan,” I drawl.
“When has it not since I got here?” Ana asks, slipping her hand into mine and giving it a squeeze. She mouths, “Thank you,” and I nearly keel over from shock.
Instead, I pull her closer. “Anything for you, Anaxandra.”
She closes her eyes and inhales slowly, deeply. “Say it again.”
“Anaxandra.”
“Gods, this is sickening,” the body remarks.
“Gods, I can’t wait until she is back inside you and I can rail you so hard, your eyes will pop.”
“Big talk,” the body says and shuts up as Ana giggles.
“Eclipse. We need to figure out when there is one,” Tobin interrupts and turns on his heel to march out of the chamber, except there is nowhere to go. We fell from somewhere above us,
“Hey, genius?” I call out. “Where exactly do you think you’re going?”
“To create a door that will get us out of here. Are you going to lend me your power, or are we going to stay down here forever and miss the only chance in a millennium or more to get Ana back in her true form?”
“That’s a very specific timescale,” I say, pulling Ana towards Tobin as Leith follows.
“This is SilverGate. It’s dark constantly with the moon in the sky, if you hadn’t fucking noticed,” he snaps. “How often do you think the sun, or a sun, comes around?”
“Fair point,” I mutter. “You don’t have to be a dick about it.”
Tobin gives me a look over his shoulder. “I’m exhausted, underfed, and standing in a bone cathedral beneath a sentient academy with a goddess’s spare body offering commentary from a basin. I’m allowed to be a dick.”
Ana makes a considering noise. “He has a point.”
“You’re meant to be on my side,” I say.
“I am. That doesn’t make him wrong.”
Leith steps past us and places his palm against the nearest wall. Death magic spreads over the bone and glass, searching for anything useful. The chamber reacts badly. Violet haze gathers overhead, then tightens into a slow-turning spiral.
The basin ripples behind us.
“Fine. I guess nearly being eaten by a filing cabinet and a god puddle today made someone tetchy.”
“I didn’t almost get eaten,” Tobin says, raising his hands towards the darkness above us. Silver light sparks between his fingers, then flickers. “I was assessed.”
“By a murder room,” Ana says with a sage nod.
“Classification room.”
“It’s like he thinks the difference matters,” I stage-whisper to her.
She snorts.
“Would you two shut up?” Leith mutters. His magic crawls across the bone and glass, searching for seams. “There was a threshold above the pool. It may still exist.”
“Great,” I say. “Let’s knock.”