Chapter Forty Two
HIMMEL
Grogginess Himmel had never experienced before swelled through her head. The heavy weight lolled from side to side, making her feel nearly useless. If her soul depended on it, she could not lift her eyelids. A heavy force pressed on them far stronger than herself.
She struggled to recall what happened. It had been eons since she felt this worn out. Did she crash into a ship? It happened once, after she became Arcanist. But . . . no, this was entirely different.
Had she attempted to cross into the sea and slammed into a protective arcane wall? Also unlikely.
A pained cry brought her around.
Himmel’s eyes flew open. Attempts to become the wind and blow out of this area met with failure—she was not incorporeal.
Her human form dominated, which was strange enough.
She tried to wiggle her fingers, but failed.
She could barely swivel her neck. Her cheeks and lips moved enough to allow discussion, but little else. Everything ached.
A cursory examination led her to glance to the left, the right, the middle.
Swirling darkness coated a dim room, replete with shelves and illuminated glass jars.
So many shelves on every side. Hints of salt, seaweed, and sand expanded through her nose.
This must be the Hall of the Sea. The dim enclosure felt claustrophobic and cold, despite its massive size.
Himmel seemed to be in the middle of a perfect circle brightened by gleaming reliquaries.
Reliquaries.
Her mind hiccuped over the realization. She never thought she’d lay her eyes on something as sacred and protected as a soul.
A reliquary directly in front of her shone a brilliant amethyst that faded to blackest onyx, then flared with crimson streaks.
The hues rippled through a variant palette, always an offshoot of purple or red.
The arcane protected these precious vessels.
But why would Onskar bring her here?
A groan to her left jarred her from the focused trance, resembling the initial cry that woke her. She sucked in a breath through her nose, immediately scenting the air. Earth. Growing things.
“Himmel.” Jordaire moaned. “Are you awake?”
She spun her head, but her neck wouldn’t move far.
“Jordaire?”
“Who else?” he groused. “It’s about time you woke up.”
“What are you doing here?”
“Couldn’t let you take him down alone.”
A deranged urge to laugh swelled from deep in her gut. Take him down? Would either of them defeat Onskar? She dragged her gaze around, unable to move much. The same horrendous weight pressed on her from without, restricting the simplest of movements. A suppressive arcane wall, perhaps?
She glimpsed far enough to the side to see Jordaire. They both stood upright, propped by arcane. Blood slashed his face. One eye was swollen shut and his bottom lip was split.
“What happened to you?”
“Punishment,” he bit out. Each phrase was a grunt. “For seeking the false diasvard against his wishes and helping you and Pedr. He . . . beat me to the edge of death . . . and stopped the arcane from . . . healing me.”
“Bastid.”
He grunted. Himmel strained to see him from the corner of her eyes, but nothing further revealed. Onskar probably didn’t want them to see each other. She had a feeling Jordaire’s injuries were more extensive than she thought.
“This is the Hall of the Sea, isn’t it?” she whispered.
Jordaire didn’t bother curbing his volume.
“Isn’t it obvious? That bastid brought us to the Hall of the Sea to toy with us.
He’s drawing Mila here.” He cackled, and she noted the hidden hint of madness within.
“Mila is on her way to win Pedr’s soul back and Onskar’s going to use us as leverage against her.
” Jordaire’s amusement turned almost hysterical.
“She’s too soft! She’ll never make it. He knows that. He knows it!”
Jordaire howled with laughter.
Himmel flinched. She would describe Mila in many ways, but soft didn’t quite fit the picture. Mila had a gentle side, certainly. But Mila squared up to many should-be-impossible situations and came out the other side.
Scrappy worked better. Not that it mattered. No amount of scrappiness would lead Mila to success.
All hilarity dropped from Jordaire’s screeching giggles. “We’re doomed,” he lamented. “Doomed, I tell you!”
Himmel opened her mouth to disagree, but stopped short. Weren’t they? Jordaire had always been dramatic, but maybe this situation deserved a little drama.
“Then we’re doomed together,” she concluded.
“Together!” he cried, tittering. “Yes, Himmel. Yes, we’re together. With any luck, he’ll obliterate our souls, have too much loose arcane, and obliterate himself.” Jordaire tipped his head back and screamed with mirth.
Himmel forced her rising hysteria to the side. They couldn’t both lose their heads. Whatever Jordaire might believe, obliteration hadn’t arrived yet. She didn’t doubt Mila, Einar, and Pedr approached, which gave her a potential opportunity to be useful. She had to start with the facts.
“Jordaire?”
His breathy reply sounded weak and normal in the aftermath of his wildness.
“Yes?”
“How are we here?”
“What do you mean?”
“We couldn’t enter our own Halls, and we’re not supposed to enter other Halls either. So how are we here?”
The question shook him out of a dazed stupor. Blinking, he slowly said, “I don’t know. I hadn’t thought about it.”
Himmel warmed to this line of questioning, recalling Onskar’s defensive reply earlier, when she mentioned other arcane discrepancies.
What had he said about arcane rules and power?
Something important. Very important. Every little nuance of supposed arcane law would matter at an exponential rate here.
Inspiration struck.
She remembered.
“Jordaire,” she hissed, “Onskar said that arcane had rules and that he didn’t control most of them.” She spoke steadily, logically, despite her surge of excitement. If Onskar didn’t control the arcane rules, didn’t that work in their favor?
“Okaaaay.”
“Which means he controls some of the rules. Which ones?”
“What does it matter?”
“Go with it!” she snapped.
Growling, he snapped back, “Fine! If you want to discuss control, you have to discuss abilities. You only control to the extent you are able. For example, I don’t control the sky nor the wind, yes?”
“Yes.”
“So Onskar controls anything with a soul, which is everything.”
She frowned, tangled between logic and pain. Maybe this wouldn’t help. Jordaire pressed on, his brow heavy over his eyes. “Though . . . control is a misnomer here. Consider the Arcanists as a collective. What do we control?”
Himmel replied immediately with, “The arcane.”
“No, we control our implementation of arcane abilities, and only that. For the most part, the arcane obeys us, particularly when we command. Sometimes?”
“It doesn’t?”
“Correct. Why?”
“No idea.”
“Me either,” he admitted, his upper lip curled, “but that’s another aberration. Another variance of the law that Onskar has never explained.”
“Noted.”
On a roll now, Jordaire continued with short, gasping breaths. “As the Arcanist of Souls, he holds the majority of arcane power, which means he operates by a different rulebook.”
“Does he?”
“Of course he does!”
“By whose admission?”
“His own.”
“Have you heard it from anyone else?”
Jordaire paused, as if confused by the switch in their back-and-forth. Finally, he asked, “Who would contradict him?”
“Exactly.”
He faltered. He opened his mouth, closed it again. “Where are you going with this, Himmel? What’s the point of discussing the arcane and control of it?”
“What if everything Onskar told us is a lie? Or some of it is a lie, and the lies are the important parts?”
The question seeped into Jordaire’s expression slowly. His cheeks became limp, brow heavy, lips parted. He blinked, dragged his eyes to meet hers. She could barely make out his astonishment when he slowly whispered, “It could be. What if it is?”
“Then there’s a chance.”
“Of what?”
“Defeating him. If the arcane doesn’t work the way we believed all these years, he may not be in control. We simply have to exploit and test.” She added carefully, “There is hope.”
Jordaire surprised her with a solemn brevity and a single nod. “A very, very small chance.”
“It’s better than nothing.”
A slamming door reverberated through the Hall of the Sea, commanding their attention.
Himmel’s body tensed beneath the restrictive arcane blanket.
Jordaire bared his teeth, jaw taut as a wire, when Onskar strode into view between the ghostly shelves.
Himmel thought she saw a flicker of movement behind Onskar.
A dashing foot, silent cloak, but her mind surely played tricks on her.
Onskar slowed his approach, reached for a reliquary, and adjusted it on the shelf.
When he touched it, the interior blazed a shocking farrago of colors.
He nudged a second, a third, a fourth. The pointless ministrations, no doubt meant to exude his control and freedom, bought Himmel a moment to scrutinize him.
He appeared lackluster in the low light.
Only trapped souls illuminated the room, making it difficult to discern his expression.
Onskar had two modes—livid and bland. He rarely betrayed emotion between the pathetic range.
Semidarkness sculpted his thin cheeks to razor edges, like a skeleton draped in skin.
He spun on his heel to face them, smiling with all his teeth in a near-perfect imitation of Jordaire’s aggressive snarl.
“You’re awake.” He inclined his head, paused at the bottom, and straightened with dramatic flourish.
“How lovely. I could hear you growling halfway through Elestra, Jordaire. You’ve never been subtle, not for a moment.
Forgive my absence, will you?” His brow rose in theatrical apology.
“I was doing my work as an Arcanist and sorting a few souls. They are needy, aren’t they? ”
He stopped a few paces away, eyeing Himmel. “You do look worse for wear, Himmel.”
She said nothing. His study roved to Jordaire, whom he regarded with growing disdain. “Jordaire, you stubborn brute, have you learned your lesson? Fighting me is futile.”
Jordaire snapped his teeth in a biting motion that reverberated.
Onskar laughed.
“Well, you’re both here. Welcome.” Onskar reached up, brushed dust from his shoulder, and straightened his sleeves. That finished, he brought his fingertips together in front of him and stared between Himmel and Jordaire. “I have already read your souls while you were unconscious. Very revealing.”
Himmel’s nose twitched. The bastid. She knew such would happen, but the idea of his lecherous mind rooting through hers made her skin crawl with revulsion. Onskar paused, drew a breath through his nose, swirled around to encompass the inner circle, and paused.
“I smell . . . defeat. Desperation. Is that . . .” He paused, took several sharp, successive breaths, and let it out in a dramatic swoosh. “ . . . hope? Himmel, you wretched thing. Do you still have hope?”
“Not with the likes of Mila coming for us,” Jordaire groused. His previous expression cleared entirely, returning him to the cantankerous old man from before. “We’re all doomed! She can’t do a thing with the arcane.”
Onskar rolled his eyes, waved a hand. “Yes, yes, you dramatic and worthless bag of bones. Shut up.”
“Pathetic!” Jordaire shouted. “She’s pathetic! She’ll never set us free, and then what?”
Determination filled Jordaire’s vitriol, as if he must say it. As if he spewed the venom on purpose.
Understanding clicked.
Himmel almost laughed. How hadn’t she seen it before?
Of course Jordaire ragged on Mila. This wasn’t Jordaire’s foul temper at work, but strategy.
He foreshadowed Mila as a sheltered mess.
The act was an attempt to keep his emotions disbelieving and irritated and hopeless, which allowed Onskar false optimism.
But if Onskar had read their souls, he would know the plan . . .
Wait . . . no.
He wouldn’t know Draven and Mila and Einar’s plan because Himmel and Jordaire didn’t know their final schemes. Only the vague idea to come to the Hall of the Sea, which Onskar knew without them. Onskar had snatched Himmel and Jordaire before the trio settled on a plan of attack.
A painful slap across the cheek startled Himmel from her thoughts. She sank into the shock that pain provided, erasing the smell of amusement that nearly rose.
“Himmel?” Onskar inquired. “Shall I slap you again, or will you listen to me now?”
She mumbled something.
“What do you have to say for yourself?” Onskar asked, ticking each sound through his gritted teeth.
“Nothing.”
“Tell me about Mila!”
Himmel met him stare-for-stare. “I thought you read my soul?”
Maniacal fire brightened his eyes before a closed fist slammed into her cheek. A crack reverberated underneath her nose, exploding into her head. She didn’t benefit from lost consciousness, the way a human might. The pain overcame her.
“Say it again, Himmel!” he shrieked.
Suppressing the sobs only expanded the agony. She half-mumbled, half-blubbered, “Jordaire . . . he’s right!”
Onskar’s voice pitched higher.
“About what?”
The pain receded enough to think. Onskar must have used the arcane to retract it a little. If he read their souls, why inquire? Maybe he didn’t read their souls, or couldn’t see Mila. Himmel gathered her courage.
It’s just pain, she told herself. Just a sensation, like sneezing. It’ll fade.
She gasped out with infused reluctance, “Mila is . . . kind. She never thinks of harming . . . anyone. She’s experienced so little. Her obsession is . . . Pedr.” Every word of it was true.
Onskar sniffed.
“Hmm . . .”
He studied Himmel before slinking to a shelf. In a toneless voice, he said, “How very sad for all of you,” while staring at the closest reliquary.
The reliquary had an oblong shape. Twisted like reaching strands of seaweed infused by rigid lightning. The hues within had a garish effulgence. They changed from deepest emerald to lightest yellow to burnt orange in seconds, flashing like a mad thing. His fingertips hovered above it.
“I brought you here to teach all of you a lesson,” he said quietly, eyes locked on the roving soul within. “Pedr, most of all, though each of you has violated all my rules. I cannot abide such rebellion. Not with . . .”
He cut short, voice tightening. “My displeasure knows no bounds. After this moment, I will release the anchors to your souls. You shall lose consciousness, and awake in the same position, but feeling very different.”
He cut a slotted glance over his shoulder, staring right at Himmel. His lips curled up in a sly smile.
“Have a good nap.”