Chapter Forty Seven
HIMMEL
The terror in Mila’s eyes was no ploy.
Bound by the arcane and without control, Himmel, in her bodily form, floated out of the recesses and right to Onskar’s side.
Not by will, but force. His power wrapped her like a sheet.
Arms tight, elbows pinched, legs bound. She couldn’t move a single appendage.
Bloody streaks dripped along the floor beneath her, radiating a crimson stain off the glossy surface. The air smelled like copper.
Jordaire, still unconscious, followed.
Sun and stars, Himmel ached. Everything hurt.
Her chest, her bones, her jaw, where rampant arcane once flowed.
Onskar unanchored her immediately after crunching his arcane-infused fist into her face; from this, she wouldn’t heal.
The agony of every blink, thought, knew no bounds.
Himmel barely had the energy to meet Mila’s eyes.
Mila mouthed, “Himmel?”
All of Himmel’s hopes fled. No sign of Einar. No shred of hope in Mila’s eyes. Had they truly thrown her into the wild dog pit after all? Had they no plan? Himmel couldn’t sense arcane power use from Mila. The poor woman, cast before Onskar, without a prayer of survival.
Obliteration awaited.
“Himmel,” Onskar said, his voice reverberating through the Hall, “did me the great favor of revealing all that she knew. Most souls cannot fight me, as you know, and her memories revealed your weakness, Mila. Your utter lack of arcane ability. It’s interesting that you didn’t try to hide it from me. Not a little.”
Mila shrank back, trembling fingers reaching for her mouth. “Himmel,” she cried, her voice a gasp, “I . . . I didn’t know you were here!”
Voice as trapped as the rest of her, Himmel could only blink. She hoped her expression imparted understanding, forgiveness.
“Of course you didn’t,” Onskar crooned with dramatic condolences. “Sweet, sheltered Mila, unable to use the arcane. I don’t need to read your soul to know that you lack the ruthlessness your mother hoped for. Imagine the great disappointment you must have been.”
A flash of hurt appeared in Mila’s eyes.
Himmel smelled the resulting wound his words caused, the sadness.
Granted, Himmel knew Mila better than most. Her winds assisted Mila on her first escape from the Queens, tracking their progress before Pedr’s curse.
Memories Onskar might have seen when he riffled through Himmel’s soul.
He would notice only Mila’s failings, her weaknesses.
Mila had been eager to prove herself, ready to learn, before she met Pedr. Since then, Himmel appreciated the raw tenacity that fifteen years had given Mila.
But . . . did it matter?
Was love enough to sustain her now?
Mila’s obvious emotions weren’t the worst part, but the utter lack of Einar’s presence in the room. She sensed no fear, no scent, no shuffling. Himmel’s despair rose.
Onskar faced Jordaire, who hadn’t stirred. His limp state, only occasionally conscious, was as terrifying as Pedr’s. The great power that had once been Jordaire already dwindled. Against Onskar’s arcane inferno, Jordaire resembled a candle.
How much time had passed since Onskar initiated the unanchoring?
Hours?
Days?
“Jordaire,” Onskar barked. “You wretched being. Wake up.”
In less than a second, Onskar crossed the circle. Shadows followed him like cloaks, trailing between skeletal fingers and whitest flesh. Here, in the Hall of the Sea, Onskar appeared more chilling than ever before. Gone was the gentleman bastid. Gone was the occasionally amused smile.
This being was all cold calculation. Receiver of death, in skin.
Onskar delivered a blow to Jordaire’s midsection, and the Arcanist came alive with a gusty breath and a long groan. Onskar rolled his eyes.
“Very dramatic, old man. Wake up, you festering pile of puss. Wake up!”
His shout tripled through the room, stirring souls in the closest reliquaries. Onskar spun on his heel, chin elevated, while Jordaire blew out heaving breaths. A niggling of guilt tickled the back of Himmel’s distant, exhausted mind.
This was her fault.
“Do you believe me, Mila, when I say that sometimes obliteration isn’t the worst fate?
That which these Arcanists endure is far more agonizing than a simple ending.
The unwinding of arcane from the soul—brutal, when you think about it.
Extracting such . . . ability. The human body cannot live afterward, and the soul is forever changed.
You might say that it leaves them in mere . . . pieces.”
An empty reliquary toppled from high above, crashing to the tile and smashing into smoke. It curled to nothing, without trace. Himmel felt a weak stirring in her chest. Sorrow reanimated a long dormant heart.
“And now,” Onskar whispered, “we separate the arcane from the riff raff.”
Weight tightened the room with a stuffiness Himmel could barely stand. No human could have survived it, like slurping soup into the lungs. Jordaire’s mouth broke open in a silent scream. His eyes, already shut, clenched tight. He sobbed as he writhed, limbs bucking.
Onskar smiled.
Mila advanced with a shout. “No! Stop it!” but Himmel already smelled victory and defeat. They wound through the room as Onskar began to laugh. A low, rolling, maniacal sound that set her nerves on fire. Jordaire emitted one last scream, a bleat, and his entire body calmed like a sigh.
Life bled out of him.
His skin turned ashen and gray, melting into the floor until the body became rolling dust. A sigh from Onskar’s lips sent the white sand pile scattering into the air like airborne granules, billowing in a cloud that surged, until it dissipated entirely.
No.
It wasn’t possible.
Unanchoring required days. The arcane couldn’t unwind from a soul so quickly. Himmel withheld her scream as Onskar turned to face her. His catlike visage altered his bearing entirely, activating her lurking terror.
“Himmel,” he sang. “It’s your turn.”
Fear became a molten thing inside of her, melting all the way through her gut and spreading into sinews.
All those centuries, free in the air. The sky as her pedestal, the world at her feet.
They would culminate in a hellhole under the water, at the hand of a sadistic tyrant whom she had ignored for years.
I brought this on myself, she thought, by never questioning him.
Five hundred years to seek answers, to notice something amiss, and she wasted each minute of them. A tear trickled down her face when the gathering pressure localized on top of her chest. A body leaped between them, black hair soaring over lean shoulders.
Mila shouted, “No!” with her arms held out to the side, as if her puny will would stop someone like Onskar.
Sweet woman, Himmel wanted to say.
If possible, the arcane expanded. A growl cut Onskar’s mirth short. “You, pathetic creature,” he shouted. “Do not dictate to me!”
He aimed a powerful surge at Mila. In the milliseconds between understanding what he’d done and the arrival of the violent squall, Himmel braced herself.
Such a terrible wind would slam Mila into the wall, shatter bones, break her head and spine.
Mila might be Onskar’s arcane equal, but that didn’t protect her from pain.
The attack slammed into Mila and Himmel at the same moment. Himmel trembled in her tether, held prisoner to silence and stillness.
Mila didn’t sway.
The arcane blast moved through—or around—her. Onskar blinked once. Twice. He straightened and murmured, “What is this?”
Mila stared, wide-eyed.
Soil broke underneath Mila, reaching for her ankles. Its tenacious grip wrapped her, then faded in patches, as if she’d soaked it into her skin. Mila’s head snapped down, lips parting. Onskar’s brow crashed. He advanced, thundering, “Consume her! I command it!”
The soil tried.
It disappeared inside of her.
Mila elevated her head, caught Onskar’s stunned stare.
Time began to expand. Every second of their lockdown stare cradled an eternity.
The cowering woman-child ceased to exist all at once.
All of Mila’s uncertainty faded, replaced with a snarling woman with love in her eyes and treachery flowing out in droves.
Himmel couldn’t take her eyes away.
Mila didn’t use the arcane.
She took it.
Stole it.
Soaked it into her very soul like a sponge.
Mila braced her knees, beckoned with a hand, and smiled. “It appears that the arcane has a purpose inside of me after all. Show me what you’ve got, Onskar.”