Chapter Fifty
EINAR
Einar crept behind Himmel, diasvard in hand. As he approached, he cast a wary gaze into the circle’s interior. Mila darted into the shelves on the other side, Onskar fast on her heels, the bastid. All Einar’s work to position himself near the Arcanist meant nothing.
Ah, well.
He’d make the best of it.
Creeping forward, he paused behind Himmel. She didn’t turn, didn’t twitch. Not a glide of eyes or subtle sniff. Couldn’t she smell him? No, because Onskar couldn’t smell him either. Nothing made sense, but he didn’t have time to question it.
He stepped up behind Himmel and set his free hand on her back. The hand clutching the diasvard lingered close, his knuckles white around it. The moment his skin touched her dress, she collapsed. Whatever arcane supported her failed at his touch.
Reacting on instinct, he dropped the dagger and grabbed her arms before she slammed into the ground. The diasvard clattered quietly on top of his boot, then tilted.
Lowering her, he carefully rested Himmel on her side.
Her eyes remained closed, head lolling. She panted; a fluttering, breathy pace.
A harried heartbeat pulsed in her neck. The same ravages that stamped Pedr’s face appeared here.
Exhaustion, deep wrinkles, a sense of emptiness.
Onskar already initiated her unanchoring.
Three Arcanists unanchoring at the same time? All that arcane had to go somewhere.
Where?
Electricity crackled off Himmel’s skin, glided into Einar’s hand, through his palm, up his arm, and swarmed his shoulder. He sensed a hiding leviathan in the exchange.
Himmel’s lips parted. She drew in a shuddering, deep breath, then sighed. Her head tipped, body relaxed as she expelled the air. His nostrils filled with a noxious smell, like concentrated pepper. A scent he’d never experienced before, putrid and unforgettable. His sinuses swam with it.
Would the thick, musty odor ever leave?
Defeat, he realized. I smell defeat.
Unconsciousness claimed Himmel, and he forced himself to move on. She would be safer passed out than conscious of what happened next.
Einar rushed along the shelves, hurrying. No one saw him. Or, if they did, they ignored him. A quick glance between reliquaries confirmed Mila and Onskar returned to the circle. Onskar growled something, a heady storm developing in a swirl overhead.
Slinking along, Einar jogged, angling himself toward Onskar’s rearward. No longer did Einar care about being seen, because shadows followed him. Apparently, he had no scent. If Onskar was going to find Einar, he would have by now.
On Mila’s return, she’d done a fair job of positioning Onskar into a better position near Einar. Based on the thunder that crackled in the room, casting dim shadows on the world, he had a feeling she focused solely on survival and distraction.
Time to make it worth it.
When he came to a stop, Einar assessed the distance between them. Onskar stood too far to throw the diasvard with any accuracy, and Einar wouldn’t risk it dropping and Onskar gaining control. Besides, Onskar wore a hideous cloak that might tangle any weapon.
Had Onskar planned it?
Probably.
The sense of creeping into a perfectly laid trap continued to pester Einar, but failed to change his mind. He slipped beyond the final shelves and into the interior. Mila’s eyes didn’t flicker his way once. Her attention didn’t glaze, her words never faltered.
In a flash, a wall of water formed within the circle.
Sloshing around, it nearly swept Einar’s legs out from beneath him.
He leaped up, flying all the way to the shelves he’d just abandoned.
Somehow, somehow, he gripped an edge twice as high as his own height.
He’d never jumped this high in his life.
Souls breathed nonsensical words in his ears. They wound like a stream, braiding together, brightening near him. When he gazed into the closest one, he thought he saw a tear dribbling from an eye.
The forming tsunami towered around the shelves, created in the span of a breath. The curling white top slammed into Mila, bursting in a spray. She withstood the terrible force with a half smile, welcoming arms extended.
What droplets touched her turned to steam. The water appeared to lessen, then fade. It curled to smoke, seeped to wood, dissipated to nothing.
“Shite,” he muttered.
Releasing his hold, he dropped to the ground. His legs landed without pain, but an uncanny strength. From that height, he should have twisted an ankle, or hurt a hip, but he’d forgotten what pain felt like already.
What puppet master pulled these strings?
A first, piercing note cut the room. Siren song. It blazed through his ear drums like a knife. Einar screamed, dropped to his knees. His painful shout drowned in the shocking sound emitting from Mila’s lips. He screwed his eyes shut, covered his ears.
His body writhed from the unleashed sound. His eardrums cracked, bleeding. All goals evaporated. His focus turned to an immediate and desperate obsession.
He must find the source of that sound.
He must find her.
The siren.
A force outside himself compelled Einar to his knees. He crawled, ignoring the dagger in hand and shouting instincts. Reason told him to turn away from the siren and her majestic song.
How could he?
She was magnificent.
The arcane crackled along his skin, painfully electric. With it, a warning. An urge to turn away that he had no power to acknowledge. Her melody shifted, and the changing note stole the last of his hearing.
Silence fell. He couldn’t hear Mila anymore, but he felt her draw. Her insistent command. Come to me, she sang, come to me. The canticle continued, looping, looping, looping.
Come to me.
Einar obeyed.
He clumped across the floor with the dagger still in hand, half stumbling, half crouched. He didn’t move fast enough, but the agony prevented him from standing upright. He clawed toward her, desperate.
Blood vessels cracked in his face.
His vision blurred.
Heart thudded.
Skin turned to flame.
Einar dropped to his knees. Close. He was so close to her. If he could only . . .
. . . the song ceased.
A stunning quiet overtook his mind, washing the demented melody from his brain. He stood, tottering, half blind. Blood chugged from his ears, draining down his neck. The world appeared blurry, nonsensical.
He saw a dumbfounding sight: a dark dome and two figures.
Onskar and Mila squared off, contained in an arcane bubble.
Her lips parted. Clouds of smoke billowed from Onskar’s mouth, and Mila closed her eyes, breathing them in.
Through these sluggish realizations, Einar saw a familiar-but-dwindling body drop to the ground.
Onskar, withered.
After all that, Onskar wasn’t yet dead.
Einar whispered, Shite, but heard nothing. Maybe he didn’t whisper. Maybe his thoughts overrode his body and nothing was real. His vision cleared from the blurry surreality, and understanding washed pure intelligence through him. It made clear exactly what happened.
The arcane from all four Arcanists resided within Mila—it must. With Onskar on the ground, and Pedr, Jordaire, and Himmel unanchoring, where else would it go? She contained all of their teeming abilities.
Einar understood enough to comprehend why Mila doubled over. Strain revealed itself in her weary eyes, the underlying panic. It held her fast, requiring all she had to give. Einar fumbled for the diasvard, realized he still gripped it. His legs gave out, and he dropped.
The once-mighty Arcanist of Souls weakly gnashed his teeth at Mila, his pitiful rage sending a furious smell through the room. The blistering scent of hatred, not unlike rotting seaweed.
Mila stood as she sucked the life from Onskar one breath at a time, willingly taking it into herself. Cracks in her ability revealed. A tear raced down her cheek. She doubled over again, as if sobbing in between deepest air draughts.
Einar stumbled forward and towered over the fool.
Onskar’s dark eyes met Einar’s. With the diasvard clutched in his hand, an awful, painful tension vibrated through his hand bones, wrist. He summoned the rest of his energy, gripped the diasvard with bloody fingers, and lifted it. “For Agnes, you bastid.”
He brought the dagger down.
It sliced the air at a strangely quick speed, angling between ribs, sinew, bone. Like a knife in butter, the hideous diasvard glided through Onskar’s chest cavity like it was made to do so. It lodged in Onskar’s dead heart.
The Arcanist of Souls screamed.
Energy of unknown origin expelled from the diasvard, glowing a brilliant emerald-and-white. It flared, spreading wide. Underneath the brilliance, pure sand granules exploded within Onskar, skittering over the blackest floor.
Onskar’s pained shout ceased. His eyes rolled back in his head. Einar’s palm burned, the skin sweaty where he gripped the dagger. The diasvard handle became slick with bubbling blood. It quaked, like thunder made corporeal, until Einar could not hold it.
He released the dagger and fell back.
A wave of gray bubbled from the interior of Onskar’s chest and spread outward in a wave.
Ash followed, collapsing his body into billowing fumes and residual white sand.
The slate wave gathered in a spinning vortex that cushioned a descending reliquary made of clear black glass.
As the smoke glided inside the vessel, Onskar decayed to more sand.
The stream stopped.
Churning ebony smoke expanded in the reliquary, which elevated, slid onto a high shelf, and slipped out of sight.