Chapter XXXII
XXXII
Wraiths possess no physical form and can be killed only by burning with baelfyr.
BANG.
On the other side of Vic, BANG. Deafening explosions followed the lines Nathaniel had drawn.
Vic fell to her knees as the ground rattled underneath her, and she stumbled to stand.
Xan shifted into a form midway between man and shadow and sent a jet of water toward the powder leading into the training hallway.
He meant to extinguish the fire before it reached the lower levels, but it was useless.
Nathaniel had prepared the space too thoroughly.
It was too late to stop what was coming.
All they could do was get out of the way.
BANG.
The ground trembled as more of the powder detonated. Under them now. The fire had gotten into the lift’s shaft, Vic was sure. Into the cages.
From deep under the castle, roaring blows shook the foundations. The floor rolled with each new explosion, so hard Vic worried the castle would crumble. The noise grew distant as the fire spread lower.
Within seconds, the sound was deep enough that Vic barely heard it. But the ground swayed beneath her.
Soon other sounds followed from the deep. Growls and shrieks rumbled under her feet. The sound of metal tearing apart. Heavy footfalls climbing closer.
But Vic stood transfixed, staring at the corpse in front of her.
There was so much blood. It spread like a carpet around Nathaniel’s body; surely all the blood he’d held inside of him now seeped across the stone.
It ran in rivulets over the edge of the landing, a waterfall of crimson heading for the Arena floor.
She had done that. No question about it, Vic had done that to him.
She knew it like she’d known everything since she woke up—in her bones, under her skin.
She’d ripped Nathaniel apart from the inside, split him like an Orcan would its victim.
Her rage had fled when she struck, and now Vic stared at the horrific white of his bloodless skin with a blankness she had never felt before.
Should she feel guilty? She didn’t.
Vic jumped when Xan reached her and forced her gaze away from the man she’d murdered.
Vic wondered if he’d noticed the holes in her clothing, the half-dried blood staining the black fabric, making it shimmer in the light.
Vic supposed he didn’t need to see any of that to understand what had happened to her.
All he’d have to do was look in her eyes. He’d see the Lumen, and he’d know.
And Xan was okay, Vic noticed with a start. Where had he been hurt? Where had the blood come from? She’d seen him go down—she’d seen red. But Xan stood in front of her looking solid and strong, and Vic couldn’t make sense of what was happening.
He held her eyes for an instant before tugging her toward the exit.
Vic fought for balance as they hurried over shaking ground.
She slipped in the pooling blood and flung a hand forward for Xan.
He was shadow at the edges, as he’d been the night he fought the manananggal, and Vic’s fingers sank into his form as she grabbed him.
She pulled herself upright as Xan shoved her into the hallway.
The training area was destroyed. A mess of rubble and fire blocked the main exit, and the smoke choked Vic as she stared. With his back to Vic, Xan raised both arms toward the double doors leading to the Arena.
Xan put his palms flat against the runes cut into the heavy wood. Judging by his frown, something was supposed to happen.
“What is it?” Vic asked, her voice a rasp.
“He broke the wards,” Xan said. “We can’t seal in the Arena.”
“Can you fix it?”
Xan shook his head as he rushed to the nearest wall and repeated the action on a set of smaller runes. When he touched the markings, they flared gold. Then the runes nearby followed, sparking a chain reaction that left the ceiling aglow.
He hurried back to Vic and pulled her away from the wrecked hallway.
“Nathaniel didn’t mess with the wards surrounding the castle,” he said, pulling her down another corridor. “Only the ones keeping them in the Arena.”
“I don’t know what that means,” Vic said, looking back at the ruins of the training area as they disappeared around the corner.
“They’re stuck inside the castle. The Orcans can’t get out.”
“But people live here,” Vic said, thinking of the dining hall full of people and running faster. Where was Henry? She turned to run toward the other side of the castle, where the apartments were. Where everyone she knew lived. “We need to help them.”
Xan grabbed her arm and pulled her in the opposite direction.
“You’re drained, Vic. You’re not helping anyone tonight.”
Vic growled in frustration, and the hold on her arm tightened. Behind them came the sound of breaking stone as something wrenched its way through the castle walls.
“I need to get you to safety.” She wanted to argue with him. She wanted to insist that she could fight, she could help. But her thoughts kept drifting away from her. Vic couldn’t hold anything in her mind still for long enough to vocalize it.
With a plaintive look behind her, Vic followed him, wondering dimly if Xan could dislocate her shoulder tugging her along like this.
“God, you’re slow,” Xan yelled when Vic rounded a corner an instant after he did. He put an arm behind her back and pushed, as if he could shove her faster than she could run.
“Hey!”
“You are so…” Xan searched for the right word as they ran up a staircase. Something nasty that would perfectly summarize how annoying he found Vic. “Corporeal,” he spat.
A noise behind her made Vic turn, and she screeched as something resembling a giant spider skittered up the spiral stairs toward them. Its pincers, sharp and dripping with thick globs of saliva, snapped open and shut as it crawled up the wall.
“Here,” Xan grunted, and he shoved Vic into a hallway off the landing. He spun her around and through a doorway. The door slammed shut behind them, submerging them in darkness.
But Xan did something with his hands and the wards on the wall began to glow. They lit the room enough for Vic to see the outline of Xan and the space behind him. It was an office, smaller than Max’s and less cluttered.
“Some of the ranking members have rooms with extra protections,” Xan said on an exhale. “You’ll be safe here.”
“I fucking hate spiders,” Vic said.
She could still hear the arachni crawling around the hallway.
Its claws scratched at the walls as it climbed around the door, snuffling at the cracks.
A shadow at the threshold had too many legs.
Vic held her breath in some wild attempt to stay quiet.
When the tip of a spiny leg found its way through the crack in the door, Vic flinched, and a wrenching sound like metal bending in the wind filled the hallway, followed by a far too loud and far too wet crunch.
Had Vic done that?
She leaned against the door and slid until her ass hit the floor.
Xan knelt in front of her, his hands on her. He pulled her wrists away from her body, looking at the bloodstains on her hands. His fingers slid over her torso and thighs, looking for injuries that weren’t there anymore. She’d healed in the forest, just as Max said Mades always did.
“You were hurt,” she said, her voice ragged. “Nathaniel hit you.”
“I’m fine,” Xan grumbled. “He stunned me.”
Vic reached for his shoulder, where the fabric of his clothing was torn over a cut that was about three inches long. She hovered her fingers over the wound. It wasn’t deep, and it had stopped bleeding.
“I saw you bleed,” Vic said. “And I killed him.”
“I know you did, sweetheart. You’re not yourself right now.”
“Will I ever be myself again?” she asked, and a horrible empty feeling of loss hit her out of nowhere. Vic knew the answer—they both did. No, Xan would say, if he could bring himself to be honest and cruel. Not the way you used to be.
“What was it?” he asked instead. The shadows in her periphery danced.
Xan had eyes like broken glass on asphalt, like Vic remembered. Only brighter now, at once mystical and real. They glowed in the dim like crystals tossing moonlight. She’d never seen anything like it.
“Something in the woods,” she said, and an emotion passed across Xan’s face. His brother had been killed by a forest demon, she remembered. “A kind of mimic I didn’t recognize. It had Henry’s voice.”
Xan’s fingers froze on the sides of her arms, but he said nothing.
“Nathaniel said ‘He did it,’ when he saw my eyes,” Vic said. “I think he meant Mann.”
Xan frowned.
“Like he thought Mann orchestrated the whole thing. Someone had to. Maybe he had me Made on purpose, like he did to himself.”
“Where are you hurt?” he said, and his hands wandered over her arms and neck.
Everywhere, Vic wanted to say. She was hurt everywhere. She was broken and she would never get better. She shook her head as if to clear the memory.
Xan’s gaze fell to the gashes in her clothing, to the lines of flesh visible beneath them, and Vic pulled her hand over to cover the exposed skin.
“I was fixed when I woke up.”
Something flared in Xan’s eyes, and his palms landed on the sides of her face. Big and warm and rough against her cold skin, and Vic shivered. She felt naked, unearthed, like her whole body was awake for the first time in her life, and everything she felt was right on the surface.
Vic had always thought that time had made her tough.
All her wounds had scabbed over and scarred, but today they were torn open, bleeding, and full of dirt.
She felt remade in their image, a walking wound left to fester.
But something else hummed under her skin—tangling with the pain and fear—a kind of newfound energy, a wild, untamed thing.
“Why did you come back to the castle?” Vic asked.
“I needed to find you,” Xan said, quiet, almost dazed.
“I wasn’t supposed to be here,” she said.
“You’re never where you’re supposed to be.”