Interitus shivers, an oscillation filled with rage rises over her cheeks.She sucks in a breath and screams.A holler that shatters the tower windows and makes everybody, including the wraiths, drop to the ground and cover their ears.
On and on she roars.
Bricks crumble; bodies roll.Searing heat rings in my ears as her fury fills the campus.It creeps over my arms and neck like slime and ants’ feet and maggots.It burrows under pores and feasts on my innards until I’m writhing on the floor and begging for death.
The Architect moth swarm surges towards Interitus, pushing her back, back, back.
But Interitus is wrathful.And for the first time, I see her and truly understand the venom that lurks beneath her skin and feathers.
She will not cease.
This is not over.Her head snaps towards me, isolating me out of the crowd.
Shit.
I scramble up and stumble.But it’s too late, she soars through the air, her wings open and flapping, sending wraiths and bodies gusting away.She swoops down, grabbing me by the collar and lifting me up into the air.
“Did you reap her?”she asks.
I hesitate but see no reason to lie.After all, Architecti is here because I reaped Lucy.“Yes.”
Interitus closes her eyes, inhaling a slow, agonising breath.When she opens them, her golden eye glints with a poison I drown in, her blue one cold as the depths of the Lantis Ocean.She carries the same determination I do.We’re thirty feet above the ground now, my toes prickle, my stomach churns.
“Good, Midnight.That’s very good.I spent forty years here waiting for this moment.”
“Lucy’s dead.You can’t hurt her anymore.”I don’t know why I’m trying to protect her.I’m fucking livid with her.
Interitus smiles at me, her eyes soft and full of pity.“And if you think that’s enough to stop me, you’re more pathetic than I realised.”
“Let her rest in peace.”
She snorts at me, grips hold of my jacket tighter and soars higher into the air.
Her head jerks to Architecti.“You might have my moth, but this isn’t over.”
Architecti, gripping the side of the tower, stills.The only movement is the flexing of her jaw.
“Without the moth, you are powerless.”
Interitus tuts three times.“You thought stealing my moth was enough to stop me?”
Architecti’s smile falters.
Interitus laughs.“There’s always another source.”She flies right for the tower’s shrinking void.I wriggle harder, trying to get out of her grip.
Interitus snarls, “Catch me if you can, sister…”
She drops me.
I fall fast as she zips through the air, her wings narrowing as she dives headfirst into the void and vanishes into the underworld.
“Interitus!”I shriek, but it’s too fucking late.She’s gone and I’m plummeting towards the earth.
3
Architecti
We play a game of cat and mouse.I lose Interitus then find her, only to lose her all over again.Regardless of her hide-and-seek antics, I hobble fast, my tendons and ligaments knitting together quickly despite my injuries.
