“That’s enough, for you. Of course.”
I lift my head up to look at him. He’s smiling. He knows me. I laugh, he laughs, and our genuine glee echoes up the spiral for probably the first time in its history.
It’s ridiculous. To lie in the dying hall of the Devil, his blood bloomed across my shirt, discussing plans with my closest confidant—the good man I murdered. The man I, perhaps, love.
“I don’t know if this will work,” I admit. “I don’t even have a plan.”
“I’ll give you step one: We leave.”
It hurts my ribs to laugh again, enough that I double over.
I look once again at the pool when I get up. What would destroying this place do to the souls trapped within? Do I risk destroying them?
I don’t understand these forces. But knowing Mr. Pratterman was nothing biblical grants me hope that this place can be toppled. A science I don’t understand, that’s all. No more mystical than the ocean tides. But I won’t decide another’s fate anymore. I won’t reap them like grain. I kneel once again at the edge of the pool.
“I want to use what’s left here to end this place! All of it!” I call out to the souls I helped trap here. “I don’t know what’ll happen to you when I do. Help me. Lend me your strength one last time. Or stay, but I can’tpromise what’ll become of you.”
They have no reason to trust me. Would I grant this request in their position? How can they believe that an acolyte of the toppled Lord of Darkness will keep their word?
The surface churns. I squint in the low crimson light. A rush of water begins, but not forward. Inward. A whirlpool. A spiral within a spiral. Foaming caps appear in arcs around the center.
“Can you see what’s happening?” I ask Douglas.
He floats a few feet up. “They’re collecting. Perhaps they’ve made a decision.”
The water stills. I let out a long breath. They don’t want anything to do with me. I can’t blame them.
“Elle, they’re moving.”
A bright line beneath the water extends toward the shoreline. It looks like a vein, branching out and coming back together with each pulse of light. It doesn’t stop at the water’s edge. It slithers between the stones until it reaches my knees. I place my hands on the ground, palms up. It doesn’t hesitate. The line extends up my fingers and seeps beneath my skin.
The power granted to me by the souls is raw, electric, and it runs wild in my veins. It grows tenfold, then a hundredfold. They’re using me as their vessel. My exhaustion lifts for a moment as they take on the burden. They’re helping me. I want to thank them, but my throat tightens when I try.
I search among their consciousnesses. So many. Most are strangers, yet each connects with a memory from their demises. Sailors, mostly, but also passengers, soldiers, cooks, even a few children—I can’t linger on them or I may not get up again. My parents are among their number, though they do not attempt to muscle through to me. They linger on the far edges of the crowd in my mind. Just hoping for a ride up to thesurface.
I think back to those letters between my father and Mr. Seymour. That night in my parents’ backyard, Thomas talking of power and networks and new frontiers.
There’s one thought that permeates every soul I connect with. Different languages, phrasings, but the same idea:Make it end. Bring me home.
I turn back to the stairs. Step one, leave. I stand. Each footfall forward sparks at the ground like grinding metal. That’s new.
“I don’t mean to scare it out of you, Elle,” Douglas says tentatively beside me, “but is that hope I see in your face?”
I roll my eyes. “It’s going to take a lot more than hope to destroy all this.”
I can almost feel his smile against my back as I ascend the first stair. He stands beside me, egging me on and teasing me as though we were old friends. In a way, we are.
I push off the ground and grasp the souls’ power as I feel out the cavern. Its enormity is now an extension of myself. Every stalactite of meat is my own muscle. Each worn stone is my own tortoise shell. The whirlpool’s collection of souls are a second heart, fueling me upward as it laps against my ankles. I pull the entirety of the structure up, stone grinding on stone, until the first stair is flush with the floor. This is impossible, yet each titanic step upward flattens the spiral by one step.
To be wholly exhausted, yet fueled to the brim, creates a cycle in my movements. Douglas floats beside me to shout encouragement, but I can barely hear him. The souls within me help where they can, massaging muscle and pushing blood through my all-too-human heart.
Sisyphus would be proud. But I’ll ensure this is a one-way trip.
While the souls want this place destroyed, the spiral itself holds no such mercy. Has a lifetime passed that I raised my left leg, then theright, then pulled the entire realm upward once more? Closer, closer, every turn of the stairs promises an end.
“Ja-James,” I huff out. “Check. How many. More.”
Through squinting eyes rimmed with sweat, I watch him float upward. He takes too long.
