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Chapter Fifty-Eight

The ground rushes toward me, the bones and the clouds arching over my head. But then Lonan’s shadowed face obscures the clouds. He grabs me, and I’m yanked to a stop, suspended over the graveyard.

He reaches down with both arms to pull me up, his sword still gripped in his hand while he holds to the bridge of bones with his knees. Above us, Poppy drives the stake toward Galvin’s stomach. The hand that had just been wrapped around my throat latches on to her wrist. Siphon strength meets siphon strength. He snarls, wrestling her for the book.

This is the destruction trial, meant to test our loyalty to the Light. But in the course of this dark night, I have lost my loyalties. I have realized that my deepest allegiance is not to any kingdom, nor toward the Light or Dark, it is toward those I love and toward what is right.

So even as Lonan tries to grab both my arms and pull me out of danger, I let the monster take over. The siphon venom consumes me. A heady, weightless sensation fills my head, and my vision clouds white. Thirst. Wrath. Power. It’s all I know.

Lightning flashes. Rain soaks me. But with inhuman strength I grab hold of the bone bridge and fling myself up. My feet find purchase on the platform where Galvin and Poppy struggle. Lonan is at my back, still on his knees.

With a grip more merciless than any monster I’ve met, more heartless than war, more savage than the Ridding, I seize Galvin by the throat. He chokes, his eyes bugging wide. He releases his grip on Poppy, but her attention is no longer on him. She stares at me fearfully, and it’s her that I reach for next. I release Galvin and yank the book from her hands, gripping it tightly to my chest.

I run back across my bridge. The bones shift beneath my feet, rearranging and snaking a new path through the air. I grit my teeth as I follow them, every step risking falling through thin air. The wind picks up. Rain pounds at my back. But I hold tight to the book, following whatever path the bones trace for me.

They lead me to the last place I want to be.

The clocktower’s glowing yellow face looms large before me as I step onto the stone ledge. Elaborate stonework—arches, spires, and scrolls—decorate its edges, and it’s those I cling to as the bone bridge leads me onto its ledge. Above me, the minute hand ticks ever closer to dawn.

I turn back toward the others, and it’s the worst mistake.

Poppy has lost all her fight. Galvin rips the silver stake out of her hand.

Galvin grips the stake. Light flashes. Thunder rolls. And he plunges the silver into her heart.

My heart is broken. But for her it stops.

She’s too far away for me to read her expression, and in this moment that feels like some sort of betrayal, that I wasn’t there to ride through this last horror with her, to feel it with her, to bear the weight of it as she tumbles into nothingness. All I see is her body slump and Galvin pulling the stake, crimson and glistening. He releases her, heartless as he is, and lets her body tumble to the ground.

I abandon her in this moment. I snap my eyes shut, unable to watch her fall.

Everything feels quiet for a moment, the cold rain washing me as a deep heaviness falls over my muscles. I cannot keep going.

But the flash of crimson against my closed eyelids forces them open again. Lonan grapples with Galvin. He can’t kill him—he won’t as long as Galvin and I are bonded. But Galvin is lunging toward my bridge, toward the clocktower. Lonan wrestles him back.

I throw open the book without reverence. It doesn’t matter that it’s an ancient, sacred text. I have seconds.

The pages are worn and as arcane as I expected, full of runes and languages I can’t understand. Hopelessness climbs up my throat as I flip the pages. My mother said this was important, that it was how we heal magic.

A way to break the bloodbond—it’s all I need. It’s a vain hope, but I am a mouse in a trap and I have no other path out.

I’m flipping through pages erratically as Galvin steps down the path toward me. But Lonan is close behind him. He tackles him, jumping on his back. Both boys fall, hitting the bridge and nearly slipping off.

My breaths come harsh and fast as I search the book. Page after page, showing nothing—

I stop, nearly passing it, but for a simple word that catches my eye.

Love.

I flip back to it and run my fingers down a page of faded handwriting. There are no charts, no runes, no illustrations here. This is a story.

It is the same, word for word, as the one my father found in Imaelhain, the legend of the bloodbond.

But the last words are not cut off.

And so it was that this love was destined to heal the old wounds, to repair what was broken, not only in the broken-hearted girl, but in magic itself. For the Light and Dark, once torn, would be mended. The tear in all magic repaired. What was once lost would be found, and the whole-hearted girl and her Fated love would be one, bound in the Dark, united in the Light, and chosen in the Dim.

For though Darkness enthralls and the Light liberates, Choice and Will are the shield of Fate. The stars incline. They do not bind. Whatever Fate dictates, it is woven by mankind.