Page 114

He doesn’t answer.

Instead my godfather’s voice comes from everywhere, like he is the shadows themselves. “You swore fealty to me, as did Lonan. He belongs to me. My shadows and my heir will obey me.” His voice has changed. He sounds more spirit than man. “You thought your little clock was the only way to access your mother? To find that enchanted world where she hides the book? Oh, darling girl. Your knowledge of these things is so juvenile, Nightingale. The timepiece was not the true link to her world. You were.

“She broke your heart. She took a piece of you with her so that you would always be able to access her world. She was always a soft woman—even in pushing you away, she wanted you to have a way back to her. Your heart is the way back, Nightingale. And so, I will have it.”

The Darkness strikes like a viper. It lashes at my heels, and pain flares up my legs. My scars burn—my tie to the Dark. I swing my scythe, lavender Light arcing through the air.

Light conquers Dark. That is what we are taught at Gossemort. But I know the Dark as well as I know the Light. I am a wielder of both.

The shadows strike again, this time lancing me in the side of my neck. I cry out in pain, swinging my scythe. The shadows screech as though afraid and curl back from it. But there are so many of them.

I force myself to my feet, force myself to grip the handle of my scythe with both hands. Where is Lonan?

A shadow strikes. I don’t know it’s there until fangs of Darkness pierce the back of my arm. But this time I’m ready. Before it pulls away, I’m plunging my scythe down on it.

The Darkness screams. There’s a wisp of light, a ghostly curl where the shadow once was.

This is the culmination of the Ridding, of every trial. I stand against chaos, against shadows, against destruction. The Light has to be enough. Shadows bear down on me. I don’t think. I execute.

“Your father didn’t have to go off to war, you know. He chose it.” Not true. Not true. There was nothing my father wanted more than to be at home, with me, with my mother. “He was a soldier, Vesper. And men like that do not return from war the same. They crave the chaos of it after a while, unable to tolerate the quiet of home. In the end, he could not stay away. He loved you. He loved war more.”

Darkness bears down on my heart. Chaos. Confusion. They batter my mind, refusing to let me rise above. Damn it, I have to think. But my father’s face appears in my mind, that dull, disinterested look he would sometimes get in his eyes when he thought I wasn’t looking. I knew he was away in those moments, somewhere else, deep in woods whose roots are full of blood. Rejection is an old wound, older than any of my scars.

I can feel the shadows squirm. They writhe in faster and faster loops around one another, pressing in, filling the whole space. They curl against my ankles, the feel of them like the waxy skin of a serpent. I wait for the pain, wait for the strike.

It catches me on my chest, over where the crone stitched her oath, and the pain is so severe my knees give out. I scream. Finally the fangs of Darkness rip from my flesh. I can feel hot blood flowing down my back, further soaking my dress. Tears trail down my filthy cheeks.

Dawn is so near.

“Surrender your heart, Vesper,” my godfather commands.

My lungs seize, like my own scythe is stabbing through them. I can’t breathe.

“What life is worth living without love, Nightingale? You have worn out your usefulness. It is time to give in to the night.”

My mind fogs over. The Darkness presses in upon me.

But then a new voice crackles its way through the abyss. The crone whispers, “Didn’t think you’d scurry off without fulfilling your bargain, did you? But a trifle, deary. A poem. To bless an old woman.”

But I can’t. I’ve broken my timepiece. My access to the Dark is gone.

“Come now. An object, one of personal significance, a place for all that chaos to burn.”

As if steered by the voice of the crone, my awareness turns to the weight of the silver stake in my pocket.

I pull it from my dress and run my thumb over the emblem of the dragon on its handle. Creating an anchor requires a soul-deep connection to the object. I destroyed the bloodbond with this stake. I killed my own bloodmate—an act of rebellion, against the stars, against the hands of Fate.

I hear a shuffling, and through the Dark, Saint Nona the Spinner steps toward me; her grin full of teeth like needles spreads, the only thing in the Dark to catch the light. “What say you, girl? A little ditty about death, perhaps.”

Two more figures step out of the darkness—the ghostly figure of Saint Decima the Ender, and the other, my mother, draped in white.

“I decide how you will die.” She recites her role in rote monotone, her eyes unrecognizing.

“Would you like to know how I’ll do it? Or would you like it to just . . . happen?”

I am still fated to die this night. Saint Decima cut my thread. Fate has come to collect.

I swallow, forcing my voice to speak. “Will it hurt?”