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The Spirits she had warned of were not here yet—perhaps a sigils still stood—but it would not be long.
Back in the crypt, Maksim snatched the crown from my hands without a word. Orso stood guard at the edge of the entrance to the underground, body tense.
I surveyed the room. One was missing.
“Whereis she?”
Orso pointed. “Lumi said we were too slow before disappearing down there. Something about blocking the way.”
I removed the wall I so carefully constructed to get into the treasury.
Through the bond, pain like a thousand cuts washed over me. I swayed on my feet.
I had planned and held back. She was my blood and Spirit. Would I even survive if she was used by Ealhswip?
The pain vibrated into my bones. I fell against the wall.
“Fix the crowns then come,” I urged Maksim. “Hurry!”
Before anyone could argue, I threw myself down the stairs on legs barely bearing my weight, ready to fly one last time. Lorists say hope will give you wings. In this moment I believed it, for it had stuck with me this far and only needed to carry me a little further.
For the first time, I prayed to the Death Goddess, summoning her true name and face in my mind—Ixama, blessed be, see me, hear me, turn this way. You let this creature out. Help us!—for by returning, Ealhswip, the last divine ruler of Tal, had surely angered the Goddess more than I.
For once, death might be on our side.
Chapter thirty
Vanya
Itook the slick stone steps three at a time.
Something below sang to me of grief and love, its tune captivating and terrifying. That it was broken and needed me to make it better. Only the discordant notes of Lumi’s pain reminded me of who I was.
Like when I leaped between roofs or off a building, when the wind buffered me high in the sky, I soared.
Life and death, two sides of the same coin, joined me and Lumi, and so was the thing below. Unable to resist, I reached out, wishing to make it whole, only to recoil as the floor leveled. Uncountable glowing Spirits covered a vast cavern’s ceiling in unnatural light. In the distance, the Gate’s green shine, similar to that of the bone soldiers, mixed with Lumi’s white.
The woman I once knew as von Lemerch burned cold blue like the snow carrying winter winds. Neither dead nor alive, she reached for my sister.
The magical song transformed into a cry of pain. With a roar, I ignored all rules—everything Mariska had told me of separationbetween magics and Morovara of balance—and using both our powers, commanded the living and the dead to stop.
The world paused, and I felt all.
Tal’s Spirits pressed down.
The unnaturalness of von Mekeln and the zeal of the priestesses fighting against the two still-standing guards.
And close by, the man I might love and the woman he just married, hurt but, thank the Wishmaker, alive.
Then an invisible force brought me to my knees. Ice wormed itself into my mind. My stomach turned. My throat clenched.
I slammed the walls up, instinctively protecting myself while cutting off my own magic. The nausea subsided while claws kept digging their way through my walls.
Darkness descended, as if someone with immense power had snuffed the light of the dead.
Crawling blindly, I closed in on the remaining green light, hoping Ealhswip and her people would not see any better than me in the dark—a hopeful deception I clung to when no one attacked.
The priestesses’ voices rose in a chant, the eerie words tangling with the melody of the dead. Before the Gate stood my sister and a monster wearing a woman’s skin.
