“I won’t kill them,” he assured her and then shrugged a single, horn-tipped shoulder. “That would be a waste. They’re much more useful alive.”
“You said you only wanted the town back.”
“And are those within it not part of the town themselves? They may be the kin of those who locked me away, but they are the ones here now, and they belong to me by right. Otherwise who would I provide for? Who would I protect?” His voice was slick on her ears and in her mind, but it didn’t slip past the memory of another voice, so painfully similar, that promised protection but never meant it.
Celeste’s innards went cold. Ice bled into her veins, and they hardened. “They won’t…they won’tstay,” she insisted, sword quivering though leveled.They’re not like me, she thought.
“They will have food and water and warmth—everything they could desire. They will be grateful to be kept safe from the suffering and discomfort of the world. And, eventually, they will love me.” Utter certainty dripped from his words. “But don’t worry: you will always be my favorite—my most clever, my most gracious, my most cherished pet,” he said with such a warmth to his praise.
The hardness in her belly softened. No one had before called her clever or gracious because she’d never been those things, had never earned being anyone’s cherished anything. Proof of Celeste’s wretchedness sprouted all over Briarwyke in the vines meant to bloom with good magic turned evil. If she hadn’t opened the apotrope without thinking, all of this could have been avoided. If she had only said something sooner, those above could have been spared. But Celeste’s life had always been, until recently, a series of disastrous if-onlys and failed virtues.
But someone saw prospect in her now, and she’d had the chance, however briefly, to be loved.
Syphon’s eyes dipped down to the blade as he reached over the dome with an arm so long there was hardly any effort, and his fingers grazed her cheek. She let the glassy touch slide over her skin and didn’t dare to move.
“You will give me what I want,” she said, unsure if it were a question or a demand. “When I break through and collect the noxscura for you, then you’re going to take it all away.”
Syphon tipped his head once more, a hint of pity in the bend to his brow. “I will do this for you, remove your burden and carry it myself, but there are limits, pet, as I’ve told you. You will remain by my side, and in time, we will both be free.” He chuckled, and it filled the cavern, pulling back his too-many-fingered hand and smirking down at her with the satisfaction of already having won. “I knew that you would find a way to free us both, and by tricking that righteous moron too.”
Celeste nodded once, biting the inside of her mouth and holding back the shadows that wanted to lash out.
“Betrayer!” shouted Sid from her hands as he was lifted. “Heathen! Witch!”
Noxscura wrapped around Celeste’s arms so they would not shake. The sword wasn’t wrong—she had stolen him, and she was about to wield him for a terrible undertaking, but couldn’t he see? Couldn’t he understand? She squeezed the hilt in both hands, its heft almost too much.I’m so sorry, Sid.
And then the sword simply said, “Oh.”
There was a lightness that started in her toes. It traveled upward, flourishing in her chest until it reached her hands where the Obsidian Widow Maker became a weightless thing, and the blade that had always been black glowed anew with a terrible brilliance so dark it swallowed up the light of the dome beneath it.
“There’s my good girl.” Syphon’s words made her stomach squirm as he stepped back, mingling with the shadows of the cavern, and Celeste was left alone with the deadly pool below.
She raised the weapon above her head, an extension of herself as if she were born to be its wielder, and noxscura swept along with it. Without hesitation, she spun the hilt in hand and plunged the blade downward.
Divine arcana sparked, shaking the cavern. Magic seared up her arms, defending against the intrusion, hot and angry as it burned her skin. Her shoulders and back screamed as she struggled, but she had practice now with smothering divinity, and the noxscura was unwavering in its aid until there was a terrible crack. Golden light filled the cavern and just as quickly collapsed, snuffed into nonexistence by the darkness.
No longer trapped behind the protective barrier, silvery dread swirled before Celeste. She caught herself before she tumbled in, and there, in the mirror-like surface, was her reflection. Face drawn thin and pale, black hair bundled messily as strands fell free of the knot atop her head, and eyes that were identical to the cursed color before her. Her figure sloshed with the living liquid shifting against the edges of the earthen dome as if trying to crawl out. To touch her. To consume her.
“Quickly,” said Syphon from the shadows, and Celeste nearly collapsed into the pool until she felt the hilt of the Obsidian Widow Maker grow suddenly heavy again in her hand.
She stepped back and swung, releasing the sword so that it clattered away into the darkness of the cavern.
“What are you doing?” Syphon snapped.
“It would be destroyed inside. The sword can be collected after.” She didn’t look at him, voice already raw as she staggered back to the basin and dropped her hands onto either side of it. Her own, familiar noxscura was wrapped tightly around her limbs, but she remained in control, though she wished the arcana would do it for her.
Syphon urged her on, his words paling beneath the liquid’s sounds and her own beating heart. Unlike in the dreams he’d forced on her, he could not push her under—he was smart enough to know touching pure noxscura was too great a risk. It would have to be siphoned through her, and then?
Celeste snapped her gaze up just once and caught his, hungry and ruinous.
Then he could have it all.
The pain was worse than she had ever remembered, but once she stepped inside, there was no escaping. She squeezed her eyes shut as the deep freeze of the noxscura took her, and in the darkness behind her lids, she saw Delphine. She had done this, suffered the pure arcana twice, once willingly, knowing the potential of death it held. Celeste would never truly know why, if her sister had done it for her, for the lot of the nox-touched children, or simply for herself, but it didn’t matter. Delphine was dead, but this they would always share—Celeste too would survive for at least as long as it would take to protect those she loved.
An unending night sky of bursting stars enveloped Celeste, their lights sharpening into blades that opened wounds over every inch of her flesh. Crimson wept from her limbs, her chest, her face, and then the light shifted, the color all drawn away, and her blood turned silver as it seeped back under her skin with the sting of venom from planes beyond.
Darkness came after, and then relief at the silence and weightlessness that followed. Unsure if she still existed, unable to move or see or speak, she waited, and there was a trickling away from her of pain, sorrow, guilt, shame, and then last, beneath it all, the glint of something small and fragile that had been hidden and left to die. But it was still alive, and even in her chimerical state, to it she clung.
Existence came crashing back into Celeste with a force that knocked the breath from her. Eyes flying open, she knew she had become the things that Syphon had promised, a creature with limitless power that was unstoppable, but it was not meant to last. The blood was already coming, a thin trickle from her nose, and her innards were shuffling themselves around to make room for the magic that would eventually be her undoing unless she gave it away.
