“I am,” he answers. The net hums higher. Five at once this time. They slip past my senses and go. The pressure at the seam shivers.
He tries the floor channels next, ramming force into the cuts to get around Dastian’s hold. I shove shadow flat into the grooves and choke the lanes until only a trickle runs.
“Use my lanes or nothing,” Dastian snaps, redirecting the strays along his red-lit paths. They burn out against the far wall in neat lines.
He hates neat.
The rope thickens. He compresses weight rather than spread it. That tells me he is done testing. He is going to try to punch through.
“Brace,” I warn. I pin the wall ring with both hands and push shadow down every joint.
Nyssa narrows the floor slit to the last hair’s breadth without losing purchase. “Come on,” she says, quiet and certain. “No more fog.”
He commits. The rope hits the circle with a hard, straight drive. The chamber booms. The water shudders around us. Dastian flares, sending the rebound into the channels and away from us. The roof dips a finger, and I hold it with a steady, even push.
“Now,” Nyssa says, and drops a brand onto the rope the way she did at the mound, clean and exact. It bites, heatless, sealing to the line at three points—her, the cut, the seam.
He bucks. The brand holds. Good.
“Pull,” I tell Voren, voice flat.
He throws everything through the mark. The drowned come like a chain hauled out of a well. They pass my senses in a fast, constant run. The pressure at the seam falls in steps I count, each drop exactly.
“Give me something to kick,” Dastian mutters, his chaotic energy making him bounce on the balls of his feet, itching for a fight.
“We’re trying,” Nyssa grits out. “Be ready.”
“What if it tries to possess you?” I ask, suddenly.
“Then you kick my arse,” she says. “I am done fucking about. This is the end of the road. I’m going to goad him into possessing me. You are going to kill me, and then I will resurrect.”
“And if you don’t?”
“Then know that I died a fucking hero.”
The comment is so Nyssa, it makes my heart lurch. Now is the moment. I grip her hand and pull her closer. “I love you,” I whisper into her hair.
“I know. Now let’s end this.”
I don’t flinch. I won’t. If she is going to make me kill her, I’ll do it clean.
“Voren,” I say, eyes on the seam. “Catch her on the breath between. Don’t let him ride her out.”
“I have her,” he answers, voice like a still lake. His power threads tighter through the room, quiet as a net drawn hand over hand.
“Dastian,” I add, “if he tries to bolt, you close every angle that isn’t her.”
“Every door but the one we choose,” he agrees, jaw set, palms bright and tight with contained riot.
Nyssa looks back once. Not long enough for doubt. Long enough to brand me with the knowledge that she trusts me to end her. Then she turns to the crack and opens the line inside herself. I can’t see, but I feel it hit my shadows like a lock settling. Light threads her bones, shadow seals the seams, death hums just out of swing. She breathes, and the chamber answers.
“Come then,” she says, low. “Stop pretending.”
He doesn’t test. He lunges.
The rope turns into a spear. It slams the slit, snaps through the brand, and hammers into her palm. The mark we set at the mound flares under my ribs. The hook takes. He screams without sound and drives harder.
I pin the walls. The roof dips, and I force it up. Dastian scythes the rebound along the channels, red threads burning a ring that dies at the far stones. Voren’s tether thrums high and tightens to a wire.
