I swallow down my panic at the thought of being this far underground and the racing thoughts wondering if Natasya got away.
I don’t even allow my mind to ponder over what the dead could possibly be planning with me. They kept me alive for a reason and I’m not entirely sure if I want to know what that reason is.
Suddenly the dead part to the side, like a stream parting around a river and to my utter shock they reveal Natasya standing there. She looks resplendent, her red hair a flaming halo around her and her purple dress clings to her frame. Beautiful and very much alive, but for how much longer?
She strides forward like she has nothing to fear. Even though she is entering a room full of dead bodies that fully intend to rip her still beating heart from her chest.
I strain my neck as I stare at her with horror. She is holding a vial up near her mouth, I’m not sure what the contents are, but whatever it is, it seems to have upset the ghosts. They begin hissing and snarling.
“All right, I’m here,” she calls out loudly. “Where is Evengi?”
My heart sinks with realization. She is here for me. Out of everything that I considered every possibility of how this would turn out, Natasya having a crisis of conscience and coming back for me was not even on the list. I counted on her sense of self-preservation. Her selfishness. The fact that she doesn’t let moral scruples stop her.
I counted on her to act like a necromancer.
But here she is, standing there surrounded by dead things so vibrant and alive. And ready to throw that all away for me?
Before I can fully work through the crushing weight of disappointment over her actually doing something heroic, rough hands reach onto the shelf and yank me out.
I find myself staring into the empty space above Brom’s collar as he swings the sword out. I flinch but they simply cut through the ropes holding me in place. I stretch my arms as I turn to Natasya.
“What are you doing here?” I demand, but her eyes are focused on something in the middle of the floor. I look down, realizing that it’s a skull, cracked with half the side of it collapsed in on itself.
“Papa,” Natasya breathes as she stares at it. Even from across the crypt I can see the tears shining in her eyes. Her eyes flick up as fury floods her face. “You killed my papa.”
“We will send you to join him,” one of the ghosts says with a dry chuckle as two of the dead grasp Natasya’s arms. They wrest the potion vial away from her and throw it to the side. It cracks and there is an exploding sound as flames erupt. They aren’t huge flames, but they are so hot that I can feel them from here. They leap up to one of the corpses, and it lets out a hollow screech as the flames climb up it, consuming the dried flesh and burial rags.
One of the necromancer ghosts screams. “My body! My form!”
In the moment of chaos, I feel something bump my now free hand.
I look down to see the grinning teeth of a rotting smile and the hollow eyeless stare of one of the undead. It holds something out to me, a worn brown leather book.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Natasya
I’d staked a lot on the fact that the necromancers wouldn’t notice one extra dead amongst their ranks.
I won’t lie, I was seriously considering just trading my life for Evengi’s, even though I couldn’t fathom why I would. But as I stepped into the burial mound, I saw the corpse there. The necromancers, it seemed, could only control one corpse at a time in their weakened state of being mere spirits.
So, the necromancer who controlled Brom had left his body unattended for me to come across. I reanimated it, and then while I played the part of keeping the spirits distracted, I sent my dead minion to relieve Brom’s body of its spellbook.
I look across the way to see Evengi staring down at the spellbook as it is held out to him by the rotting corpse I sent to him.
“Evengi!” I shriek as the two corpses yank my arms apart. Skeletal hands grasp my shoulders as they shove me to my knees. A third undead steps in front of me, raising a crude dagger over its head “Read the book.”
He jolts at my word, grabbing the book. He flips it open, and I hear necromancer spirits begin to realize that I was nothing more than a distraction.
“No!” one cries.
“Stop him!” another cries.
But it’s too late, Evengi is already reading out loud. It’s a strange language that I don’t recognize, the language of magic. It’s not one that I hear often, magickers always speak their spells softly in the barest of whispers to keep others from learning and stealing their spells.
But Evengi isn’t a practiced magicker, so he reads it out loud. His tone is lilting and almost hypnotic. But what happens next is truly breathtaking.
Flames begin flickering through the air, dancing and skipping over our heads. As I watch the flames take on shapes, I blink as a dragon made of pure fire flaps its wings it lets out a breath of fire and suddenly the smell of burning flesh fills my nostrils.
