I took a moment to stretch my senses past the attic—to Talan and Ryder standing guard, to the soldiers patrolling beneath us, to the lawn and our soldiers and the chimaera still throwing themselves tirelessly against the wards. The portals still hovered in the air, casting an orange glow over the canyon, but nothing more emerged from them. Another lucky thing that made my feathers bristle with warning.
“We should keep going,” I decided. Maybe the answer really was as simple as Ankaret’s nearness enfeebling the anchors’ metal. Maybe she was even consciously helping us somehow.
My sisters agreed, and Farrin began her song. It was identical to the first one in both melody and rhythm—pleasantly predictable, pleasantly ordered. As it moved over us and through us, the air thrumming with our joined power, I thought of the same images of tumbling blocks, a tidy wedge of pie, and my sisters, small and careful, content.Simplicity, urged the sweet timbre of Farrin’s song.Softness. Unlatch. Unmake.
Gemma gasped softly, and a second later, the goblet cracked inthree. The light outlining its carvings disappeared, the hot metal went cold, and soon another layer of ashes coated our hands.
We stared at each other in bewildered silence. Even Gemma, with all her cheerful optimism, looked surprised.
“All right, then,” she said, a little uncertainly. She glanced at the crown, which now sat alone in the center of our triangle. It had always been the most fearsome-looking anchor, with those sharp spikes and the three jewels like eyes.The Man with the Three-Eyed Crown. It seemed like ages since we’d been to Brimgard, where Gemma had torn the crown from Talan’s head and broken his bondage to Kilraith.
I took a deep breath. There was no sense in delaying this, no logic in fearing this dead metal thing. “Farrin—”
Her name disappeared in an explosion of sound and a burst of brilliant light. The house jolted around us; the light outside was suddenly a sinister flood of orange.
I hurried toward the windows, dread high in my throat, already knowing what I would see. What met my eyes was even worse than I expected: the shell of ward magic still stood in place around Big Deep, but the surface of it had shattered like thin ice. And the chimaera were no longer alone. Titans, fae, furiants with their flashing fists, nymphs wielding spirals of fire and water, griffins with wingspans twice as large as mine—Kilraith’s army had in its ranks every kind of Olden being I’d ever faced. I watched them pour out of the portals hovering in the sky only long enough to see a wind titan dive straight for the wards. Tall, thin, and pale, with eyes like lightning and fists swirling with cyclones, it rammed into the wall of magic so hard that a dozen fresh cracks appeared in its surface.
I watched our armies hurry into formation with a pit in my stomach. We’d prepared for this. We’d known it would happen. And yet our soldiers seemed suddenly pitiful in the face of all this Olden glory. We needed Caiathos. We needed Neave.
We needed Mother.
And we needed my sisters.
And me.
I hurried back to them, my blood roaring with the desire to leap out the window and tear across the lawn into battle. I said nothing; they could see everything they needed to know on my face and hear it in the din from outside. Either Kilraith remained strong enough to control that army even with only two anchors left to him, or all those Oldens were just as determined to crush us even with Kilraith’s will weakened.
Or Kilraiths’ will hadn’t been weakened at all.
Our plan was in shambles. Every decision that had led us here seemed suddenly, fatally foolish.
I looked fiercely at Farrin.Begin.
She obeyed at once, pale but resolute. Her song uncoiled from her throat just as sweetly as it had twice before. But when our fingers touched the crown, there was nothing tidy or easy about its magic; it flared brilliantly to life, bucking wildly against our power. So much for an equilibrium of strength; I had to use all my energy to grip the godsdamned thing and keep it from flinging my sisters across the room. Holding on to it made me feel like the whole house was tilting around me.
With our triangle unbalanced, Farrin’s song faltered, but she recovered quickly and shifted into the most complicated variation yet. Her voice was strong, her rhythm sure, but I could barely find the original melody anymore. I could barely hear myselfthink.
Blue lightning so bright it rivaled the brilliance of Ankaret’s eyes poured out of the crown’s carvings and wrapped around our bodies, weaving a knot around our hands. Soon we were completely wreathed inside it, and the cursed power tugging on us, trying to pry open our fingers, made it hard to breathe. A high vibrating whine rang in myears, buzzing around my head like a wasp, and for a moment I thought maybe I’d lost my hearing. Then the whine became a shriek, and I realized with horror that it was coming from the crown. But I could still hear Farrin’s song and see the glimmer of Gemma’s scarred hand, which the crown’s anger had turned incandescent.
Anger—that was the right word. The crown wasangry. I had the wild thought that maybe it had absorbed all the might of the goblet and key to use for itself.
Or maybe this was why Kilraith hadn’t yet appeared with his army; maybe he wasin here, fighting us from inside the crown.
Past the sound of that shrieking fury came the sound of Talan screaming in pain outside on the landing. I looked quickly at Gemma, but she was utterly focused on holding on to the crown, her cheeks red from the effort.
“Farrin!” Ryder roared from beyond the door. Some kind of racket was clattering up the attic stairs. I heard gunfire, screams, splintering wood. An explosion from the lawn shattered the four attic windows.
The desperation in Ryder’s voice spurred something in Farrin. Steely-eyed, she sang louder, faster. Her voice split into pieces, as if she held an entire chorus inside her and all those fierce singers were at war with the shrieking crown. The din was awful; I strained to block it out and focus only on my sisters—Farrin’s song, Gemma’s panting breaths. We pulled and pulled. Every tendon in my body felt ready to pop, and my talons carved tracks into the wooden floor.
Hurry, was all I could think.Hurry, faster, die,die, you awful godsdamned thing!
Then the world burst open at our fingertips, hurling us all back into the walls. For a moment I lay there in shock, my ears ringing and a white cloud shimmering around the edges of my vision. Then I saw the jagged charred spot in the center of the room. A ring of glittering ash surrounded it.
The crown was gone.
I pushed myself to my feet and ran to my sisters, heart in my throat. But though Farrin held her right arm against her chest, and it took Gemma a moment to regain her balance, they were both alive and standing. I pulled them both to me, folding them into the safety of my wings so I could feel their hearts beating against mine for at least a few seconds. We said nothing; we didn’t need to. The heat of our skin, the crackle of power that still hummed around us, the way our blood roared as one through our veins—red like our father’s, gold like our mother’s—said more than any words could.
Destroying the anchors hadn’t hurt us. Instead it hadgalvanizedus.
