“You could have come to me.” She touched her forehead to his. “Why didn’t you come to me?”
“You were withthem. The humans.” His voice twisted on the word. “They’d gotten their claws into you. You loved them so much you’d forgotten who you really were. I had to destroy them.”
“Destroying people I loved? This was how you hoped to awaken me?”
“And it worked. You became yourself again. And now look at you.” He stepped back to regard her, their hands joined. “As you were born. As you were meant to be.”
Ankaret was quiet for a moment. The firebird at her back dimmed slightly, bowing its bright head.
“So much anger in you,” she said sadly. “Tormenting the gods who made you. Tormenting the creatures they made. Our kindred. And yet you would see them slaughtered. You would destroy everything that keeps them safe and watch two worlds obliterate each other.”
“No, Ankaret,” he rasped, his eyes glinting. “The Olden world will triumph, and the human world will fall. Don’t you see? It is the greatest final punishment we can deal the gods who made us and then abandoned us. The humans are notworthyof your love.”
“And you are? You, who have battled me as if I am just as much your enemy as they are?”
“I never intended to kill you. I only wanted you to understand what must be done. And you keepfightingme, Ankaret. These humans have poisoned you against me. Would you truly choose them over me?”
Ankaret’s sadness hit me as surely as if she’d struck me. She stepped back from Kilraith and said, “Choose them over the man I loved? Never. But you are not the man I loved. You’re right. The man I loved is dead.”
Then, so quickly it took me a moment to understand what I was seeing, the firebird surged forward, engulfing Ankaret’s body, and plunged her fiery wings into Kilraith’s chest.
I cannot do this alone.
Her voice resounded through my head, and the despair in it left me reeling. But at any moment Kilraith could recover from his shock and fight back, and his fury would overpower her sadness, and this time his sword would not miss. I saw it all unfolding in my mind like a bad dream, and I could not allow it to happen.
So I flew at them, right at Kilraith’s back, which Ankaret hadpresented to me so helpfully. I’d done this before, I told myself, or at least something similar—with my sisters, I’d torn apart the host body housing Jaetris and revealed the gilded egg of Mhorghast.
But this was different. This was not a feeble human body barely held together by an exhausted and tortured god. This was Kilraith at his full strength, and I didn’t have my sisters at my side. I had only the Mist at my back, and Ankaret’s licking fire, and the power that lived inside me, which I drew upon with every scrap of will I possessed.
In the instant before my talons hit Kilraith’s body, a single thought occurred to me:This will hurt.
Then I slammed into him, my talons sinking into his flesh like knives into hot butter. The dark bird of shadows overhead thrashed in anger, lightning shooting out from his wings to coil like whips around my forearms, and Kilraith’s scream was so loud that it nearly made me lose my grip. But somehow I kept going, pressing my talons deeper and deeper into his body, until I felt the burn of Ankaret’s fire against my skin.
The pain was searing, unthinkable. My vision went white. And in my desperation, the only thing I could think of—the only thing left to me—were the four precious syllables of my sisters’ names.
Gemma.
Farrin.
I called out to them with everything I was—every muscle, every breath, every memory.
I imagined us as the women of mere moments ago, tearing apart a crown in an empty attic as everyone we loved fought nearby.
I imagined us as the children we had once been. Three little girls, hand-in-hand-in-hand, running through the gardens of Ivyhill and shrieking with joy, because we were playing hide-and-seek with our parents, and they were so clever with their hiding spots, but we wouldfind them all the same. When we were together, we could do anything. We were unstoppable.
And then, as I clung to these images in my mind, my sisters, remarkably, answered me.
I felt them hear my call, and I heard them respond withtheirevery muscle, every breath, every memory. Something had happened in that attic, something new and wonderful. Destroying the anchors together had formed new cords of power between us, connecting us in ways I didn’t understand.
Images unfurled before me, beside me,withinme. I saw Gemma on the great house’s steps, helping Caiathos stand as Talan held them both, lending them his strength. I saw Farrin, singing tirelessly on the ruined lawn as Ryder shielded her with his body and his sword. And though they were fighting their own battles, they were also there beside me, helping me fight mine.
I’m here, came Gemma’s voice.
You aren’t alone, came Farrin’s.
I sensed their bewilderment as keenly as I felt my own. How this was happening, and if it would last, none of us knew. Maybe this vivid connection would fade; maybe it was only the union of Ankaret and Kilraith, the violence of their power, that gave it life.
But for now it was real, and it was ours. My mind touched my sisters’ minds, and their memories opened to me in a cascade of colors and sounds. I was Gemma, wrenching the Three-Eyed Crown from Talan’s head, my heart breaking to hear his anguished cries. I was Farrin, navigating Kilraith’s version of Ivyhill, desperate to find Ryder somewhere in the flames.
