The echoes of their pain, their anger, their helplessness, turned my bones to steel.
I understood now what had to be done. I couldn’t let go of Kilraith—not for a second, not for a breath—even though his anger,and Ankaret’s fire, was searing my skin. I had to hold open his ruined body and keep him from thrashing away. I had to give Ankaret time to destroy him from the inside out.
We’re right here, said Farrin, her voice as clear as a bell in my mind.
We won’t let you go, said Gemma, fierce and close, as if she were right beside me.
When I forced my eyes open against the scorching air, I no longer saw Ankaret’s familiar pale form. I could see only the firebird pouring itself into the bloody maw of Kilraith’s mutilated chest. His arms lit up, his legs, the shreds of his torso. Every vein turned a scorching bright gold.
“Kill me,” he said faintly, the sound nearly lost beneath the firebird’s roaring flames. “Yes, my Ankaret. Kill me. Let’s make her rage. Let’s ruin her.”
Her.The word slipped into my pain-fogged mind and right out again.
Listen to me, Ankaret said.All three of you, listen.Her voice was suddenly right beside me. No apology there, no regret. Only a command, and I felt my sisters listening too.I will not leave any of you. Not yet. Not until everything is finished, and there is so much left to do. Do not fear, no matter what you see. I am stronger than him. I am everything he should have been and more. Thank you for helping me. I could not have done this alone. I could not have borne it.
Just do it, I wanted to scream at her,and hurry. But I couldn’t speak, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t even be sure that I was still alive.
You are alive.Gemma.
And then Farrin:You’re so strong, Mara.
As I watched, tears streaming down my face, Ankaret’s fire filled Kilraith completely, consuming everything he was and everything he had once been. I watched him light up from the inside—every bone, every vein, every hair incandescent with flame—until I could seenothing of the body I’d helped rend apart. The bird of shadows and storms was gone. The images of their memories disappeared. All that was left was fire.
Suddenly everything grew quiet. I could hear nothing—not the battle, not my sisters, not even the sound of my own screams.
Then an explosion at my fingertips threw me across the canyon. I rolled to a stop on a flat stretch of pebbled earth, pushed myself up with shaking arms, and looked behind me in a frantic daze.
Ankaret and Kilraith were gone. In their place was a huge black gash in the earth, up from which drifted a single column of smoke.
Numbly I inspected my body, but I was unhurt—no burns, no blisters. Only a bright pink tinge to my skin, a faint sizzling sound in my ears, and a few scratches from where I’d hit the ground.
Gemma?I thought, shaking my head a little.Farrin?
But they didn’t answer; whatever power had joined us was gone, or at least exhausted.
For a moment I could only sit there in astonishment. Then my panicked mind came screaming back to me.
Gareth. Get Gareth.
Gareth’s mother, standing near the cliff, fighting with mud and stone.
Gareth, running right toward her.
I staggered to my feet and launched myself into the air through a wave of dizziness. I had no sense of how much time had passed since I’d left him on those cliffs. It couldn’t have been long, I told myself, rounding a bend in the canyon. The Mist was still thick, shrouding the cliffs in silver. Maybe Gareth was right where I’d left him. Comets and gods and a purple-skied otherworld—nothing was impossible anymore. Maybe days had passed for me and only seconds for him.
Then the house finally came into view, and everything inside me went quiet and still.
An entire section of the cliffs near the river was gone. A landslide of rocks and mud had cascaded down the ruined cliff face from Big Deep’s lawn to the river below.
And lying on the riverbank, a bright red gash on his forehead and his lower half buried in rubble, was Gareth.
Chapter 43
There it was. There was the reason for that acid burning the back of my throat.Something bad.
My body had known before my mind did, as though loving Gareth, and him loving me, had made us one person. My body had known with the same instinct that had told me at ten years old, as the Warden’s carriage bore me away from Ivyhill, that I would never be able to go home again. And my body knew now, as I landed hard in the muddy water and sloshed toward him.
He’s fine, I reasoned.He’ll have a headache when he wakes up. It wasn’t that far a fall.
