Where she had attacked before, crystal ash still smoked, and the Fifth had blackened stone. Shouts came across the walls, the battle between panoms and roixers in full force.
“This is not right,” Jake said, stepping in front of Lenna to be a physical barrier between the wall and her body.
“What isn’t?” Lenna asked, narrowing her golden eyes at the uneven wall in front of them.
The corridor walls breathed.
Wet. Wrong. Too alive.
With a sick pop, hidden pods split open. Membranes tore. Black fluid slicked down the stone as bodies spilled out, screeching.
Hatchlings. Dozens of them, peeking. Sangins still slick with their mother’s ink, claws skittering, teeth already red.
“Fuck,” Lenna hissed, golden sparks igniting in her palm.
Hope’s dagger cut the throat of the first one before its scream finished. Jake’s Harming cut another clean in half. The floor crawled with them, the air heavy with the iron stink of blood.
Ayla’s silver sparks flashed like the sharpest knives. Stevian was calm—always calm—his shadows already coiling from his hands. He exchanged stares with Hope for the briefest moment, a kind smile on his lips as he nodded.
Ciaran’s shadows poured out the moment the membranes broke. His darkness flooded the chamber in a tide of black, wall to wall. For a heartbeat, Hope thought it would hold, that they were safe.
Then the pods ruptured wider. Black ink bled from the walls, seeping into the shadows themselves. It pulsed, alive, hungry, like a sentient, living entity. More screaming sangins were birthed from the walls, pouring into the corridor like endless killing curses.
What had the Queen done to the Organ House—to Hope’s House?
Stevian moved first. He spread his arms, and his shadows became a blanket, slamming over the hatchlings. They shrieked, muffled against the smothering dark.
“Hold them down,” he barked, braiding his shade tighter, pressing them into stone.
The ink fought back. It wormed into his shadow, thick as oil, staining it, eating it. Hope felt her skin prickle with the Fifth—she could burn it all to ash, but there were too many lives that mattered between these walls. The risk was too high.
Stevian didn’t hesitate. He pushed harder, shadows strangling, suffocating, breaking. He took every writhing sangin body into himself, until his arms trembled with the weight, until the black ink rose from the floor to his ankles, knees, chest—
“Go!” he shouted. His smile was back, determined and reckless. His eyes flicked to Hope, then to Ciaran. “Don’t waste this.”
“Stevian—” Hope lunged, went to catch his wrist as her blades flew to the sangins while she Harmed them with her free hand, trying to get them off him. But she couldn’t touch him. His arms were covered in ink, now trailing up his neck. He was going to drown in the Queen’s ink.
His breath was ragged. “We were forged for war.” His shadows surged one last time, drowning every sangin hatchling in the room. The ink crawled up his neck like fire, eating what he was. His body shook, but his voice stayed steady. “Be the ones who live for peace.”
Then the shadow snapped.
There wasn’t a scream. Just a body falling, and a smear of darkness burned into stone that light refused to touch.
Ciaran dropped to his knees beside him, shadows trembling in his hands. Ayla’s jaw clenched so hard it could break. Hope’s face went hard as iron. She couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe—Stevian’s smile was still there, even as the last of him bled into silence.
But there was no time to grieve. Not in this war.
She grabbed Ciaran’s hand, helping him stand, allowing for a quick caress on his grandfather’s cheek before he covered Stevian’s body with shadows.
And they ran.
The Organ House roared around them. Sparks collided with steel, panom magic against roixer spears. The black-eyed soldiers moved like machines, the Queen’s ink drivingevery weapon with intent. Outside, chaos thundered—their allies fighting at the gates, panoms and courtrades spilling blood for Thyria.
They fought their way through the battle, following Jake’s lead to the throne room. It wasn’t an easy feat. Roixers and sangins and panoms battled for their lives, and it felt so wrong not to help, to continue running. Hope had to keep reminding herself that the end of the battle was ahead of them, not here. Once the Queen was dealt with, this would end. This carnage and massacre would end.
Lenna halted behind Jake, her eyes locked on a fire-haired woman fighting three roixers at once. The woman’s bronze sparks didn’t falter, moving smoothly around them, dodging, Harming them, but one of the roixers spears opened the skin on her leg.
“You rotten sons of a fucking feather,” Lenna roared, running towards them. She lifted her hands, simultaneously Giving a golden necklace to one that stopped him dead between screams, Taking the breath out of another’s lungs. Before she could deal with the third roixer, Ayla had stepped in, Giving silver metal chains that locked his arms and legs. The woman clenched her jaw, lifting her chin as her nostrils flared.
