The same demon that had slithered into Bryony’s mind.
Keiran’s attention went to Aspen, as if called to her by her cries, or perhaps by the familial bond she shared with Bryony, recognizing in her the power of a Sculptress-blessed witch. He advanced on her, steps slow and unbothered. His eyes shuddered as he breathed her in. “I can smell her on you.”
“Please,” Aspen whispered. “I’ll do anything if you release my—”
Keiran’s hand shot out and grabbed her by the neck, silencing her. His features darkened with hatred. “This is all your fault,” he said to Aspen. “You deserved to be ripped apart, and I will ensure that you never be put whole again.”
With unnatural strength, Keiran plunged a hand clean through Aspen’s chest.
Aspen’s eyes widened. Romie shoutedno, the sound of it ringing in Emory’s ears, tearing through her heart.
There was a horrible cracking and squelching sound as Keiran fished for something inside Aspen’s chest. None of them had time to move before he ripped a blood-slick piece of rib bone out of her, and Aspen fell, lifeless, at their feet.
Emory watched in total stupor as Keiran walked up to the door and slotted the bloody rib into the spiral etching. It fit perfectly in the second outermost ring of the curved cavity.
The door accepted its sacrifice.
A breath blew through the grotto, making the fine hairs on Emory’s arms stand to attention. Both the spiral and the bone erupted in silver light, and suddenly cracks of it ran along the basalt columns, shifting from silver to green to the rich brown of tilled earth, as if the woods themselves were trying to erupt from the columns. Spores of silvery green lifted from the striated rock, concentrating around the spiral, where they sprouted into a collection of strange fungi and moss and leaves that seemed to form a lock.
And yet the door did not open. Keiran pressed a hand to the lock expectantly, anger darkening his features when the door remained shut.
Emory felt Romie’s hand brush against hers. She followed her line of sight to Aspen, prone and bleeding at their feet, and understood Romie’s meaning: use Keiran’s distraction to heal Aspen.
Blood poured out of the hole in the witch’s chest, a wound too big and too swiftly administered for Emory to heal, if the deathly pallor of Aspen’s face was any indication.
But Emory refused to have another death on her hands.
She willed whatever light she could into her, making it pulse bright enough to blast back the umbrae that held her and Romie, creating a protective dome around the two of them and Aspen. The umbrae shrunk away from the light, slithering back into shadows around Keiran, whose focus was on them now, the door still unopened behind him. Emory quickly willed Wardcrafter magic into the dome of light, hoping it would keep the demon at bay.
Indeed, his features grew dark when he found he could not approach them. “You cannot keep me out forever, Tidecaller.”
Emory ignored him as she crouched at Aspen’s side. Her usual ghosts had finally deigned to make an appearance, hovering around Aspen like a morbid welcome party. Travers, Lia, Jordyn, Lizaveta—all of them whispering accusations in her ear. All of them here except for Keiran.
“Can you save her?”
Romie’s strained voice snapped her back to the here and now. There were unshed tears in her eyes as she crouched on the other side of Aspen.
Emory fought to block out the darkness pressing in. “I can try, but the ley line—”
A sliver of fear in Romie’s eyes, then a steely tilt of her chin. “Do it,” she said.
Emory didn’t need to be told twice. She called on all the magic she could muster, throwing caution to the wind as she opened herself up to the power of the ley line that ran beneath them. She’d felt it growing in strength as they neared the door. The air down here sizzled with possibility, power. Begging her to take from it. And so she flung every bit of healing power she could grasp intoAspen, all the while strengthening the protective dome around them.
Emory’s magic assessed the damage, finding the spot where Aspen’s rib bone had been ruptured, nearly piercing her lungs in the process. The witch’s eyes were glassy, fixed above her unseeingly, but Emory refused to believe she was dead. And therewasbreath to her still, though her life force was faint and fading fast.
Distantly, Emory was aware of Keiran moving at the edge of her vision, but he could not get close to her and Romie and Aspen, not as Emory’s magic flared brighter and more powerful around them, Healer and Lightkeeper and Wardcrafter blending together until she didn’t know which was which, until it became something new entirely, fueled by the crackling energy of the ley line that flooded through her. She was suddenly aware of silver veins running along her arms as she ran her hands over Aspen, trying to mend the witch’s bones. But again she felt invincible, feeling no impending sense of Collapsing.
“Please,” she gritted out. “Please don’t die.”
Her blood felt like ice fire in her veins, the sort of burning cold that the stars themselves blazed with. She could feel her ghosts hungering for such power, could see that hunger echoed in Keiran’s expression as he watched her, but she blocked it all out, focusing her attention on Aspen until her rib finally mended—regrewfrom nothing—and her chest stitched itself up and life returned to her face, her eyes.
There was no time to wonder at what she’d done as Romie suddenly fell limply at Aspen’s side, her own face as white as a sheet, lips tinged blue as though from a lingering kiss from death itself.
“Ro!”
Panicked, Emory let go of her magic. All the light faded at once, the dome around them flickering out, her ghosts pressing in closeras if angered at being denied this feast of magic. Romie’s eyes fluttered open as she managed a weak, “I’ll be fine.”
She was decidedlynotfine, but before Emory could assess what was wrong, the umbrae pounced, flocking to Romie like moths to a flame. Emory was lifted to her feet as Keiran grabbed her by the back of the neck. Those unnatural eyes drew her in like a black hole. His other hand reached for her arm, and for a terrifying moment Emory thought he might rip her apart too. But he merely lifted her wrist to peer at the silver spiral on her skin. “Interesting,” he said. There was something like bloodlust in his eyes. “I didn’t think your kind still existed. But here you stand, the key to everything.”
