Nova licks a paw and stalks into the undergrowth. Brielle takes her time, aware of everything, the crackle of twig, the bristle of thorn and leaf, the birds watching her with gleaming eyes from the knots and whorls of ancient bark. The mist coats her like a second skin, dew and the scent of moss clinging to the back of her throat as she follows the sounds of Dreska and her descent into Clarus. She had to simulate it. It is not the night marked as Clarus on the witch calendar. That night is when day and night are of equal length, so instead she ensured Dreska had a couple of drops of wyvern bloodmingled with the hot berry juice she drank at supper. This would draw her true nature to the surface, and with a few witch words, a spell cast over her in the clearing and a drop of Brielle’s own blood to thread a warding around her, Dreska would tip either way over the next few hours.
Witch or wraith.
Or death.
Finally, Brielle settles into the undergrowth, whispering the wordsumbra tuttelathen, as she nicks the side of her palm with a small blade, allowing a couple of drops to hiss on the edge of the clearing,Clarus inquisitio.The mist clears to the edges, as though the clearing is now a wide, pale marble, and in its centre stands Dreska. The whole world seems to tremor, then hold its breath.
Dreska’s spine suddenly snaps straight, her head tipped to the sky, light and dark pouring from her like ethereal smoke. The light and dark whirl as a storm, tearing though the clearing, raking up leaves as Dreska’s mouth opens in a silent scream.
Then the storm takes the form of a wither beast, crying with her sister’s voice. It grows huge and substantial, lumbering round her in a circle, and Brielle watches with gritted teeth as Dreska’s shoulders drop and a sob escapes her throat.Keep it together, she wills her silently.Put yourself aside and figure it out.
As Dreska and the wither beast circle each other, Dreska wiping at her eyes with her sleeve, Brielle isdragged back to memories of her own Clarus, to the beast freed from the enclosure of her own mind, her own flesh.
A wyvern.
One of the murderous monsters that killed her mother, that split such a mighty hunter in half, merely for sport, when Brielle was far too young. Brielle remembers how she shook with rage as the wyvern circled her on Clarus, how she used her cunning and her might to drag it down to the ground, then staked its wings to the cold earth. She cried over it, she remembers that, cried for her birth mother, for the lack of warmth, lack of love in her life, all except for Lowri’s. Then she bled the wyvern dry, the light and dark pouring back into her as she claimed the kill, and she knew what she would do, what she had to do.
That was the night the plan hatched in her mind to hunt down those wyvern in the Spines, the entire pack, and slaughter them all. It was only when Lowri shrieked in pain and sorrow that she jolted back into herself, to see what it was that her sister faced. Wraiths. Many, many wraiths, all swooping to claim her, their eyes shaped like the Malefant’s. She couldn’t interfere, but she stood with Lowri as her sister swept them all away. All her fears and sorrows, all her unworthy, poisoned thoughts were crippling her, but, in the end, Brielle and Lowri were together as dawn crested the land in the wild north of Arnhem. They conquered Clarus together.
She smiles at the memory now, how they grinned at each other, clothes torn and filthy, how they both knew at the same moment that they were witch and hunter.
Brielle, so lost in memories of her own Clarus, in monitoring Dreska’s, does not hear the soft pad of footsteps behind her, nor the sigh of brushed leaves as someone approaches.
Not until there is steel at her throat.
‘And what have we here?’ a voice rumbles in her ear.
‘the rexilium brothers?’ lowri asks,foreboding blooming inside her as she looks to Eli. ‘Have you ever met anyone that can do what you can do?’
Eli frowns and shakes his head. ‘No one. It’s why I wanted, why I was so interested in finding my father.’
‘I know,’ Lowri says quietly. ‘But perhaps it’s best you didn’t find these brothers if they started a war here and caused such damage.’
‘More than damage,’ Ethlet says. ‘Devastation. They tried to conquer our world and were beaten back, but at great cost. Come outside. I think it’s time you see Fallow with your own eyes.’
Lowri gathers her temporary strength from the Fallow Fog brew to step outside, into the world beyond Eli’s father’s house. What she finds is an abomination. Magic – overused and twisted in such an unnatural, vicious way – has left a legacy of darkness that drips over Fallow. She watches as a drop falls from the dense fog above, descending like tendrils of onyx smoke.Where it meets the paved street it splashes like ink, before dissipating. She licks her lips, cowering away, all too aware of the repercussions of twisted magic from the experiments in the lower levels of Coven Septern. If these Rexilium brothers did this, if they are capable of this level of destruction that cannot be undone … she watches as another droplet falls, then another. She cannot see the sun or moon or stars. The fog obscures it all. Ethlet sighs, stepping out beside her, and opens an umbrella with apop, covering them both.
‘You probably don’t have long before you weaken again, but let’s take a walk. Traversing is disorientating, from what I’ve been told. Isaiah said Fallow is like walking through a fractured mirror of Highborn. You may find it … strange.’
Eli declines an umbrella, holding out his hand for a drop of fog to land on his fingertips. It wreaths his skin in shadow for a heartbeat, then disappears. He rubs his fingertips together, regarding them impassively, then turns to Ethlet. ‘Lead the way.’
They follow Ethlet past rows of crooked homes, all three or four storeys tall that don’t just go up, but sometimes across, a room borrowed from one side or the other in jagged lines. It’s not until they cross a street that two things occur to Lowri: there are no carriages, no horses or carts using the roads, and the houses all look as if they’re falling over, as though suspended before the very brink of collapse.
People hurry past, clutching umbrellas that hidetheir faces, and Lowri makes a point of observing their shoes instead. It’s the only part of them not painted in black or grey like the streets of Fallow surrounding them. Ruby-red heels, burgundy flats, cerulean boots, even shoes that sharpen to a point, glistening and gold. She searches in vain for any other hint of colour in this city, but even the shop windows are bereft. They hold garments in shades ranging from shale to granite, umbrellas that all look the same to her untrained eye, and one shop holds cage after cage of mice, all pale grey with black beads for eyes.
‘Why the shoes?’ she murmurs to Ethlet as they round a corner on to a square with a gated garden at the centre, complete with muted grey rose bushes and stygian trees. ‘And why is everything else grey?’
‘It’s another after-effect of the war. All the colour, all the light, was absorbed into the fog. Well, most of it. A few glints remained. If you had a little colour left, a little light magic, what would you use it on?’ she asks. ‘It’s a glimmer of hope, and it’s also just the fashion. I’ve got a pair of blush-pink boots I’m rather fond of.’
‘So the shadow magic has been overused, whereas the light magic has all but vanished?’ Eli asks, reaching out to pluck a rose petal through the black bars surrounding the garden. ‘And it’s light magic that brings colour to your world?’
‘Pretty much,’ Ethlet says with a small shrug. ‘A world in balance has every shade of light and shadow, but when the Rexilium brothers were through withFallow, they had blotted out most of the light and left too much shadow behind. Now we are in the after, and even the Society cannot fix it.’
‘You’ve mentioned the Society before. Who are they?’ Lowri asks, stepping round a puddle that could just be rain, or, she realises, could be fog.
‘Oh, careless of me,’ Ethlet tuts. ‘They’re a collective of the very best and brightest minds, stretching across the land. Shadow and light magic wielders, they experiment, theorise, revolutionise. They use magic for the betterment and advancement of our world. Only now, of course, they have just shadow magic left.’
‘And my father?’ Eli says, glancing at her. ‘Where did he fit into all this?’
