The room goes thin around the edges as the smell of salt and winter herbs cut through smoke and copper just as the mage appears. She steps over the threshold and stops like she ran face-first into a fate she didn’t order.
Her eyes take me in. From my busted nose to the smear of black drying at my mouth and chest. The shake in my wrists I’m pretending isn’t there. Something like alarm breaks through her stone-cold expression.
“This is worse than I thought,” she says. She drops to her knees beside me. Cold, dry fingers press to my sternum, and every muscle in my body lights like a fuse. My limbs burn, a starved fire racing out to my edges, and then some invisible hook takes my spine and lifts.
My chest rumbles with a deep groan. Every bone aches as I’m held, torso suspended, eye level with the Stygian like the room forgot which way gravity was supposed to go.
Knight swears and steps in, but she flashes him a look that stops him mid-lunge.
“Touch him and you will snap his spine,” she warns. “And it seems he’s unable to heal so I suggest you stand back. It’s weak. Any movement, it tears.”
“Tear what?” Sinner asks, voice gone flat.
“The braid,” she says. Her palm never leaves my chest. I can feel her power tasting me like a viper’s tongue. “Two threads, one knot, and a third, much older, looping the others tight.”
“Speak like a person,” Knight grinds out.
She ignores him, eyes on me. “Listen, boy,” she murmurs, and the word boy should make me laugh, but nothing in me remembers how. “The shore you want will drown you if you go as you are. The moon split its light to keep a tide alive. One part burns in you. The other burns where she’s missed.”
“Riddles,” I breathe, head lolling, fury too tired to lift its fists. “Why are you here, mage?”
“We will end this,” Creed says again, steadier now, tasting my glare and not looking away.
“Creed,” Knight shakes his head.
“There is no choice. We have to buy time, figure out how to cut her from his core without unraveling the thread that’s actually keeping his heart beating.”
Knight’s jaw clenches so hard I hear it. “We’re not—”
“We are,” Creed says, not looking away from me.
The mage’s hand leaves my chest and the invisible hook lets me drop an inch or two. I sway and Knight lunges to break the fall.
The mage clicks her tongue, and I jerk to a halt like a marionette whose strings were yanked from above.
Creed steps up, decision in his shoulders like armor. “London,” he says. “shield the room. No one can know.”
“What are you doing, Creed?” I jerk.
Why can’t I move?
I open my mouth, but nothing comes out.
Why can’t I speak?
“God damn it, do it!” Creed shouts. “Now. Everyone, all at once.”
“It’s wrong,” Knight snaps.
“I said fucking do it!”
“It’s forbidden, even to us.”
“There is no choice.” Sinner.
“Enough! Now! All of you!” my brother screams.
The air goes cold, prickles of ice erupt across my skin, only to burn like fire a moment later.
