9
CRUCIBLE
YSIRA
The darkness in the passageway was almost complete. Colors grew muted and fuzzy. Neri slipped through with ease, but Ysira had to clench her shoulders and suck in her stomach. As she crept forward, the wall shifted beneath her fingers from familiar craggy stone to something smoother . . . other.
Cool yellow light bloomed in the tunnel, revealing a hall with perfect, sterile geometry. Ysira’s scalp prickled. Her boot squished into a lumpy wetness. She was accosted by the stench of something ancient and freshly exhumed, of ash and offal.
The hall curved as they advanced and came upon an antechamber of sorts before a broad metal door. Above it perched a blinking light reminiscent of the globes in the Palestone City, and below—amidst charred and splattered gore, as though some great force had blown it apart—was a skeleton in scattered disarray.
Ysira could not quite pinpoint what felt so wrong about this space—more than the destroyed body. She’d seen plenty ofthose. No, it was these clean lines and smooth walls, materials for which she had no name . . . yet seemed horribly familiar. It made her skin crawl.
While Ysira stared, trying to make sense of it, Neri knelt and picked up a bone. A cracked femur, longer than human, with an odd sheen to its surface.
“Put that down,” Ysira said.
Neri ignored her. He ventured closer, toward the headless ribcage and spinal column. Movement caught Ysira’s eye.
It was red as blood, no longer than her hand, with dozens of wispy appendages. It peeked out from behind a vertebra, revealing a core that glowed like an ember. It was so small, and yet the longer she looked at it, the more its presence seemed to engulf the area. The psychic weight of a thousand minds, concentrated into a singularity, pulling her into its grasp. It was sheer will, sheer power, sheer hunger.
The entity from her dreams—from all their dreams.
Ysira’s field of vision split down the middle, creating a shimmering fracture in reality. She saw stars aglow in red light. Limitless, monstrous potential.
A quiver in her brainstem made her lightheaded, returning her to her body. Trembling, she blinked several times to regain her bearings. Beside her, Neri stood transfixed. His lips moved as if the entity spoke to him, and he answered, in no language Ysira understood. He stepped toward it.
The thing twitched, rearing up with sudden speed. Ysira didn’t think before she lunged. She shoved Neri behind her. The red thing jumped. It scuttled up her arm, leaving a trail of fire in its wake—and paused. Her passenger flinched.
The red thing’s appendages flickered as though in recognition. A predator, assessing its prey. Primordial terror, more than Ysira’s own, engulfed her like a shock of cold water. But the creature let them be, uninterested.
It leapt at Neri.
His eyes met Ysira’s, wide and terrified, for a splinter of a moment in which it was already far too late.
It burrowed into his ear.
Neri cried out, hand flying to his temple. He dropped to the ground.
An instant later, he began to convulse.
Ysira had never felt so stupid, so useless. She did the only thing she knew how: held Neri on his side, ensuring he didn’t aspirate while his limbs jerked and he foamed at the mouth. Minutes passed before he fell still in her arms, still breathing, but barely.
Her vision blurred, her eyes suddenly wet. She wiped away the tears, which helped neither of them. What would Ogden do now?
She checked Neri’s pulse, frantic and irregular as a dying moth beneath her fingertips. It fluttered and then—her own heart spasmed?—
Nothing.
“No.” The word escaped her, half a sob.
She stacked her hands one over the other and began to pump on Neri’s chest. Forcing blood through his body. She could not let him die like this.
Ysira had told herself for eleven years that Neri might as well be a stranger. She had tried so hard to feel nothing, and forwhat? She knew him. Her very body still bore the evidence of him. That fragile newborn with a wrinkly little face, who she hadn’t wanted to hold because she was afraid she would love him and loving him felt like a concession. Like saying everything that had happened to her, every awful moment that led to his existence, was perfectly acceptable. Like telling whatever gods might be watching that she would have chosen this for herself.
But for a handful of days, he had nursed at her breast and snuggled against her as if she were the safest place in the world. She had realized even then that she would know him anywhere, as long as she lived. For it all to lead to this, to end likethis?—
She continued to work, pausing compressions only to tilt Neri’s head back and blow air into his mouth. Ribs cracked and popped under her palms. She bit through her lower lip. Her arms began to go numb.
