Screams rang through Echo’s ears, and it took her a moment to realize they were coming from her.
The library’s once-proud facade had crumbled, split down the middle as if sundered by a vengeful god. The remaining outer wall protruded like a row of broken teeth.
The head of a lion rolled to a stop by Echo’s boot. Half its mane had been blown off, and its sightless stone eyes stared up at the wound in the sky. It was Patience, the guardian of the southern side of the library’s entrance. Her sister, Fortitude, remained on her perch on the north side of the steps, her head angled toward Echo. It looked like she was surveying the destruction of her kingdom, knowing there wasn’t a damn thing she could do to save it.
The library had been Echo’s refuge. The first place in the world she had ever felt safe. The first place she had ever belonged. It was her home. And now it was destroyed, blown apart as easily as if it were a child’s plaything, a castle built of hollow blocks, toppled with a finger.
Other voices came to Echo. Other screams. Not far from where she had landed, she saw a flash of vibrant feathers crouching over a still form, their colors as wild and lovely as those of a peacock. Jasper. In his lap he cradled a head of silvery hair, a pale face streaked with blood. Dorian. There was something wrong with his face, something desperately wrong. Even through the cacophony and the chaos, Echo could see Jasper’s hand covering half of Dorian’s face, trying in vain to stanch the bleeding. Then she realized why. Dorian’s eye. Someone had cut it out. Jasper’s body heaved with violent sobs as he begged in a medley of English, Avicet, and broken Drakhar for Dorian to please not die.
Bile rose in Echo’s throat. Nothing had ever hurt like this. Not the dagger she had sunk into her own chest. Not the feeling of her own fire burning her from the inside out. Not the horror of finding the person she’d loved strung up like so much meat.
Your pain will be such exquisite agony.
A sob clawed its way from Echo’s throat. Tears blurred her vision. The fight raged on all around her, but she could not take her eyes from the spectacle of senseless destruction in front of her. Flames flickered around Echo’s fists, scorching the earth beneath her bruised and bloody knuckles. She didn’t remember injuring them. It must have happened in the fall. The abraded skin burned where the fire touched it. Her own body – her own magic – was betraying her. And she couldn’t stop it.
A slow, steady tread crunched over the rubble, advancing on Echo like a predator lazily circling its prey.
“Such a shame, really.” Tanith’s voice was close, coming from somewhere behind Echo and to the left. She could have dug her sword into Echo’s back and Echo couldn’t have lifted a finger to stop her. So great was her pain. So exquisite was her agony. “It was a marvelous library.”
A heavy hand came to rest on Echo’s shoulder. Golden gauntlets dug into her muscles, the armored fingers tipped like claws. Tanith leaned down to whisper her next words into Echo’s ear.
“Tell me, Firebird. Does it hurt?”
Echo had never quite understood what people meant when they said they were seeing red. It had always seemed to her a cartoonish idiom. But a hot wave of rage rushed over her at the feel of Tanith’s warm breath on the shell of her ear. At the sight of the library, half in ruins. At the sound of people who trusted her enough to follow her into battle falling under the onslaught of the kuçedra’s vile creatures.
Her anger seethed. It bubbled and spilled over, sparking into her hands in white-hot pulses of flames. Still on her knees, Echo pivoted with a snarl that sounded, even to her ears, more animal than human. The power rolled from Echo in waves, knocking Tanith off her feet. The sound of armor scraping over pavement was loud, even in the din of battle.
Tanith pushed herself up, wiping at a split lip with a gauntleted hand. Black ooze seeped through the broken skin, leaving a smear like shadow dust across her pale cheek. She looked at the blood that was not blood, so dark against her gilded armor. “It feels good, doesn’t it? The rage. The bloodlust.” She smiled, licking at the black not-blood on her lip. “I used to try so hard to contain it, to hold it back, when all I wanted was to bathe the world in blood until there was no one left standing. But no more. I don’t have to hold back.” Her smile widened. “And neither do you.”
“Oh, fuck you,” Echo spat. Angry tears burned at the corners of her eyes. She hated that Tanith was right, but it had felt good. Letting the magic pour out of her hands, fueled by pure emotion, felt like nothing she had ever experienced before. It felt raw. Immediate. She felt like she was overfull of power, and it wanted nothing more than to be let out.
And so she would let it out. Right into Tanith’s smug face.
Echo rose to her feet. Her fall had been cushioned; she’d felt someone’s magic buoying her, but she hadn’t seen who had done it. No matter. It had saved her, and now she would put a stop to Tanith’s insanity once and for all. Whatever it took.
“It didn’t have to be like this,” Echo said. “Your people – and mine – are in more danger now than they ever have been, and it’s all on you.”
“What an awfully myopic worldview.” Tanith shook her head. “This is the only way it was ever going to be. I just gave the world the push it needed. It will be cleansed, and we will have a blank canvas on which to paint our new world. That you cannot see that tells me you were never worthy of the power given to you. If only you had known how to wield it properly. The prophecy was true. The firebird was the catalyst for our salvation, the harbinger of our future. The future simply does not include you.”
“You really love the sound of your own voice, don’t you?” Flames manifested in Echo’s hands. She would need to call more of the power within her than she ever had. Her blows had been as effective as a mosquito stinging an elephant; Tanith had brushed them off with minimal effort. The fire burned, brighter and brighter, until even her own skin was sweltering under the heat of it.
Black tendrils swirled around Tanith’s form, creating a cloud of impenetrable darkness. She approached, stepping over snapped power lines and fallen cables, and the darkness moved with her, dancing around her in a frenzied mass of movement. “I can feel all that light inside you. Burning. Wanting to destroy.” The darkness fragmented into different shapes. Dark veins raced down the unmarked skin of her neck. It was as if each deployment of the kuçedra’s power meant that the monster within her was claiming more and more of her, marking its territory. With enough time, there would be nothing of Tanith left.
“What are you waiting for?” asked Tanith. Her feet, encased in plated sabatons attached to the gold grieves on her legs, came to a halt right next to a severed power line; one of them was squarely in the middle of a puddle, inches away from where sparks of electricity sputtered from the exposed end of the cable. It was a hell of a fire hazard if Echo had ever seen one.
“This,” said Echo. She bent down and reached for the end of the cable near her. The rubber melted under her touch as her flames ran the length of it, all the way to the sparking tip. It took only a second or two for Tanith to realize what was happening, but it was enough. The exposed coils caught fire and exploded.
Echo was glad Tanith had headed into battle wearing armor. Metal was a fantastic conductor of electricity. As was water.
The shock sent Tanith crashing to the ground, her body writhing as electricity coursed through her. The black cloudlike beings around her evanesced like a fleeing mist. Her black irises rolled back, exposing the pale whites of her eyes, laced with capillaries gone dark. The acrid smell of burning hair wafted over Echo.
She approached Tanith, careful to avoid the flailing power lines, grateful that the rubber soles of her boots protected her far better than the metal of Tanith’s sabatons.
“I was waiting for you,” Echo said. “This is my city. This is my world. I know it better than you ever will.” She unleashed another volley of fire at Tanith’s vulnerable, prostrate form. A scream tore its way from Tanith’s throat as flames and electricity seared once more.
Echo tried to ignore the thrill of satisfaction she felt at the sound of those screams. It was a horrible sight to behold. No one should take pleasure in what she was doing. And yet …
She reached behind her, rucking up her leather jacket. The dagger was still tucked safely into the waistband of her pants. It had dug painfully into her spine when she fell, but she was obscenely glad she hadn’t lost it when the roof had collapsed. She slid it out of its scabbard. As Helios’s vain attempt at an assassination had proven, a simple stabbing wouldn’t stop Tanith. But Echo would saw through her neck, through bone and tendon, if she had to. Let’s see how well you bounce back without your head.
Tanith’s screams quieted as she fought to roll away from the sparking cable. Her hair was a frazzled mess, and she reeked of an odor straight from Echo’s – and Rose’s – nightmares: burnt flesh. Echo had done that. Another surge of gratification shot through her. A detached part of her felt sickened by the thought that she was the one turning the tables and inflicting the same damage Tanith had on Rose so many years ago, but it was a small part. Easily ignored.
Tanith rolled onto her knees, shivering with the aftershocks of electrocution. Burn marks were scored into her armor. With unsteady but quick hands, Tanith unbuckled the chest plate and let it clatter to the ground. Without the heavy armor wearing her down, she knelt back onto her heels and inhaled deeply. “There. That’s much better.”
You have no idea, Echo thought. Before Tanith could recover any further, Echo ran at her, the dagger naked in her hand, the magpie wings on the hilt digging into her palm. Tanith’s corrupted eyes widened as she struggled to get into a defensive stance, but Echo was too fast. The blade found its target – an opening on the side of Tanith’s armor – and sank through her leather tunic with ease. Echo felt the air punched out of Tanith’s lungs with the force of the blow. Steel scraped against bone as Echo drove the dagger between Tanith’s ribs, aiming for the heart. If Tanith even had one.
Resistance slowed the dagger down as the widest part of it reached the space between Tanith’s ribs. Echo tried to drive it deeper, but Tanith’s hands came up to trap hers, stopping her.
Tanith grunted in pain, but her lips curled into a wobbling smile. “Is that all you’ve got?” She leaned forward and yanked Echo’s hands – still closed over the hilt of the dagger – closer, burying the blade even deeper into her own chest. Black bile bubbled from her mouth. “I told you it felt good.”
That same black ooze poured over their joined hands, pulsing with each beat of Tanith’s heart. It scorched Echo’s skin, burning a thousand times worse than any fire she had ever felt before. Echo tried to pull her hands back, but Tanith held firm.
“You want to kill me? Make me suffer?” Tanith’s voice cracked with the effort of speaking, but there was a clarity in her eyes that sent Echo’s stomach plummeting. “Then do it.”
That small part of Echo that screamed at her to stop, that this wasn’t what she wanted, faded to silence.
She did want to kill Tanith. She did want to make her suffer. And so she would.
Echo cast her gaze around at the shattered facade of the library, at the still bodies that littered the street, at the white-feathered head darting between the fallen, trying to see who could be saved and for whom there was no hope. She thought of Caius, tumbling from the rooftop. Of Dorian, his handsome face a carved-up ruin. Of Jasper, begging him to stay awake. Of the homes lost and the hearts broken and the lives destroyed because of one person’s thirst for power.
The tips of Echo’s fingers tingled with magic. She didn’t try to hold it back or rein it in. She simply let it go. Fire erupted from her hands in swaths of black and white, like the feathers of a magpie. It ran down the length of the blade as if the steel were a conduit channeling her magic into the wound on Tanith’s chest. Tanith angled her head up and looked at Echo through the flames. For a moment, the black seemed to flee from her irises, leaving them the red they used to be. Her brow wrinkled in a frown, oddly delicate on her features. But in the next moment, her eyes were black once more. An illusion, Echo thought. Her mind playing tricks on her.
“This ends now,” Echo said. She pushed the fire toward Tanith, who was still kneeling on the ground, weak from electrocution. Who was the most vulnerable Echo had ever seen her. Who was … smiling?
The fire did not burn her.
The metal of Tanith’s remaining armor began to glow, hot as an ember, but her skin was radiating with Echo’s light. It didn’t char her flesh. It sank into it. Tanith was absorbing it.
All of it.
Echo tried to pull back, but it was too late. Tanith lurched forward and grabbed Echo’s arms, pulling her into a gross parody of an embrace.
“You’re not wrong.” Viscous black liquid escaped from the corners of Tanith’s mouth. “This ends. This war. This thing between us. And so does everything else.”
Tanith’s fingers dug into Echo’s wrists. Sharp pinpoints of pain lanced through Echo’s arms, straight to her core. Something tugged at her – not physically, but at the deepest recesses of her being. It felt like a hook had been sunk into her gut and was pulling her organs out. But she had no wounds. She didn’t bleed.
The tugging sensation grew stronger as Tanith’s smile grew darker, more feral. Again Echo tried to pull her hands away, and again Tanith tightened her hold, refusing to let Echo go.
Tanith leaned in and spoke into Echo’s ear, her voice a harsh whisper. “Look around you, little firebird. Your friends are dead and dying. Your allies fall, one after another. The humans you tricked into trusting you are crumpling like toy soldiers.”
Echo looked. A man in fatigues – no, a boy, for he could not be a day over nineteen – was lying on the ground, his face toward the heavens, his eyes open and unblinking. The front of his uniform had three long gashes, from one shoulder all the way to his waist. Blood smeared the greenish camouflage, but his heart had ceased its beating and the blood trickled to the asphalt in an unhurried descent. Not three feet from him was an Avicen soldier, facedown in the street, white cloak stained crimson, sword still clutched in lifeless fingers.
The fighting had not come near them, and only then did Echo realize why. A ring of shadows had sprouted all around, an impenetrable barrier of velvety blackness cutting them off from the world beyond its border. The only people in the circle were Echo, Tanith, and the dead.
She couldn’t see through the shadows as they rose higher, as if sensing her attempt to spot a familiar face through the darkness. Caius may have survived the fall, but they were hopelessly outnumbered. Ivy was no fighter. Rowan was still green, despite his conviction. Dorian was probably already dead. And Jasper. Jasper would do something stupid seeking revenge and get himself killed. They didn’t stand a chance. Not one of them.
Not unless Echo put an end to it. All of it.
That blinding rage returned, churning in her blood with the ferocity of some ancient war cry, pulsing through her veins like the beating of a battle drum. A snarl rose from deep inside her chest, and she shoved every ounce of magic she had at her disposal into Tanith, wildly. Desperately. The tugging ceased as she opened the floodgates of power, hoping to overload Tanith just as she’d done with the fire and electricity.
But Tanith’s smile only widened, her lips cracked and oozing tar-black blood. The ground shook beneath them, like the warning shocks of an oncoming earthquake.
And Echo realized that she had been mistaken. Tremendously, catastrophically mistaken.
The scar on her chest burned, as if trying to tear a hole in her heart to match the one in the sky.
It was not a scar at all.
It was a seed. A small kernel of shadows, left to germinate in her soil, where it would be tended, where it could grow. Echo felt herself cracking like concrete losing a battle to stubborn roots.
It was a scar. It was not a scar. It was a seed. It was not a seed.
It was a keyhole.
The shadows reached inside her and turned. Tanith smiled.
“Yes, that’s it. Just like that. Embrace your darkness.” Her fingers dug deeply enough into the flesh of Echo’s wrists to draw blood, a screaming red against her skin, so unlike the unnatural black of Tanith’s. “Let. Me. In.”