Their return to the cabin was a blur of action. Dorian and Jasper held Caius suspended between them while Echo navigated the unpredictable path through the in-between, bouncing from country to country to muddle their tracks. She felt the darkness tug at her as she traversed the void between doorways, as though it were hungry for her to become lost in its fathomless depths. The sensation reminded her of a book she had read about mountaineering disasters that described, in vivid detail, what it felt like to succumb to the siren song of hypothermia. It would’ve been so easy to let herself go, to sink into that velvety blackness. But she pushed onward, leaving smears of shadow dust and blood in her wake. She didn’t trust Tanith’s sudden change of heart. If a battalion of Firedrakes tracked them through the in-between, metaphorical guns blazing, Echo would not have been the least bit surprised. They had to get away, and fast.
Echo laid her palm against the door of a utility closet in a Nairobi railway station. When the door swung open, instead of disused Cairo Metro track, they were greeted by heaps of snow – not something one encountered often in Egypt in autumn. There were train tracks half visible through the snow, though they stood not on the platform but on the solid-white-blanketed ground that stretched as far as the eye could see.
“Where the hell are we?” Jasper said. He had one of Caius’s arms looped around his shoulders as he helped Dorian support the unconscious Drakharin.
Echo looked around wildly for any marker or sign that would inform her of their location. Perhaps if she could recognize the language, she would have a better idea of where they were. But even without a sign – of which there were none – Echo had a general idea of which part of the globe they were currently standing on.
The sky seemed to hang lower than it did in New York or Edinburgh. Above their heads ribbons of green and blue light danced against a dusky backdrop.
“Are those the northern lights?” Jasper asked. Dorian had been silent since they carried Caius from the temple ruins.
Despite the urgency of their situation, Echo found herself momentarily mesmerized by the unexpected sight. “Yep.”
“That’s fascinating,” Jasper said, “but we need to get out of here.” He looked around for some indication of how this patch of land operated as a gateway to the in-between. “How did we even get here in the first place?”
A very fine question.
Echo started kicking at the snow around her feet to clear it away. The toe of her boot connected with something hard, and she dropped to her knees to dig it out. The snow was bitterly cold against her bare skin, but she kept digging until her efforts revealed a signpost that had fallen to the ground and been buried during a storm. She worked her way along the metal post until she reached the sign at the end of it.
KIRKENES–BJØRNEVATNBANEN.
“We’re in Norway,” Echo said. “This must be an abandoned stop on this line.”
“Great,” Jasper said. “I’ve always wanted to visit an abandoned Norwegian train station. Now that I’ve done so, I can check it off my bucket list.” Jasper hefted Caius up a little bit higher; he had begun to sag in their arms. “Can you get us out of here? He’s a lot heavier than he looks.”
Without answering, Echo pulled the pouch of shadow dust out of her pocket. The bag was distressingly light. If they ran out of shadow dust before reaching the cabin, they would be in deep trouble. Caius’s condition was worsening with every trip through the in-between. Every breath he drew seemed to be shallower than the last. There was a very real possibility he would die propped up between Dorian and Jasper.
Echo had never tried to access the in-between in the middle of a train line, without a doorway to aid her, but if the magic along the railway was strong enough to bring them there, then maybe it was strong enough to get them out.
She dipped her fingers into the pouch, and they came away stained black with dust. It was a minuscule amount, but hopefully enough for the next leg of their journey. With a silent prayer, Echo dragged her fingers along the cold steel track and pictured the nearest gateway to the cabin they’d been able to find: a ring of tall oak trees, humming with magic older than any railroad station. She didn’t want to waste any time jumping from gateway to gateway, not with the condition Caius was in. They’d taken a circuitous route back from the temple, but with the in-between as volatile as it had been lately, it was unlikely anyone – no matter how strong his or her magic – would be able to track their progress through it.
Black smoke slithered from the snow, like the first stubborn spring blossoms sprouting up through a layer of frost. Power shivered up Echo’s arm, from her fingers, which grew cold against the rail, to her shoulder. It was a weak thread. Tentative. But it was enough if they worked together.
“The trees,” Echo said, grasping the thin stream of magic curling outward from the in-between. “The ones near the cabin. Focus on them.”
She hoped Dorian and Jasper did as they were told. With three minds envisioning the same destination, perhaps the in-between would be less likely to lead them astray again.
Echo stumbled into a copse of trees, stomach roiling with nausea. Travel through the in-between didn’t bother her as much as it had before becoming the firebird, but struggling to resist the ceaseless pull of the void wore on her more than she had realized. She wanted to stand still just for a moment, to let her legs appreciate solid ground beneath both feet, to give her stomach a chance to stop bubbling threateningly. But they didn’t have the time. Caius didn’t have the time. She could tell from the way Jasper and Dorian struggled to keep Caius balanced between them that they, too, were feeling the effects of too much travel through an inhospitable in-between.
With no small amount of difficulty, the three of them wrestled Caius out of the woods and into the cabin. Echo was once again grateful for its isolation. How they would explain carting a bruised, bloodied unconscious man, body decorated with whip marks and scales, should some hapless passerby stumble upon them, Echo hadn’t the faintest clue.
Once they were inside the cabin, she felt something loosen in her chest. They had done it. They had saved Caius and brought him back to safety. The hardest part was behind them. All they had to do now was patch him up.
“On the bed,” Echo said as she pushed open the bedroom door.
Dorian and Jasper deposited Caius on the mattress with as much gentleness as they could muster, which was not much at all. Caius’s head lolled on the pillow and one arm dropped off the side of the bed. It was hard to tell through the blood and the bruises, but Echo thought she saw a spider’s web of black veins near his wrists.
“That wasn’t there when we found him, right?” Echo pointed at the darkened patch of skin, careful not to touch it. “Am I losing it? Did I just not notice before?”
Dorian stepped closer. He reached out as if to lay his hand on the raw skin of Caius’s wrist, but then thought better of it. “No, that was certainly not there when we found him.”
“This is bad,” Jasper said unhelpfully.
“Very bad,” Echo agreed. Caius hadn’t shown signs of the kuçedra’s taint in the temple. That they were appearing now was very bad indeed.
Dorian rummaged through Echo’s bag. It took her a minute to realize what he was looking for.
“The elixir,” Dorian said, holding up a glass vial of viscous red liquid.
“Okay,” Jasper said. “Maybe this isn’t so bad.”
As much as Echo wanted to agree with him, she couldn’t help the surge of dread she felt as Dorian approached with the bloodweed elixir. “Do you think that’ll work?”
They all knew the elixir’s success rate was not one hundred percent. The longer a person had been exposed to the kuçedra’s blight, the less likely they were to respond to treatment. But for the moment, a silent consensus had been reached: they would not mention the likelihood of failure. What else could they do?
Dorian’s hands trembled as he uncorked the vial. The pungent scent made Echo’s nostrils burn, but she stayed close to the bedside – close but not touching – as Dorian tipped the elixir into Caius’s partially open mouth. Echo realized then that she hadn’t thought to pack some of the syringes she’d seen Ivy use to administer the elixir intravenously. Stupid.
Silence descended upon the room as they waited. Echo knew from observation that the elixir did not always work immediately, but none of them was eager to shatter the fragile bubble of hope and fear that enveloped them. It would be so easy to tip the scales to one side or the other.
A sudden shiver worked its way down Caius’s body. Echo reached for him, but Dorian held her back. “Look,” he said.
The dark veins on Caius’s arm were not improving. They were spreading. Echo watched with growing horror as black lines marched across Caius’s skin, branching out from his wrists to crawl up his arms and over his shoulders. They snaked across his collarbones as a powerful seizure racked his body. An alarming gurgling noise rose from his throat, swiftly followed by a red liquid tinged with black. For a moment, Echo thought it was blood, but once the acrid smell of the elixir hit the air, she understood what was happening.
“His body’s rejecting it,” Dorian said, sounding more hopeless than Echo had ever heard him.
A ragged scream tore its way from Caius’s throat. He sounded like he was being burned alive.
“It isn’t working.” Echo fought against Dorian’s grip, but it was like trying to break through iron bands. “It’s killing him.”
Jasper swore and left the room. Echo was ready to shout at him for his cowardice, but then he returned, wearing an absolutely absurd pair of bright-pink rubber gloves. The gloves had been under the sink when Echo and Jasper first arrived at the cabin, most likely left by its previous inhabitants.
“What are you doing?” Echo asked as Jasper turned a struggling Caius onto his side with brisk efficiency.
“I had a friend swallow a few too many pills once.” Jasper held Caius’s jaw open with one hand and reached into his mouth with two fingers. “It’s not the first time I’ve had to make somebody puke.”
It wasn’t pretty.
Caius retched and Dorian let go of Echo to retrieve a bucket from beneath the sink. Jasper held Caius in his gloved hands, coaxing the elixir out of him. When it seemed as though most of it had been purged from his system, Caius sagged against Jasper, who rearranged himself so that his skin wasn’t in danger of coming in contact with Caius’s.
“What do we do now?” Echo’s voice was as thin and helpless as a reed battered by a strong wind.
After disposing of the bucket’s contents, Dorian sank to his knees beside the bed. “I don’t know.”
The black continued to spread, though more slowly. Every now and then, a thickened vein would throb and the darkness would pulse outward, as if propelled by the beating of Caius’s heart.
“He’s going to die, isn’t he.” Jasper didn’t make it sound like a question but rather a statement of fact. They all knew it.
Dorian buried his face in his hands, as though he couldn’t bring himself to look at his prince, to face his failure. His shoulders shook and though he made no noise, Echo knew he was crying.
Not like this, whispered a voice at the back of her mind. Please, not like this.
“I want to try something,” Echo said, hoping she sounded more confident than she felt.
Dorian peered at her with a red-rimmed eye. “The elixir is the only thing we’ve found that helps fight the kuçedra’s toxin. The circle Tanith had him in must have had some spell worked into it to halt its spread. When we removed him from it, we broke the spell. What can you possibly do?” There was an accusation in his words: If not for you, we wouldn’t be here. If not for you, he never would have been taken. Echo didn’t think Dorian was wrong, but recriminations would have to wait.
“I think he’s right,” Jasper said softly. He’d removed the gloves and slid off the bed. He wasn’t touching Dorian, but it was painfully obvious he wanted to. “We’re lucky we got this far. What’s left for us to try?”
“Good old-fashioned brute force.” Tongues of flame tickled Echo’s palms. A deep soreness had settled into her muscles after burning the barrier and fleeing through the in-between. But rest would have to wait a bit longer.
Dorian and Jasper stood between Echo and the bed. Caius’s already-shallow breaths were accompanied by a wet, rattling noise coming from deep inside his chest.
“What are you going to do to him?” It was Dorian’s turn to hover and feel useless. Echo didn’t envy him in the slightest.
“I’m going to burn the poison out of him,” she said.
A resounding silence met her statement. A nice, long, stunned silence.
“You’re going to do what?” Jasper asked.
“I’m going to burn the —”
He waved away the rest of her sentence. “Yes, I heard you the first time. But I don’t understand you. Let me rephrase: why the devil do you think you’d be able to do something like that?”
Echo shrugged.
“Are you mad?” Dorian blurted.
“Probably,” Echo replied. “But unless you’d rather watch him fade away while that monster uses him as a living, breathing battery until there’s nothing left, I suggest you get out of my way and let me try.”
Dorian hesitated, still uncertain.
“What have we got to lose?” Echo said softly. “If we do nothing, then we lose him for sure. But there’s a chance I can save him.”
“How?” Dorian asked. He looked over his shoulder at Caius, at the whip marks and the burns and the black veins covering his body. “Try to explain it to me. Please.” His voice broke. “I’m supposed to protect him.”
Echo struggled to find the words to describe the feeling she had in her gut. “The kuçedra is supposed to be the counterpart to the firebird, right?”
Dorian nodded slowly, like he was trying to follow the ramblings of a crazy person. He probably was. “Right.”
“Well, if you have a positive and a negative, they’ll cancel each other out.” Echo neglected to mention the growing patch of black on her own chest. Her logic was even less sound than they knew, but she was desperate, clutching at whatever half-formed straws she could find.
“I don’t think dealing with cosmic forces is similar to doing basic arithmetic,” Jasper said.
“No, but we know that the fire doesn’t always hurt. In the Black Forest, it passed over my friends – over you – because I didn’t want to harm you.”
Their expressions remained firmly skeptical.
“The prophecy,” Echo said. “The firebird prophecy. It said it was – I am – supposed to be able to change things for good. The firebird’s power is not simply a destructive force. What if – and I honestly believe this is true – what if I could be the opposite of destructive? What if I could help heal him?”
Jasper threw his hands in the air and stepped away from the bed. “Fine. Do whatever it is you’re going to do. He’s as good as dead anyway. Even if you wind up killing him faster, then it would probably be an act of mercy.”
Dorian flinched at the words. He was the one Echo had to persuade, not Jasper. She wouldn’t be able to accomplish much of anything if Dorian insisted on fighting her every step of the way.
“A positive and a negative,” said Dorian, as if he was measuring the idea, testing it for holes. There were plenty to find, but until a miracle solution presented itself, it was the best they had.
“The light and the dark,” Echo said. “Two sides of the same coin. I can fight this. I have to believe that I can fight this.” If she couldn’t do it for herself, maybe, just maybe, she could do it for him. “And I have to at least try.”
After a long moment, Dorian stepped aside. “Help him,” he said. It was an order, not a request.
“I will.”
And that was a promise.
Despite her outward confidence, Echo had no idea what she was doing. Since that was not a particularly unusual state of affairs for her, she did not let it deter her from the task at hand.
“Hold him down,” she said with more authority than she felt.
Dorian shot her another skeptical look, but he kept his mouth shut and directed Jasper to take hold of one of Caius’s arms while he held the other. They’d both donned gloves – the last thing they needed was another victim for the kuçedra to consume.
Caius’s head lolled about on the pillow like a rag doll’s. His skin had taken on an increasingly sickly pallor. Every minute that passed was one minute lost; if Echo did not figure out a way to save him now, they wouldn’t have another chance.
Okay, Echo addressed the other vessels, whose voices, with the exception of Rose and her plaintive plea, had been blessedly silent for days. If any of you have any ideas about where to start, I’m listening.
The silence in her head grew even more profound.
Then, when Echo had all but given up hope of receiving an answer, a single small voice spoke up, one she had not heard before.
Touch him, whispered the voice.
Echo raked her gaze over the blackened veins that covered most of Caius’s torso.
Are you sure that’s a good idea? Like, really, really, really sure?
A familiar voice cut in. Oh, for the love of the gods, Echo, just do it, Rose all but shouted in Echo’s skull. Phantom voice or not, it reverberated through Echo’s head, rattling her bones.
“Okay, fine. I’m doing it!”
Echo didn’t realize she’d spoken aloud until Jasper shot her a quizzical glance and inquired, “Who are you talking to?”
“No one,” said Echo. Now was not the time for that conversation. She stepped closer to the bed, focusing on the sensation of magic coursing through her blood. It was always there, humming faintly like the rumble of a subway far below a city. It had been distracting at first, but one got used to it eventually.
Jasper didn’t look like he believed her, but any other questions he might have had were interrupted by Caius’s sudden thrashing.
It can feel you approaching, said the unidentified vessel. It knows what you intend to do.
The kuçedra. It may not have been in the room with them, but it knew. It had a presence, and all because of the blight besieging Caius. The Ala had told Echo that she believed the kuçedra was using its victims as a power source, as a way to charge its own magic. It fed on them, but Echo had not believed that the infection was sentient. If the voice speaking to Echo now was correct, then there was far more going on beneath the surface of Caius’s skin than any of them had realized.
The closer Echo got, the more Caius struggled. He fought Dorian and Jasper, thrashing against their braced arms with all his might. He was not simply infected; he was a man possessed.
The last of Echo’s reluctance fled at the sight of Caius’s panicked frenzy. There was nothing she would not do to save him from the hell in which he was ensnared.
Unlike Jasper’s and Dorian’s, her hands were bare. She crawled onto the bed, dodging wild kicks from Caius’s flailing legs. A few blows landed on Echo’s shins. She would have impressive bruises to show for it later.
The moment her hands connected with Caius’s chest, she felt the kuçedra dancing below the surface of his skin. Though Caius was sweating and flushed, he was not feverish; his skin was cool to the touch. Dangerously so. Echo knew what he should have felt like: pleasantly warmer than average. But his flesh was clammy and cold beneath her fingers, and it bruised immediately, no matter how light her touch. A pained utterance escaped Caius’s lips.
No, not bruised. Burned. Echo yanked her hands back as Caius’s skin began to blister.
“You’re hurting him,” Dorian said, voice strained as he wrestled down Caius, who had half risen in an attempt to buck Echo off.
The blistered flesh smoothed the second she ceased touching him. His skin was unmarred, save for the dark swollen veins crisscrossing his torso.
It’s a ruse, said the voice in Echo’s head. It wants you to stop. It wants you to give up and go away. You mustn’t.
That was all Echo needed to hear. She pushed down on Caius’s chest as firmly as she could, using her legs to leverage her weight as he continued to struggle against the three people holding him.
The veins stopped spreading.
“Was that you?” Jasper asked, as awestruck as he ever allowed himself to sound.
“I think so,” Echo said.
But there was already so much darkness in Caius. She felt the power circulating in her own blood rise to the surface. A positive force and a negative force, attracted to one another as the laws of the universe dictated. There was a patch of dense blackness on Caius’s chest, just north of his left pectoral muscle. It was right above his heart. Echo zeroed in on it.
Out, damned spot.
Just as she had done in the Black Forest and then again at Avalon, Echo let the magic flow through her as it wished. She was a vessel. A conduit. The magic of the firebird was a river running over her, through her, from her. It wanted to be let out, and so she released it in a great, rushing wave.
She thought not of heat and fire and blinding light, but of warmth. Of purity. Of the gentle shining of the sun at dawn and starlight on the surface of the ocean. She thought of the songs sung by birds at the break of day and the crisp, clear scent of an autumn breeze. In her mind, she crafted an image that stood in absolute opposition to the stain she felt pulsating in Caius’s heart.
Out, damn you.
Echo took everything she felt and pushed it into Caius. A sharp stab of pain flared at the base of her skull, right where she always felt the physical cost of magic first. The agony crested to a skull-splitting roar, but she forced herself to maintain the stream of light and magic emanating from her palms and soaking into Caius’s skin.
He screamed, and she echoed it. They were both burning from within, but still, she did not stop. She could not – would not – stop until she had cleansed him of the kuçedra’s venomous influence.
She held on and burned with him until there was nothing left.