Echo watched in fascination as Caius shoveled another forkful of pancakes into his mouth. It was his eighth or ninth so far. The first words he’d spoken upon waking were “We have to talk about Tanith.” The next were “But not before I eat something.” His stomach had emphasized the sentiment with a well-timed growl. Fair enough. Echo had neither the desire nor the energy to dive headfirst into a discussion of the machinations of his insane sister on an empty stomach either. It was bad for digestion. It had to be.
And so she had found herself on breakfast duty, cobbling together a respectable meal out of the meager supplies in the cabin’s pantry. She didn’t mind. Cooking gave her hands something to do and her mind something on which to focus that wasn’t related to kidnappings, malevolent shadow monsters, the voices in her head, or the possible end of the world. It was a nice reprieve. She was glad they had enough flour, sugar, and milk to make it happen.
Dorian had pushed aside the plate Echo offered to him. Once Caius had finished his first serving, he’d taken Dorian’s and devoured that, too. When it was clear that his time in captivity had left him with a hunger that would not be satisfied until he’d eaten everything that wasn’t nailed down, Echo offered him her pancakes as well. Jasper, being Jasper, didn’t share his. Tidying up the mess she’d made of the kitchen gave Echo a moment to think about the previous night. Something had changed between her and Caius. Something about her had changed. She was no longer the Echo who had been Rowan’s girlfriend. Rowan belonged to a part of her life that was now so foreign to Echo, it felt like it had happened to someone else. Rowan looked at her and saw the girl she used to be.
But Caius saw her as she was: an amalgamation of disastrous events, a mess of a human being whose head was occupied by ghosts. He didn’t expect her to be anything other than what she was. There was no pressure for her to be the same Echo whose chief concern was picking enough pockets for the money to buy a slice from the pizzeria on the corner of St. Marks and Avenue A when her hands had been clumsy and untried. He understood the complexity of her life. He was living it with her. And that was why it had been so easy to give in, to let him slide his arms around her waist and pull her close, to luxuriate in the feel of his warm breath against her neck as he slept, wrapped around her like she was the only thing keeping him afloat. They had slept like that, twined around each other. It had been too warm under the layers of blankets, but Echo hadn’t felt the slightest desire to move. It had felt right, lying next to Caius. It had felt like where she was supposed to be.
Not even the sight of him scarfing down pancakes like there was no tomorrow was enough to dissuade her of that notion.
“When was the last time you ate?” Echo asked, picking up the cooling mug of coffee she’d left beside the sink. She sipped it, taking a strange pleasure in watching Caius eat. If his appetite was this ravenous, then it must mean that he was all right. She didn’t have much of one herself. Now that she’d washed the flour off her hands and left the pan to soak, she found herself thinking once again about kidnappings and shadow monsters and how bad things would turn out if Tanith was left to rampage unchecked.
“What day is it?” Caius said.
“Wednesday.”
“I don’t know why I even asked. I don’t remember.”
Dorian’s eye narrowed. “As if kidnapping you wasn’t bad enough. She couldn’t even be bothered with feeding you.”
Caius set his fork down on his empty plate. He looked around, as if scouting for more food. There was none. “To be honest, I’m not sure there’s anything left of my sister to speak of. What she’s become … what the kuçedra has made her …”
“There’s no excuse,” Dorian said. “Not for what she did to you or for what she’s going to do.”
“I know that,” said Caius. “I just … every time I looked at her, I couldn’t help but try to find some semblance of the woman she was, of the person I knew. And there was nothing.” He sighed. “Do we have any fruit?”
“Only some sad overripe bananas. I’ll go get them,” Jasper said. He was in a much better mood after the night he’d spent with Dorian. Echo assumed they’d worked out … whatever it was between them, if the state she’d found them in that morning was any indication. She hid her smile behind her coffee mug. Today was far less dire than yesterday. Caius was safe and eating them out of house and home. Jasper and Dorian had cuddled. Echo had managed to use her powers for something besides raining death and destruction down on her enemies. Things were looking up.
As Caius ate, he told them what he knew: Tanith had a plan. A well-organized one. Her endgame was a mystery to him, but once Echo had informed him of the increasing instability of the in-between, he began to put the pieces of the puzzle together.
“I think she’s attempting to destroy the in-between,” Caius said. He frowned, then amended his statement. “Actually, not the in-between, but the veil between this world and the in-between. That’s what she’s trying to unmake.”
“What?” Echo choked on a mouthful of coffee. She had suspected Tanith was involved in the disturbances to the in-between, but this was beyond what even she had thought possible. With the firebird and the kuçedra entering the physical plane of existence, there were bound to be repercussions on a larger scale – that much magic didn’t come into the world without tipping the scales somehow – but Echo hadn’t believed that a single person could affect the in-between to such a degree. Why would Tanith want to, mad or not? “Why?”
“My sister isn’t thinking clearly,” Caius said around a mouthful of banana. He chewed, then swallowed. “She’s always been ruthless, but there was, without fail, a method to her madness. A rationality. Reasoning. I saw none of that in her eyes when she …” His expression darkened. “… when she ordered me flogged so that I would be too weak to fight back.”
Dorian pushed himself to his feet and began to pace the room. The blue of his eye had gone an almost storm gray. “Why would she do that? Just to make you suffer?”
Caius put the remains of the banana down, as though he couldn’t bear to stomach one more bite as he remembered what Tanith had done. “She was using me as a conduit. A battery, if you will. Most of the time, she left me somewhere under guard – close enough to where she would be but far enough away and hidden so that I would not be able to get a bearing on my surroundings. She took me with her once, to a tomb. Inside, there was a seal. I could feel the hum of the in-between through it. It was like the veil was thinner there than in other places, even stronger gateways. Tanith had Drakharin mages with her, but it was my power she used to break the seal. She had done some damage to it already, but she leached my power to deliver the blow that cracked it open. I believe the mages were there to contain the overflow of the in-between until we were clear of the broken seal.”
Dorian stilled his restless pacing. “But why have you beaten and whipped? She was already torturing you by draining you of your power. The Drakharin have a long history of considering themselves above the common rules of engagement, but that’s one thing we’ve never done, especially not to each other.”
“Tanith bled the magic out of me,” said Caius. “It was easier to steal when I was wounded and vulnerable.”
A pall fell over the room. After a few moments of silence, Jasper said, “Your sister’s a real bitch.”
That pulled a startled laugh from Caius. “I … yes. Yes, she is.”
“But why screw with the in-between?” Echo asked. It didn’t add up. “What is she hoping to accomplish?”
With a shake of his head, Caius started in on the last banana. “If I had to hazard a guess, I would say she’s trying to sow as much chaos as possible. The kuçedra seems to thrive on it. She mentioned creating a new world from the ashes of the old, but I haven’t the foggiest idea if she means that literally. I don’t see how it would be possible.”
“Well, it seems like an awfully elaborate plan just to create a little chaos,” Dorian said. “What does tampering with the in-between accomplish? Why seek to destroy it?”
He wasn’t wrong. There had to be something they weren’t seeing. Some hidden cog in the machine that would make it all fit together. Echo drummed her fingers against her thigh. Think. Think, think, think. They were missing something – some crucial detail that, when revealed, would illuminate Tanith’s endgame. From everything Caius had told her about Tanith when they had spent months hiding in Jasper’s London warehouse, Echo knew his sister to be a cunning commander: strong on the battlefield and sly at the war table as she designed plans that lesser minds could never have dreamed up. Caius had been the youngest Dragon Prince elected in the history of the Drakharin people, and Tanith had been the youngest commander of their armies. Her elevation had nothing to do with her brother’s position; she had earned it entirely on her own merit. But the kuçedra had changed her. Echo hadn’t accounted for that. The firebird hadn’t changed her. At least, not in any way she had noticed. Beyond the obvious. The fundamentals of Echo – of who she was as a person – were the same. But the kuçedra was different; it could not be tamed or controlled. Tanith was not its vessel – she was its slave. The calculating commander would never have set in motion a series of events that might result in nothing but wild, chaotic destruction. The kuçedra craved such a thing. Tanith wouldn’t. But if there was any part of her left, as Caius so desperately hoped, then perhaps she was trying to steer that unbiddable beast in a direction not too far off from her own aims. Glory for the Drakharin. Victory against their enemies.
Zugzwang, Echo thought. German. A situation that arises in a game of chess when a player has to make a move that would harm their own position. It was not impossible to win a game once maneuvered into such a position, but it was difficult. That was where Tanith must have found herself once she’d realized what, exactly, she had let into herself. A skilled tactician could theoretically turn the tide of a game in her favor after landing in zugzwang, but the kuçedra cared not for tactics. Echo had looked into its swirling depths after it had torn through Grand Central. Caius was right. It did want chaos. It was a mad horse, champing at the bit; Tanith was its rider, attempting to rein it in. She might not be able to direct the pieces in this chess game to a neat victory, but there was one move left to her: flipping the damn board.
“It’s not the in-between she wants to destroy,” Echo said. The conversation had continued, but the others went silent at her words. She knew they were true as she spoke them, with a great, ringing clarity. The chorus of voices in the back of her mind swelled from their relative silence, words blurring together so they sounded like trees rustling in a breeze.
“Then what?” Dorian asked. “What is she trying to destroy if not the in-between?”
Echo met that single, sharp eye and said, “Everything else.”