Page 133

“Ankaret!”

Chapter 29

At first I was afraid she wouldn’t come. In a single instant of icy fear, I thought a hundred things: the feather was a lie, Ankaret’s strange friendship was a lie, I was foolish to have trusted her. I was wrong about what I’d seen at the capital. She hadn’t beaten Kilraith; he had beaten her, and now she was dead.

But then there was a distant boom like a far-off explosion, and the ground began to shake. Kilraith—all four of him—shifted forms. He was a great bird of storms and shadows with eyes like lightning; he was a roaring column of darkness; he was a whirling fist of night sky; he was a bear chimaera with a crescent-moon smile. And then he was a man—tall and bare-armed, as Talan had described his appearance on the night they’d first met. He wore a fine vest and trousers, gloves and gauntlets, and an onyx diadem in his long white hair.

I froze. This was the form he came back to most often amid all the flickering others, this tall, finely built man with skin as white as his hair, angry eyes of violet and gold, and, on his forehead, a bright starburst scar.

I didn’t have time to work through my shock, for suddenly she was there, streaking down out of the sky in a cascade of fire.Ankaret.

Kilraith roared with fury and rose to meet her, his voice warping as he shifted between his many shuddering forms. The elegant body of the white-haired man stretched and darkened, becoming the massive winged creature I’d seen at the capital. He shot up into the air and crashed into Ankaret. Their eyes flickered—eyes of lightning, eyes of blue fire. The tremendous impact knocked us all off our feet.

A distant wave of terrified cries rose up underneath the cacophony of their fight—all Mhorghast’s spectators, still distant, now screaming. The shapes of their assembled crowds flickered in and out of sight at the corners of my eyes. The illusion that hid them was buckling.

“Gemma!” I cried. “Mara!”

I ran for Jaetris and heard my sisters, Talan, and Nesset close behind me. I sang as I ran, still the cheerful rondo, my steps as light as each twirling note.Distract him, I thought, charging my song with the command.Hide us.A song of deception, a plea for protection.Ankaret.I laced her name into the notes of an upward bend in the melody, as light and brilliant as her fiery feet upon the ground.

Ryder, Gareth, and Father still lay bound, their bodies frozen in agony. It killed me to run past them, to leave them to whatever torment Kilraith had devised for them, but our time was short. I didn’t know how long Ankaret would be able to hold off Kilraith; every second seemed to race faster than the one before it.

We reached Jaetris on his throne. When his tired gold eyes slid over to look at me, I felt the instinctual urge to kneel before him in reverence. But instead I steeled myself against the might of him and stood fast. Even bound and at Kilraith’s mercy as he was, his presence made my skin buzz.

“Talan, Nesset, keep watch,” Gemma said sharply. “Anyone or anything who comes near—”

“I’ll make them think they’re skipping through a meadow without a care in the world,” Talan replied pleasantly. “Nudge them right past us.”

“And I’ll tear out their throats with my teeth,” Nesset spat. She crouched, lithe and battle-ready, and then a wave of warmth rippled through the air as Talan called upon his demonic power. Right before my eyes, he shifted into a horned chimaera, scaly, cat-faced, prowling. I thought of what he’d told us about the many forms Kilraith had forced him to take while he was bound to him, how his cruel parents had transformed into the shapes of whatever had most terrified their victims. The greater demons were beings of deception and illusion, descendants of Jaetris and Zelphenia—god of the mind, goddess of the unknowable.

I turned back to Jaetris, who watched Talan with bland interest. Beyond and above him, the sky rippled. I tried not to think about how many Olden beings were lurking just past the range of our vision, ready to strike.

“Jaetris, god of the mind,” I said, “where is the egg that binds you to the creature Kilraith?”

He didn’t answer. He stared with bleary eyes at the warring shapes of Kilraith and Ankaret in the sky.

I shot Mara a silent plea. She was the one used to prying information out of people.

Grim-faced, she approached him. “Jaetris, tell us where it is,” she commanded. “We can destroy it. We can free you.”

That got his attention. Slowly he looked up at her and let out a thin, wheezing laugh.

“You?” He took in all three of us—our shining skin, our lustrous hair, the gold flecks in our eyes. Unimpressed, he chewed on his cracked lip and let his eyes drift closed. “Leave me,” he moaned.

Gemma tried next. She knelt before him and placed a hand on each of his. “Uncle,” she said softly. “Hear me. Hear us. Come out of the place where he’s put you.” Her fingers glowed a faint blue white as she gently probed him with her power, just as she’d done to pullthe Three-Eyed Crown out of Talan. The scars on her hand lit up like stars.

Shadows shifted across Jaetris’s gnarled face. Tiny green vines sprouted at his heels and climbed up curiously to show him their budding faces.

He sneered down at Gemma. “How dare you,” he gasped.“Uncle?”Then, trembling violently with the effort, he knocked her back with a sharp jut of his chin. She flew several feet before slamming into the ground. Talan slunk over to her at once and nudged her upright with his massive horned head.

That display of power had taxed Jaetris. He slumped back against his throne, even thinner and grayer, as if entire layers of his being had been scraped away by that single swipe. I looked back over my shoulder and saw the brilliant twist of Ankaret spiraling up into the air, Kilraith racing after her in a torrent of black clouds.

An impatient burst of inspiration exploded through me, as quick and hot as Ankaret’s own fire. I grabbed the obsidian-handled dagger from my boot and sliced open my arm. The pain was instant, searing, and for a moment I crouched over the wound, gasping first in shock, then in relieved wonder. My wild guess had been correct.

The blood dripping down my arm was bright red swirled with gold—a human’s blood and the blood of a god, awakened by Mhorghast’s Olden air.

Mara cursed and grabbed for me, but then she saw the sheen of my blood and stopped, staring. I pushed past her, blinking back tears, and slashed open Jaetris’s own arm. His wrinkled skin opened like paper, and out of the thin wound trickled blood so brilliantly gold that it hurt my eyes.

He stared stupidly down at the gash, then blew out a short angry breath. I thrust my own arm at him, showing him the red-gold blood staining my skin.