Page 76 of House of the Beast

Chapter

T ime grinded to a near halt. I was keenly aware of the mayhem coursing through the streets of Sorrowsend and my own sorry urgency to stem the flow, but between me and Aster, the seconds stretched on as the rest of the world seemed to fade away.

There was only us, our careful breaths, our eyes locked on each other.

Neither of us wanted to do this, so we hung in the moment before it, for as long as we could.

Then everything snapped into motion. Aster’s hand swept up toward me. “Hold still, Alma.”

His command was peaceful, insidious, draining the movement from my limbs as control was wrested from me.

Before it could take hold completely, I shored up my mind and emptied it of him.

I could not go back to my home again—my business there was finished—but I found I had no need to.

All I needed was the warm confidence from Ephrem and my mother’s letter, and then I pushed Aster from me, soul from soul.

The compulsion disappeared. His face twisted with annoyance. I leaped into my own offense and charged him.

Something intercepted my path, and I brought my sword up to block it, lurching to a halt. Metal rang against metal. I stumbled back, eyes wide.

It was my father’s sword, held by my father’s metal arm and still dripping with his blood. The leather harness at the end of it swung emptily in the air. It had been ripped off his body and was now mounting its own offense against me.

It fought the way my father had fought—with perfect grace and precision, forcing me back step by step. My years of training turned the exchange into second nature, and I met it blow for blow, but with mounting frustration. It was keeping me at bay with flawless technique. There were no openings.

And I no longer had my monster to call upon to help me.

As it drove me away, Aster raised his hand, palm upturned, and made a motion like he was pulling something down.

In the distance, the walls of Sevelie’s home caved in and plummeted to the ground with a terrible crash that echoed through the streets.

I might have screamed. I couldn’t tell over the surge of fear and rage that overtook me. I aimed a blow at my father’s sword, hammering it away with frantic strength. As soon as that metal arm reeled back, I shoved past it and charged at Aster, feet pounding against stone, my blade flashing.

Aster pointed his hand down at the floor and flicked two fingers up.

The ground rippled below me. The solid stone paving convulsed like a wave and then kicked up beneath my feet. Dust clouded my vision, wrenching coughs from my lungs as my balance lurched. I toppled to the ground like a crippled foal, barely managing not to impale myself on my own sword.

My head knocked against the ground, hard. Pain jolted through my skull. When I blinked, light burst across my vision and the edges of everything took a second to solidify. The breath had been knocked from me and my knees felt like someone had taken a hammer to them.

Still, I braced them against the ground, and my battered hands too, and shoved myself upright again, snarling.

“I think I’ll take this away now,” said Aster calmly. He made a short chopping motion with his hand.

I nearly ate pavement again as my metal arm suddenly collapsed below me. I couldn’t move it.

My arm was dead.

A cry of frustration ripped out of me. It was an impossible fight.

Aster knew my every move—he had taught me many of them.

He had been with me through all my father’s lessons, watching as I drilled these movements into my brain, and he had taken away my only advantages, leaving me handicapped and as feeble as I had been before he found me.

But I did not need my arm to stand, and I still had one with which to hold a sword.

I forced myself to my feet again, sword clutched in my flesh hand.

Something whistled through the air. I looked up just in time to duck as one of the lances wielded by the House Metia Heavensguard came hurtling down toward me. It buried itself not even two steps away from me with a great crack; the entire tip of it had gone through the stone.

More Metia spears stormed down upon me. I managed to batter one away, my shoulder nearly feeling like it would snap off from the force of it, but the others came too fast. I closed my eyes and waited for the end.

But they did not hit me. Like the first spear, they only buried themselves into the ground, surrounding me like the bars of a makeshift cage.

I was trapped.

“Fight me properly, you cheating fucking worm!” I screeched at Aster.

I threw my weight against one of the spears, hoping to dislodge it. But the ground rippled again, stone closing up over the spearheads, holding them in place.

“Just stay put, Alma,” said Aster coldly. “It will be over soon.”

“Over there!” someone yelled.

I whirled around to see a group of Church knights rounding the side of the building. They must have come from the halls of healing. There were two Disciples in their midst leading a small parade of sickly-looking people in white gowns.

“Get back!” I screamed at them. “Run! Get away!”

“Put the sword down!” one of the knights said instead of listening to me like he should have. He stepped forward, drawing his weapon. “Or we’ll—”

He didn’t have the opportunity to finish that sentence. His skull suddenly caved in on itself with a wet pop, blood and gristle showering the ground. His companions flinched back with a chorus of strangled cries.

I whipped around to see that Aster had pinched his thumb and forefinger together, looking amused. With a flourish, he flicked them apart again.

Something shattered nearby. Glass pelted the ground as tentacles of shadow, just like those of the Heavenseer, reached out from one of the stained-glass windows and wrapped around the screaming congregation.

“Aster!” I cried—calling for him to let them go.

“They threatened us first,” he responded lightly. The tentacles coiled tight. Bone crunched and blood showered onto the ground. The screams choked off and then died.

I couldn’t breathe. There was too much air in my lungs.

I remembered the rageful joy that had flooded me when we killed Olissa Goldmercy’s men and knew that Aster wasn’t going to stop.

He had been waiting for his revenge for too long.

Even if I got on my knees and begged and cried, he was going to destroy this whole city and everyone living inside it.

I threw myself against the side of my cage again, my metal arm hanging heavily and uselessly at my side.

And then Aster was there. He reached a hand in through the shafts to brush his fingers against my cheek.

“Stay in there for now and let me handle everything,” he soothed. “It’ll be over soon.”

“Not if I can fucking help it!” My arm shot out to grab him. He stepped easily out of reach, but I used the momentum of my movement to begin trying to wriggle out from my prison.

He watched me struggle for a second like a pinned bug before turning back to face the court. “Always so stubborn,” he said. “But I know you’ll come around eventually.”

With another easy flick of his hand, the court’s judiciary building, where my father might have been tried, collapsed in on itself. Another, and the clock tower followed.

I squeezed and stretched, paying no mind to the way my bones ground painfully together as I tried to force my way through.

I made it almost halfway. Then the ground shifted, and the two lances on either side of me moved in, pinching the breath from between my ribs.

It was too much. My vision swam. Grunting in frustration, I wrestled myself backward.

But Aster was too busy yanking down another building to close up the wider gap that had been left on either side of the lances pinning me down.

I wriggled through before he could think to rectify that. He spared me a lazy glance of incredulity at this, and a flick of his fingers—and then I was back to fighting my father’s sword again.

The attack was relentless, and this time, two lances tore themselves up from the ground to help.

I was pinned in place from three angles, and it was only by sheer strength of will that I was not forced away from Aster again.

I fought as hard as I ever had, trying to make myself an opening, but it was futile.

In fact, I should have been long dead by now.

I should have been long dead.

The thought lodged in my brain. I was fighting like an animal, yes—but I had only one functional arm, the light that had always led me in battle was gone, and my temple throbbed almost blindingly with every movement.

Exhaustion weighed my hand down. I was wild and desperate but barely at half my strength.

And yet I was still fighting. I had not been skewered or dismembered or gutted, even though there had been ample opportunity for it to happen.

The weapons commanded by Aster weren’t trying to kill me—only to match me blow for blow, to keep me occupied while the curse of Kugara tore down the city around us.

After everything, he was still doing his best not to hurt me.

I knew then what I had to do.

Shoring up the last reserves of my strength, I watched for when one of the Metia spears would dive toward me—and I did not knock it away this time, but merely redirected it with my blade, giving myself space to slip quickly past.

I lunged for Aster, drawing my sword level with my chest as I did so, aiming straight for his heart.

Black flashed in my peripheral vision. My father’s sword shot after me in pursuit, delivering a lightning stab that I normally would have drawn myself up short to parry.

But this time, I ignored all the years of training and instinct that had kept me alive. I kept up my charge.

The blade tore into my torso.

I saw Aster’s eyes widen. He had not meant to do that. He knew how I fought, how I dodged; he had calculated that blow to interrupt me but leave me safe.

“Alma!” he gasped, eyes wide and stricken, hands instantly reaching for me. He made an aborted step toward me as if to help.

It was all I needed.

My blade exploded through Aster’s chest. I drove it in deep, all the way to the hilt.

White-hot agony lashed through my abdomen, but it didn’t matter. My actions were what had brought us to this point, and if I had to pay for them with my life—at least I did it without regret.

At least if I saw my mother again, I could tell her I had done my best to be good.

Aster’s blood was warm as it spilled down my knuckles. It soaked into the front of my coat, ran gently down my skin, dripped onto the ground. He looked startled at first, then angry—but more at himself, rather than at me. A small, resigned smile crept across his face.

“Took advantage of my only weakness, huh?” he teased softly.

Around us, the earth stopped heaving. The screams of terror suddenly seemed very distant. My monster leaned his weight heavily against me, and together, we fell to the ground.

One of his hands came to rest gently over mine, still clutched around the hilt of my sword. The other went around my shoulders to pull us in close. Blood soaked through my filthy coat, dripping sluggishly from my wound to mix with Aster’s.

He looked at me, and his eyes were so bright.

“Why?” I managed.

He smiled a little lopsidedly. “You know why.”

My heart felt like it was tearing itself in two. It hurt worse than the blade through my gut.

Neither of us was the type to surrender quietly for another’s convenience. It was what had bound us from the beginning, when he had first asked me to be his friend on that dark, quiet evening back at the Avera estate. This was something he had had to do, and I understood.

“I wish,” I began, but didn’t know how to continue.

“Me too,” he said simply, and rested his forehead against mine. “I always knew this story wouldn’t have a happy ending. But still, I wanted to dream, for a while.”

I blinked my tears stubbornly away. When had I started crying?

“You should have chosen someone else,” I said.

He laughed. His voice was growing weak. The pool of blood around us widened. “Never.”

“Maybe you would’ve had a chance.”

“It wouldn’t have been worth it,” he said simply. “It never was, until I met you.”

He leaned into me harder. His strength was fading.

The tears were streaming freely down my face now, hot and bitter. “Why? You said it yourself. I’m sullen, cowardly, and too softhearted, and now I’ve ruined all your plans.”

“You are the worst thing that’s ever happened to me,” he agreed amiably despite the strain in his voice.

Every breath he took was growing more labored, his chest rising and falling unevenly.

“But also, the best. In another world, maybe you and I would have been happy, living quiet lives and keeping each other company.”

I wanted that. More than anything, I wished for those idle surrogate lives, where my anger was tempered, where the hurt was gone, where we could have simply grown old together.

But maybe then we would never have met. Maybe then my heart wouldn’t be shattered beyond repair, my life wouldn’t be coming to its end.

“I hate you,” I told him.

He smiled at me one last time. “Liar,” he said. “My sullen, cowardly, softhearted liar. You were the worst of the worst, Alma, and I loved you anyway.”

He took my metal hand and brought my fingers up against his lips.

Then he fell against me, his face pressing into my hair, his weight going heavy before suddenly it was fading—and so was he.

The very image of him waned right before my eyes, dissolving into shadow.

My hands—flesh and metal, its life given back to me—went around him, desperately holding him close.

Another breath... and my sword clattered to the ground. My monster, my friend, my prince from the stars, my Aster was gone.