Chapter 30. Poisoned Chains
“A group of violent miscreants in the lower city burned down the Forge,” Lord Kevan said, slowly turning towards King Dukemot. “There is nothing left but ashes.” The king was sitting in a cushioned seat, a crackling fire in the wide mantle before him, its edges rimmed with gold designs of twisting Renjin and burning trees.
“The Forge. That was the tavern by the canal in Copper Lanes. The one Veronica liked to frequent.” Dukemot set down his chalice of wine and squinted at Lord Kevan.
“The very same,” Lord Kevan said with a long blink.
“Those parasites Tonila and Darko were using that location as their den. It should have been under their protection.”
“Yes,” Lord Kevan replied. “It seems the rats can’t resist returning to their old holes. But those particular rodents are now nowhere to be found. Some say they were still inside the tavern when the building collapsed into flames.”
“It would take a bold man to stand against someone like Darko.”
“It could be so, my king. Or perhaps a bold boy. Even a very bold and vengeful girl is just as likely.”
“Is a street war on our hands?” Dukemot asked, the concern ripening his voice. “Should we tell Commander Markus to route the guard to the lower streets?”
“I don’t believe that would be wise at this time,” Lord Kevan all but whispered. “The violence and looting has been mostly contained to Copper Lanes and the slums beyond the walls. We can afford to wait this out.”
Dukemot shook his head and looked back into the flames. “Darko and Tonila have been the scum of this city for seventy years. I was glad to be rid of them the first time, perhaps we should celebrate to be rid of them now.”
Lord Kevan let half a smile creep up his face that was quickly smothered by doubts. “On any other occasion I might agree with you, my king. However, I have some…disquieting information to share.” The doom in his voice seemed jagged enough to bite through rock.
“What is it?” King Dukemot asked, sitting on the edge of his chair.
“My watchers have informed me that this attack on the lower city was carried out by someone close to the throne.” Lord Kevan looked into Dukemot’s eyes, as if he was begging for him to come to the conclusion himself.
Dukemot shook his head, giving Lord Kevan a long stare. He then broke his gaze and glared back into the flames, grabbing his forehead with one hand as he let out a sigh. “It matters not. Let her play her little games. As long as she keeps herself in Copper Lanes she is no problem of ours.”
“Everything that happens on this island is a problem of ours,” Lord Kevan said, chuckling as if it pained him to be true.
Dukemot dragged a hand across his cheek, eyes glinting with the flames in the hearth.
“My king, she stirred the peasants of Copper Lanes into a violent furor then unleashed them onto The Forge. Dozens who were present that night now lie dead in the streets. They listen to her commands.”
“Do they? Because as I remember it, the peasants have hated Darko for decades. Perhaps they finally grew tired of his meddling and cleaned out the filth.”
My king, we cannot afford to ignore this threat. Her interference could jeopardize everything we’ve been working towards. Your daughter would raze this city to the ground if she knew you were planning to supplant her right to the throne.”
King Dukemot laughed, sounding more angry than humored. “An uprising against some criminal underlord is little to be afraid of, Lord Kevan. There is a chasm of difference between standing against a thug and standing against the crown. Should the threat ever escalate beyond that, the Royal Army can stop her. The people of Copper Lanes fear us. They know we are strong.”
“Then it should concern you to hear that many soldiers from the Royal Army were present the night the Forge was burned. And they were not fighting for the crown. At least not for our crown.”
Dukemot snapped to Lord Kevan as his face turned red as a tomato. He shook his head, rage boiling in his eyes. “Treason, now. In my own capitol.”
“The people of Denengear and beyond know of the recent defeat our armies suffered against the Protectors in the North. They know Goroth is dead. They know we are vulnerable now more than ever before. And we have a girl with king’s blood in her veins moving through our capitol city stirring up talks of rebellion. The people are listening to her, my king. Whatever strength we had is waning fast.”
“We need more time. Manie hasn’t taken to the idea of ruling a kingdom like I’d hoped she would…”
“Which makes me believe in her even more,” said Lord Kevan, his voice darkened with conviction. “She has no lust for power, no desire to take control, she only wants to do good. Not since the days of King Mikhail have we been blessed with such a ruler. Talmoria could enter a new golden age with her at the helm. The future would be secure under her reign. We could finally have peace. But if we are to see that future come true, we must fight for it. We must rip out the weeds before they can block her light.”
Dukemot’s eyes burned with anger but his voice remained dim. “Rip out the weeds… Tell me–how do you intend to rip out these weeds, Lord Kevan? By killing my own daughter?”
“My king,” Lord Kevan said carefully. “She is not your daughter anymore. The daughter you remember is real now only in dreams and memories, as heartbreaking as it is to say... The girl you raised would never have committed these atrocities.” Lord Kevan drew in a deep breath, then let it out. “They say she calls herself the Queen of the Reborn, now.” His voice grew deep with displeasure. “She’s changed, and not for the better.”
“The Reborn?” Dukemot exclaimed. The naming of them seemed to anger him. “What does this queen think she’s going to do–turn the whole island into an army of undead who will serve her for all eternity?”
Lord Kevan nodded, doom in his eyes. “I believe that is exactly what she intends to do,” he said, nodding. “She can open windows into the Death Realm. The people believe she’s going to give them back their lost families.”
Dukemot looked out the windows around the hearth, towards the fires burning across Copper Lanes, the direness in his eyes building over the storm of flame. “Manie is all we have left… She’s the key to restoring the world I destroyed. Not this dream of Reborn. Veronica is a fool. She’ll doom us all if she continues down this path. Those men, those specters, in their tombs, warned me of this betrayal. They said this power was all but impossible to contain. They told me it nearly destroyed the world once, and that dead men went to war with the living. I should have listened to them.”
“I understand why you did not heed their warning,” Lord Kevan said. “You had to know the truth. No parent could ever blame you for that… But now that you’ve tasted its bitterness, we must obey the men who sealed this power from the world once. We must prevent their doom from becoming our future.”
Dukemot shook his head. “I just need time to prepare Manie for the throne. Just a little more time.”
“I fear we are almost out of time. The Protectors are on our doorstep. As is this army of Reborn.”
“War from three sides, a disease devouring us from within, and I have no true allies.” Dukemot laughed. “How did the world come to this?”
Lord Kevan put his hand on Dukemot’s shoulder. “We can still succeed. If we act now, we can secure Manie’s rule. But we must halt Veronica’s plans.”
“Halt her plans.” Dukemot stood from his chair and went to the window, placing his hands on the rim, looking out at the destruction cast across a place that had once been so beautiful. The fires raging across Denengear filled the air with smoke and sparks, turning the sunset red. “This is what Shaleah wanted all along: to make me kill my own daughter. Even now her presence can be felt lingering in the shadows. I suppose she’ll have what she wants in the end, one way or another.”
“If we wait and do nothing, we’d be repeating the same mistakes that led to the creation of the Gray Death and all the horrors that came with it. You owe it to your people to make this sacrifice.”
“I’m well aware… But I…I simply cannot give my permission for that. Veronica is as close to my daughter as I shall ever have again. I cannot commit this evil against her.” Dukemot put his eyes on Lord Kevan, his vision sagging under the weight of his despair. “I’m sorry. These Crystals, my wife, even me–their own father–we’ve meddled in their lives enough. The only role I have left to play in my daughters’ future is to try and give them back a piece of what was taken away.”
Lord Kevan looked struck by the words like a knife to the heart. He closed his eyes and nodded in silence, letting out a solemn breath. He broke his silence by saying, “I understand, my king. I cannot imagine the burdens you bear. You’ve borne the sorrows of a thousand men by now.” Lord Kevan approached King Dukemot and stood at his side, looking out across the destroyed city.
Dukemot seemed to calm as he let out a breath. He showed half a smile and quickly let it down. “If only I possessed half that many men’s wisdom, we wouldn’t be in this mess.”
Lord Kevan returned a polite laugh. “Yes, if only a great many things had turned out differently.”
“You’ve been my friend for years, Lord Kevan. You’ve always served me loyally. Are you going to leave the city before it’s too late? Before this growing ocean of enemies devours us?”
Lord Kevan drew in a breath and let it out slow. “No. This city will be where I die if it comes to that. I’ve been standing here for too long to run now.”
“It’s those damn stairs, isn’t it? Your knees can’t stomach the idea of descending them all again.”
Lord Kevan laughed with the King. “Yes, the exercise does begin to grate after so many years…”
Dukemot returned a heartfelt laugh and put his hand on Lord Kevan’s shoulder, squeezing tightly. “Thank you for standing with me, old friend.”
Manie could feel her heart beating in her ears as she watched her father and Lord Kevan from the hole in the painting. She leaned away and remembered to breathe. “Veronica?” she whispered to herself, stunned to hear the name on their tongue. “She’s… alive?” Manie put her hands over her mouth as hot tears boiled up in her eyes. She felt the world spinning like the mansion had tumbled off Denengears cliffs into the sea. And she wants to bring the dead back to life? Manie didn’t know what to think. It seemed impossible. That couldn’t have been what they meant. “The last time I saw her she was… falling…to her death…” The words sent a shiver up Manie’s spine. You killed me, Manie, her sister’s voice whispered in her mind. You killed me. She closed her eyes and could see Veronica standing there in the darkness. Veronica looked up at Manie, pupils glowing red. You killed me, she said. Your own sister. Your own blood! You killed me! Manie opened her eyes and shoved out her hands to push the memory of Veronica away. “Stop! I didn’t want to do it!”
Manie’s breathing was heavy. She wiped sweat off her cheek and forehead. Memories were closing in like a noose tightening around her throat. You can do this, Manie. You’re strong. The words of encouragement came from the same voice that accused her of murder.
“No, this can’t be real. Veronica can’t be alive.” Manie crossed her arms and tried to stop shivering. “What is going on around this place?” she asked the darkness, wishing she would wake up in her bed about now. Another horrifying realization was that if Veronica really had been reborn, then that meant others could have been reborn as well. Others like Darko and Tonila. Markus. It was starting to make sense. That’s how they’d survived all these years untouched by time–they hadn’t. Did the same thing happen to my father? Is he Reborn too?
Manie turned back to the hole in the wall as panic built in her chest like a sack of bricks had dropped on her heart. She leaned in to see and listen, but her father and Lord Kevan were no longer in the study. “The key to the future…” Manie said dimly. “He called me the key to the future.” The only thing I’ve ever been the key to is destroying everything I care about. “I can never live up to their expectations,” Manie said aloud. “I killed my own sister.”
She pushed away from the hole and looked down the cold dark of the tight passages behind the walls, the flame in her eyes painting the shadows the color of blood. Sorrow tugged at Manie’s throat as she remembered the death of her sister had meant the end to a future she’d wished was real for half her life–to go on adventures with Veronica, to be a part of her life, no matter how dark and twisted it had become–and then in one moment it was gone forever.
Could this be a chance to fix that? Manie wondered for half an instant. Then she reminded herself of the truth. “No one could forgive what I did. I’m a monster. I’ll always be a monster. If Veronica really is alive then she probably wants me dead, too…” The idea of that was crushing. She thought about Shawn and wished he was there to comfort her. Now he was gone as well, like everyone else.
Manie put up her hands and ignited a red flame in her palms that roared as it swept towards the ceiling in a burst of heat and light. She remembered all the corpses in Market Town and in villages across the South. She remembered the look in Helki’s eyes as the girl breathed her last, cold breath. Jarod’s orders before she and Shawn left the Valley of Caves was to find the cure to the Gray Death and then get themselves out of Denengear. It sounded so simple, then. Now it seemed impossible. “I have to find my mother’s lab. That’s all that matters. Then I can leave this place and never come back.” The words hurt as much as they soothed. This place had once been her home. It still was–in a way–just twisted beyond recognition.
Manie tried to breathe as she moved through the secret passages, bending and turning as the path leaned around the walls. She could hear the ocean roaring and booming beyond the stone and wood. She could hear voices in rooms behind covered eye holes. So many secrets in a place she’d lived her entire life. So many stories. What else had been kept hidden? Cobwebs blocked the way so Manie had to crawl on her elbows to get under, using the flame in her fingers to scare away the spiders without harming them.
When Manie finally arrived back at the dusty boards and rotten wood that marked the entrance to her new room, she noticed something wasn’t right. Before setting out she’d left a white cloth hanging in the frame as she closed the false wall to her bedroom, so she’d know which one was hers. The cloth was now on the floor. Manie bent down and picked it up, fighting the chill in her skin as she touched it. “Someone was here.” She looked at the wall and froze. Someone could be in my room right now. “Okay,” she whispered, trying to find her courage. “It’s definitely not my sister.”
Manie lifted the latch on the wall, making the tile in the bathroom on the other side slide up with a gentle hiss. A loud click snapped in the darkness and Manie bit her lip to hide her scream, leaning into the panel and making the secret door whine as it bent into her bathroom. A curtain of golden light cracked as the door opened, extending across the dark and dusty secret hallway and unveiling Manie from the shadows. The first thing she noticed were rows of burning yellow candles set on the steps leading up to the steamy tub. The bronze tiles gleamed and shone like the sun was burning in their reflection.
Manie wanted to run, but instead she took a deep breath and ignited the red flames in her palm. She stepped into the bathroom and shut the false panel door with one hand behind her. “Hello?” she called. The steaming water in the bath was purple with soaps and perfumes, and a layer of red and blue flower petals were floating in each corner. Sahlee’s maids must have drawn me a bath.
Don’t let the monsters find you, Manie, Veronica taunted in her mind. Manie could hear creaking floorboards in the next room. “Who’s there?!” she shouted, the flame in her palm erupting with a burst of flame, growing larger the angrier she got. But underneath she was terrified. “I know someone’s here!”
Manie opened the bathroom door and crept out into the front, where the carved statues, silk dresses and jeweled crowns were waiting–everything that made her look like a queen. The glass doors to the balcony over the garden were open and the curtains blowing inside with the wind like sheets of white smoke, snapping and whipping as the breeze rushed past them. I didn’t leave them open.
Manie’s eyes projected a red blaze over the furniture to join the flame in her hands. She scanned the room from corner to corner and saw nothing. It seemed empty, but there was one room left to check. Manie approached her bedroom door, heart hammering in her chest as reached for the handle, when a giant crash erupted from the balcony. Behind you, Veronica’s voice whispered. Manie screamed and turned back, shooting a wash of flame at a shadow in the curtains. Fire crackled and climbed the fabric, smoke and sparks bursting across the room, but as the flame died away she saw no one, just the doors to the balcony slamming against the walls in the wind.
“Shit!” Manie ran to the curtains and ripped them off the rails, bunching them up and stamping on them to put out the flames. Once they were extinguished Manie coughed and went for the balcony doors, grunting as she fought the wind to get them shut. Once the wind had been broken and the room silent, she panted and tried to catch her breath. “Okay, what next?”
A dirty hand wrapped around Manie’s lips and pressed her mouth shut. Someone leaned down and whispered in her ear. “Don’t make a sound.”
Manie looked up at the person who had grabbed her and saw Gale–hair a mess, face caked with grime and shining with sweat. Her eyes were pinned open as if she’d seen a dead woman. Manie had never felt so terrified and happy to see someone at once. She instantly wanted to tell Gale the thousand things she’d learned and overheard in secret conversations since arriving. And who could know what secrets Gale was going to tell. The last time they’d seen each other was at the Valley of Caves with the rest of the Protectors. It seemed like a thousand years ago by now. Since that night it was like the world had been turned on its head.
Gale looked towards the door to Manie’s room, hand still firmly over Manie’s mouth, and stared. Muffled voices could be heard outside and they seemed to be getting closer.
“She had to go this way. We’ve checked every room,” a man said.
“Haven’t checked the little queeny’s room,” another man replied.
“That’s the one room we can’t check. King’ll get involved if that happens.”
Gale took her hand off Manie’s mouth and put a finger against her lips. She grabbed Manie’s shoulders and pushed her around to her side.
“Who are they?” Manie whispered.
“Bad men,” Gale replied quickly. “They’re working for someone in this city. Someone who wants me dead.”
“Dead?” Manie asked. “They know who you are?”
“What if we just take a little peek,” the man beyond the wall suggested. Manie watched the handle to the door turn and a knot quickly formed in her gut. She watched Gale wrap her fingers around the handle of her sword as she rushed across the room, silent as a cat. Gale put her shoulder against the wall behind the door. “Stay there,” she whispered back. “If they come in, tell them to leave.”
The door clicked and began to whine open. Manie could barely breathe she was so afraid. Gale slowly drew out her sword, inch by inch, as sweat beaded up and dripped down her face. Manie bit her lip and tried to use the pain to power through her fear. The door slowly came open, and golden light from a lantern broke into Manie’s room, bending across the floor and wall the wider the door swung open, until a face became revealed, old and gnarled and stretched like dried meat, cheeks sunken like black pits. Green eyes came to rest on Manie’s, widening in surprise. Manie thought she was about to faint. “Hello, Princess," the man said as a desperate smile shivered up his face.
Manie could barely find her words. “What–what are you doing here?” she asked, trying to sound threatening. “This is my room.” Manie tried to keep her eyes on the man’s as Gale reached down and unsheathed a dagger with the hand that wasn’t holding her sword.
“I mean you no harm,” he said, sweat sliding down his leathery skin. “I’m only looking for one of my friends. Want to have a small chat with her.”
“Well you’ve come to the wrong place,” Manie snapped back. “I want you to leave, now.”
The intruder’s eyes shifted to the still smoking ball of curtains in the corner by the balcony entrance, then back to Manie. “Did something happen?” he asked, his eyes tightening into slits. “You look a bit pale, m’lady. Are you in danger?”
“Everything’s fine,” Manie said with a bite, her eyes burning from not blinking for so long. The intruder’s face was painted red from the flame in her eyes. “Please leave, or else you're the one who’s going to be in danger.”
The man looked into the bathroom, then to the closed bedroom door on the opposite side of the room, sniffing as he noticed the smoke. He slowly shook his head. “No, I don’t think I will.” He put a foot inside the bedroom but paused as his friend grabbed his shoulder.
“What do you think you’re doing? We’ve got to get the ‘ell out of here!”
“Just a minute!” He roared back at his friend.
“You should listen to your friend,” Manie said with a raised voice. “I am the princess. And this is my room.”
He turned to Manie, smiling at the challenge, his eyes gleaming gold in the lantern light. “I’ll be gone in a moment, love, and then everything will be all peas and porridge, I promise.” He reached around the door with his left arm to shut it behind him as he entered and Manie stepped back, Gale within reach.
“I tried to warn you,” Manie said, her voice growing dark.
“Just want to ‘ave a look around, that’s all,” he said back.
Gale swung the blade and stuck the point of her dagger through the man’s arm above the wrist, pinning him to the wood of the door with a furious grunt. The intruder gasped in shock and dropped his lantern, crumpling to his knees as he looked at the knife sticking through his arm. Blood pumped out around the hole, spilling down the white paint like a falling red curtain. He screamed until all the air had left his lungs and spit was flying from his mouth. “FUCK…!”
“What just happened?!” the second man shouted.
“SHE’S HERE!” The first man screamed as he held his arm with his other hand.
The second intruder pushed into Manie’s room but Gale leaned back and kicked the door with all her strength, grunting as her boot hammered into the wood. The second man was crushed against the frame as the first was yanked off his knees, arm still pinned to the door.
“FUCKING KILL HER NOW!” he hollered, yanking on the blade with his free hand.
Gale kicked the door a second time, once again smashing the second intruder in the frame, but before she could kick it a third time, he squeezed his way through the gap. He held out a knife towards Gale, and she raised her longsword. “Oh fuck,” he grunted.
Gale screamed as she swatted his blade to the side and charged him, driving her sword through his chest and out between his shoulders like a silver spear. The intruder dropped his knife as blood painted his black decayed teeth red. Gale slid him off her sword and the man let out a little yelp when he hit the floor, like a tiny dog being kicked.
The man who was pinned to the door ripped the blade out of his arm and wood at once, screaming as he did. He then turned to Gale and tried to swing at her leg.
“Gale look out!” Manie screamed.
He slashed at Gale but missed when she stepped out of his reach. He leaned against the door with his shoulder, making it shut from his weight as he tumbled over. He propped his back against the door, still holding the blade.
Gale turned to face him. She pointed the tip of her sword at his throat. “Drop it!”
The man let the weapon fall from his fingers. He put his wrist against his chest and cradled it with his unwounded hand, blood slithering between his fingers. “You nicked me good.”
“I’ve known how to use a blade since I was a child,” Gale said down at the man, her voice like the bite of a snake. “Since my parents were slaughtered in front of me.” She retrieved her dagger from the carpet and wiped the bloody edge on the intruder’s shoulder until it was clean.
“So the rumors are true, you’re the Orphan of the Ashes…”
“The rumors are true,” Gale said back, her words a whisper of rage.
“Then just kill me and get this over with!” he shouted, his rage breaking into a smile and forced laugh that was shattered by terror. “But in the end it isn’t going to matter. Soon I’ll be born again, stronger than I ever could be in this life. There’s nothing you can do to stop our queen. She’s already got Copper Lanes under her control.”
“What are you talking about? Your queen?” Gale asked. “Talmoria was ruled by a king last I understood.”
The man laughed. “You’ve been here for weeks and you still haven’t separated the fruit from the flowers? She’s been right under your nose this whole time. The Queen of the Reborn. The daughter of Talmoria’s destiny. The one true queen.”
Manie wandered around the lounges and stopped beside Gale, watching the blood pool around the cheek of the first man she’d killed. The light from the lantern was dancing across his blood, making it sparkle and flash like a pool of crimson gold. The smell was almost as sickening as the sight of his absent eyes. “It’s my sister,” she said, the words like ice cracking and burning on her lips. “Veronica’s alive. I heard my father say it.” Manie stopped breathing. She saw Veronica’s face flash into her memory, smiling, laughing, then falling from the tower to her death. We’ll always be sisters–no matter what. No one can take that away from us.
“Your sister is alive?” Gale asked, turning to Manie.
“No,” the man said before Manie could answer. “Not alive. Reborn. Our queen is going to create a world that can live forever. A world that will be safe from the Gray Death, and all other diseases too. We can all have this gift–even you, Princess–but first you have to die.”
Again Manie saw the look of pain and fear in her sister’s eyes before she fell.
Gale’s eyes burned with questions. She turned to the man on the floor. “You’ll die long before we do, Scum, I can promise that.” Gale put her gaze on the growing pool of blood beneath the intruder's legs, then back on his eyes. “But before you expire, I have questions for you. Questions like why, when I arrived in this death infested city, was I marched out to the middle of The Dead Forest to be executed? Who told them to do it? Was that your queen, too?”
He smiled for a moment before the fear retook his face. “Look in a mirror. You’re a Protector. Why else would she want you dead?”
“I came here to cure the Gray Death, not to interfere in your queen's delusions about eternal life. How did she know I was coming? Who told her I’d be a threat?”
The man laughed as sweat painted his face. “Sometimes our friends really aren’t our friends at all. You should know that by now, Bluebird.”
Gale gritted her teeth, the rage erupting in her eyes like a lightning storm. “Silvan. I knew he couldn’t be trusted. He’s been acting strange ever since we finished off Duncan at Sarratania.”
“Silvan…betrayed us?” Manie asked, her mind fighting to explain how that could be possible. She was desperate to convince herself it wasn’t true. “But he’s a Protector like we are. He has the Blue Flame.”
“He’s also got three dead sisters he misses dearly,” the man said with a biting smile. “You know what they say about blood and water, Princess. Blood runs thicker.”
“Dead sisters?” Manie remembered the story Silvan told of the Protector he’d killed to avenge his family. The sisters who’d wandered into the Sour Marshes and never emerged alive.
“How is your queen going to awaken these Reborn?” Gale demanded, putting her dagger against the man’s throat. “Best explain quickly, I’m running out of patience as quickly as you're running out of blood.”
Manie watched the puddle of blood beneath his legs grow wider and wider in the rug as they talked
“King Dukemot has the Black Crystal,” the intruder said, gulping down air behind the edge of Gale’s blade. “It can open a doorway…into the Death Realm... Her sister was the first to be brought back from the nightmare. It’s how he brought back Goroth and all the others… It’s the only way.”
“The Black Crystal,” Manie whispered. “He found it…” She’d heard legends about that Crystal growing up, but she’d also heard it had been lost for centuries.
“Why did he stop after his daughter?” Gale asked. “Why not use the Black Crystal to bring back everyone in his kingdom who’s died?”
“Because brave King Dukemot is afraid. He fears the power he saw in the ones who came back. He feared a world that could grow beyond his control. But our queen isn’t afraid. She’s been to the other side, she’s seen the nightmare beyond the edge of death. Once her army is strong enough,” the man turned his head so he could breathe easier behind Gale’s dagger, “she’s going to take the Black Crystal from him and write a kingdom of eternity into the history books that will last a hundred thousand years…”
“Veronica…” Manie whispered, feeling a hard lump rise in her throat. Saving the dead from death. That sounds exactly like something she’d try to do. Manie remembered how once Veronica had told her that people like them had a responsibility to protect things that were weaker than they were.
The man laughed again, his voice like grunts bubbling up from the sludge of a swamp. “Once the true queen takes the throne, you’ll wish they’d killed you that night in The Dead Forest.” He laughed in Gale’s face like a cackling hyena. “Thought you got away, did you? Think again!”
Gale stomped on the man’s knee, making him shout and cry, then leaned into the blade against his throat to quiet him. “How soon is your queen planning to do this?”
“Soon…” he whimpered. “Real soon. And when she does, there will be an army out there as large as all the dead who have ever died.” He took a moment to catch his breath. “Everyone you Protectors cut down to try and stop her will just come marching back through those gates her father built. You can’t stop her. She’s going to take over the whole island before this is over… There will be…no place…left to hide…”
The man’s eyes drooped with exhaustion and blood loss. The deeper into his sleep the man slipped, the angrier Gale became. “Shut your liar’s mouth!” she shouted in his face, waking him as she leaned into the blade against his throat hard enough to make him bleed. He guffawed and coughed himself back to consciousness. Once he had gone quiet, Gale let off the pressure and looked at Manie, her eyes practically steaming as the blue flame inside them burned brighter and brighter.
“What if he isn’t lying?” Manie asked, struggling to breathe as the fear rose within her like a pond of poison. This felt more dire than when she and Shawn were facing down the Agents of Cinder and Goroth on the edge of Milly’s Forest. Far more dire.
Gale didn’t seem ready to believe it. She squinted as if the thought was fire in her mind. “Then we’re in trouble. Jarod is marching the entire Protector army south to unseat your father from the throne. And if this boot-rot really is telling us the truth about his queen’s plans, when the Protectors get here, they’re going to find themselves trapped in the center of a battle they cannot win.”
The true danger they were in was beginning to take hold like venom in Manie’s veins. “What do we do...?”
“We have to get a message to Jarod fast–tell him to stop and turn back his army before it's too late.”
That seemed like the worst idea of all to Manie’s ears. That would leave them isolated and alone in their enemy's home. “But what if we need Jarod’s army to stop what my sister is planning? I heard my father say something about the end of the world and the dead fighting the living and that he has to kill one of his daughters to stop it. He said I’m the key, to the future of Talmoria, to everything. And… that Veronica really is alive.”
Manie could hardly believe what they were discussing was possible. It was like some mad dream. She killed her own sister seventy years ago and now that same person was alive again and making plans against their father, the king.
Gale’s eyes reflected an icy ocean of doubt back at Manie. She turned back to the intruder and pushed her dagger against his throat. “Where is your queen hiding, Scum?
His eyes were fluttering shut. He began to slide across the door. “Hey, wake up! I asked you a question.” She grabbed his shoulder and tried to stop him from falling but he was too heavy for her. His eyes closed as he slumped over face down on the floor in his own blood, gurgling out his last breath. Gale shoved his arm off her legs with a grunt of frustration and put her dagger back in its sheath with a smack. “He’s dead…”
“So what then, is that it? Do we just find Shawn and go home?” Manie had never felt so defeated. “Just let whatever my sister is planning happen?” It felt too big for them to control, but how could they just turn away?
Gale grabbed Manie’s wrists. “We didn’t come here to fight your family, we came to find a cure to the Gray Death. First we do that, then we can regroup outside the city with Jarod and Shawn and decide what to do about your sister.”
“Lord Kevan said she calls herself the Queen of the Reborn…” Manie said. “Is that what my sister is, now…? I never thought something like this was possible.”
“No one could have predicted this, Manie. The Crystals are a force few understand.”
“My father wants me to be Talmoria’s queen. He told his most trusted advisor that I was the key to the island’s future. He’s been teaching me everything he knows about ruling a kingdom… I don’t want it, but…what happens when my sister finds out? Veronica’s the eldest daughter in our bloodline. Not me.”
Gale’s eyes sharpened into icy panic. “She probably already knows…”
Manie felt her stomach churn with anxiety. “No. Please don’t let that be true…”
“It doesn’t matter,” Gale said, squeezing Manie’s wrists. “For now we find your mother’s lab. That’s what’s important. Nothing else. Then we’ll get you far far away from this place.”
“How do we find it?” Manie asked, defeat crushing her heart like a mountain of ice. “I’ve asked everyone who might know a hint about the lab’s secret location and I’ve come up with nothing. I’ve read my father’s books, looked through his old scrolls, I’ve even listened in on secret conversations and still not a whisper about a lab. It’s hopeless.”
“That’s because the answer isn't up here,” Gale said, pointing at the floor with a smile. “It’s below. Hidden from sight. Your mother was a clever woman, but she had one weakness: a builder named Vincent. I’ve learned the location of a room that belonged to him long ago. We might find clues there that could lead us to your mothers lab.”
Manie put a hand against her forehead, doubting it was possible. “Vincent…? I’ve never heard of him but…I guess it’s our best chance...”
Gale grabbed Manie’s shoulder, the flame in her eyes rippling like a sapphire river. “Don’t lose hope, Manie. There’s always hope.”
Manie had been betrayed by hope too many times already, but she decided that once more couldn’t kill her. “Where are we going?” she asked, exhausted as she turned her eyes from Gale’s.
“There’s an abandoned cathedral beneath the mansion. The east wing is where Vincent’s room is.” Gale looked at the greenhouse beyond the balcony. “There’s been a lot of noise coming from down there lately. The soldiers can’t stop talking about it. Must be your sister.” Gale looked back at the blood and corpses at the entrance to Manie’s room. “Come. We should hurry, before the rest of the scum in this city come looking for their friends.”
“I think I know a safe way to get to the lower part of the mansion,” Manie said. “I saw a cistern with stairs in one of the secret passages. It went deep. It could lead us to the cathedral.”
“Show me,” Gale said.
***
Shawn let his hands hover over the candle’s flame, allowing the fire to reach up and lick his skin, trying to imagine what it would feel like to be burned alive. Darko and Tonila’s screams were still in his ears. You’re a Protector, Shawn, Molly had said to him. You’re supposed to protect people. And she was right. But he hadn’t protected anyone then. On that night he’d failed to live up to the Blue Flame. He tried to think of the Death Realm and all the people there that were depending on him and Veronica to save their lives, but it didn’t make the screams go away, only silenced them for a moment as he imagined a world of undeath. “They need our help…”
A crushing weight was falling on Shawn. He pushed away the sights, the sounds, trying to remember where he’d come from. He saw his mother and sister, his house at the front of the cul de sac, his cozy room at the top of the stairs. School would be back in session now. He imagined Spencer and Sam waiting for him behind the high school, talking about the things they’d done over summer break. Now their stories would be about things they’d done without him. Do they even know I’m gone? Do they care? His mom had cared. She’d made him promise to come home when his adventure with Manie was over. Will I ever keep that promise?
Shawn removed his gaze from the flame and looked at the open books around him, seeing passages like, burned to death for her crimes. Another scroll read, The mind must be taken before the body will obey. Shawn’s blurry eyes found another stretch of writing in the dim light of the candles and torchlight. Power will always reside in the strongest blood. Shawn looked at the scar across the middle of his palm, remembering the night Manie had cut open his hand in her mother’s cabin so she could give him his power. Then he saw the scar on his wrist from when Veronica had drawn his blood in the mausoleum so she could take that same power from him. What is my role in all this? Why am I even here?
Shawn let his eyes wander across the damp stone walls, across a world carved of stone. The air at the back of the cathedral was cold and damp as a swamp in winter. It stank of smoke from the torches and moss from the canal everywhere there was air to breathe. Shawn could hear the humming of a thousand voices in the chamber beyond the doorway behind him. He felt unsettled in the presence of their noise. Each word was a part of the next–each thought, each threat–it all melted together into one sound, one voice, one hungry harmony, like the crushing weight of an ocean bearing down on the entire world. The people of Copper Lanes had come to the cathedral to see their queen. And their queen had come to see them.
Veronica appeared from the darkness in the hallway at the side of the room, bending a shadow through the torch light as she came inside. The iron chandelier swinging over her heat looked like a hive of melted wax. “I’m back. Did you miss me?” Veronica’s voice was high and excited as she jumped up and sat onto the stone table in front of him, knocking half the scrolls and books to the floor.
“Of course,” Shawn said, trying to muster up some enthusiasm as he rubbed the exhaustion from his eyes.
She smiled. “It always feels like an eternity when I’m away from you.” Veronica leaned towards Shawn and ran her fingers through his hair, then down his shoulder and off his elbow. “Soon we’ll be together for an eternity, and then we’ll never be apart. Just us–like it was meant to be. No more monsters like Darko and Tonila to try to steal our future away. No more kings and queens who control the island. Nothing stands between us and a world of Reborn.”
Shawn could hear Darko and Tonila warning him about her world, telling him that he’d have to kill her if he wanted to stop it from being born. “What about your father? He’s still here.”
“My father is a broken man, Shawn. His time has passed. The only real enemies we have now are your old friends, the Protectors.”
“And your sister? Are you forgetting about her? We have to find a cage to lock her in where she won’t be able to get in our way. We still have a long way to go before your future becomes real,” Shawn looked into Veronica’s burning, green eyes as sweat formed on his face. Every time he spoke of Manie it was like Veronica could see the seams of his lie coming undone.
Veronica’s smile receded into her cheeks like a mountain being buried in snow. “Yes,” Veronica said, her eyes practically bleeding flame. “A cage.” She smiled, but even her smile made her look more dangerous. “Or maybe not.”
Shawn’s stomach dropped. She’d killed Darko and Tonila with little hesitation even though it’d ripped out a piece of her heart to do so. “Manie will always be your sister. Killing her isn’t going to change that.”
“No, but revenge might make the pain of her betrayal disappear. Then we can begin again,” Veronica smiled, “with my sister on a short leash.” Veronica’s smile dropped. She let a breath escape her lungs. “No matter what I choose, keeping Manie out of our way will be as easy as crushing a fly. No one will accept her as Talmoria’s queen even if she’s handed the throne by my father. She’s weak. She always has been weak, and she always will be weak.”
“I’m not so sure you’d say that if you’d seen her fight,” Shawn said back, trying not to bite his tongue.
Veronica’s expression opened like a flower blooming into death. “You’re always so quick to come to her defense,” she said, shaking her head at him and squinting. “What is with you two? Were you a frog and she turned you into a prince? Did she kiss your magic sword?” Veronica looked like she wanted to cry and scream at once. “You need to forget about her, Shawn, like I had to. She means nothing to us.”
“I can’t just forget about her,” Shawn said. “She was my friend. At least that much was real between us. I gave up everything I’ve ever known to save her life. My family, my friends, my home…” Shawn remembered the moment the blue beam erupted from the tip of Mikhail’s Crystal like a spear of blue fire, swarming down Goroth’s throat and exploding through the monster’s chest like a bomb from the sun. He felt proud and terrified at once, knowing all that had happened because of that decision.
“Exactly. She kidnapped you from your world and then nearly got you killed trying to fix her own mistakes. She’s never cared about anyone but herself–not even me. She used you, Shawn. She uses everyone. Saving the Torch-Wings was her attempt to redeem herself for helping our father imprison them, and even that she couldn’t succeed at. Milly’s dead, nearly all of the Torch-Wing forests have been destroyed, and now our mother has the Red Crystal she’s desired for a thousand years–the Crystal that began this war in the first place: all of that is thanks to my sister.”
“You can’t blame Manie for everything, Veronica. She’s a victim, too.”
“A victim? After what she did to me? To the Torch-Wings? She’s the one who unleashed fire and death on our world. No one else.”
“Yeah, but you never tried to save the Torch-Wings,” Shawn said, standing up from his seat. “Manie never stopped trying to save them, not even after your mother killed her. She was going to die for them. What were you going to do for them? Anything? We saved them together.”
Veronica jumped off the table. “I’m not the one who revealed them to the world–she was. It was never my problem to solve. If she’d come with me the night I tried to take her away from Denengear, no one would have ever known the Torch-Wings were still real in the first place. Least of all our father. She should have died for them. She should have lost everything. It’s what she did to them.”
“I wasn’t going to let that happen,” Shawn said, the fire of his conviction seering into his heart. I’m saving you! He heard his own voice echo from the top of Sarratania’s tower. “I loved her.”
Veronica slapped Shawn across the cheek, making his face whip to the side. When he looked back at Vee he saw tears boiling in her eyes. “Don’t say that!” she screamed. “You don’t mean it!”
Shawn reached up and held his stinging cheek. The pain felt good. He knew his words hurt her far worse than any slap could hurt him. She was alone in a way that no one else could come close to understanding, and he’d just reminded her of that.
Veronica put her fists on her forehead and turned away, growling in rage. “None of it matters,” she snapped back as tears broke from her eyes. “Once she’s in a cage, or dead, we won’t have to think about my sister ever again!” The green fire in Veronica’s eyes raged, boiling up her irises like a wildfire gone out of control.
Shawn smiled as he took his hand off his cheek. “You’ll never stop thinking about her. Even if you kill her.”
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Veronica looked like she wanted to bite back, but instead she contained her rage and said, “We don’t have time for this, Shawn. The real enemy is out there, taking cities and spreading lies. Do you think the Protectors are going to roll over and just let us have the island? You saw them from my sister’s tower. They’re approaching the city fast. We have to finish my plans before they get to Denengear.” Veronica went to Shawn, the fire in her eyes rapidly cooling. “You have to leave them in the past with Manie. This is a new world being born. A new you.” Veronica touched Shawn’s cheek where she’d slapped him and smiled, looking like she saw a god in his eyes. “A new us,” she whispered. “There’s no room in our future for them anymore. You have to trust me. I’m trying to save you.”
Shawn closed his eyes, remembering how she’d saved his life in the Forest of Forgotten Dreams when he was cornered by the mother Renjin, and when he’d fallen from the log across the chasm. He turned his face into her hand and pressed her fingers against his cheek. “I do trust you, Veronica,” he said, hating himself for it being true. He opened his eyes and looked into hers, seeing tears boiling on the edge of the green flame, her lips split open.
“Then come with me,” she whispered, grabbing Shawn’s hand. “I’ll take us someplace no one’s ever been.”
Claps of boots on stone began to chatter up from one of the dark doorways at the edge of the room, and a torch’s fire could be seen bending up the stone stairs. Shawn could hear commander Markus speaking to another man, a voice Shawn could only barely recognize.
“It’s time we go speak with our people, my king.”
Veronica smiled, but her words terrified him. It felt like mountains were shifting around him. Shawn caught himself holding his breath and remembering his friends at school. “Alright… Let’s go.”
***
“This way,” Manie said back to Gale. She turned left at the intersection of dark hallways and kept moving. The walls were stone bricks and wood beams, hissing in the darkness as rain struck the mansion. The flame in she and Gale’s eyes was bright enough to turn the darkness to red and blue light, and when the colors mixed, everything became purple. “I was lost the first time I came this way. Watch your head here.” Manie ducked under a fallen beam, avoiding the cobwebs and spiders.
“What were you looking for?” Gale asked as she grunted and squeezed herself through.
“I was trying to find out what's happened over the past seventy years since I’ve been gone.”
“Did you learn anything?”
“Nothing my father didn’t already tell me himself. But I had to know he wasn't lying. He hid the truth about the Torch-Wings from me for years... I don’t know if I can ever trust him again.”
“If he’s trying to give you the throne then clearly he trusts you. Maybe he’s different now.”
“He’s not different,” Manie said, remembering everything good and bad about her father. “That’s why he’s giving the throne to me. He can’t even trust himself with that power anymore.”
Manie came into a widened room with three hallways going off in different directions, and a stone alcove with a fountain inside that had gone dry. A statue of a woman was rising up on waves in the sea, her hair flowing like water. There were Torch-Wings painted into the wall behind the woman’s shoulders, but the paint had mostly faded. The woman was clutching a rose to her chest. It was the same rose Milly had given to Manie after the Battle for the Beacons. The rose that would transform Manie into Queen of the Torch-Wings if she pricked herself on one of its thorns.
Manie reached out to the stone flower and pushed on its stem, making it bend and click. The fountain in the alcove wall began to fall into the floor with a stony grind, rumbling and hissing as the sea and Milly disappeared. A platform slid over the opening and connected their path to a room lit by moonlight.
“That was incredible,” Gale said, her voice as light as mist. “This place sometimes feels like it was built by gods.”
“If you consider power in the Crystals to be godly,” Manie said as she ducked and went through. When she came out on the other side, she was standing at the top of a cistern, just below a metal grate in the ceiling that was letting water from the city above drain in, soaking the ropes of ivy and moss. Blue moonlight painted the gray bricks with sapphire light, but under the glow and years of grime was gold, and a painting of a Torch-Wing forest high up in the trees. Manie could see dozens of glass houses hanging in branches and sparkling Torch-Wings flying around them. As she and Gale approached the edge of the Cistern’s well, she saw the painting grow below, showing thousands of Torch-Wings in every color imaginable.
“King Mikhail must have loved the Torch-Wings as much as you,” Gale said as she looked down.
“Maybe he did… He died trying to stop my mother from destroying our world, maybe he did it for theirs, too.” Manie felt a strange responsibility as she said those words, like she was somehow bound to the same fate. “Do you think he would have regretted his decision? Considering what his actions caused.”
“Sometimes doing the right thing has a price. But the price is never as high as doing what's wrong,” Gale said. “I admire what Mikhail did. It was brave. Even if it got him killed.”
Manie thought about that in silence, imagining what would have happened if she’d left Talmoria with Shawn before the Battle for the Beacons. The Torch-Wings would have gone extinct and Duncan would have taken over the North. The stones in the alcove began to grind, and the passage closed behind them, leaving the statue of Milly and her rose in its place.
“Careful on the steps, they’re slick as ice,” Manie said as she descended the rim of the cistern, twisting deeper and deeper into the mansion’s depths until the moonlight dimmed and the shadows swelled around them, darkening the portrait of the Torch-Wing forest behind a jungle of moss and growth. When they reached the bottom, Manie found the floor flooded with sparkling, green rainwater. “Get ready to get wet.” She splashed down into the icy pool, making herself gasp. The water went knee deep and formed into a little river that ran into slits in the wall. Manie looked around at an intersection of four stone tunnels around the room, wondering which way to go.
“Which way now?” Gale jumped down into the water with Manie and screamed from the cold. “It's freezing!”
“I don’t know,” Manie replied, shivering and holding her arms. “I wish Shawn was here.”
Gale reached up and picked a chunk of moss out of Manie’s hair and rubbed her shoulders. “We’ll find him. Stop worrying.”
“I can’t help it… I care about him more than my own life.”
“He cares about you, too,” Gale said, smiling. “It’s hard not to notice. He hardly takes his eyes off you.”
Manie missed him even more, now. She looked around the bottom of the well, noticing four tunnels in a half circle across the stones. She trudged through the water, every step splashing green scum up the dress Sahlee had tailored for her. She wouldn’t live this down easily when the seamstress saw what she’d done to it. On the wall Manie found a placard with words written under thick moss. She scraped it away with her fingernails and looked again. “Drains.”
“This one has writing too,” Gale said as she chopped away the ivy with her knife. “Mausoleum.”
Manie went to the third alcove which faced away from the stairs, her feet already numb, ripping at the ivy and grinding away the moss. “Inner Sanctum. Do you think this could be it?”
“Let’s see what this last one says.” Gale splashed her way to the final alcove and cleared the growth. “Copper Lanes. Hmm…” Gale threw her braid over her shoulder. “Well…between Drains, Mausoleum, Copper Lanes and Inner Sanctum, I’d wager mausoleum is our best chance. Come on. I’ll go first this time.”
Gale went into the shadowy tunnel, extending the darkness with the blue light of her eyes the deeper she went. Manie felt a sense of doom rising inside, like the very stones of her father’s mansion were vibrating with some unhearable message. “Somethings not right about this.” Manie went into the tunnel after Gale, bending over so she wouldn’t hit her head.
“About what?” Gale asked from ahead.
“Everything. Shawn’s gone. Silvan betrayed us. My sister is alive again,” Manie said with a laugh of madness. “It feels like we’re walking into a trap… like something bad is going to happen.”
“Don’t let the enemy inside your mind. We’re going to get through this.”
“Not if what that man you killed said is true. If what he said is true, then we’re about to face an army that can’t die.”
“Everyone can die,” Gale said. “Even the dead. They’ll just have to die again.”
Manie laughed as she imagined the absurdity of that.
“And it might have been a lie just to scare us, so don’t give up just yet. There’s another statue of a rose ahead.” Gale stopped moving, the water splashing and gurgling as it ran into a grate in the floor of the tunnel.
“Push the thorn,” Manie said.
Gale pressed on the rose and the thorn clicked. The wall grinded and hissed, folding up into the next room as dirt and grime fell from the edge. Manie’s heart was hammering in her chest. Her pulse ran hot and cold at once. The longer it took for the door to open the more claustrophobic she felt. When it finally came fully open, Gale stepped out of the tunnel and into the next room, her eyes lighting everything with a blue tint as she stood.
“Someone’s been using this room,” Gale said, her eyes thinned with disgust.
Manie came out next, seeing tombs everywhere around the stone walls, each housing a skeleton or a coffin, each spilling shredded cloth and bones. The red flame in her eyes burned across the room, turning the air the color of blood. There were dozens of skeletons and decayed corpses spread across the floor. The smell was enough to choke away Manie’s breath.
“What is this?” Manie asked, covering her nose with one hand. She saw a wooden rack with bloody ropes dangling from the top and bottom corners, like someone had been tied to it. Beside it was a table covered in dried blood and broken glass. On the table was a strange book Manie thought she recognized. The pages were covered in bloody fingerprints, but she could see the name of the chapter on one page: Blood Awakening. She flipped the cover and saw the red X that confirmed her fears. “This is one of Jango’s books from back when he was building an army of Crystal wielders… Why is this here?”
Gale came over with Manie and looked, her blue eyes mixing with Manie’s red and turning the book purple. “You think someone is trying Jango’s old tricks?”
“There’s blood everywhere. I think your question answers itself.”
“It only gets worse,” Gale said, releasing a breath. “That means someone in the city might have learned to use the power in the Crystals. Someone that could be our enemy.”
“I’ve never had to fight someone who had powers,” Manie said, fear washing over her mind. “All my battles have been against ordinary people. Never ones who could control the Crystals.
“I don’t think anyone has, not since your mother’s war a thousand years ago,” Gale said.
Manie could still remember the devastation she’d seen in Jango’s moving tapestry, the horror that could be unleashed if a population of Crystal Keepers went to war. She remembered an excerpt from one of her history books, describing the event–The war reshaped the mountains and boiled the seas, turned the sky to fire and rotted the air into poison. Nowhere on Talmoria was safe.
“We shouldn’t waste time,” Gale said, her voice as thin as mist. “We need to find Vincent’s room before whoever spilled this blood returns.”
Gale and Manie turned their attention towards the door at the end of the room, their eyes meeting the darkness as one and turning the walls pink and purple, blue and red. An uproar of cheers and whistles hummed through the wood, their stamping feet and shouting voices shaking the stones.
“Are we still in the city?” Manie asked as dust fell from the ceiling.
“We couldn’t have gone that far,” Gale said as she moved across the room and put her ear against the door. “They’re shouting for someone,” Gale’s eyes grew wider the longer she listened.
“Who?” Manie asked, the anticipation building in her stomach until she thought her organs were about to burst.
Gale turned back to Manie, her face bent and frozen into disbelief. “I think… I think they’re saying…Veronica.”
“No…” Manie felt the world spin. The walls seemed to shake every time the voices rose to their height. White sparks swarmed Manie’s eyes as she saw her sister’s face in her mind, showing an evil smile. Gale grabbed the handle of the door and slowly turned until the latch clicked open and the door broke from the frame, unleashing a flood of voices and screams and whistles that came pouring into the room, practically knocking Manie off her feet.
“The Queen of the Reborn!” a man shouted with such vigor that Manie flinched when she heard him, and in his voice’s wake came a thousand other cheers and screams repeating the same words over and over again. Gale leaned around the door and looked through the crack, then slowly pulled until it was halfway open, letting golden light from the torches melt into the room, glowing up the stony walls of the mausoleum and revealing more blood.
Manie could see a crowd beyond the door churning and bouncing with excitement and fury. The air smelled of smoke and sweat, hot and humid as a day in summer. Thousands of shadows were bouncing across the walls like a sea of jagged black teeth, fists rising into the air in unison as they chanted her sister’s name. “Veronica! Veronica! For a future Reborn!”
“Come here,” Gale said, loud enough to overpower the storm in the next room.
Manie didn’t want to move, but she obeyed Gale’s command, her legs slowly carrying her towards the thunderous sound. She came to the doorway and looked out across a field of thousands of faces glowing in the torchlight under the deep, dark roof of the cathedral that extended high over top of them, where black smoke swirled and streamed through shattered windows and into the undercity outside.
“Look,” Gale said loudly, pointing towards the far end of the chamber, past the shattered statue of a king, where all the people were looking. Manie turned her gaze to where Gale was pointing and found a far away stage with three people standing on it. They were hidden behind a wall of fists and hands rising over the sea of shoulders and heads. The world seemed to be shaking. “Recognize anyone?”
Manie squinted and tried to see, but there were too many people blocking her sight, the fire from the torches sparkling over the sweat on their skin. “I can’t see their faces…” The knot in her stomach grew harder, like a pebble turning into a stone.
“We have to climb up.” Gale said as she stepped through the door. There was a broken pillar not far away, surrounded by people cheering and whistling and crying. “Take my hand. We have to stay together.”
Manie grabbed Gale’s hand and squeezed. The warmth in her fingers seemed like the only thing that was real, the rest was just a nightmare. Where am I? Manie asked herself. Not at home, was the only answer that came to mind.
Gale pushed through the bodies, grunting and squeezing past arms and chests. “Make way!”
“Veronica!” they shouted. “Savior of the damned! Queen of the Reborn!”
As Gale struggled to push through a large group to reach the pillar, Manie saw an old woman nearby, crying and laughing as she looked towards the stage. “I can’t wait to see my Ronny again. I’ve missed him so much.”
There was a small girl at the woman’s side, clutching her hand. “Will I get to see Papa too?”
“We’ll get to see everyone, darling,” the old woman replied. “The world will be reborn.”
Manie watched them smile towards the stage, everyone chanting her sister’s name. A man with an orange beard went close to the girl and old woman, kneeling and smiling as he got close. “You’re waiting to see your father? I’m here for my brother. The queen is going to save him, too. Everything is going to be alright. I know it in my heart.”
The little girl smiled at the bearded man and old woman, who returned her joy. It seemed an odd glimmer of hope among all this madness. Maybe it's not how it seems. The light from the torches painted everything black and gold, red with fiery light. The people were dirty, skinny and alone. It seemed like they’d all lost someone they couldn’t live without. And their hope had brought them together here in a broken cathedral where people had once worshiped the power in the Crystals.
“Out of my way!” Gale shouted as she pushed through the large men, dragging Manie with her. When they came out on the other side they were in an open area with less people. Manie followed Gale through and they reached the side of the broken pillar with ease. Gale put her back against the stone and knelt, cupping her hands. Her face was covered in sweat and her eyes were wide and blue with fear. “Climb up and grab a look. We need to know what we’re dealing with.”
“Okay…” Manie didn’t want to see, for fear of what she might find, but she went to Gale and put her shoe into her hands, climbing onto her shoulder, then up onto the broken seat of the pillar. She crawled on her knees until she was away from the edge, then looked up, over the thousands of writhing bodies below, to the stage where the three people were standing. Manie didn’t want to believe her eyes, but now that she had a clear view, there was no doubt of who she was looking at.
“Oh god…” It was Veronica. Like a lightning bolt exploding into her eyes, a flash of memories erupted in Manie’s mind. It was like she’d stepped back in time, to the night they first saw the Torch-Wings together, then to the last night they ever saw each other alive. I’ll always be here for you, Little Lightning Bolt, Veronica said in her mind. We’re sisters. No one can ever take that away from us.
Manie’s focus whipped back to the present like a comet bursting into a shower of sparks in the sky. She focused on the stage, on her sister’s face. “It’s her, Gale,” Manie said, choking on the words as she cried and laughed at once, breath sputtering into her lungs like she was drowning. “She’s alive. My sister…is alive.” Manie thought she was going to faint. She could sense her heart beating hot in her eyes like her veins were pumping liquid iron. Her mind was being torn in so many different directions she wasn’t sure what to feel. “I’ve wanted to see her again for so long…to tell her that I’m sorry for what I did…and there she is. She’s right here in front of me.”
“Are you sure it’s her?!” Gale screamed up at Manie, pain and disbelief shredding her voice.
“It’s her,” Manie called back, the words leaving scars in her throat. “Why didn’t my father tell me…? Why would he keep her life a secret?” Manie wiped tears from her eyes so she could get a better view, appreciating every detail of her sister’s face. “She looks different, Gale. Her hair… And she has a scar on her cheek. It looks fresh.” Manie touched her face. “I wonder what happened?”
Beyond the crowd of bodies, Manie watched Veronica raise her arms and point her fingers at the roof of the cathedral. A bursting cloud of green fire exploded into a shockwave that roared and shook the room as it came swarming out of her hands, burning over the audience and rising to the top of the room with a crackling rush of heat and sparks, washing out like a giant, boiling blanket.
Manie looked up into the flames, the heat on her face almost unbearable. Within the inferno was a world of children laughing, women crying, and men screaming in joy as they looked down from their world of death and into the world of the living. Manie could barely believe her eyes. Everyone from Copper Lanes went silent as they peered up into the lost world, shrunken by what they saw.
“That’s Jon!” A man pointed and screamed at the sky, laughing. “Jon! I’m right here, Laddie!” He waved his arms and jumped. “I’m still here waiting for ya’! Those bastards cut ya’ down, but I’m still waitin’. Come on back! We’ll have a pint on me!”
Manie could see thousands of green faces staring down, their image bleeding through the coiling cloud of flame like a world of melting wax figures. She could feel sweat soaking into her dress. Hot wind was blowing sparks down over the crowd and throwing Manie’s hair back over her shoulders.
“Mother!” A teenage girl cried into the field of fire. “Mother, please come back. I need you with me.” She fell to her knees and began to beg at the sky. “How could you leave me like this? Please come back.”
“This is worse than we ever could have imagined!” Gale shouted from the base of the pillar, as green flashes of lightning and fire lit the walls around her and thunder shook clouds of dust from the stones. “These people are going to do whatever their queen tells them. Who else do you see up there?”
While everyone else was hypnotized by the souls of green fire at the roof, Manie bent her gaze back to the stage, to the person creating the show–her own sister, her lost best friend. Manie could see a twinkling spark in both Veronica’s eyes that was the same shade of green as the flame washing out of her hands. “She’s bonded with another Crystal,” Manie said aloud, her voice firm and direct. And it wasn’t a Crystal of wind like when she and Veronica were children. This Crystal and the power it contained was far more dangerous.
Manie wiped her eyes to clear the dust fogging her vision. It felt like she was riding an earthquake into the sea as the stones hummed and shook beneath her. There were two others standing near her sister and more in the back. “One of them…is…Commander Markus!” Again Manie could hardly believe what she was seeing. “He guarded me from Veronica when I was a child.” What is going on around here? She could still hear Markus’s voice echoing across the throne room. Veronica cannot be allowed back into our presence after what she’s done. She’s no better than her own traitorous mother. For the safety of princess Manie, she must be banished to Copper Lanes.
Manie could hardly believe Markus was now up there with Veronica, helping her. “My father would be furious if he knew. The entire council would be furious.” The sting of betrayal bit into Manie like a viper’s strike.
“Who’s the third?” Gale asked, panic rising in her voice.
Manie didn’t want to look again, but when she did, the third sight was just shocking. “Silvan,” Manie called down, wounded by who she saw as much as if she’d just taken a knife to the gut. “He did betray us, Gale...”
“That traitor!” Gale cried in fury. “I’ll make him answer for what he’s done. He drew us all into a trap!”
Manie could hardly look at Silvan’s face without feeling nauseous. “He told them we were coming. When Commander Markus took me out of the back of the wagon he said he’d been expecting our arrival. Now it makes sense.” She’d trusted Silvan completely before tonight. Now she never would again.
“What is happening in this place?” Gale asked. “Has this city turned everyone mad?”
Manie carried the same question in her own mind. “Not the city, the Crystals,” she answered, feeling the life drain out of her. “Everything I’ve ever believed was true has been a lie. Everything. Just like last time…” Manie remembered the deception her father created that led to the imprisonment of the Torch-Wings. How he’d used her power in his war against Queen Milly. Manie had once been told by Milly that her father would have forgiven her if she’d let Veronica take Mikhail’s Crystal that night in the tower, that none of the Torch-Wings needed to die. All of their pain could have been avoided if Manie had just let that power go. But she hadn’t been able to. A tear boiled over Manie’s vision and she squinted to break it.
The green fire that held the world of the Reborn flashed away, rippling and roaring as it came together and washed away the faces of the dead. Above a sea of gasps and cries, the fire swept through the cathedral towards the stage where Veronica was standing and was swallowed up by her hands, becoming a raging tornado of flame that disappeared into her fingers, and the people in the Death Realm disappeared with it. As the sight of the faces in the fire vanished into a swirl of green flame, the people cried and cheered and shouted Veronica’s name until the cathedral hummed and shook around them. Dust fell from cracks in the ceiling and candles dislodged from brass holders. Finally the tornado of fire swallowed the last of the dead and disappeared into Veronica’s hands, and she stumbled back into someone’s arms who caught her. In the darkness of the fire’s wake, the crowd’s chanting became silent, until barely a whisper could be heard.
“Do you understand the gift I’m trying to give you?” Veronica asked her audience as she regained her feet, voice thundering over the cathedral like she’d just become a god. “The gift I’m trying to give us? This is the gift of Rebirth! A new future for everyone on our island. A better future. A way to reverse the destruction my father and mother unleashed on Talmoria–all those years ago–and make us stronger. And the Protectors want to take that gift away!”
Words of uncertainty crossed the crowd like they each were holding their breath. “But the Protectors aren’t our enemy,” Manie heard a girl say. “The queen has to be wrong. They’d help us save our families, too.” A man grabbed the girl’s hand and said. “I’m not sure about that anymore, darling. They never were much of ones for magic.”
“You heard me right,” Veronica continued as she whipped across the stage. “I didn’t misspeak–the Protectors are our enemy, now. Once, a time long ago, they were a group the people of Talmoria could trust and depend on to do the right thing–when Mikhail was still their king–but they are not those people anymore.”
“What are you talking about, Veronica?” Manie didn’t understand how she could say that. The Protectors had always been heroes in their stories. Ever since they were children.
“They’ve been taken hostage by a pretender named Jarod who believes that there is only one way for life to exist on Talmoria: the old way. But the old way is dead. The old way was swallowed up by a storm of fire and disease! The Protectors don’t want to save the people trapped in the Death Realm, they think the Reborn are abominations. They think we’re all freaks! When they get to Denengear, they’re not going to help us, they’re going to try to kill your queen and take my future away from everyone. If they succeed, you will never see your families again. That is the only future they have to offer you.”
The audience was turning to rage and anger the longer Veronica spoke. Gasps and screams were echoing across the chamber. “How could they turn on us now after we’ve found another way?” An old woman lamented through her tears. “Haven’t we all been through enough torment?”
“They’re the abominations!” A man cried. “They’re the freaks! Only a monster could stand in the way of a man reuniting with his beloved.”
Manie could see her sister smile at their reaction. “Yes. They are wrong for wanting to stand in our way!” Veronica cried back to her audience. “The people trapped in the Death Realm have suffered enough.” Her voice wilted with sorrow like a violin being bent out of tune. “They are living in a nightmare so terrible and tortuous that no one who hasn’t been there can possibly understand. It’s death for them, every moment of every day, reliving their worst horrors until eternity ends. And the Protectors only want a cure to the disease–Nothing else. They don’t care about your dead children, or your dead mothers, or your dead brothers and sisters and husbands. All they care about is ensuring that they come into power however this disaster ends!” Veronica put her hands together. “But the Protectors have made a mistake, because there is no cure to the Gray Death. There never was, and there never will be. That hope is gone… Everything they are fighting and dying for is a fantasy, a dream, a wish that will never come true.”
Veronica stood and let her eyes hover across the audience as they whispered and watched her like a pack of wolves waiting to feast. “And even if there is a cure out there somewhere, all you have to do is look at Copper Lanes and Market Town to see what that cure would buy us–at the mounds of bodies burning in the streets and the gutters lined end to end with corpses. Too many of us have already died for a cure to mean anything. A cure is not going to bring our families back. A cure is not going to erase the damage their loss has already done. Only I can. Only through Rebirth can the pain of our pasts be mended. By bringing them back to us.”
The silence in the crowd was deafening. All that could be heard was a few babies crying in the far back and a pack of dogs barking. Manie looked around the cathedral and saw thousands of faces staring up at her sister like they’d turned to ice, like they were all hypnotized by her words. Manie could hardly tell if anyone was even still breathing.
“You have to kill any Protector you see,” Veronica said in a softer voice than before, as if afraid speaking those words too loudly might cut her tongue. She walked across the stairs, her black dress flowing like a waterfall of ink. “Anyone who carries a blue flame in their eyes. That spark is what marks them as our enemy. All Protectors have it. It can be hard to see in the light, but if you bring them into the shadows, there will be no way to hide it. They all have to die!” Veronica said louder this time, her voice echoing. “Stopping them is the only way to cut a path to the future I’m trying to make. We already came too close to losing it once.” Veronica touched her cheek. “Together, we can succeed. Together, we can take our world back! Our families will be Reborn, and this time, we’ll decide our own futures!”
The crowd ignited with approval, their furious cheers echoing off the walls like an earthquake shaking the city. Fists rose and weapons were unsheathed, shaking in the air above the crowd.
“You heard what she said, kill every Protector you see!” A man hollered, and was soon joined by almost a dozen others. “Turn those blue eyes bloody!”
“I’ll kill anyone who gets between me and my boy!” an old man shouted, stabbing his dagger in the air. “Blue eyes or brown!”
“This is real!” Another cried as he looked around the audience with mad eyes so wide they seemed ready to come out of his head. “We’re taking our island back!”
Manie climbed down and Gale pulled her legs into her arms to help her descend. When she was back on the ground, Manie looked into Gale’s eyes and watched the blue flame in her pupils dance, terrified by the sight. Just behind her shoulders were a dozen armored mercenaries wielding blades. “Did you hear what my sister just said?” Manie asked in a low voice. “There’s no cure!”
Gale’s eyes flicked from side to side as sweat shined across her face. “It has to be a lie…”
“We have to get out of here, now.” Manie was in shock. Her reality had just vanished into a cloud of green fire and madness. It felt like the Protectors had already lost the battle. The throne, her old life, the cure, everything had just been destroyed at once. “If my sister unleashes this many people on the Cloud District with Commander Markus’s help…if they try to take the mansion…they’ll kill everyone. There aren’t enough of us left to stop them.”
Gale looked at the stage, past the thousands of shouting people, sweat dripping down her face. “And if she gets the Black Crystal from your father she’ll open the Death Realm…and then she’ll have an army that can’t be stopped.” Gale turned back to Manie, the fear shining in her eyes like molten obsidian. The crowd around her was chanting, “Death to Protectors! Death to Protectors! Death to Protectors!”
“It’s even worse than we were led to believe,” Gale said, looking breathless.
Manie felt terror grip her by the throat. She remembered watching Goroth climb out of a flaming tunnel in the Earth at the edge of the Beacons of Black Fire. She’d believed she was going to die that night. And now she felt that same fear again. “We can’t let this happen... We have to find some way to…to stop this.” Manie could hear her sister’s voice behind her eyes, feel Veronica’s hand squeezing her shoulders and whispering in her ear. We have a responsibility to protect things, Manie. That’s what this power means.
“The sister I grew up with still has to be in her somewhere,” Manie said. “We have to convince her that she’s wrong, that there’s still another way to save them.”
“Manie, you can’t,” Gale said, shaking her head. “Look at her. Look at these people. There is no going back.”
“She wants to do the right thing,” Manie argued. “She wants to save people’s lives. She’ll listen to me if I can find a way to speak to her. I know she will…” And then I have to tell her how sorry I am for what I did to her. Manie could feel tears boil into her eyes as her heart bounced faster and faster between her ribs. She felt like she was standing on a windy peak at the top of a snowy mountain.
“Manie, no,” Gale said, like a mother forbidding her child. “It isn’t safe. Your sister may not be as forgiving of your past as you want her to be...”
“I have to try something,” Manie said back, voice disappearing into the past. “I have to find a way to end this. If I tell her I regret what I did…maybe she’ll stop…”
Gale shook her head, then grabbed Manie and hugged her, squeezing tight. “Manie…” Gale sighed through her nose. “Veronica is never going to forgive you for her death. I’m sorry, but it’s the truth. That kind of hurt goes too deep. It’s worse than anything you or I have ever experienced.” She released Manie and looked her in the eyes. “Please listen to me. I know who you are, and you are not an evil person. We all make mistakes. You don’t deserve to die for them.”
Manie turned her eyes on the floor. “I’ve made many.”
“Not even close.” Gale squeezed Manie’s shoulders. “Now follow me. We have to go. There’s nothing we can do about this in a night,” Gale said. ”These people have made up their minds. Your sister is their god now.”
The words drew a chill up Manie’s spine. What would happen when these people found out that she was being given Talmoria’s throne? It’ll be my head they want next.
“The east wing is on the other side of this rubble.” Gale put up a hand to block her eyes from the sight of the crowd around her, squinting as she spoke. “We have to find Vincent’s room.”
“We should just go back,” Manie said. “This is too dangerous.” She could feel the eyes around her searching for blue flame. It felt like the whole world was crumbling, dust and pebbles breaking from the walls and falling around her with the chanting and shouting voices. The doom her father spoke of was already here.
“They were already trying to kill me before I came down here,” Gale all but whispered, turning to look at the door to the east wing, beyond the shattered portion of the pillar that had fallen. “And I might not survive long enough to return... This could be our only chance, Manie. We have to take it. Jarod is depending on us. All the Protectors are.”
Manie looked again at her sister on the stage, wishing it was all a dream of a future that could never be real. She wanted to wake in her own bed, with her family back together, with the Torch-Wing forests still standing, with all the dead from fire and disease still living. Veronica would be her best friend again, and Bree and Julius would have never turned to stone. When reality refused to fade away into dreams, Manie let out a breath to keep herself from crying. Why is this happening to me? Why?
“Okay...you’re right,” Manie said to Gale. “But please, let’s do this as quick as we can. I want to leave before something even worse happens.”
***
Shawn sank into himself like a spider retreating into its web. No cure? How can that be possible? It has to be a lie. Every disease can be cured. Even Jango uncovered a vaccine. She’s lying. The crowd before him was raging like a wildfire that had just been showered in oil. Sweat was glimmering across the thousands of rising arms like a field of molten metal. He could smell smoke and fury in the air so fiercely he could taste it on his tongue.
“For the future!” Veronica shouted down at them, her teeth bared like she’d become a fire feeding on their rage. She raised her fist in the air, and the people did the same, responding with, “Death to Protectors! Death to Protectors!”
Molly looked like she was chained to a broken ship as the ocean rose around it; but Dylan couldn’t have looked more excited, his smile stretched from ear to ear. He laughed and said, “Can you believe this is real? Look at them–they love us!”
“She just told them to kill all the Protectors,” Shawn said back, the anger burning through his voice.
“Yes, I suppose that is going to become a bit of a problem for you,” Dylan said with a poisonous smile. “You might become one of us sooner than you thought.” Blue light shimmered on Dylan’s cheeks from the flame in Shawn’s eyes.
Did she just betray me? Shawn edged closer to Veronica and grabbed her arm. “I saved your life at the Forge and this is how you thank me? By telling half the city to kill me?” Shawn’s voice simmered with cold fury.
Veronica turned to him, the green fire in her eyes raging. “You can’t save my life, Shawn. I lost my life a long time ago. And I’m stronger now because of it.” Veronica pulled her arm out of Shawn’s grip. “But I’m not going to let them kill you, no,” she said, voice soured by the insinuation. “I would never force you to become one of the Reborn. Not unless you were ready.”
“I’ll never be ready, Veronica. That’s never been part of the plan. I’m going home one day–to see my family. I can’t go back if I’m dead.”
Veronica’s eyes widened, but her pupils stayed locked to Shawn’s. It seemed like another thread of her plan had just come loose. “But you have to stay with me…forever.”
Silvan moved towards Veronica, putting himself between her and the crowd. “Veronica, this is a very bad idea,” he said, his words heavy as a mountain. “If you start a war with the Protectors it will not end until one side or the other has been destroyed. Is that really what you want–to drag all these people into a fight they cannot win?”
“A fight they cannot win?” Veronica looked at him like he’d lost his mind. “Once I have control of the Black Crystal our people will be invincible.”
“They’ll find a way to stop you. They always do. The Protectors are a lot more resourceful than you want to believe they are. I’ve never seen them find a fight they couldn’t win.”
Markus came towards Silvan. “Do you need to be separated from the queen, Silvan?”
Silvan looked like he wanted to kill Commander Markus here and now. But he doused his rage and turned back to Veronica. “Give Shawn the cure. Let us save the living our way–and I promise you the Protectors will let you save the dead yours.”
Shawn was surprised to hear Silvan stand up for him. Maybe there was a reason he hadn’t lost the blue flame in his eyes yet. Maybe he was still a Protector in his heart.
“You can’t promise that,” Veronica said back to him. “If the Protectors knew who you really were they’d have you executed. And they’d do the same to me if they knew what I was planning.”
“I can promise you that I will try,” Silvan said, like he was begging a volcano not to explode. “Anything is better than this. You’re going to get people killed, Veronica. People I care about. And people you care about, too, if you’d take a night to truly think about what it is you’re doing.”
“People are going to die no matter what we do, Silvan,” Veronica said, her eyes growing wide. “There’s a disease out there killing thousands by the day, and saving them is no longer an option. Rebirth is the only path forward.”
Silvan’s face glowed like the kiln of an oven. “You promised to keep them safe. Shawn and the others.”
“And I’m going to,” Veronica said back, her tongue as sharp as a blade. “Why do you think he’s here?” She pointed back at the bald bartender from The Forge. “Come here, Zander,” Veronica called without looking at him. “Come give Shawn and Silvan their marks of safety.”
Zander came forward, a fear of death on his face. “Yes, Queen Veronica. Queen of the Reborn.” he went to one knee and bowed his head before coming back to his feet. “Right this way, my lords,” Zander said to Shawn and Silvan. There was a table nearby that had pots of sooty liquid and a pointed dagger made of bone.
“Tattoos?” Shawn said, unsure if she was joking.
“Yes, a stripe of ink in the shape of a side facing skull right on the top of your hand. Me and Zander were up half the morning deciding on the design. I think you’re going to like it.” Veronica smiled.
“I don’t want a tattoo, Veronica. I want the cure you promised me before I followed you into the Forest of Forgotten Dreams.”
Markus snickered as he shook his head at Silvan and Shawn. “This is all too entertaining. A kid who thinks he’s going to save the world with a cure and a man whose entire family died because of a Protector, now he thinks he’s one of them. You think the Protectors care what happens to either of you? They don’t. All they care about is power, like everyone else in this game. I knew you two were dimwitted but I didn’t think you were that ignorant.”
“I didn’t choose the Blue Flame,” Silvan said, “It chose me–for a reason I think I’m beginning to understand.”
“Sounds like traitors talk to me,” Markus said, putting a hand on his sword’s pommel. “Should I kill him now or after we leave the stage, my queen?”
“You’re not killing anyone,” Veronica said to Markus so fiercely it seemed that he was the one about to die. “Take your hand from your sword.”
Markus obeyed like a kicked dog as Veronica's eyes bared wide. She looked at Silvan and shook her head. “What is happening to you? I thought you could see more clearly? Your sisters are depending on you, Silvan. I’ve seen them in the Death Realm. They’re suffering, reliving their most terrible nightmares over and over again. The longer they stay trapped in that place the more it's going to take away from who they used to be. We have to save them. Now.”
Silvan was quieted by her statement. He squinted back the pain in his eyes and held his chin high, looking down at Veronica with a frown like she’d morphed herself into a rat. “Give Shawn the cure, Veronica. Show him where it is. He played his part in your little game. It’s time for this to end.”
Veronica looked like she was watching a tsunami about to crash down on her world and destroy everything she’d just built. “I can’t. I won’t.”
Shawn grabbed her wrist. “Please, Veronica. Please. You know it’s the right thing to do. I can save as many people as you can if I get that cure into the right hands. We can save Talmoria together. You can save the dead, and I can save the living.”
Something in Veronica’s eyes seemed to be bending, leaning back to the side of reason, but then she shook it all away. “No,” she asserted. “That isn’t the right way. Shawn, can’t you see? Rebirth is the cure to the Gray Death. It’s the cure to everything, all the evils my father and mother have unleashed. Rebirth is the only way to save the people killed by my mother’s disease, and it's the only way to save the people killed by my father’s fires. They are trapped in the Death Realm, and we are the only ones who can save them.”
The sparkle in Veronica’s eyes was like an invitation into doom. “I know, Veronica. But you have to know that the cure can help us, too.”
She shook her head at him. “Shawn. No. We can’t.”
Shawn was growing frustrated. “Without my blood, you wouldn’t have any of this power in the first place. I should get to decide the future, too.”
“I saved your life in that forest,” Veronica snapped back. “Twice. You owed me. And I told you before, there is no cure. It’s gone. Finding my mother’s lab was the first thing I did after coming back to life, and it’s empty. There’s nothing left inside except dusty old papers and shelves of broken jars.” She shrugged. “So sorry.”
Shawn felt like she’d just punched him in the stomach. “The cure is gone?”
“Yup,” Veronica said back. “It was never there at all.”
“Can’t we make another?” Shawn asked.
“It doesn’t work that way,” Veronica said. “My mother made it impossible to cure.”
“So you lied,” Shawn said, squeezing her wrist tighter and tighter as his face became hot. “You tricked me into helping you by promising me a cure–and now you want to kill my friends…”
Anger appeared in Veronica’s eyes like a spark igniting a flame. “I’m trying to keep you safe. I’m protecting you from death. It’s only a tattoo, Shawn. It could be a lot worse. I want you to be you. Not anyone else. I can’t risk losing you to the Death Realm like how I lost myself.” She put her hand on Shawn’s cheek. “You may not believe me now, but I care about you. I care about you more than I care about them.” She nodded to make it clear she was talking about the people in Copper Lanes and the rest of her secret allies. “You’re the only thing that makes me happy. But if you want me to keep you safe, you have to trust me.”
The thought that the cure was gone was devastating. Shawn closed his eyes and turned away, his head spinning. She has to be lying. There had to be a cure somewhere, or clues on how to find one… Agatha–Shaleah–couldn’t have covered her tracks that well. But if Veronica wasn’t wrong, then Rebirth might really be their best chance to save everyone. He couldn’t let her become his enemy. “I do trust you, Vee,” Shawn said, trying to preserve what little hope was left. “But this… It’s…”
“There’s no reason to be afraid.” She took Shawn’s hands. “Come with me. Please. Give me your hand and let Zander give you a small mark of safety. I promise you won’t be harmed. You and Silvan both.”
Shawn thought of home, his old life. He remembered going to parties with his friends and just not mattering to anything except himself. Now his actions had decided the future of an entire world, and maybe whether many of his friends were going to die or not. And he was being forced to watch it come crashing into reality.
***
“Give me your hand,” Gale said from the top of the toppled pillar. “I can see the door.”
“Okay, I’m coming.” Manie reached up and grabbed Gale’s hand, and Gale pulled her up. Manie put her feet into the marble and climbed above the crowd. She turned her head and looked at the stage again, seeing her sister, and someone else she hadn’t seen before. Veronica was holding his hand, leading him across the stage towards a table. When they reached the chair the guest sat, and Manie saw his face. “It’s fucking Shawn!” she shouted, her heart exploding with joy and relief. “He’s alive.” And then the doom washed over her as she realized who he was with and where he was.
Gale jerked Manie’s arm, nearly dropping her off the pillar as she turned to look at the stage. “What?”
“My sister is holding Shawn’s hand,” Manie said, her voice bleeding into shock as Gale dragged her to the top of the pillar. Manie crawled and wrapped her legs around the stonework, then looked again with Gale. A bald man with an eye patch came around and grabbed tools off the table next to Shawn. He raised a hammer and began tapping the back of a bone dagger into Shawn’s hand, the clicking echoing across the cathedral as he worked.
“You’re right,” Gale said, her voice dropping into darkness. “It is Shawn… What is he doing up there?”
“And what are they doing to him?” Manie asked.
“I think they’re giving him a tattoo.”
“Why?” Manie asked.
***
The skin split and bled each time the needle-point dagger plunged into Shawn’s skin. He winced and bit his tongue as he watched the punctures begin to form a shape, a bent line like the cap of a skull. Zander wiped Shawn’s blood with a cloth, then smeared the sooty liquid into the holes he’d made with his bone dagger, making the tattoo burn like acid. Shawn wanted to yank his hand away and run. The chanting voices, the hot humid air, the glaring eyes of Veronica and her friends. He was surrounded on all sides by enemies, and only now was he beginning to see it. He wished he was back with Manie. As lost as he’d been since coming to Talmoria, she’d always made him feel like he was home. And now he might never see her alive again.
“That hurts,” Shawn said as he let out his breath. “Can you slow down a little bit?”
Zander looked up at Shawn through his one eye, sweat bleeding across his face. “Slow will hurt worse, Lad.”
Veronica grabbed Shawn’s shoulder and leaned over him to see the progress, her eyes bleeding lust like she was staring at a golden crown being engraved with her name. “The pain is your initiation. This makes you one of us.”
“He’s taking it well,” Molly said, her voice dimmed like a light had gone out inside her.
Zander turned the dagger back to Shawn’s hand and readied his tiny hammer. “You ready?” he asked.
“Of course he’s ready,” Veronica said. “He was born for this.”
Zander took a breath and continued to tap holes into Shawn’s hand, making him bleed pricks of red blood. Shawn tried not to wince, but the pain only got more intense the longer it went on. But it wasn’t really the pain that was getting to him, it was the feeling of betrayal growing stronger in his chest with each tap, like a flame igniting into a firestorm he could barely contain. The stripe of sooty ink bent down into a black eye and a hole for a nose.
“Don’t focus on the pain,” Silvan said. “Think about anything else.”
Shawn closed his eyes and tried to imagine he was at home in the cul-de-sac, but the sound of the metal hitting bone only reminded him of the Battle for the Beacons, and sent him there instead, to remember how much blood and death had been spilled that night on the field of fire and snow between the Protectors and the Agents of Cinder, at the foot of the last Torch-Wing forest on Talmoria, where fate had already been decided once. Now it would be decided again. Shawn could hear the thousands of swords and spears and shields singing and crashing in metallic clangs. He could sense the world shaking as Goroth sped towards him and Manie and the rest of the Protectors, the heat of its flaming breath biting on his face. He could feel the fear in his heart as he watched teeth snap shut around Queen Milly’s waist.
“This is what true devotion looks like,” Veronica said, rubbing her cheek against the side of Shawn’s face as she grabbed his neck and rubbed his shoulders. “You’ve made the right choice.”
The teeth formed the upper jaw, and Zander poured more ink into the open wounds, pressing and smearing with his thumb. Shawn thought his hand was going to tear itself in half.
If Manie sees it she’ll think I’ve lost my mind, Shawn thought. Maybe I have lost my mind. But if any of this kept her safe, he knew it would be worth it. Nothing would be worse than seeing Manie get hurt. He closed his eyes and tried not to think, but there in the darkness he could see Manie’s face, hear her voice, like a blue lantern in the darkness, guiding him where he was meant to go. Maybe she’ll save me before it’s too late…before I make things any worse…
***
“We have to get up there and save him!” Manie all but shouted, gritting her teeth. “They’re hurting him.”
“Not now.” Gale said loud enough so Manie could hear her over the roar of the audience. “If we attack now we’ll just get ourselves killed. We have to wait for a better chance.”
“I knew something was wrong. Shawn never disappears this long unless something bad has happened.” The sight of her sister hanging over Shawn’s shoulder pricked up a special kind of anger in Manie that she had never known existed until now. She could hardly watch without feeling like she was about to explode. The lightning in her fingers was tingling.
***
Zander poured the last of the sooty liquid over the top of Shawn’s hand and rubbed it in with his palm. When he was done, he grabbed a wet cloth and wiped away the ink. The cold water felt good on Shawn’s burning skin. When he looked down at his hand he saw the shape of a skull looking to the side, empty black eyes, a hollow nose, teeth in the upper jaw but the bottom jaw missing. It was crude, more like a stripe with details than a picture. It was a mark, a brand to tell the world what he was and who he belonged to.
Zander picked up Shawn’s hand to wrap it with a thin cloth, but Veronica grabbed Shawn’s wrist and pulled it away before he could, making Shawn wince.
“It’s beautiful,” Veronica said. She grabbed Shawn’s fingers and looked closer, appreciating every detail. “This is a work of art, Zander.” She rubbed her thumb over the tattoo, making the lines burn as blood pushed up from the holes.
The bald man was sweating as he watched Veronica inspect the tattoo. “Thank you, my queen.”
“What do you think?” Veronica asked as she looked into Shawn’s eyes with a dim smile. “Do you like it?”
Shawn felt the life inside him draining like a hole in an ocean. The longer he looked at the green flame in Veronica’s eyes, the more he felt himself slipping away. He saw the scar on her cheek and could hear Darko’s voice in his mind, warning him of the future she’d unleash and what must be done to stop it. Shawn held up his hand and looked at the burning lines. Blood slithered down the back of his wrist and soaked into his sleeve. “No, Vee… I don’t.”
Veronica’s smile fell, and for a moment she looked afraid, like she’d seen a reflection in a mirror of a person that wasn’t herself. Silvan, Markus, Zander–everyone turned to Veronica to see what she would do. Veronica closed her eyes and let out a breath, then she looked back up, the anger and determination back. She grabbed Shawn by the arm and yanked him out of the chair, dragging him across the stage to the edge of the stairs and the edge of the crowd.
“This is what true devotion looks like!” Veronica shouted, holding Shawn’s arm high above her head so the entire city could see the ink and blood running down his hand. “This is how a real hero is born! The heir to Mikhail’s power is now one of us! We are the true Protectors. Not those pretenders in the North!”
The crowd erupted at the sight of Shawn’s tattoo, then the blood coming out of his hand turned gold, sparkling and shimmering in the darkness like blood from the sun, and the crowd's reaction was more akin to a crack of thunder than anything humanlike.
“He is your king!” Veronica shouted down at her audience, as if her voice could stir the clouds. “And I am your queen! Together we will bring all the dead back from the Death Realm and create a Reborn world!”
And now Shawn knew it was complete, he fully belonged to her. He could see it in their eyes. He could see it in hers. There was no going back from this, not without upturning the entire world.
***
“What the fuck!” Manie shouted, fighting to slide down the pillar and get to Shawn.
“Manie, no!” Gale screamed, grabbing her by the arm to stop her. “You can’t get to him. We have our own reasons to be here.”
Manie hung there in Gale’s arm, watching Veronica parade Shawn across the stage like he was some kind of trophy. The audience was raging with approval, calling out and whistling as if it was King Mikhail standing on the stage before them. The sight was worse than torture. Shawn was the only thing in this world she had left. The thought of losing him was like a knife being stuck through her heart. “Veronica…why…?”
“The gods have returned!” A man hollered at the top of his lungs. “Fate is on our side!”
Manie could feel sweat sliding down her neck as the stink and heat of thousands of bodies drifted across the cathedral. She thought she was going to be sick.
“Manie stop,” Gale begged. “Please, Manie. Let him go. We’ll find a way to bring him back, I promise. Shawn’s a Protector. He’ll know how to keep himself safe.”
“I can’t believe this is happening…” Manie looked back at Gale, breaking sight with Shawn. She felt tears break and fall from the corner of her eye.
“It doesn’t mean anything,” Gale shouted over the fury of the crowd. “Look at me. We’ll get him back. He hasn’t forgotten you.”
“Okay,” Manie relented, trying not to cry. “Okay I’ll leave him.” She felt like abandoning him would mean his death. His death over the deaths of thousands if they failed.
Gale slipped down the side of the pillar closer to the wall of the cathedral where the doors to the east wing were. Wind howled and rolled through the room and the walls shook from the crowd's cheers. Manie turned her eyes to Veronica and Shawn one last time before she fell, trying to imagine a way to undo what her sister had begun. They were in a new world now. A reborn world. Gale grabbed a wooden board and used it to pry away the rest of the debris blocking the door. When it was cleared she tried the handle but it wouldn’t budge. “Guess we’ll have to do this the old fashioned way.” She took a step back, then rammed her shoulder against the door, making the lock snap open and the door swing into the next room, slamming against the wall on the other side. Once it was open, Gale turned back and grabbed Manie, pulling her towards the open doorway. “Come on. The hard part’s over.”
Manie allowed herself to be dragged away, though her body felt like lead. Each step was heavier than the last. She was leaving Shawn to a fate that was beyond her reach.
“I don’t know how much more of this I can take...” Manie could feel herself rotting from the inside, like she was little more than a corpse given breath. The anger was building like a forest fire as lie after lie became revealed, and she didn’t know how much longer she could contain it.