He Who Breaks the Earth (The Gods-Touched Duology)
He Who Breaks the Earth: Chapter 25

Anwei sat on the deck of the ship she had stolen, unable to move. Lia was gone. Altahn and his riders were gone. Knox was nothing but a faint stain inside her, and fading more every moment. Knox, she thought. Willow could talk to you. Why won’t you talk to me? Help me fix this!

Footsteps padded across the deck, Abendiza’s voice grumbling like an auroshe’s growl. “There’s a litter of Calsta’s little burners in these woods. I wonder what will happen when your friends wander into their camp.”

“Who?” Noa’s voice was breathless, afraid. “Lia? She’ll know to stay away from Devoted.”

“No, your Trib friends who left in a huff when they found out that you killed the young one’s father.” Anwei opened her eyes to replace Abendiza shrugging. “They’re headed straight for the camp.”

“You’re the one from the records we stole, aren’t you?” Noa breathed, all raptures and delight at the idea of a curse gone from her voice. “ ‘The world is cursed to bleed—’ ”

“And I am the sword.” Abendiza nodded. “I convinced myself that I was sacrificing my own soul to fight the abominations destroying the world. So many of us became shapeshifters for reasons that made sense—power was needed to fight power. But most of us only caused greater tribulation.” She nudged Anwei with her toe. “You’re going to sit here and mope while your friends are killed, I suppose?”

“Altahn came here to help his people regain Calsta’s favor,” Anwei whispered. “To kill the shapeshifter who took his father. To reclaim the sword that killed his father’s… father’s father’s father…”

“Don’t hurt yourself, dear.” Abendiza’s voice was a little too polite.

Anwei looked up. “But I’m the shapeshifter who killed his father. If I go after him, he’ll kill me.”

She flinched when Noa stood up. “Where are they?”

Abendiza waved vaguely toward the trees, holding Anwei’s gaze. “Altahn knows what you are now, so you count him an enemy instead of a friend. Another enemy stands in his path, and thus the threat he poses is neutralized, all without a single bit of energy expelled from your system. Very neat. Let your nothing friend here try to stop it. She’ll try to be a hero, but then she’ll have to come running back to you—”

“I might not have whatever has let you grow so very old.” Noa thrust herself between Anwei and the old woman, but then she kept walking toward the hold. “Maybe I can’t fight like Knox and Lia, or grow trees and new body parts for people like Anwei, but that doesn’t make me nothing.”

So Noa was going, too, then.

“You’re touched by a trickster.” Abendiza’s laugh rubbed like snake scales and poisonberry leaves. “May she give you her own luck.”

They were all gone. Knox. Anwei’s thoughts cracked into jagged shards. I didn’t mean to. Please—

“Oh, be quiet,” the old woman responded to the thought. “You did mean to, even if you hadn’t let yourself look at the consequences. You put your own goals ahead of everyone else’s, and gods-may-care what happened to the others so long as you got what you wanted.”

“You’re reading my mind like a spiriter?”

“Interesting, because I shouldn’t be able to, given the oaths you’ve broken. Shifters’ minds are usually shielded, even to other shifters. Taking a soul for ourselves makes us more than any gods-touched could ever be,” the woman’s voice croaked. “You, however, are changed, yet not changed—an open book when you should not be. Your magic should be a weapon instead of the boon it was meant to be, but you’re not like me for some reason. Not like your enemy Tual, hurting his enemies and friends alike.”

Anwei opened her eyes to glare up at the woman. “He—”

“Hurt you. The first time, yes.” Abendiza went to the sails and began tying them down, one knot after another. “Then you spent the rest of your life hurting yourself. He didn’t do it. Your brother is out there waiting for you—”

“He forgot me.”

“Is your soul really worth those three words? Your life? The lives of your friends? You’d rather be remembered, respected, feared than spend even one second happy?” Abendiza pointed at Anwei’s forehead, her gnarled finger stretching to press gently between her eyes. “The bond between you and that boy still isn’t broken, though it should be. Is your pain really wrapped up so tight inside you that there isn’t room for a life?” She climbed up to the second tier of canvas flapping madly in the wind and began to tie them down. “Because the life you think you are taking will only put you in the sword.”

“What do you mean?” Anwei rasped.

“You become a shapeshifter when you bond with another, then kill them. But since you’re tied together, that bond drags half your soul into the caprenum blade along with the one you love.” The old woman stopped her knots a moment to stare down the channel. “Then when you finally die, the rest of you gets dragged inside to molder for all eternity.”

“Is that why shapeshifters can only be killed with shapeshifter blades?” Noa came up from the hold, a bag over her shoulder with bits of broken wood sticking up from the top.

“Shapeshifters can only be killed by the blade they used to turn shapeshifter. I claimed a few caprenum weapons myself, for experiments, of course.” Anwei’s skin pebbled at the cold in those words as Abendiza climbed down to check the anchor. “It took a long time, lifetimes over lifetimes, before my research came clear: there is no escape from the fate of endless corruption and suffering inside a caprenum blade. At least, that was what I thought.” Abendiza pushed the gangplank out on its hinges, the far end toppling lopsided onto shore. She checked that it was stable before giving Noa a gracious bow, as if she’d played a fanfare and thrown rose petals for Noa to walk upon. “I gave up. Stayed here in the lake where no one knew to hunt me, using so little life force I had enough stored up to last me centuries without having to destroy anyone new. Until I found you.”

“You didn’t kill anyone else?” Noa scoffed. “What about the Basists massacred when you took over this abbey? What about the curse?”

“I am not the one who destroyed the abbey, though I am the one who killed the shapeshifter who did. Tual arrived with the high khonin family who came to claim the island once the Warlord took power.” Abendiza turned an eye on Noa. “It astounds me that he learned little more than to extend his own life by taking from his masters year after year. Hiding in the shadows like a little spider, hoping they wouldn’t notice the corpses piling up around him.” She pointed at Anwei. “But something changed when he took my sword and tried to use it to turn Mateo into a shapeshifter. Something broke.”

“Where are Altahn and the others?” Noa asked, patience gone.

“Go replace them. They’re out there.” Abendiza waved her away, uncaring. “Caprenum is unbreakable. If you use it to kill someone, all that happens is they die. If a gods-touched tries to sacrifice someone they don’t love with it, it cracks their own soul in two instead of the victims’. But with Tual and Mateo…” Abendiza shook her head slowly. “Something new happened. Out of his love for Mateo, Tual helped Mateo murder that girl, and it broke something. The girl’s soul went into the sword whole. Then someone who loved her took it up. That love latched onto her somehow. Made a bond strong enough to keep her here. I don’t know if it was because of Tual, or because the girl was whole and unbroken when she went in, or because the sword already had an active shapeshifter attached to it—me. But whatever happened, instead of a single bond, it made a…. a web.”

Knox. Anwei’s throat clenched. Knox picked up the sword, and Willow’s soul clung to him.

“It took me a long time to feel it—to understand what Tual had done with my sword. But just now, when you sent your little boyfriend into the sword without stabbing him at all, it destabilized even further. It’s weak. Fragile in a way I have never seen caprenum before.”

Anwei put her hands over her ears, not wanting to hear the analytical breakdown of what she’d done to Knox.

“I’m going,” Noa interrupted. “Are you coming with me, Anwei? We have to stop them from falling into trouble.”

“More trouble than they’d be in if a fire dancer and two shapeshifters showed up to save them?” The word curled on Anwei’s tongue. Shapeshifter. That’s what the snake-tooth man was.

What she was now.

“I love you, Anwei.” Noa set down her bag to pull Anwei into a hug. Anwei couldn’t move, her whole body slowly turning to stone. Noa was the last thing between her and alone. “I’m going to go help them.”

“Noa, you can’t go out there.” Anwei was ashamed of the way her voice broke. “There are sinkholes and earth that will break the moment you step on it and spiders and animals and Devoted, Noa! You’re just a dancer, not some hero!”

“And you’re just a thief, Anwei.” Noa let go of Anwei, and Anwei was somehow even colder than she’d been before. The dancer picked up her bag and started for the rail, the bits of splintered wooden crate sticking out from under the flap. “Sinkholes and spiders and Devoted are nothing to losing a friend. Stay here with… that if you want to.” She cast a glance toward Abendiza, who was grinning from the top of the gangplank. “Keep her from eating Knox until I get back. Then we’ll come up with what we need to do next. But it’s my turn to save someone instead of being spectacularly saved. That’s what friends do.”

Friends. The word hurt as much as Noa flitting down the gangplank and into the trees, the first morning light touching her wild waves of hair, khonin knots a tangle over her ear.

Anwei stood, hands shaking as she felt for her medicine bag, but it was gone. The sword was gone too, lost to the water. She knocked over the box of herbs Noa had brought when Lia had dragged herself on board, but the envelopes of powder, leaves, and flower petals meant nothing to her dead nose.

Her fingers found the two specially marked packets. When Anwei pulled them out, her stomach twinged, because one was half gone. She’d poured it into Knox’s drink.

Sleeping Death.

Anwei dropped them. Then picked them up again and stuffed them into her tunic pocket. Knees shaking, she stood and turned toward the forest. Friends. Friends help each other even when they aren’t wanted.

“The sword isn’t stable anymore,” Abendiza’s voice croaked, and Anwei turned to replace the old woman looking straight through her, eyes clouded but her mind sharp. “Which means we might be able to destroy it.”

“I don’t care.” Anwei started down the gangplank, the shape of Noa already lost in the trees ahead. “Not about swords or—”

“No, you need to listen to me.” Abendiza followed her, effortlessly keeping pace when Anwei began to run despite the feel of the ground shifting under her feet. “A shapeshifter’s soul, since it exists half inside the blade and half outside, holds open a tiny hole between our world and a place we can store someone’s talents, their magic, their memories. But this web between Mateo, Knox, and the girl is making the hole bigger than it is supposed to be.”

Anwei swore when her foot broke through a thin spot in the ground, making her stumble. “Which way did Noa go?”

“Knox and Mateo should never have been able to bond to the same girl.” Abendiza huffed as she followed. “Mateo should have died trying to sacrifice someone he wasn’t bonded to in the first place, but Tual did something I’ve never seen before—somehow he used his love for Mateo to sacrifice someone wholly unrelated, and it worked to an extent. It flies directly in the face of all my research. Perhaps because it was a shapeshifter who’d learned to love someone new, there were new ways to form a bond? Whatever the case, it still wasn’t enough—Mateo ended up with a hole inside him.”

“I don’t need a lesson in shapeshifter theory!” Anwei picked her way around a prickly bush that reached for her as she passed.

But Abendiza continued musing, her eyes glazed as she ticked the facts off one by one on her fingers. “You may have killed your boyfriend by breaking your bond to him, but it shouldn’t have put him into the sword. It’s supposed to be a conscious sacrifice. A decision. You knew you were the only thing holding him together, but you weren’t trying to take his soul. You didn’t even try to stab him, and yet he’s stuck in there.”

“Go away!” Anwei yelled, dodging around a tree to get away from the shapeshifter. “You’re just saying the same thing over and over.”

“Souls trapped on the other side of the barrier grow corrupted, feeding on each other because they hunger after the lives stolen from them. Willow wasn’t properly sacrificed, so she’s jammed halfway through the hole instead of fully on the other side of it.” Abendiza’s voice rose as Anwei ducked around a tree, trying to escape. “All shapeshifters lose part of themselves to the sword when they put the one they love inside, but if someone tries to do it the wrong way, it should kill them. As near as I can tell, that’s what happened, only Knox, who did love his sister enough to form some kind of bond, picked up the sword in time to forge some kind of two-headed link that stopped the hole in Mateo from killing him completely and also stopped the girl from being taken fully into the sword. She would have drained Mateo completely, and both of them would have died, but with that wholesome, earned connection to her brother, she had a source of energy that kept her partly in this world and stopped her from consuming Mateo entirely, I think?” The shapeshifter shrugged. “Which should be impossible.”

“Who cares? It happened.” Anwei gasped, looking for some sign Noa had come this way.

“Because it’s breaking laws that I thought were unbreakable.” Abendiza darted out in front of Anwei, blocking her way. “Half of my soul is in that sword. I did years of research trying to replace a way to get it out and came up with nothing. Now there’s a chance to destroy the sword once and for all, and you think I’m going to let the girl who can help me walk away? Listen.”

“I need to stop my friend from waltzing into danger for no good reason, so—”

“You are part of this web too, and you’re more a danger to Noa right now than any of Calsta’s little devotees.” Abendiza grabbed Anwei’s arm. “Mateo Montanne shouldn’t exist. Knox’s soul shouldn’t have been sucked in without you stabbing him. And the ghost inside the sword shouldn’t be able to speak so clearly to the wielder.”

“Leave me alone.” Wrenching her arm free, Anwei fell to her knees, checking the ground, the trees, the bushes for hints Noa could have passed through. Wasn’t that what Knox did when he was trying to follow someone whose aura was out of range? He looked for… she didn’t even know. Broken branches. Footprints? There was no mud or dirt for footprints to be left behind, only dead leaves.

The shapeshifter’s voice came out in a hiss, more snake than human. “The sword will suck you in too if we don’t do something—”

“The sword is at the bottom of a lake!” Anwei roared.

“But if you help me, then we can get Knox out.”

Anwei stopped, her madly beating heart going still. “You can get him out?”

Abendiza smiled, then strode into the trees ahead, weaving between plants and hopping over spots of ground as if she could feel the thin places around her. Anwei ran after her, swearing when her foot punched through the fragile earth, stone digging into her ankle. Abendiza walked on as Anwei struggled once more, leaving her behind in the trees. “Can you get him out, Abendiza? If I do what you want me to and try to destroy the sword, Knox comes back? Alive?” Anwei got her foot loose and limped after the old woman, ducking trees and crashing through a spider’s web large enough to catch her. Swearing, she tore off the sticky strands, the phantom feel of spider legs crawling across her skin. “Abendiza!”

The shapeshifter hardly looked back when Anwei caught up. “I don’t know. But I have hope.”

“Hope?” The thin rays of light inside Anwei started to wither. Hope was for people without plans, for people with no answers, no end goal.

Hope was nothing.

“A chance isn’t enough for you?” Abendiza laughed as she walked, that terrible gut-churning hiss. “Here’s the only alternative I can see: you take the power waiting inside you where your partner used to be. Use it to save Noa before she stumbles into Calsta’s camp with nothing but a pointy stick. Maybe you’d manage to save the Trib too—they might even love you for it, forget the people you’ve killed out of gratitude.” She shrugged. “That’s more hope again, I suppose. Not even magic can force people to forget the things they don’t want to.”

Anwei looked around, totally lost, tricked into following this woman for long enough that whatever bearings she’d had were gone. Her hands began to shake.

Abendiza whispered, “If hope isn’t enough for you, then save the people you know you can. Kill Knox the rest of the way. Save Noa before she gets herself killed.” She looked Anwei up and down. “Save yourself from being alone.” Then Abendiza walked away.

The weight inside Anwei grew until she couldn’t take another step. Panic unfolded inside her, and she could feel the ground crackling under her body, too much for anyone to hold. Her family dead at a god’s hand—no, her own hand, the same way Knox was dead because she’d walked away, ignoring him when he cried out for her, choosing instead the snake-tooth man on his island, waiting for her now…

Only, the snake-tooth man, Tual Montanne, was not waiting for Anwei.

She was a fish he’d hooked without noticing, leaving her to flop along after him, gasping for air, unable to cut herself free. The earth beneath her trembled, the roar of underground channels, of the past, of the person Anwei was supposed to be waiting down there to wash her away.

If there was anything to take. Not even Anwei’s own twin could remember her.

Knox beat inside Anwei’s chest like a heart, every pulse a tiny bit dimmer. A heart she could eat to get back all that the nameless god took from her, and more. It was her way to save Noa, the only one who had stayed despite seeing the emptiness that was all Anwei had inside. To save Altahn, who dove into the water between Anwei and the snake because he trusted her. Knox’s soul was a weapon full of storm and shadow and power just waiting—all she had to do was bite.

The ground beneath Anwei caved. She fell, hands scrabbling over roots and grass. Her arms screamed when she caught hold of a bare root, the spindly thing not near enough to hold her. Chest deep in the hole, her arms screaming, Anwei could feel the water snarling just beneath her feet, anxious to grab hold of her.

Knox glistened inside her, begging to be swallowed. Taking his life would mean she would be strong like the snake-tooth man. Strong. Able to do… more. Enough to stop Devoted from hurting Noa and Altahn. Enough to replace Lia out in the forest and convince her to put away her sword. Enough to destroy Tual. Enough to make Mateo remember her so she wouldn’t be nothing anymore. Enough to get her out of this stupid hole.

But taking Knox would mean losing all of them just the way she’d lost him. Really, she’d already lost them. The thought of it felt more like nothing than any shapeshifter sword.

Tears ran like fire down her cheeks, and Anwei’s arms began to shake, not strong enough to keep herself from being sucked down into the abyss. There was dirt in her mouth, and the stone beneath her arms and chest was beginning to crack, her fingers white from clenching at the world that wanted her to drown.

Because this was what it meant to be a replaceer, a fake goddess, a girl with a mixed tincture of death and revenge where her heart should have been. It meant dying here in the forest alone, having betrayed every person she loved.

Take it, and you can save Noa. The words were hers, not some god whispering what to do. You don’t have to listen to any god or keep any rules. Take him and his power. Become what you’ve always been, but with power.

But what had she always been? Someone who put revenge before her friends? Before her own life? Anwei’s chest was an iron cage, her soul hardened to flint.

But a voice seemed to whisper from the back of the storm in her mind. Anwei. Like Knox, every time he’d said her name. In anger, in fear, in panic. So quietly on the boat earlier that evening. What had she been so afraid of? That he’d leave? That he’d disappear? That he’d hurt her like everyone else she’d loved?

Could that possibly hurt more than him being gone?

Anwei could feel her muscles starting to fail, could feel the rush of water beneath her, the depth of magic waiting in Knox that could save her from any fall. But she couldn’t let go. Wouldn’t. Straining, crying, fingers bleeding, Anwei fought, her friends’ lives somehow stacked against each other, because she’d set them in the scales that way.

But she wasn’t going to choose. She refused to choose between them.

It always would have come to this; she just hadn’t seen it before. Because she’d set them all opposite her, as if losing one or two would be worth destroying the man who’d been weighing Anwei down for so many years.

A man who couldn’t even remember Anwei’s name.

Anwei pushed the thought of the snake-tooth away, lost him, left him behind. She forgot him and the scales that needed to be balanced, because if she was going to die, she wanted the people she loved to be in her mind. The sharp smile Noa wore as she smeared her face with gray powder and practiced her ghostly caterwaul on the way to the tomb. Lia kneeling to take her hand as they’d sat at the bottom of the tomb, the world broken around them. Altahn diving into the water with nothing but acid, salpowder, and a stolen aura to keep him safe. And Knox. Fighting through everything he was and holding his hand out to her anyway.

She held tight to them, and the weight pulling her down seemed to fall away. Anwei dragged herself up inch by inch until her elbows, her chest, her waist, her hips, then all of her was on solid ground, and she rolled away from the hole.

Gasping, she forced herself onto her knees, cupping her hands to her chest where Knox beat inside her like a second heart. Onto her feet. And into the trees after Abendiza, after Noa, after Altahn and Bane and Gilesh, no plans, no tricks, no herbs, no magic, because her friends were the thing keeping her tethered to the world.

She wanted them more than she wanted any evil man to know that she was a poison of his own making that he was going to swallow.

She no longer wanted to be a poison at all.

When Anwei caught up to Abendiza, her heart was ablaze, her body aching, and her whole life boiled down to nothing that mattered other than the friends she didn’t want to take from anymore.

Before she could say anything, something rattled the earth.

Anwei saw fire. And swords. And Noa surrounded by sparkle. And Anwei ran toward the fight with nothing but herself to offer. Like some hero.

Noa wasn’t walking aimlessly. The shapeshifter had pointed that gnarled finger of hers, and so Noa had gone, taking a second to twist her hair up and stick Falan’s flower through it, a silent prayer to her goddess that luck would be with her as it always was. Her job was to sparkle, to be the distraction while the real work happened.

And now she was the one holding a bag with nothing but sticks coated in the last dregs of salpowder pitch Altahn had left in the belly of the ship.

He’d stopped, facing Noa while Anwei had stared into nothing and the shapeshifter woman watched. “You can come with us, if you like.”

Gilesh had batted him over the shoulder with a lecherous grin, as if the rider couldn’t feel the story spiraling out of control around him. Bane was trying hard to smile too. Maybe the two of them only survived because they pretended nothing was wrong. Altahn flapped a hand at them, telling them to go stand with the horses, Galerey chirping from his shoulder. As they went, the little lizard sprang off his shoulder and landed on Noa’s head, her little claws soft points against Noa’s scalp.

But Noa couldn’t laugh. “Please don’t go,” she whispered. “We can figure this out. We can—”

“Calsta is not going to reward me or my clan with favor if I follow someone like Anwei. I don’t know why I thought—” Altahn sighed, looking down. Then reached out and took her hand. “Come with me. You didn’t know what she was. You don’t have to stay.”

Noa stared at his hand touching hers, Galerey clawing down through her hair to perch on her shoulder, pressing her warm little face against Noa’s neck. “I knew she was a Basist, Altahn. Basists aren’t—”

“No, I’ve gathered enough to know Basism isn’t what’s wrong with shapeshifters. You didn’t know she was a murderer, Noa. Did you?”

Lips pressing together, Noa couldn’t choke out the words, thinking of Belash Point, the magic gone wrong, the people stuck in trees. Of Lia’s furrowed brow back when they’d been outside Rentara. He doesn’t know it was you? Noa had thought they were talking about Anwei’s magic, not what Anwei’s magic had done. “The tomb… I think it was an accident. She lost control—”

“And killed my father. She lost control and then killed Knox, the person she’s been mooning after the entire time I’ve known her. She loves you most after him. Does that mean the next time she loses control, you’ll be the one to die?” He inched forward. “You told me to look closer, and I did—I thought she was more than Yaru. That all of us together were something special. A force that could change a past that went wrong.” Then he looked over toward Anwei, still staring blankly at the rail, as if whatever had broken Knox had broken her too. “But she truly believes she is some goddess, that she’s larger than the rest of us. That we’re not worth as much. She could have told me what happened back in the tomb.”

“And you still would have helped us?”

“Does it matter?” He turned back to her. “I’m trying to do what my father wanted.”

Noa looked down. “I’m not trying to defend her. But do you really think any of this is what your father would have wanted you to do? Carting us all south, braiding your hair like a Rooster. Rigging a Basist fort with salpowder and fighting a snake with a Basist? What do you want, Altahn?”

Altahn breathed in slow. “My father would have killed her. He would have tried, anyway. I am not everything he wanted me to be. And I…. need to be more than he was too. Which is why I’m leaving.” He reached out to take Galerey from her shoulder, the lizard squawking when her spines caught in Noa’s hair. “I’ll replace another way to bring Calsta’s favor. The more I learn about shapeshifter swords, the more I think the only benefit to taking ours back would be to destroy it somehow.” He reached out to touch Noa’s hand again. “Please come with me. When I was down in the water with elsparn all around me and that… woman… snake thing circling around looking for me, all I could think was I didn’t want to die so far from home, and that maybe… some of this was worth it because I got to meet you.”

Noa looked up at him, the trace of uncertainty in his face more appealing than any of the jokes, the silly banter, the last hints of that quiet smile. More appealing than any of her past beaus, the world to them nothing but a bauble to be taken. A perfect turn on a stage in a story that was more costume and fire than truth. Altahn was true though, heavier than the silver rounds and heavy silk that made up the life Noa had left.

But she looked away, because she’d found out she was real too, that the things she said, the promises she made mattered. “I can’t leave Anwei.”

Altahn started to laugh, taking her other hand so they were both clasped in his. “I almost think I’d like you less if you did come. Even if Anwei doesn’t deserve you.” Then he let go and started down the gangplank. Toward his riders, his horses, his life a path crooked before him. But at least he was walking it now instead of the version of himself he’d tried to divine from his father’s last words. “Come replace me someday,” he called.

“You’ll be married and have eight new cows,” she called back. “And you’re a terrible dancer—you can’t lie about it anymore. I’ve seen.”

“You just have very specific taste. I’m a fabulous dancer.” Gilesh and Bane were laughing, catcalling Altahn as he took one of the horse’s leads, and he even smiled—a terrible, stretched thing that showed all his teeth. It felt wrong. Suddenly it occurred to Noa that maybe all the other smiles—the ones full of calm acceptance of what was before him—were Altahn. None of them had been fake.

But it was the fake one he left with, turning away from her and not looking back, as if doing so would end in ruin. Now the trees were pink and yellow with Calsta’s morning paint, and Noa was going to replace Altahn much sooner than planned. The light had barely sunk down between tree branches, and everything was too dark. Devoted. Noa kept the thought in her mind as she strode forward. That old snake lady said Altahn was about to stumble straight into their camp—

A branch cracked behind her, and suddenly Noa could see it in her head as if she were watching from an audience. There would be four or five of them, all ranged out where she couldn’t see them. One would distract her by making noise directly behind her to tease out a weapon, which would result in a fabulous dance of flames—

Noa turned, looking to one side, then the other, touching Falan’s flower for luck. Pulling out the two strips of wood she’d coated in salpowder pitch, she started to run. It was the kind that would ignite on impact, so all she had to do was clap the strips together and—

“Noa Russo?” The voice spoke from the branches above her. Noa stumbled to a halt before swearing at herself because that was exactly what she wasn’t supposed to do. She clapped the salpowder sticks together and began to run again. Maybe a sparkle would be enough if it meant distracting them long enough for Altahn to pass peacefully?

A man swung down from the tree in front of her, forcing Noa to pivot off course, but then a woman landed in a crouch down that path, and when Noa turned, there were five, just like she’d imagined, closing the circle around her until it was tight. “You are Noa Russo, correct?” The woman who had first called her name stepped up, the spitting, sparkling light of Noa’s salpowder sticks catching in the double auroshe crest tooled into the leather over her chest. “I saw a performance of yours in Chaol before your father reported you missing. What are you doing in Forge?” Her eyes followed the length of Noa’s arms, the splutter of fire making her look confused. “With… fire sticks?”

Noa tossed one up and caught it with a grin that hurt. “Would you believe I come out here to rehearse?”

The Devoted next to her laughed, his light cuirass hanging open with nothing but a loose tunic beneath it. “You came out to the waterways around Tual Montanne’s house to rehearse… what?”

Noa gave a little spin, and the Devoted inched back from the fizzle of salpowder, their smiles sparking memories of her father not looking away from his ledgers when he asked her not to “dance around with all that cheap riffraff.” As if she were nothing but sparkle.

“Miss Russo, I’m afraid we’ll have to—”

Noa jumped into her next spin, twisting around to shove her salpowder sticks down the unarmored Devoted’s tunic.

At least, that was what was supposed to happen. She turned in the air, driving them down at him, but he swatted them out of the air. Another Devoted grabbed hold of Noa around the ribs, pinning her arms. The sound of steel being drawn filled her ears—

And then the forest exploded.

Mateo stood across from Lia as if he’d somehow entered a new existence, one where an auroshe was snarling at his back to defend him. Rosie snarled again when Lia’s sword twitched. Weeks ago Lia had come to him with her fists raised, demanding he teach her how he hid his aura so that the Warlord wouldn’t replace her.

He hadn’t known then what he was. Now, she kept the sword pointed at his throat, reaching one hand out to take the rock he’d pried free from the tunnels, then tested on the Warlord’s unmoving form in the courtyard before riding Rosie away from the island. Lia’s aura fluttered around her like gilded petals, each so fragile that little more than a gust of air could scatter them.

Where is the sword? Willow’s voice snarled up inside him, like a ghost of the backbone she was to him, but then she wilted, her touch soft and her voice echoing from far, far away. Thin and weak, as if even speaking those four words was taxing beyond her strength.

She left him as he was. Human.

Mostly.

Tual Montanne was human, mostly. A father fit for someone like Mateo. The only other person in the Commonwealth—in the world, probably—who believed Mateo deserved to live. He’d shown it over and over, taking him from the family that had hurt him, culling one of the many little girls the Warlord took in order to keep his heart beating. Joining the Warlord’s circle when being discovered meant death. Tual was the only person who believed in him. The only person who had lifted a finger to help after Mateo did nothing but be touched by the wrong god.

And Tual was done hiding. Mateo had seen enough about shapeshifters of the past to know he didn’t want to be one of the little skeletons at his father’s feet, used up the way Cath had been. The way the Warlord had been.

Harlan. The guards. Maybe Hilaria.

Aria Seystone.

She’d been used up, the last flicker of life gone, even if she wasn’t stiff and hadn’t started to smell. She was exactly what Mateo would become if he didn’t choose the correct side now: dead. Choosing Lia’s side, running away, giving up… it had never really been a viable choice. But now, more than ever, it wasn’t possible. Perhaps it had been Willow who had taken Aria Seystone’s soul, but Lia would never, ever forgive him for it.

Lia snatched the stone, her fingers burning where they brushed his palm. The moment she touched the stone, the glittering crown of energy over her head winked out. He shivered, unable to look away from the way light dappled her copper hair, the touch of her eyes like fingers trailing across his cheek, down his neck, across his chest. Mateo knew what kind of lie he’d become. That there was nothing he could ever do to fix it. Lia would never, could never love him if she knew the truth.

She was an impossibility now. Not a choice.

The unfairness of it made him want her all the more.

“Where is my sister?” she asked quietly, the stone tight in her fist.

“On the island. I can’t get her out myself. Not with my father…” Mateo licked his lips when her eyes narrowed. Rosie snorted, making him jump. “What reason could I have to lie? You’d know, wouldn’t you?”

“Let’s not pretend I’m stupid, Mateo.”

Mateo swallowed, taking a step toward Lia. She didn’t flinch, didn’t run, didn’t draw the sword. Just stood there, looking up at him. Her words itched, because Mateo had seen her aura was too small to be reading thoughts long before she’d seen him. If she’d been under a veil with Calsta opening minds around her, he never would have come within range. “I stayed with your sister—tried to make sure she was all right until I realized neither of us was safe there.” Another step closer, hands outstretched. And he hated it. Hated it and wanted Lia to reach back all at once. “We have to get her out.”

Still, Lia didn’t move. “We were friends in Chaol.”

“Yes.”

“I liked you. I want to believe that’s who you are.”

“That is who I am. I never lied to you in Chaol. Not even once.” He hung back, waiting for the sword to twitch toward him. “I just didn’t have all the information.”

She blinked, as if thinking back to every word that had passed his lips. They had been true. He hadn’t needed to lie before. “If you want to help—”

The words froze in the air between them. Lia opened her mouth to say something after a moment, but suddenly she tensed, looking out into the trees.

“Lia?” He reached out—

But then the world was cracking open with the sound she must have heard moments before he could, a flash of fire and smoke in the distance, then a sound like a god’s death attacking his ears. The ground began to shake, and Mateo was somehow on his knees, the forest floor groaning beneath him. Rosie screamed behind him, and Mateo turned to replace her dancing back as the dirt at her feet seemed to drain into a hundred little fractures in the stone.

“Get back,” he cried, fear for the auroshe filling him like she was his soft little Bella, ready to ride with him anywhere, rather than the broken creature snarling up toward the sky. “Don’t fall!”

Rosie bowed her long, sinewy neck as if this were a command, then took off into the trees. Birds fled the branches overhead as he stumbled up from the ground.

“Lia!” he cried at her retreating figure. “Lia, you’re going toward the explosion?”

Lia switched directions faster than a bird diving for a mouse, veering back toward him. For a moment Mateo was glad because she was listening to him. At least that was what he thought until she grabbed hold of his lapels and wrenched him to a stop. “If you want to help, you’re going to do exactly as I say. Do you understand me?”

“Depends on what you say.” He pushed back from her, grateful for Willow’s preoccupation with whatever was going on with Knox at the moment despite the way his arms shook with weakness.

“The only person I know around here who can blow things up is my friend. And I can feel Devoted nearby. My friends are in trouble.”

Lia’s friends. A web of vines encircled Mateo’s chest and tightened.

Lia was already running again, only pausing to call over her shoulder. “Do you have your drawing satchel?”

“No.”

“Well then, we’re going to have to make do.”

The blast caught Noa in the chest, bowling her backward into the Devoted holding her so they both hit the ground. Noa rolled out of his grip and hopped onto her feet. She ran toward the blast, jumping downed trees and broken branches only to stumble to a crumbling edge where land had been only moments before. Now there was only a hole with water roaring at the bottom.

“Noa! What are you doing—” Altahn’s voice rang out and she ran toward the hole, shouts chasing her faster. An auroshe scream needled down her arms, and then another, their beastly cackling racing toward her from the other direction. “Noa!” He yelled again, and she finally saw him hunched behind a tent, Bane next to him with a drawn sword.

“Leave it to you to walk straight into a Devoted camp!” She ran to him.

Altahn pulled her into the tent, Galerey chortling excitedly from his collar. Gilesh lay on the ground just inside the tent, his eyes closed and his face pale, the beginnings of a bruise at his temple and blood on his sleeve. “I didn’t walk into their camp,” Altahn hissed. “Gilesh was scouting, and they grabbed him. We barely managed to stay out of range. Thanks for distracting them long enough for Galerey to set off that last bit of salpowder I had.”

Bane grabbed Gilesh’s feet. “No time for chitchat.”

Altahn took hold of Gilesh under the arms, and they pushed out of the tent only to replace two Devoted standing outside, their swords drawn. Carefully setting Gilesh back down, Altahn put up his hands. “We only wanted to pass peacefully. Your goddess has no quarrel with my clan, and our treaty—”

He crashed into Noa’s side, sending her tripping over Gilesh. She barely caught the flash of metal and moonlight, and the breeze of blade slipping through the air close enough to ruffle her hair. Noa fell to her knees, heart swelling up too large in her chest, quiet, as if it could feel the lack of applause in this particular drama. There was no stage, there were no tricks, no costumes—

“Stop!” And then Anwei was there, sliding to her knees before the two Devoted. “I know why you’re here.” Her hands rose in submission, showing she had no weapons. “We’re here for the same reason you are. We’re not a threat.”

The Devoted who had tried to take off Noa’s head paused. “I recognize you from—”

“Put your sword away.” Another voice rippled through the other Devoted farther back in the trees. Noa gasped at the sight of the newcomer when she pushed into the little circle of open space between them and the Devoted. It was Lia… only it wasn’t Lia. The shape of her face was wrong, and there were shadows spilling from her eyes like tears. Just like the wrinkled nightmare from the deep who had helped drag Anwei onto the boat.

“Of course you recognize us. We were all there when the tomb in Chaol collapsed,” Not-Lia continued pompously, her hands stacked on the pommel of a sword Noa couldn’t remember seeing before. The apparition shoved between the two Devoted and Noa, batting the swords away with her own. “And you are in danger of destroying my whole mission. I ran away on the Warlord’s command to infiltrate the shapeshifter’s household, and my friends are helping.” As Not-Lia spoke, Altahn’s hand snaked around Noa’s wrist, pulling her back from the bristle of swords, as if somehow they could melt into the trees and the Devoted would forget them.

The Devoted was shaking his head. “The Warlord sent me herself to bring you in, Spiriter Seystone. Her orders were to dispatch anyone else with you and not to listen to anything you say because of shapeshifter corruption—”

“And the last communication the Warlord sent was to look out for a Beildan healer who was the real culprit, on the word of Mateo Montanne—” the second Devoted began.

“Mateo told you the shapeshifter was me?” Anwei stood, a motion that brought his sword to her throat. Her hands came up, her voice wobbling. “I came here with nothing. No weapons. No herbs. No help from any god. I’m powerless, with nothing but my braids to show what I am. I promise, if you listen to me, we can stop Tual Montanne from—”

“It’s his son we need to stop. Mateo,” the man gruffed back, pressing the sword closer. “Not the aukincer.”

“Tual Montanne is very close to rising up and becoming like the shapeshifters in all the old stories,” Not-Lia interjected importantly, her mouth stretching awkwardly with every word. “The Warlord is currently in his power, and you want to fight me?”

Anwei swallowed loudly, making the blade against her throat bob. Noa shuddered, her fingers tangled in the bit of hair now so much shorter than the rest. “I can help you get onto his island without being seen.” Anwei’s voice cracked. “There are waterways and rooms with… boats….”

Noa tried to move forward, but Altahn grabbed her arm, holding her back. “We have to help,” she said, her voice husky with tears.

“I suppose it might have closed,” Anwei drew the words out too long. “But I probably could get it open. With some help. From you Devoted, and your swords, and gods above, would you just run!” The last she shouted toward Noa, Altahn, and Bane, Gilesh blinking confusedly on the ground.

Which was when Noa realized there was no plan. There was no grand distraction, no hidden doors or surprise flames, no decoy glass window. Anwei was standing there between them and the Devoted with nothing but her body to protect them. A surge of love for her friend rushed up inside her, Anwei sacrificing herself to save the rest of them.

Unfortunately, more Devoted had appeared from the shadows behind them, their swords blocking any hope of escape. Anwei stood firm, and Altahn rose to stand next to her, his hand reaching out to touch her arm almost like gratitude before he turned to face the new threat. Noa tried to fill the space next to him as if she would be some help in a fight.

She had no tricks to play, no sparks to distract with. There was no glitter under this kind of moon. “Can’t you do something,” she hissed toward Not-Lia, whose eyes had turned black.

“If I might interject before you all cut each other into little pieces?” a new voice rippled out over the bristle of tension and terror. Noa almost wanted to laugh at the polite interjection, but when she saw the speaker, she couldn’t, new terror knifing through her. It was Mateo Montanne. Shapeshifter. The boy who held the other half of Knox’s mad ghost. There were dark circles under his eyes, mud streaked across his extremely expensive coat, and a battered sun hat in his hands. He cleared his throat. “Um… Lia there is telling the truth about infiltrating our household. And about my father being the shapeshifter. To be honest, it might be too late to stop him. But there’s a chance, if we all work together… I’m… I’m on your side.”

Mateo Montanne was definitely not on their side. Bile rose in Noa’s throat at the shadows pooling like sick all around him, just like the ones around his father. The air felt like a razor brushing soft down Noa’s neck, at least until she felt Anwei hunch. The healer reached back toward her, fingers grappling until they found Noa. And all Noa could do was hold steady as best she could while Anwei stared at the boy who looked so much like her, down the freckles across their noses.