He Who Breaks the Earth (The Gods-Touched Duology)
He Who Breaks the Earth: Chapter 26

Knox’s chest pulsed with pain and worry, and Anwei—whatever she was doing—was too far away. “Can’t you see what’s out there?” he asked his sister.

But she was in one of her dark moments, prowling at the edge of his circle of light, the shadow claws sunk bone-deep inside her. “This is some fool god’s plan,” she growled. “We have to keep your body alive or my connection to the world will break. It takes so much concentration, and we can’t use Mateo’s body without risking damage.”

“It’s you keeping me alive?”

“I can do it so long as Anwei doesn’t decide to take your soul.” Willow’s voice broke, and for a moment she was swallowed into the darkness, a strangled cry wrenching from her lips.

“You want me alive?” Knox whispered.

Willow’s face emerged from the shadow, and she wrenched herself free, brushing off her shoulders and arms as if she’d been coated in spiderwebs, a fanciful crown on her head like a little girl in a princess dream. “I do,” she whispered. “But they think if your light goes out, then the hole will get bigger. If they take Lia, the hole will get bigger. Then Mateo, then everyone else. All the death in the world, that’s what they want.”

“They?”

The shudder that went through Willow, the way the darkness grasped at her wrenched at Knox’s heart. He moved on, not wanting to make her explain. “What hole?” Knox stood and walked toward her, his light creeping over tentacles and claws and worms that skittered back to merge into the shadow hulking behind Willow. It seemed to reach around her toward him.

“What are you looking at?” Willow asked, looking up at him, the shadows both a part of her and something else entirely wearing her like a mask. Or perhaps she was wearing it. It seemed to be both and neither at once. Willow flashed, her fingers sharpening to claws. “What are you looking at?”

Which was when Knox realized that he was looking at something through the darkness. A spot of color on the not-walls. He stepped forward, forcing his eyes to focus on that one spot. Maybe it was a window, a doorway…

It tried to slide away from his attention, but he didn’t let go, concentrating until the little spot took shape, sparking into reds and golds. It was a relief carved into what looked like stone covered in old, cracked paint, much like the ones that had been down in that shapeshifter devil Patenga’s tomb. The lines of it resisted as they shuddered into being under Knox’s gaze as if they’d broken some oath by letting him notice them. The markings were harsh, hewn with claws rather than tools. Knox took a step back, trying to look at the whole carving at once.

It was a tree.

There was a woman at its center, a twisted root carved around her body, her arms making branches and little flowers growing from the hair coiled around her head like snakes. Beneath her there were more roots, contorted and fuzzing in and out of focus. When Knox stared hard at them, they snapped into shape. The roots were people. They were all connected, a single body touching the tree’s base, two below him, one below that, making a line of bodies. Some were twisted and broken, others doing the twisting and breaking. Knox’s insides roiled, focusing on the woman who seemed to be feeding on them all at the very top. Only her legs were underground to the knee, the rest of her pressing up toward a dead sun in this dead place. Her roots connected her to every one of the awful bodies below.

Were they all shapeshifters? Shapeshifters and the ones they betrayed to become what they were? The more he looked, the more he could feel the violence of this place, the taste of death in his mouth, flickers of skeletons piled high at the edges of his vision, spreading out to make the walls, the darkness above, the floor beneath his feet, all of it connecting back to that thing wearing Willow’s face. It was as if this place was all one being, manifesting as so many different things. He spun, trying to see it all at once, the bodies, the skeletons, the dead, but he could only see them from the very corners of his eyes where the darkness teased him most. Until he turned back toward Willow, who was taking hungry little steps toward him while he looked around. Her eyes had bled into nothing. The face and voice of whatever this place was because she was the last to be stolen.

Or because she was too big to swallow once she’d tied herself to him.

“Mateo wanted me to live, you know,” Willow whispered, but her voice came out too deep, full of needles and knives. “Not like you. You just wanted me gone.” Every word growled, her eyes glowing darkly at the edges, her skin going gray, and those claws about her shoulders growing roots and flowers from their knuckles so they looked like wings. No, all of her was growing, but there was still a ghost of little girl in the bloating monster. Even when she was the darkness, Knox could feel his sister inside it somewhere.

“Stay with me. Stay here, Willow. I didn’t want you gone.” Knox’s chest grew heavy with the weight of her existence for so long in this place. He reached for her, trying not to cringe at the inky tendrils reaching back. “My whole life was dedicated to saving you from this place. It started talking through you, and… I didn’t even know you were still in here.”

“Don’t touch me.” Willow’s voice was high and scared. “Don’t touch any of the shadow—” She choked on the words, the darkness swirling closer to Knox, but not quite touching. Her voice lowered into a growl, rougher than a parchwolf’s tongue. “Mateo knows what it means to be unfairly treated. To have life stolen away from you long before your first kiss, your first love, your first weapon, your first child…” The monstrous hand lifted from her shoulder, a single claw reaching toward Knox.

“I gave myself to Calsta for you, Willow,” he whispered. The light around him glowed a little brighter, and the shadowy claw flinched back, Willow’s eyes flicking up above his head.

And then Knox saw it. A boy next to the woman with her snakes for hair, her ribbons of souls spread around her like a war. He looked like Anwei. He had her same freckle-spotted, upturned nose, same light brown skin. His hair was cropped short, and he wore a jacket with lacy cuffs and ridiculous buttons that served no purpose Knox could see, only that they would get caught on things and would be easy to grab hold of in a fight. The boy wore the same half smile he’d seen on Anwei’s face a thousand times.

Mateo. Knox put his hand on the wall next to the carving, Mateo’s face staring blankly out at him. So much suffering over one boy.

“He’s not as bad as you think.” Willow’s voice had turned soft again. “He’s like me. But I don’t know if he hears my voice any better than you did. The shadows make me say things all the time.”

Willow was underground beneath him, like the other shapeshifter’s roots. Her fingers were long claws that matched the ones still clasped around the real Willow’s shoulders. But her carving was solid, whole, a pillar of strength rather than the twisted web of contortions making up the other shapeshifter’s root system. One of Willow’s hands had reached up to clasp Mateo’s ankle, and the other had pushed free of the earth to grab hold of…

Knox’s eyes fuzzed over the sight of his own form in stone.

He wasn’t bent, dried out, bloody like the others, but his feet were firmly underground.

Above him, a new branch of the tree began to form before his eyes. The stone seemed to writhe as the marks formed a girl with long braids, little leaves and buds sprouting from her arms. Anwei. One of her hands was stretched down to grab hold of Knox, as if she were trying to pull him free. Her other hand reached for her brother.

Knox stared at that outstretched hand, Anwei’s fingers crooked, distorted, violent. But she wasn’t reaching out to strike him. She was reaching toward him.

Knox and Anwei were somehow joined to Mateo’s tree, an unhealthy offshoot that crumbled and re-formed even as Knox watched, as if it were having a difficult time holding itself steady. And around the four of them, Anwei, Knox, Willow, and Mateo, the earth was cracked. Some of the other humans trapped underground twisted toward the fissures, their hands groping past Willow as if they meant to fight their way free.

“She’s ruining everything,” Willow said quietly. And all the victims in the reliefs began to writhe, some of them shrinking, being consumed by others so they became larger, only to be squeezed up close to the shapeshifter above, who took everything, no matter how much the victims below fought. Except for Willow—only partly underground, the roots close to her began to wind around her like ropes. Some curled up through the fractures to touch Mateo. Knox’s carved form had scars on his legs, like those creeping vines left on buildings, but the mass of rooted bodies didn’t touch him now. “All the others like her,” Willow whispered. “They want to escape the hole we’re making. Adding you in here just made it bigger. But adding you means I’ll sink deeper. Like them.”

“Was it like this when you first came here?” Knox whispered, turning away from the carving of his sister, wound around with rotting vines. “You always sounded like yourself at the beginning.”

“I had light like yours at first. A bond burning bright that led back to the world. But it got thinner and thinner until…” Her voice was worried and small. “… until they got through it. They started to touch me, then to grow inside me. Don’t let them touch you. It hasn’t been me talking to you for a long, long time, and I’ve missed you so much.”

“I’ve missed you too.” Knox shrank back a little from the darkness layered all around him, his throat too dry to swallow. Over time he’d begun thinking of Willow as her rants and screams, the memory of her like this, the little girl he’d played with, mostly gone. She looked up at him, her face so, so sad. But she pointed to the gray thread connecting them, and it sparked.

Knox’s other connection, the one to Anwei, seemed to pulse bright, the darkness shrinking back a fraction before pressing in close again. How long before she forgot him?

Before he sounded like Willow’s anger, her hunger, her obsession with death.

But none of that had been Willow. It had been the sword. The darkness. The souls moldering in this awful place with nothing to remember but the betrayal of love.

He reached out without thinking, aching to comfort some of that sadness, but Willow hissed, scuttling back into the darkness. The sight of her bled inside him, still imagining herself in high khonin lace she’d made with her own hands and a little-girl crown. Everything she’d been before trying so hard to shine out from the shadows.

Knox concentrated on the bright light Anwei made of him. Where are you?

The steady pulse of warmth in his chest didn’t feel like enough. When Willow spoke this time, it was the monster’s voice pushing against the light around him. “Why do you hold on to her so tightly when she’s the one who sent you to me?”

Knox closed his eyes. Anwei had picked him up off the street a year earlier despite the Devoted chasing him. She’d held on to him tight like some kind of miracle that should never have taken place—Anwei, the poisoner, the replaceer, the goddess, with a friend?

He hadn’t known before what it had meant to her, but now he did. Now they were both taking turns holding the other back from the darkness. Willow ranged around the circle of his light, reaching as if she wanted so badly to enter, but the thing spread through her like rot could only endure so much.

Knox’s determination to set Willow free was what had led him to Calsta. To Lia. To Anwei. Even to Noa and Altahn, their faces burning bright alongside the thin line still tethering him to a life outside this endless darkness.

Anwei had always been able to replace what she wanted. And she wanted him. He knew she did. So she would replace him. He had no doubt, the bond pulsing inside him like fire.

And the other bond, the one of gray and rot that ran between him and Willow—he concentrated on it, too, feeding it his memories of her with pink in her cheeks and breath in her lungs, twirling to make her skirt spin around her legs. He fed the bond his years of fighting, his obedience, he fed it Calsta, who had promised to help set Willow free. Because if a bond could free him from this place, then it could free Willow, too, just as he’d always promised.

He felt the shadows gathering closer around him as if Willow was the bridge to their next victim. Still, he reached, because through all his time with Calsta, Knox couldn’t understand how he hadn’t realized before that love wasn’t what the goddess sought to limit.

Because he loved his sister. He knew there was light inside Willow to match his, not only shadows. And he meant to give her the chance to replace it.

Lia watched from the trees as the Devoted dragged Anwei and the others to one tent, then Mateo to another, the rock Mateo had brought her hot in her fist. Not a single Devoted even looked her way, as if she were invisible.

The Basist rock really did block auras, then.

Devoted relied so much on auras to guard that, by the time she reached Anwei’s tent near the center of the camp, all she’d gotten were a few confused looks past the smear she made in the air with Calsta’s help.

The healer looked up as Lia slipped under the flap. She turned to replace Gilesh and Bane pressed into the corner of the tent, as far from Anwei as possible. Altahn was next to them, glowering at nothing and everything as only an oldest son could. Noa sat halfway between the healer and the Trib, slightly singed and looking as if she wished she could mediate, but had only gone to dance school.

“You’re here?” Anwei said faintly. “I was worried. When I saw… my… my brother—”

“What in Calsta’s name is wrong with you?” Lia hissed at her. “Bringing Noa and everyone straight to a Devoted camp? This is a new low. What are you even hoping to get out of it? To keep away from me?”

“Aren’t Devoted really good at hearing? We probably shouldn’t—” Gilesh began.

“Devoted use sound dampening fabric for tents or no one would ever sleep,” Lia shot back. “Where is Knox, Anwei? Fixed yet?”

Anwei swallowed, shaking her head slowly.

A form behind Anwei unraveled from the shadows, silence swelling out from the movement like ripples in a pond. Lia fell back a step, skin prickling all over at the sight of the woman, though she was thankfully no longer wearing a warped approximation of Lia’s eyes, nose, and chin like a poorly fitted mask. The woman’s features seemed to ooze into place as Lia watched, as if the moment no one was looking at her, the shapeshifter forgot to keep her face in the right shape. Anwei didn’t look back at the old woman, but Lia could see the healer’s shoulders tense, her hand pressed hard into her side where the medicine bag usually hung. The shapeshifter only looked calmly at Lia over the top of Anwei’s braids, cocking her head. “Your aura is gone. Have you been to the caves, child?” She shifted forward, her movements too smooth, long habits from her accustomed form hard to break, apparently. “Did you bring more than Mateo here? Perhaps your sister in exchange for an entire camp of Devoted to taste—”

Noa bolted up from the floor, standing between the old woman and everyone else, though Lia could feel how much it cost her to be so close to the shapeshifter. The same as when she’d been near Knox before. “Would everyone calm down? Altahn, Gilesh, and Bane stumbled into the camp by accident, I tried to save them, then Anwei tried to save all of us, so you can stop saying she’s all bad, Lia.”

Anwei stood. “Lia’s right to be upset. Everyone’s right to be upset—”

Noa ignored her, turning to point a finger at the shapeshifter. “And you can stop being so sky-cursed creepy. Lia’s here to save her sister, so don’t bother insinuating that she brought Tual Montanne’s entire household down on us.”

The shapeshifter raised an eyebrow toward Lia. “Did you?”

“Mateo found me. He promised to help save Aria.” Lia’s fingers around the rock felt sweaty, an extra measure of confidence in her voice that she wasn’t sure was merited. He’d come. He was the same butterfly, the same snark, the same boy.

The same boy. The thought was a glow inside her that felt as unnatural as the white of his aura, uncomfortable because she wanted so badly for it to be true. She wanted someone, anyone to be on her side, not on their own.

Altahn inched out from his corner. “He’d help me get the sword back, too?”

“I think he’d tell you where it’s being kept, at the very least. We’ll need it since Anwei lost Knox’s sword.”

“My sword.” The shapeshifter’s lips peeled back from her teeth in a constricted grin. “Mine.”

“Mateo says Tual is gaining power and that this might be the only chance we have to stop him before he becomes like the old shapeshifters. Like the ones the first Warlord struck from all the records.” Lia closed her eyes, concentrating on the flare of Devoted auras all around them, counting them one by one before turning back to Anwei. “Mateo was scared. With the Warlord still trapped on the island, we might be able to get the Devoted to help us. We might need them.”

Anwei’s eyes lowered. “Where did they take Mateo?”

A flare of anger crackled up Lia’s throat, and she forced her shaking hands to calm before she pointed at Anwei. “I will not let you sneak out of this tent and poison him. Stab him. Drain him like you’ve done to the rest of us. If not of souls, it’s only because you haven’t learned how yet.”

One of Anwei’s hands snaked up to touch her forehead, her fingers shaking and her shoulders bowing forward. “I only meant—”

“That you’re the planner? You need to be able to see the whole picture before you can kidnap your own brother?” The words stung on Lia’s lips when the healer carefully sat on the ground, hugging her knees to her chest, but they tasted true.

“If you don’t need me,” Anwei whispered, “I’ll go right now. I came to help.”

I came to help.

Lia swallowed the rest of what she wanted to say, the acrid bite a familiar sick in her stomach.

“I want…” Anwei’s eyes rose to meet hers, the black of them unwavering. “I want to remember who we were before.”

The sickness began to blossom in Lia’s stomach, little buds of worry unfurling their petals of bright warning colors. Who we were before.

That was all she wanted for Aria, wasn’t it? That she would have something to remember? That she would have a life, one where Lia could be with her, the way they’d been as little children?

It’s you who can fix this. Calsta’s voice burned through her. You and Knox and Anwei.

But Lia couldn’t force the words down her own throat now, not after everything. Knox is already gone, Calsta. You want me to work with Anwei? The girl who killed him?

And for once, Calsta seemed to draw closer, breathing like a gust from a fireplace on a cold day at the seclusions. Comforting. Expectant. There. This is the right path, she whispered.

Lia found herself staring at Mateo’s rock, tight inside her fist. Slowly, she held it up to show the others. “We can use this to get everyone out after dark. It blocks auras. I think we can break it into smaller pieces, then everyone could have a piece. Without auras, it won’t be as hard as you’d think to get past the Devoted guards.” After a moment, she turned back toward Anwei. “But before we do that, I need to make sure no one is murdering Mateo. We’ll need him. You know we’ll need him.”

Anwei’s hand crept out to touch the rock, shivering when she did so as if there was more to it than stone. Her aura’s white glow of light around her dissipated to nothing. “Do people often try to murder him?”

Drawing in a deep breath, Lia pulled up the back tent wall and waited for Anwei to follow. “Only the ones who have to talk to him.”

“I…” Anwei’s furrowed brow was painful. “I want to come with you. I won’t hurt him. I won’t do anything. I just want to see him.”

The healer took Lia’s hand, her fingers dry and cold where they clasped Lia’s, the rock pressed between their palms. Lia wanted to shake her off, but she didn’t. Anwei meekly followed her out of the tent as if she’d turned into someone new, keeping close every time Lia stopped behind a tent to let a Devoted pass. Mateo’s was on the other side of the box the tents made, facing inward with Devoted watching from the center of camp and guards posted around the edges.

“He’s not what you think,” Lia said quietly when the tent came into sight, then realized how familiar the words felt. They were Knox’s words once.

A burst of anger at the thought of Knox steamed up her throat. But she tamped it down. She needed to be in control of herself, because rage had no boundaries, no concept of a future, no goals. It only wanted to break things.

And Anwei did seem as if she was trying to be different. Like someone Lia could believe.

Unless this, too, was an act. Like Mateo. The two were more alike than they were different, both presenting a face Lia thought she could read when it would take Calsta’s energy to pierce clear to their souls.

Anwei didn’t answer, the beat of her heart growing louder and louder. Pausing just outside Mateo’s tent, Lia reached out toward Calsta with a question. Is this right? Putting Anwei in the same space as Mateo? Should I trust him? Should I trust her? Should I destroy him? Give me the power to see inside them as I could before. It’s as much to your benefit as mine.

The goddess’s voice warmed in her mind like a fire on a cool night. What do you truly want, Lia?

The words jolted through her. A question her father had asked sitting there next to her dying mother, his hands clasped hard together. His little girl being in charge when it had always been his job.

What a mess she’d made of it.

Power is easy for some because they want nothing more than to serve me, Calsta whispered. You and I can walk together a spell, but do you truly want a veil and sight? I could give it to you right now if that’s your true desire. But you miss your sister. You miss these people who you thought were your friends. The only reason you want to see inside them is that it would prove them to you. A beat passed, Lia’s hand outstretched to pull back the tent wall. That’s not how trust works.

What do you know about any kind of relationship? Lia asked. All you do is take them away from people.

From people who ask for it. People choose their own paths, and sometimes I help them replace the one that suits them best. Master Helan showed you. If you do not wish for a veil, then stop trying to put one back on. If you want your family and friends, then trust them. Knowing what is in their heads won’t give that to you. You have to believe what is in their hearts.

But Mateo! Lia protested. And Anwei took Knox—

Mateo is Mateo, the goddess breathed. Anwei is doing her best to fix what happened to Knox, as she’s said. No one is perfect. All of you are a bit confused. But I have hope again for humans. For myself. For my love. You, on your own, without my power, are enough.

Lia’s heart seemed to have stopped, Calsta’s power burning through her a weapon. A shield. A way to hide. A way to fight even the people who were trying to help her. What would she be without it?

Power is not what will save your sister, Lia. She needs your heart more than I do.

Anwei nudged her shoulder, jolting Lia out of the conversation in her head. “What is it?”

It took three breaths. Then three more, Lia’s heart rapping against her ribs as if it wanted to be let out. You are enough. She couldn’t help but remember the feel of not being able to see when Ewan was chasing after her. Of not being able to fight.

And Noa stepping in for her. Vivi. Of Knox waking up and seeing her face, the smile on his face one that belonged only to her brother. Of Anwei holding both her hands, telling her to breathe when she couldn’t.

“Lia?” Anwei’s hands were holding hers now. “Please, I want to help.”

Swallowing, Lia squeezed the healer’s hands between her own, the pain of losing Knox, of Aria in so much danger, of a shapeshifter’s death sentence over her head difficult to see around.

You cannot let rage corrupt you. The words were her own. Enough.

Lia breathed in deep. Looked Anwei in the eye. “You’re going to help me get Knox back. And Aria, too?”

Anwei nodded. “Yes. I promise.”

“You’re not going to hurt Mateo?”

The healer swallowed. Then looked down. “Not unless he tries to hurt me. Or you. Or Knox. Or any of us.”

The raw rage in Anwei’s voice was all too familiar. But Lia could feel her telling the truth even without Calsta’s power. So she pulled back the tent flap and let Anwei in.

Mateo’s hands wouldn’t stop shaking, not even after the Devoted manhandled him into a tent, all completely unnecessary because he knew how to walk just fine on his own. He’d been doing it his whole life. He wasn’t sure whether to be affronted or grateful that they’d stashed him in what appeared to be some kind of food preparation tent, as if the only guards he needed were a table covered in piles of green stems that looked even less appetizing than Bella’s feed.

Golden auras were ranged around the camp like a compass, all of them pointing toward their queen on the island, frightened bees not knowing whether to save her or to hang back as they’d been told. Soon they’d come ask him questions, each one a sting. Because Lia said all her friends had to come. That she had to rescue them, as if she liked the weird flashy dancer girl and the Trib, who had swords instead of personalities, and the girl with the braids.

The braids. Mateo’s chest tightened.

The tent flap rustled, and suddenly there Lia was at the far end of the tent, her aura blanked out by the rock from the tunnels. “Thank Calsta, I thought you were just going to leave me,” he began to say, but Lia was drawing someone into the tent after her.

A girl with a hundred braids.

A girl with a hundred braids.

Mateo’s knees wobbled, dumping him back onto the bench, and his mind began to unpeel, erupting with a murderous crack and pops of wood and bone in the place that was supposed to be his home, the smell of ocean and sand and blood in his nose. But behind it all, something else cried out to be seen. A quiet girl just his height waited patiently behind all the screams of pain and buckling bone as if she’d slipped in through one of the cracks in his memory. The girl before him bit her lip just as the little girl in his memory did, and Mateo saw a flash of his own fingers twisting the girl’s hair and tying it off.

Something surged inside like scrabbling claws and teeth and shadow, as if Willow was straining toward him, but wherever she was, it was too far away.

“You really are alive,” Anwei whispered—Anwei. The name slipped into his mind, not because his father had told him, not because Lia had said it. It rose inside him, a memory too sharp to hold between his fingers.

Mateo clenched his eyes shut, trying to stop the flood of his past. He didn’t want to remember. His father had said he didn’t want to remember—

The front tent flap blazed with an aura, and a Devoted stuck his head in the tent to look around. Mateo’s heart was a snarl of thorns, and something was tearing at it from the center, trying to fight its way out—maybe Willow, maybe himself—

He slowly turned his head to look over where Lia had been when the Devoted didn’t comment on her presence, but there was nothing to see but a shadow under the table, Calsta shielding Lia and Lia shielding Anwei.

Clearing his throat, Mateo sat up a little straighter, fixing the Devoted with a bored stare. “Did you need something?”

“Berrum will be in to talk to you in a few minutes.” The Devoted looked around the tent once again, unsettled. But then he withdrew.

Mateo wrenched around to face the table, Lia still nothing but a shadow. “What is your plan, Lia?”

Anwei pushed out from behind Lia before the Devoted could answer, and Mateo couldn’t look away because they shared a nose, and her hair was the same color as his. And his mind seemed to bend—

Not the violent, thought-splitting pain that had left him in a puddle in the Kingsol apothecary, but a slow widening, a whole world that belonged to him, waiting to be seen.

You didn’t want to know. But he could taste it, smell it, feel the Beildan sun on his skin, his life of paints and charcoals and herbs. His life as one half of a whole.

He breathed in, scents of lilia and corta and bei hovering around Anwei like an aura, like a soul.

“Do you remember me?” Anwei whispered, taking a step closer.

And Mateo couldn’t look, couldn’t answer, the holes in his memory beckoning because he did want to know. He did and he didn’t at the same time. He wasn’t sure how to reconcile the terrible blankness where her aura should have been. He could only see the touch of gods, but she stood unmarked before him. “I can’t see your aura,” he rasped. “Is it the stone, or are you… like me?”

She flinched back, but she didn’t break eye contact, cautious and… hopeful.

“Where’s the boy who died?” The questions came faster, and Mateo wasn’t sure they were his anymore, only glad they were blocking the ones unspooling from much deeper inside him, because Willow was swelling up cold like ice, like death, like teeth and claws—“Where’s Knox? Where is he!” The words tore out of him in a growl, a scream that tore his throat. “If he’s not with you, then where is he? I want to live!”

Knox looked up when Willow stopped midsentence and curled into a ball. One moment she’d been telling him about a trip she’d taken with their parents to the market in the next town over to buy special beads for a scarf, and the next, darkness surged around her, the claws that never left her shoulders digging in deep. Feelers burst out from the darkness toward him, and something began to lurch inside him—

Suddenly, Knox’s connection to Anwei, to the life he still hadn’t quite lost narrowed from a rope to a thread, then a thread to a hair.

“Willow?” He reached out toward her in panic, then drew back as shadows writhed across her like worms. “You’re what’s keeping my body alive, aren’t you? Why are you stopping?”

Anwei fell back when Mateo began to yell, the sight of her brother so familiar—thinner, and with cheekbones he seemed to be altogether too aware of, his muddy clothes covered in lace, his hair lopped off in short curls where his braids had been. But then he lurched toward her, his teeth bared and his hands contorted like claws as he reached for her neck.

All Anwei’s hope flickered out as she grabbed for Lia, wrenching herself out of reach. There was nothing of Arun left in this boy. All the awful things she’d thought since replaceing him alive in the tomb, the words she’d wanted to yell, the poisons she wanted to brew for leaving her all alone to die on a beach and never think of her again…

It all disappeared when she saw how blank his eyes were. Mateo barreled forward, slamming into Lia as he groped for Anwei’s throat. The stone wrenched from Anwei’s hand as she ducked, wishing she hadn’t come, because all there was to see was Willow squatting inside the body of a person she loved. It had always been the sword that had set Knox off before, but Anwei didn’t know what would cause Mateo to forget himself. Or if there was a self left to forget. “Get away,” she breathed. “We have to get away—”

Lia gasped, because the stone was on the ground, and Mateo was growling like some kind of feral beast. Planting her elbow in Mateo’s ribs, Anwei kicked the stone out under the tent wall, terrified the Devoted would replace it and confiscate it now that their auras were on display. She grabbed Lia’s arm, dragging her out of the tent to replace a circle of Devoted waiting for them outside.

Lia was pulling Anwei’s fingers free from her wrist, sputtering about auras and something being wrong, and Mateo not usually being like this, but then the tent wall tore open, and Mateo’s fingers were long and thin, his nails curling into claws. The Devoted were a mess of shouts and swords, falling back, which gave Lia time enough to grab the stone and for Anwei to grab Lia and run.

The bit of Knox still left inside Anwei twisted as if Willow was attacking from inside and out. Anwei’s fingers found the packets deep inside her pocket. Sleeping Death.

Lia lurched to the side, dragging Anwei into another tent, then out the other side. Mateo crashed through the canvas after them. Digging a heel into the ground, Anwei pivoted to face him and had to choke back a scream that came stabbing up her throat. Her brother was on all fours, his body stretched long with knobby vertebrae bristling from his back. His hands had grown into paws, and his face—

Devoted burst through the tent, barreling into the supports and tearing at the canvas. Swords flashed, and there were cries of disbelief as the canvas roof collapsed atop them, and Knox kept flickering, twisting—

“We have to stop Willow! Her taking over Mateo is doing something to Knox!” Anwei yelled desperately, pulling the packets from her pocket even though they couldn’t help. She had no way to make Mateo swallow them. And breathing the stuff would—

“No!” Lia broke Anwei’s grip, slamming into a Devoted barreling toward Mateo, flipping his sword up into the air and catching it even as she drew her own. “The Warlord is trapped on the island, and Mateo’s our only way to save her. You hurt him, she’s dead, so back off!” She crossed the swords in front of her, doing some kind of menacing Anwei-didn’t-know-what sort of form, forcing the other Devoted back. The ones closest to her began to gasp, hands to their chests, falling to their knees, and Anwei could almost see the energy spiraling out from them toward the thing Mateo had become, a body of parchwolf claws and narmaiden scales, lines like cracks up his forelegs and spidering down his side.

He leapt toward her.

Dodging a broken tent pole, Anwei held the open packet close to her chest. Altahn was suddenly there at her side, Noa just in front of her, eyes wide. Anwei’s insides were burning, her hope, her mind, her body, all of her lost because this thing, whatever he was, couldn’t be her brother. The packets in her fingers felt slippery and skeletal, like a death in red splatters and cut fingers on the floor.

Arun had been murdered, just like she’d thought, leaving nothing but Willow behind.

“How did you stop Willow before?” Lia darted in front of Anwei, throwing a sword to Altahn as Mateo paced closer.

“I didn’t. It was the sword—”

“He’s going to kill us. If there’s no god to stop him, no power, no weapon, then we have to do it. What about this? It put Knox to sleep.” Lia swiped the Sleeping Death powder from her hand and threw the open one into Mateo’s face.

“No!” Anwei was running before she could think, the world moving far too slow as the packet tore across Mateo’s teeth. The powder bloomed out, the cloud enveloping Mateo’s and Lia’s heads.

Lia went still. Mateo went still. The whole world went still except Anwei because she was trying to stop it, like down in the tomb with calistet in the air racing toward Knox’s lungs. But she had no power. She had nothing but hands to catch Lia when she fell.

Knox couldn’t see the weight of something far too heavy pressing him hard against the shadowy floor. The thing roared and cried, and after a moment, he realized it was Willow, the shadows all around them and the connection between them scorching hot. Her pressing into his chest shifted from claws to feathers to hooves—

“You can’t have Knox!” she screamed into the inky mist around them. “If you take him, it could kill me, and then where would you be?”

She already took him. It was a thousand voices, a thousand growls, a thousand screams, and Knox couldn’t do anything but cover his ears and hold tight to the one line of light between him and the world even as it frayed. But he’s not all the way dead. Nothing is working the way it’s supposed to—if we kill his connection to the girl now, perhaps we can take the boy’s body and be the shapeshifter we’re meant to be.

The shadows rolled around Knox, but he realized they still weren’t quite touching him, a faint glow from his skin holding them back. Willow was fighting them too, it seemed, as if the light belonged to him but the darkness was somehow under her control.

Or if it doesn’t work—Knox shrank back from the sound of the thousand voices, a tendril of darkness jabbing toward his throat—Mateo will be the only one left, and we can take him. But we need to get out before the hole closes again.

Willow’s weight disappeared from Knox’s chest, and there was a scarce glow between them as Willow faced down the spears of shadow lancing toward Knox.

Everything went dark and then light and then dark, and when Knox’s eyes stopped flaring with Anwei’s light inside him, he was alone in his little bubble of light, the shadows quiet.

Willow was nowhere to be seen. But after a moment, he felt the shape of her prowling along the edge of his light, as if she was keeping a perimeter. Trying not to come closer even as the claws pushed her toward him. “Something happened,” she whispered. “Mateo isn’t moving.”

“Why did the shadows get so much stronger?” he hissed, flailing to keep hold of his bond to Anwei. It was there. Brighter than ever, growing, as if she were reaching back toward him.

“Because they are swallowing me. We’re spread too thin, out like a web, and I can’t always make them do what I want. The bigger the hole gets, the stronger they are. I want to keep you alive here and your body alive in the world, and it takes so much of my concentration that they’re getting through stronger than ever.”

Getting through. To Mateo, the way they had before with Knox, taking his body and mind. He curled around the spot Willow had touched him when she’d knocked him out of the way, frantically reaching for the bond’s warmth because he was suddenly cold. Too cold. Freezing.

It was the same spot he’d been stabbed by the sword, and it was icing over.

“I’m sorry, Knox,” she whispered. “I was trying to help.”

Hands over the wound, Knox finally forced himself to look at the shadows beginning to ooze up between his fingers.

It can’t be for you. The echo of a terrible god’s voice stabbed through Anwei’s head as everything sped back up, Knox a glow of white fire that exploded back to life inside her, as if Willow didn’t have enough energy to keep Knox alive and control Mateo at the same time.

Mateo pitched forward through the haze of powder in the air, his arms crumpling out from under him and dumping him onto the ground.

Lia was limp in her arms, her sword fallen like a dead thing on the ground. “No, no, no…” Anwei covered her nose with her sleeve, madly brushing away the white bits of powder from Lia’s nose, mouth, and eyes, panic unfolding inside her because it wasn’t enough. She wasn’t enough. She couldn’t feel the tick of Lia’s humors, the flow of her breath, the slow pulse of her muscles and organs. She could only see the dusky gray of her skin, not a single smell to go with it.

The Devoted were a swirl of violence and color, and Altahn crowded in next to her, his mouth and nose covered, and Noa was asking her what to do. The world was nothing but a giant high-pitched squeal.

It’s not for me! Anwei yelled toward the nameless god as she tried to pull Lia up from the ground. It’s not for me. I’ll do whatever you want. Please, she’ll die.

Lia’s lips were turning blue. Altahn was on the ground next to her, Noa next to him, holding up Lia’s head. “What happened? What is that thing?” Noa yelled, gesturing toward Mateo. “You have to fix this, Anwei!”

Anwei’s fingers dug into Lia’s loose shirt. She pressed her mind out hard, the bond with Knox pulsing gold and red and blue and all the colors as she begged for something, someone to help. Please, any god, anywhere—

And that voice, the one she’d thought was her own made of flowers and leaves, wind off the sea, powders, poisons, roots, and stone flooded inside her. What do you want?

“I can breathe into her mouth. Like Knox did for Noa. How, Anwei?” Altahn was yelling. “Tell me how to do it!”

Don’t you see her? Anwei screamed. I’ll do what you want. I’ll be the hero you want. You saw me come in here to save my friends. I could have taken Knox and been the terror you were so afraid of creating. I don’t want that. Help me fix her. I can’t do it alone, but I know we can together.

We? The god grumbled. That goes in two directions.

Despair flooded through Anwei, Lia’s limp body in her arms. The world was too small, closing in on her like a wave of the ocean, crashing in on all sides, pressing hard against her skin. Altahn was yelling her name and Noa was crying and she couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t see, she couldn’t feel, but she could—

Anwei’s eyes flew open because she could smell.

A sickly charcoal, cinnamon, and bone smell that slithered deep into her nose. Lia’s head lolled to the side, her face gray, the smell of Sleeping Death coating her inside and out. Her humors were sluggish, fissures of red crackling through her. Anwei breathed in, and those lightning strikes in her brain electrified her bond with Knox, the thin string between them once again growing strong. She pushed Altahn back, settling Lia flat on the ground.

But the god inside her turned her toward Mateo. Him first.

Swearing with everything inside of her, Anwei crawled over to the thing her brother had become, inhaling until she could smell the terrible dust of death through his humors. Anwei chased every line of cinnamon red and burning orange the powder made, tearing it out of Mateo’s lungs, up his throat, off his skin, and out of his eyes to hover in a cloud of gray above him.

Then she fell to her knees by Lia, searching for every last grain of Sleeping Death inside her and pulling them out to join the poison pulsing and wobbling in the air over her head. She sent it high over the trees, and wind scattered it past the camp in the branches. All around Anwei, Devoted were still shouting and drawing swords, but she could only watch Lia.

Her heart wasn’t beating.

No! She scrambled to keep hold of Lia even as the Devoted dragged Altahn away from Lia. No! She can’t die. Anwei pressed hard into Lia with her mind, as if somehow she could start everything flowing again with enough breath, enough energy, enough life of her own to share—

Something in the place where she and Knox were joined sparked, a single thread of lightning that lanced down through her fingers to stab at Lia’s heart. It jolted like one last death throe, Lia’s whole body twitching. But then it gave one sluggish beat. Then another. Her humors began to move out from her chest, down through her organs, into her arms and legs. Then, finally, Lia’s lungs sucked in her first labored breath.

Chest heaving, Anwei collapsed next to Lia, fingers clutching Lia’s too tight. Was this what the nameless god wanted? To name who she helped, how and when? To use her like a puppet to save or destroy?

Or perhaps it had been a test, to see if she’d obey and heal the monster in her brother’s skin rather than the friend she couldn’t do without.

That didn’t seem fair.

It seemed like something Calsta would ask for. What Calsta did ask for.

Anwei twisted to look at the huddles of robes and armor on the ground that Mateo had left in his path, the occupants just now starting to come back awake, as if he’d sucked away their lives as he passed. Two Devoted had pulled Mateo’s body up from the ground—he was human again, his face and clothes all powdered over with dirt. He looked like a boy, but the air around him still held the bitter aftertaste of nothing.

A Devoted knelt next to Anwei, and she flinched away, trying to calculate the space between tents and how fast she could run with so little energy left inside her, but the Devoted only bent to touch soft fingers to her wrist, checking for her pulse. Then up her arm to check her humors, as if Devoted cared about healing as much as killing. Where were the gods when Devoted made choices about who lived and who died?

Maybe all gods wanted their devotees body, mind, and soul. It was the gods who ate hearts, chewing them up and swallowing them down. But Anwei could still feel her heart beating in her chest. She could feel the nameless god watching her. Waiting for what would come next.

She didn’t like it.

But she liked the idea of Lia dead even less.

And, much smaller inside, she didn’t like the idea of Arun dead, and there had been much more powder inside him. So much, she wasn’t sure if she could have gotten it all out of him if she’d helped Lia first.

Was that why? she asked quietly. Not to torture me, but because it was the only way to save them both?

The nameless god didn’t answer her for a moment. Those devoted to me ask before acting. They know I can see a much larger picture and how they fit into it.

They ask for permission before healing?

They have to. No human can see as far as I can, and being able to ask and obey regardless of your own perception or loyalties—

Anwei sat up with a groan, pushing the Devoted’s hands off her and gesturing to Lia. “She’s the one who almost died.” The nameless god was talking about an oath. Herbs and healing dictated by a god—

Oaths are required when gods-touched deal with life and death, Anwei. That’s why so many of us are involved. It’s never just one of us. Not you, not me, not just Knox or Calsta. Decisions like this take more than one mind.

Even when Anwei had worked in apothecaries, the owners had never wanted to be there next to her, pointing to which herbs she could use and which she couldn’t. This is ridiculous.

Only for big things. Can you think of a better way to keep those who follow me from using my magic to stop hearts instead of start them?

I know how to kill people without your help. Anwei’s thoughts stung even in her own mind. Partly because seeing Mateo run at her like a wild parchwolf, no limit to what he could do, made her see why. Even knowing all the things she’d done… Anwei could see why gods asked for so much before they gave.

If asking was what was required to bring Knox back… She closed her eyes hard, trying to imagine asking for permission like a little lapdog. Hoping the nameless god would only give what she wanted and not take any more back. But it was worth it.

It had to be.

Okay, she said.

When Anwei opened her eyes again, her brother was still there, somehow trapped inside the foppish, monsterish thing he’d become. His eyes were still shut just as tight as hers had been, as if he were waiting for a god to speak to him, too.