The bridge was perfect, unexpected.
Ren wasn’t sure who’d built it, but she whispered her silent thanks to them. A single path wound around a jutting formation of rocks before curling back toward the mouth of the waiting bridge. It was wide enough for a very careful carriage driver. The sides of the bridge were shoulder high, designed with a pattern of hand-sized holes to keep the wood from taking on too much water. Beneath ran some kind of gorge. Ren didn’t think the creeks could rise this high, but during a rainy season, she guessed the land would grow boggy enough to be unpassable without a bridge. It was possible Della’s outfit had built it to transport their goods to the city. No matter its history, they couldn’t have asked for a better place to make their final stand.
“You think it will work?” Theo asked.
“Narrow entry,” she said. “Upper ground. No access from below. The only visible spot for someone to port to is that bare patch of grass. The path takes them directly through where we’d be setting up on the bridge. We can always cast a spell to ward against that. Which means there’s no way to get behind us…”
He was nodding. “It’s perfect. Light the candle.”
Ren slipped the earring on one more time. She heard a brief strum from a three-string, a voice matching the rhythm easily, and it was a fine-sounding confirmation. “We’re in range.”
The two of them walked out to the heart of the bridge. Theo ferried a number of stones from the embankment to surround the candle, hoping to keep it upright even if movement jostled the bridge. Ren could tell the structure was old, but it was sturdy enough not to cause concern. Once the candle was firmly fixed in its makeshift keep, both of them summoned flame. With matching motions, they lit the waiting wick. The fire caught and Ren started her mental countdown.
“Now we set the wards,” she said.
It was a bit strange to cycle through Theo’s inventory. Not quite as expansive as her own, and arranged in a different order. It was like performing research in someone else’s library and hoping the same books were all there. She’d have to get used to the feeling.
“Antiprojectile. Three layers. Let’s put a fire resistance on the wood,” she said. “Do you happen to have the momentum reduction charm?”
Theo shook his head.
“Maybe just a searing barrier, then? I don’t want someone charging through and getting to us before we have a chance to hit them with a few spells. But let’s make sure we avoid oversaturating the air with them. Staggering the layers a few paces should be enough.”
It took time to cast spell after spell along the entryway of the bridge. Theo cast a movement charm farther down the path, promising that he’d adjusted the tolling to be quieter this time around. After they’d rehearsed the rest of the plan, there was nothing to do but set their pack out and lie down. The bridge’s half-rotted wood wasn’t the most comfortable bedding, but Ren was pretty sure she could have slept dangling from a wyvern’s claws. Theo agreed to take the first watch.
“May it be boring and without consequence,” she whispered, turning onto her side.
Sleep had been gently tugging at her tired limbs for two days now. She was swept into a dreamless state as soon as her head touched the satchel. It felt like she was awoken mere moments later, but when she looked up, dawn’s quiet fingers were threading through the sky.
Theo was asleep beside her. Ren sat up in alarm. Her entire body protested. Her calves ached and her back was stiff. She shoved up to her feet. A glance into the valley showed no signs of their pursuers. Her mouth had gone dry. She realized she hadn’t been drinking nearly enough water. Ren backtracked to Theo’s side and did her best to slip out the canteen without waking him. He looked far more innocent in sleep. It was the eyes that made him a Brood. Cold and calculating. Eyes that had likely witnessed all his family’s secrets. The details that the rest of the world might never know.
She was taking another swig when Theo’s bell tolled. It was barely a whisper, not even loud enough to stir him from sleep. She tapped the toe of his boot before striding forward to get a look at what was coming. A glance showed the waxway candle had a little less than an hour left. Ren knew they could always extinguish the flame early—before it burned all the way down—but that risked exposing them in the waxways. They needed to buy as much time as possible.
“Wake up, Theo. Someone’s here.”
There was movement down on the path. The sides of the bridge were raised and slatted. Enough to catch glimpses of something but not enough to make out what. About a minute later the figure came around the corner: Della’s hound.
“That’s not good.”
Ren had been hoping for Clyde. This complicated matters. They both watched as the dog’s eyes caught up with his nose. He stared across the bridge, head tilting briefly, and then started to howl. Theo stood. He eyed the candle before looking at Ren.
“It’s too soon. We need more time.”
“I know.”
The creature kept on like that, baying loud enough to wake up the entire mountain. It reminded Ren of the old hellhound myths. Dogs that could follow the scent of their prey even if their quarry traveled through the waxways. All the hairs on her arms stood on end when the hound fell silent. Ren’s fingers tightened around her wand. Someone else was coming up the rise, led there by the noise.
The Mackie brothers.
Ren’s real memories only featured them in jest. Both men had been mentioned a few times by Della and Holt. But the set of faded memories rattling around the back of her mind showed both of them scarfing down food at the table. She could also see the passive expressions on their faces as they dragged Ren to a shed to be tortured. They weren’t nearly as muscled as Avy, but both of them were wide as doors, and there was a certain violence written in the way they walked. She and Theo took up their stances as the brothers strode to the very edge of their bridge.
One leaned down and picked up a rock. He threw it with a casual flick of his wrist, like a boy skipping a stone in a creek. They all watched as it caught in midair, spinning around, before falling harmlessly to the ground. The two of them exchanged a glance.
“Clever little spells.”
The other one craned his neck. Ren tried to adjust, positioning herself so that she was blocking the way candle, but she moved a second too late. Their intentions were obvious.
“Looks like you’ve got half an hour left. Really think you can hold us off for that long?”
Ren’s jaw tightened. “Why don’t you try us?”
He reached his hand out, probing their defenses. There was a sharp sizzle and he pulled it back. He set the two fingers in his mouth like a child sucking a thumb, then smiled at her.
“Don’t worry. We will put the two of you to the test. Hunt, go get Della.”
The dog bolted back down the hillside. Ren and Theo could only watch as the creature went searching for his master. They’d return before long. It was one thing to hold off a pair of charging brutes like the Mackies. Quite another thing to hold them off while they were supported by the spellwork of other wizards. Besides, Ren had no idea how many people Della and Holt had recruited to their cause. It could just be their hired hands—or it could be neighbors from the surrounding region.
“What do we do?” Theo whispered. His eyes darted back to the candle. “We have to hold them off. For at least half an hour.”
Ren watched the Mackie brothers settle in, leaning against the natural stone formations, every promise of violence in their eyes. It all depended on how soon Della arrived. If worst came to worst, they could destroy the bridge and keep running. That would mean leaving behind their way candle, though. Losing the one advantage they had in their possession.
“We could fight,” Ren said, thinking out loud. “Before they have reinforcements.”
Theo weighed that. “We’ll be on the wrong side of our own wards.”
“But they wouldn’t expect it,” she whispered. “And I doubt they know much magic.”
Theo looked thoughtful, weighing all the risks, when the larger Mackie brother stood. Both boys straightened. It was like watching a hound catch a scent. The way the fur on the ridge of its back rises and its body goes perfectly still. Both of them stared down the length of the bridge.
“What are they doing?” Ren asked.
With no other warning, they started to advance. She couldn’t believe what she was seeing. They picked up speed and hit the wards at a dead sprint. The magic shoved them back at first, but they kept sprinting against the grain of those spells, their shoulders lowered like battering rams into the magic. Ren could sense their wards starting to drain. She also smelled burning flesh. The magic was searing the skin along the brothers’ knuckles and the bridges of their noses. It was inhuman for someone to resist that pain, but the Mackies didn’t even react to it.
“How is this even possible?…”
Another shove back from the barrier. Still the two brothers came. Ren was watching in horror when the first Mackie brother broke through. He came tearing across, closing the distance fast. Ren saw that his eyes were half-closed.
“Drop him,” she said.
Theo’s blast hit first. A glancing blow to the shoulder that spun the boy around. Ren’s bolt of concussive magic sent him right into the raised side of the bridge with a smack. The other brother broke through before they could turn. He learned from the first, ducking one shoulder to slip beneath Theo’s spell. Ren took aim, but he was already there, jackknifing through the air. He wrapped both arms around Theo’s waist in some kind of wrestling move. The two of them went down hard, sliding dangerously close to their flickering way candle.
Vega swooped down. The stone bird struck true, one talon seizing an exposed earlobe. The Mackie brother screamed as half of his ear ripped clean away, spattering blood. It was just enough of an opening for Theo to scramble clear on his hands and knees. And that was enough of an opening for Ren to take aim.
At such a close range, her spell hit him like a strike of lightning. Her own feet slid back from the force of it. Ren’s eyes widened as the magic launched him clear of the railing.
He went over the bridge with a scream.
She stared at the now-empty space, her heart pounding, and she noticed the one detail they’d missed. Something was scaling the grated side of the bridge. Carefully avoiding their wards. She saw its progress guided by a pair of blackened hands. Clyde was here.
The surviving brother was struggling back to his feet. His eyes fluttered open and shut in frightening sequence. Ren finally understood their bizarre charge. Clyde was controlling them the way that he’d controlled Cora. She’d said his power would keep growing, and clearly it had, if he could move these two around like pawns in battle.
Ren slid toward Theo as the monster appeared over the railing. Clyde looked more like the Clyde she remembered. Both of his eyes were bright blue. His lips had been restored to their rose red, and his skin had almost returned to a light tan color. Most of his hair shone brown, though there were a few burn marks running down the right half of his scalp. Dark bubbles of skin scaled his neck. Ren knew that all he needed now to complete his restoration was the two of them.
I am hungry. You are food.
He started to raise his hand toward them, but this time they had a plan.
“Now, Theo.”
It all happened at once.
Vega landed on her shoulder. The remaining Mackie brother half stumbled to his feet. Ren slid forward so that she was positioned slightly in front of Theo. She needed to take the first wave of the chain magic for this to work. Theo wrapped both of his arms around her neck, making sure there was skin-to-skin contact. Ren could see the research as clear as day in the back of her mind.
Physical connection adds strength to bond magic. Often, it forces spells to amplify or merge.…
Clyde’s spell hit her like a blast of death-woven air. She felt the bridge and the world rip out of her grasp as she was thrown once more into the memory.…
She found him by the bridge. It was a pretty thing, stretching halfway across to its intended partner on the other side of the canal. Her father was always busy, always moving, always talking. She loved the way he stopped dead in his tracks, though, the moment he spied her waiting. The way he set down everything in his arms to sweep her into a hug. She handed him the roll. He winked down at her. She saw the quiet pride that he felt in simply standing beside his daughter in front of all the other workers. Her final glimpse was of him walking across that bridge with the others. He held his head high. He kept his shoulders straight.
A king without a crown.
Ren sensed the dark passenger on her left. His clawed hand was set on her shoulder, drinking in her fear. Both of them watched the memory start to unravel. Her mind’s effort to erase pain that it couldn’t bear. Everything else came in ugly snapshots. Their screams tangling in the air. The sound of the earth breaking beneath them. Ren looked down and saw her father, bent wrongways in the belly of the canal. All the blood pouring out.
The shadowed figure was tightening his grip. Holding her there, until another voice sounded. It echoed in the memory unnaturally. Ren knew it sounded strange because it didn’t belong either. She looked back. In the real memory it had always been Landwin Brood who walked forward at this point. Gilded and arrogant, his face full of faux horror. But this time Theo displaced him. Landwin’s son strode forward, looking brighter than the rest of their surroundings. Golden hair the color of sunlight. Eyes like speckled forests. As he approached, the shadow at her shoulder fled.
“Come on, Ren.”
Theo took her hand.
She felt herself being drawn away by his touch. The chain magic provided a path for them, as they’d known it would. And the bond magic that linked them meant they could travel it together. Ren was swept out of her worst memory and carried downstream into Theo’s:
He strode out through the center of the gathered crowd. She could feel the anxiety dripping from his shoulders. The need to impress. The weight of everything he carried. Ren felt each of these emotions as if they were her own. Deep and nestled. It brought out an unexpected sympathy that she forced herself to set aside, something to be examined later, because until now she’d never felt this much empathy for him.
At his command the musicians departed from the instrument. She saw the way he grinned expectantly at the crowd. She didn’t waste time watching him perform the magic again.
They had a plan. All she needed to do was execute that plan.
She broke free of Timmons’s grasp on her arm. There was resistance. Moving against what had happened in the memory felt like trudging through the muck and mire of a swamp. Ren forged a path forward, though. She kept walking through the barely remembered crowd until Theo finally noticed her.
His drowning eyes lit with understanding. “Ren?”
“Come with me, Theo.”
Both of them turned, looking around the sea of faces. Some were obscured. Not important enough to have carved a place in either of their memories of what had happened that night. Theo spotted their target first.
He sat on the railing, feet dangling. His collar was a little loose. A result of his time with Timmons, Ren knew. His eyes were wide and watchful. No doubt he was seeing more of the magic in the air around them, brightened by the breath he’d enjoyed earlier that night. Clyde Winters looked like he didn’t have a care in the world.
She remembered what Timmons had said. That she’d been the last good thing for him. Watching him now, Ren saw that was true. He looked completely at ease. A boy who had no idea he was about to be burned from the inside out by his own magic the next day. They took up their stances and the memory flickered strangely.
This was the answer to the riddle that had been bothering Ren.
Theo couldn’t recall a shadow in his vision. Not like the creeping presence in their dreams. It was such a strange inconsistency. Ren had finally realized that the revenant didn’t visit this memory the way he’d visited Cora’s or her own, because he already existed here. He was already invited. The creature—hiding in the depths of the real Clyde—watched them approach. Ren saw the eyes widen slightly. Clyde’s hands rose in a defensive gesture.
It wasn’t like changing the past. This was memory, wielded as a weapon. It was the paralytic that the revenant had been using to bind their physical bodies. Ren knew if they could be subjected to such magic, the reverse was true. The monstrous version of Clyde finally understood it had made a mistake. Predator became prey.
In the memory Clyde had no dark magic to fight back with.
In the memory he was just a boy at a party.
Ren and Theo both raised their wands.
The bridge blinked back into existence.
Only a few seconds of real time had passed.
Clyde was now frozen in place. He’d managed to leap from the railing and had approached them with every intention of sucking the marrow from their precious bones. Their combined magic had dropped him to a knee. He stared at the space between them with mindless dedication. It had worked. The chain spell’s paralytic was reversed. Occupied in that other world, he was absent in this one.
Spells lit the tips of their wands.
“Now,” Ren grunted. “Now we finish him.”
Both of them unleashed fire spells at the same time. Their bright bolts struck his motionless chest. Ren cast another. Theo did too. By the time the pain shocked Clyde back to the present, it was already too late. Their magic bore down on him, burning away flesh, digging deeper and deeper until they could see the bright bones under his skin. Neither of them stopped casting until the creature’s screams fell silent. The revenant who’d chased them across a mountain chain—who’d killed their friends—was reduced to ash and bone. Ren’s chest heaved.
“We did it.”
She was so relieved that she almost didn’t see the other Mackie brother. He angled straight for Theo, who was turned slightly away, unaware of what was coming. No spells could work quickly enough. Ren met his lunge with one of her own. Her lowered shoulder struck the attacker’s hip. It swung him off course slightly, and the knife that was about to plunge into Theo’s chest bit down into his lower shoulder instead.
He let loose a scream as the surviving Mackie seized his collar, reared back, and plunged the knife toward Theo’s stomach. Ren raised her horseshoe wand.
The Mackie brothers were not twins, but they died exactly the same way. Her spell spun him away from Theo with violent force. Up over the side of the bridge. There was a trailing scream and a distant crash, and then Ren dropped to her knees beside Theo. His skin looked like pale marble. Blood poured from two different wounds. A deep cut just under his right shoulder blade and a gut wound that looked slightly shallower. Her spell had kept Mackie from plunging his knife fully in, but the blood was still flowing far too fast for her to staunch it without magic. Tears streaked down Theo’s dirt-smeared chin. He let out a pathetic moan.
“Ren. Help me. Ren, it hurts so much.”
A string of images played through Ren’s mind. One of the roads she’d imagined as they walked up to the bridge. The darkest possibility. It was second nature for Ren to prepare for every possibility. She knew if Theo died, she could still return home. They had bonded together. She could tell House Brood that the two of them had married in secret. The Broods would push back, but she could claim widowship—and eventually claim his inheritance. No witness would be able to counter her claim, because no one else had survived this journey through the woods. It would be the fastest route toward money and power. Far faster than any other path available to her…
But then Theo moaned again.
Some internal mechanism took control of her. The bond between them—that unfamiliar magic—flexed its newly forming muscles. She felt seized by something far larger than herself. A force that was equal parts pity and mercy and logic. She could not bear the thought of letting Theo die. Her mind shifted back into survival mode.
“Spells. I need to think. What spells?”
Blood was rushing through her splayed fingers. It soaked his entire front. His breathing was shallow and ragged. “Ren. Please. Con… Connery’s binding. I have that one. From anatomy class.”
His words set a missing piece of the puzzle down in front of her. Ideas formed around that thought. “No. Not Connery’s binding. I need to use Ockley’s cleansing spell first. Reduces infections. You… you probably have internal lacerations, so Connery’s binding would just seal you up without healing what’s bleeding inside. I… I need a sensory spell to find the torn tissue, then Hagland’s quickening charm to get it regenerating. And then I’d use Connery’s binding to close it all.…”
Theo’s blood kept coloring the bridge beneath them. “All right. Do that, then. Do that.”
Ren set to work. It was hard to maintain her composure, but she set aside the panic and fear that she could feel pulsing out from Theo—crossing their link—and focused instead on hunting for the right spells in his arsenal. She quietly found each one in the mental files, brought them to the forefront of her thoughts, and began casting. Theo was struggling to keep his eyes focused on her.
“Stay with me,” she hissed. “Stay with me, Theo.”
Ren knew it was not the last time that she would feel the weight of Cora’s absence. Her own anatomical magic lacked nuance and skill. When Cora had used these spells, she had done so with all the touch and grace of an artist. Ren’s attempts were elementary by comparison. Someone who knew the colors but not how to hold the brush or where to paint them. Her cleansing spell flashed out with such force that it briefly shook Theo’s entire body. A large enough jolt that his teeth clacked together. He let loose another miserable groan.
“Sorry… sorry. Just stay with me, Theo.”
She pressed on, knowing it would only get worse. The sensory magic was less invasive, but her first attempt at the spell yielded nothing. Take a deep breath, she coached herself. Try again. The second effort worked. The damaged tissue drew the magic’s attention. Her spell tethered to those locations and she could feel them like invisible threads, stretching from her fingertips to the places inside of him that had been damaged.
“Now Hagland’s quickening…”
Again her spell rushed forward with too much strength. Theo actually cried out, and she had to pin his good shoulder down with a knee to keep him from messing up the magic. He let out a guttural scream. She knew that his tissue was knitting together in quick and painful bursts. An accelerated healing that would feel a lot like someone’s fingers were jammed inside his abdomen.
Theo breathed sharply in, and then his body went still. Too still. Ren saw that he was almost translucent. Halfway to becoming a ghost. “No. Hold on, Theo.”
Her stitching was piss poor, but the wounds closed. The tissue within was starting to regenerate. It took staggering to her feet to realize just how much blood Theo had lost. Seeing all of it slicking the wooden panels of the bridge, a new panic seized Ren. What if she’d been too slow? What if he actually died? Her eyes flicked back to the way candle.
The timing was nearly flawless. She could hear the sound of barking in the distance. Della and her crew were too late. It took grunting effort, but she sat Theo up and dragged him closer to the candle. His eyes blinked open once, only to close again. His lips were turning blue.
“Don’t die, Theo. Please don’t die.”
It took all her effort to prop him up and position herself so she was sitting behind him. She let his head settle into the nest of her shoulder, reaching around to hold his gut wound with gentle pressure. Blood matted the front of his shirt. There was still one piece of magic to get right.
Ren reached into her pocket for the blades of grass. She set one of the blades over the flickering flame of the candle. It started to burn and smoke. The second blade was tucked in the very center of her palm. Ren held the image of Balmerick firmly in her mind.
Theo had stopped moving. Ren tightened her grip protectively around him. There was more barking. Closer and closer. Figures were moving up the road that led to the bridge. Ren sat there patiently until the magic of the waxways snatched them both.