FORTY-SIX

I pounded up the stairs and shoved the door open. When I stepped out onto the roof, I was nearly knocked over by the wind. There weren’t a lot of windows in the palace, so it had been easy to forget how high up I was. But at this altitude, with almost nothing to interrupt it, the wind was an endless shrieking mass of invisible force.

Directly in the center of the roof was a large metal post with one end of a massive rope fastened to the top. I didn’t see a basket, but there was a small shelter with a palace guard dozing inside.

I staggered toward the guard, my coat flapping furiously and the wind howling in the one ear that wasn’t bandaged with the king’s finest silk. The shelter was just big enough for the guard to sit in, with a small store of weapons and a pair of sigil stones that probably controlled the basket. I shook the guard awake, and he gave me a dazed look.

“I need the basket!” I shouted over the wind. “King’s orders.”

“They’ve all been called to Central!” he shouted back. “Maintenance or something.”

I gestured to the stones. “Can’t you bring it back?”

“Sorry, I think they’ve all been taken off the cables for repairs.”

Or because Crowley didn’t want to be interrupted.

I walked over to the rope and examined it. It was about three inches thick and looked like it might be enchanted with some sort of water and earth combination that would make it a little more slick, thereby reducing friction. Pretty smart, really.

My eyes followed the rope’s path. It stretched in a gentle decline, weaving between other building tops down to the roof of a squat building a few blocks away where all the ropes converged. I could see figures huddled around something. It was difficult to say for certain with only the moon and starlight, but I thought the robes might be scarlet.

They were right there. So close I could see them…

I looked up at the rope, then down at my gloved hands. Would the gloves protect my fingers from getting torn to shreds on the way there? It was fairly thin leather, and ordinarily I would have said no. But maybe since the rope was enchanted…

If Crowley had taken down the baskets, that suggested it was nearly time to create the breach. How long would it take me to make my way down to street level, then run the three blocks to that building, keeping in mind that my lung capacity wasn’t great? Probably too long. I’d just have to use the rope and hope for the best.

“Wish me luck!” I shouted to the guard. Then he stared at me, dumbfounded, as I jumped up, grabbed the rope with both hands, and then released my grip enough that I began to slide down.

Once my feet passed the edge of the roof and there was nothing but a lot of empty air beneath me, I immediately regretted my decision and wondered if it might have been the absolute worst idea I’d ever had. But even as those thoughts flitted through my mind, I was coasting along at a good clip, heading toward Central Station. It was too late to turn back now.

Then I felt the leather in my gloves begin to heat up. Not from my sigils like usual, but from the friction on the rope. I tried to slow down by tightening my grip, but I guess I had too much momentum going, because that only made it worse. The heat didn’t bother me, of course, but I was worried about what would come after.

Ahead, the roof of Central Station was coming into better view. There looked to be about ten mages, all with scarlet robes. I had no idea which one was Crowley, but I was sure he wouldn’t be able to resist making himself known.

Then my gloves gave out. As tatters of leather fluttered into the air, it became one long stretch of pain that shot from my palms down to my shoulders. I gritted my teeth and forced myself to hold on, even as the rope tore away my flesh. When it seemed like I couldn’t take the pain any longer, all I had to do was look down at the vast space beneath me and remember that the alternative was death.

By the time I reached the building, I couldn’t feel anything above my wrists, and my sleeves were soaked with blood. As soon as the roof was beneath me, I let go, landing on my side with a grunt, rolling and spitting curses.

My breath was coming out in quick gasps as I staggered to my feet and stared down at the remains of my hands. There were still a few strips of leather, and just about as much skin. It was mostly a mass of bloody pulp with occasional spots of gleaming white bone.

“Fuck…,” I hissed through clenched teeth as a shudder of agony went through me. I dropped to my knees and fought like hell not to pass out.

Through the haze of pain, I realized the sigils were gone.

I wondered if this meant I’d lost my fire, and I didn’t know how to feel about that. I’d spent most of the last fifteen years cursing the power, but right now, surrounded by ten zealot mages of questionable sanity, it was a power I might need to survive.

“Just give it a moment, Rosalind,” said a female voice.

I looked up at the cluster of mages nearby. They stood around a pulsing blue crystal that was about the size of a melon, but they were looking at me. Most of them were somewhere between surprise and fear, but one pale, freckled woman with a long mane of curly blond locks was giving me a smirk that I knew all too well.

“Crowley.” It came out of my throat like a croak.

This person had fucked up my life once, and then because that was apparently not enough, had come back from the dead to fuck it up again. Fire or no fire, I would get him somehow.

Then I felt a strange, tingling surge in my hands. I looked down and saw that even without the skin, the sigils were still there, pulsing a sullen orange. Then, incredibly, the skin began to fill in around them, spreading outward. Within seconds, my hands were completely healed, except of course for the ugly sigil brands.

“I hope you didn’t think it would be that easy to get rid of the seals,” said Crowley with the lips and voice of an angelic beauty. “What kind of prison would it be if you could just strip off the lock along with your skin? From your viewpoint, the sigils are inverted, like a mirror. They’re not there to cast magic outward after all, but inward. So what you see is the back side of the sigil, and as you well know, destroying the back of a sigil doesn’t have any permanent effect if it’s well made. And believe me, it is.” She gave me a sheepish look. “Minus the leaks, obviously.”

“Well that’s bad news for you, pal.” I said as I let the fire rise from my hands.

The other mages flinched back, but Crowley looked genuinely surprised.

“Really? No desire to know who or what you really are? You would pass up the chance to learn it directly from the person who made you this way? It might change your mind entirely.”

She had me there. By that point, I was really tired of people talking about me like they knew me better than I knew myself. And if I killed Crowley now, he/she would probably be off to some new body, and I’d be none the wiser. I supposed it wouldn’t hurt to hear what she thought was so astonishing that I’d let this entire city collapse.

“Fine, I’ll listen. But if I think for a moment you’re stalling for time so your doomsday rock can go off, you’re done. So make it fast.”

“I’ll try to be as succinct as possible.” Crowley took a deep breath. “It’s difficult for someone trapped in the material realm to conceive of this, but the elder spirits of the astral plane have… something akin to a culture and government, which have developed over countless millennia. For a long time, they had little interest in the affairs of the material realm or the fate of younger spirits foolish enough to get caught in mage bindings. But then roughly sixteen years ago, one of their own broke some law. I never learned which one, but it must have been pretty bad, because they decided that the punishment for breaking the law was to confine the criminal to a mortal form for the span of a life.”

“And this Saraph, knight of flames, everyone has been talking about was the criminal.”

“Precisely.” She smiled and gazed up at the night sky for a moment. “I was dabbling in some of the more… esoteric aspects of theotic magecraft at the time, and it got the attention of the elder spirits. They approached me with a proposition. If I prepared the vessel for their lawbreaker—the prison, if you will—to their specifications, they would teach me how to retain my identity after death, in essence allowing me to forgo thousands of years of suffering that most people had to endure before they matured into an elder spirit.”

“Let me guess,” I said. “I was the vessel.”

“Well, technically Rosalind Featherstone is the vessel,” she said. “You, Saraph, are the lawbreaker.”

“Right, you all think I’m the elder spirit. I got that part. Except I have no memory of being an elder spirit, and plenty of memories being a regular girl growing up in Drusiel.”

“Where does memory live, Saraph? In the mind, not the soul. That’s why people usually forget the details of their life when they die. As part of your punishment, I was taught how to surpress your previous memories as an elder spirit. With nothing else to go on, you mistook the memories of your host, Rosalind Featherstone, as your own.”

“If what you’re saying is true, and I’m really this elder spirit Saraph, all I have to do is kill myself, and I’ll be free to go do whatever elder spirits do when they aren’t being a pain in my ass.”

She nodded, smiling.

“On the other hand, if I kill myself, and you’ve been feeding me some elaborate lie—which you have done in the past—I’ll just be dead.”

“Yes, it is a conundrum,” agreed Crowley. “The punishment was constructed so that if you ever discovered your true nature, you’d still be left doubting, unsure of who or what you truly are. A pretty neat trap, I must confess. I can only imagine what terrible deed you committed to warrant such an exotic punishment.”

I didn’t know whether I believed Crowley or not. It certainly lined up with what Gomeh and Berith had said, but that didn’t prove anything except they all believed the same thing. Even if I accepted the whole prison idea, who were they to say for certain that Saraph was the dominant consciousness, rather than Rosalind? A pretty neat trap indeed. But it sure as hell wasn’t dissuading me from burning that grin right off his fucking face all over again.

“Well, I’ll have to wallow in angst over that during my spare time.” I lit my hands up again. “First, I better get rid of that pulsing blue thing. According to Berith, if you’re right about me being an imprisoned elder spirit, not only will it bring this whole city crashing down, it could wipe me from existence.”

“That’s why Lysander and I wanted to keep you in the asterite cave,” said Crowley. “There you would be shielded from its effects.”

The fire died in my hands. “Wait… Lysander believed all that knight-of-flames shit?”

“Why else do you think he was working with me?” asked Crowley. “The man completely loathed me. The deal was that we would keep both you and Rosalind Featherstone safe, and then once the rift was opened, I would move you to a new host, and he would get his friend back.”

“You’re saying that this whole time, Lysander thought he was rescuing Rosalind Featherstone?”

“From you,” said Crowley.

“Fuck…” It was at once sweetly noble and infuriatingly presumptuous. Exactly the sort of thing Lysander would do if he didn’t have me around to smack some sense into him.

“He didn’t blame you, of course,” Crowley added quickly. “He knew you were a victim as well, and I don’t think he held any animosity toward you at all. But the idea that Rosalind is still somewhere inside you, unable to come out, haunts him terribly.”

“An idea you put in his head.”

“I suggested it, but frankly, the person he grew up with changed so radically after Gemory Chapel that he found it quite credible that you were a completely different person.”

“Reason I changed so much is because you fucked me up so much!” I was shouting now. I’d lost my cool, and I didn’t give a damn. “I was a stupid, eager, fifteen-year-old girl, and you took advantage of me!”

Crowley looked irritated. “Well actually, I did those things to Rosalind Featherstone, not you.”

“Holy fuck, that’s it. I am going to have you begging for death.” I lunged forward, grabbed her collar with one hand, and yanked her close.

The other mages stepped forward, so I lit my free hand up and held it out toward them. “You want some of this? Really?”

They froze in place.

“You’re all idiots for following this piece of garbage,” I told them. “Crowley is using you just like he used me. The moment he doesn’t—”

A pulse shot through me like a lightning bolt. Suddenly I was fighting just to stay on my feet.

“What…,” I gasped, “was that…”

“The asterite,” Crowley said as she freed herself from my weakened grip. “It must be nearly ready. Listen, you don’t have much time, but that’s okay because I think I’ve figured out a way to protect you from its effects.”

“Or… how about I just… destroy it.”

I staggered toward the glowing blue crystal, but another pulse surged through me. This time it was so strong that it brought me to my knees.

“The closer you get to it, the worse it will be for you.” Crowley hurried over and tried to help me up.

“Get away from me!” I shoved her back and tried to stand, but my body felt like it was made of lead, and I couldn’t stay upright. The stone was only five feet away, but every movement was like pushing against a wall of sand.

“Saraph, listen to me! I really do have a plan to save you! It will be risky without the cave’s shielding, but when the asterite bridges the material and astral planes, there is a short window where everything will be in flux, and I should be able to transfer you to another host. You still won’t be free, exactly, but you’ll be able to recover your memories and get a fresh start, just like me!”

“And all I have to do… is let all these people… die, huh?”

I was nearly to my feet, but then another pulse hit, and I went back down.

“We’re running out of time, Saraph.” Crowley grabbed one of his mages—a tall, muscular man with the tan skin of a Lapisian. “How about this one?”

“Wh-what?” asked the mage, looking shocked.

Crowley ignored him. “I changed my sex, so I thought it might be fun if you did too. You know, that way it would really feel like we were starting over.”

It took me a moment to understand where she was going with this. “Start over? You and me? Is that… what this has all been about for you?”

She looked thrilled that I was getting it now. “Yes! Everything I’ve done for the last fifteen years has been to figure out a way to reunite us! We are perfect for each other. Truly a match of heart, talent, and intellect! And now we can be together forever!”

“But I thought… you said… I’m not Rosalind anymore. If that’s true… you don’t even know me.”

The pulse tore through me again, and I hadn’t even gotten halfway to my feet that time. My arms gave out, and I nearly banged my forehead on the grimy rooftop.

“You couldn’t be more wrong!” said Crowley. “I know you, Saraph, knight of flames! During the final sequence of the imprisonment ritual, as you were drawn into the material plane by my hand, and I was leaving it by your hand, our souls touched.” She smiled down at me, her eyes wide. “In that moment, I knew we were destined to be together. I have been watching you ever since, racking my brains on how I could rescue you from the prison I myself had made.”

It was all I could do to push myself back up on my hands and knees. The pulses were coming more steadily now, like the beat of a drum, and my heart kept in sync with it. As the pulse quickened, so did my heart. My vision tunneled to the point where all I could see was the glowing blue stone.

“Such… a moving story…,” I wheezed. “I… understand now…. Crowley, come closer.”

“Y-yes? Really?” She looked thrilled by my invitation and knelt down next to me. “What is it, Saraph?”

“Take off… my coat.”

She looked confused. “Your coat? Why?”

“Please…”

“O-okay, Saraph. If that will make you more comfortable. Although then we really should prepare the transfer. The time is nearly upon us.”

The pulse from the stone was even faster now, and my heart felt like it might tear right out of my chest. When Crowley pulled off my coat, the night air chilled my sweat-drenched tunic, giving me at least a moment of relief.

“Now…” My voice barely carried above the howling wind. “Hold it up…”

She gave me a baffled look as she held the coat up in front of her. “L-like this? I don’t understand—”

I summoned every last ounce of strength I had left and threw myself at her. I knocked her backward and covered her upper body and head with the coat before falling on top of her. Thankfully, Crowley’s new host was not strong, so I was able to pin her down with my weight alone.

“It’s really simple,” I said to her covered face. “Even if you’re right, and the terrible things you did were to someone else and not me. Even then, you still did them, and I still remember them as if you had done them to me. And I have suffered those memories for the last fifteen fucking years. So there is no starting over for you and me.”

The stone and my heart were like a hammer against the inside of my ribs now. Every breath hurt. But it would not end like this. I would not end like this. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the other mages rushing toward us, fools and zealots to the end, I guess. It didn’t matter. They had all helped bring about this moment. Let them reap the consequences too.

I took one long, slow, painful breath, remembering everyone who had suffered because of the writhing, panicked person beneath me. Not just me. Lysander, thinking that he was trying and failing to save his childhood friend. Edmund, his wife, and Quince. They had all suffered. That poor idiot girl back at Ariel House, and the gardener she’d murdered at the behest of a monster. All the gullible mages of his cult that he used and then killed when he was finished with them. I felt rage for all of them. It burned inside me. And I let the fire out.

All of it.

It came not just out of my hands, but my eyes, my mouth, maybe even out of my pores, for all I knew. I was wreathed in fire, shielded from the stone’s power by my own.

I stood up and walked over to it, leaving waves of fire in my wake that spread across the rooftop, consuming anyone in their path. I grasped the blue, glowing stone in my hands and held it up. I could feel it vibrate beneath my grip, unaffected by the flames.

I lifted it up over my head. Then I just let it go.

It smashed against the rooftop into shards that flickered fitfully with blue for a moment before turning to a dull gray. It was finished.

But I wasn’t.

I felt strange. Disconnected. When I looked around me, the whole world seemed leached of color, like it was made of parchment and sketched out in charcoal. It looked flimsy and unreal. A shabby excuse for existence. And I could be the flame that consumed it all.

I had just prevented the deaths of thousands by potentially securing the enslavement of hundreds of thousands. What kind of choice was that? What kind of world was this? I felt the urge to burn everything down. To incinerate every last fucking thing in this fucked-up world. I didn’t know if I could, but I stretched out my fire-encased arms and thought I might give it a try. None of it was worth a damn anyway….

Then somehow, miraculously and improbably, I thought of my mother. I thought of her tired beauty, of her refusing to give me a discount on a goddamn hat.

And I laughed, a spurt of fire jetting from my mouth.

Then I thought of my father, what was left of him, saying Somzing ees not right! And I thought of Cordelia and her well-meaning meddling advice. I thought of Chester and his droopy mustache telling me what my problem was. I thought of Lord Edmund with his gorgeous wife and his lover Quince. I thought of Warrioress Titania and her elderly houseboy. None of this was their fault. None of them deserved to be consumed by my hand. Hell, even if Orlando decided to start fucking nubile young princesses, he didn’t deserve it. Maybe not even Lysander, who, after all, thought he’d been trying to save an old friend. No matter how delicious the fiery rage felt, and no matter how justified it was, for all their sakes, and maybe even for my own, I could not give in to it. I would have to find another way to fix things. A better way.

I took a slow, steady breath, just like I’d been taught by sweet Olivia, to whom I should have been nicer.

And I calmed. The fuck. Down.

Once my fire subsided, I looked around. The asterite shards and the other mages were all gone, turned to ash and swept clean by the wind. The only thing left was the whimpering, huddled form of Crowley beneath my coat.

Also, I was hairless and completely naked. Not even my boots had survived.

“Shit,” I muttered.

I yanked the coat off Crowley and put it on. She was mostly uninjured, except for her legs, which had apparently not been completely covered by the coat. Now they ended as stumps at the knee. She looked up at me with wide, traumatized eyes, and I smiled back at her.

“Don’t worry, Crowley. I’ve got a nice cozy rat waiting for you back at the palace. Talk about a fresh start, am I right?”

I gazed out at the mess of a city I had just saved. The sky was beginning to change to rosy pink. It was nearly morning.

Then, on the next rooftop over, I saw a tall, broad-shouldered man standing there, watching me. He was too far away to make out any details, but when you’ve known someone your whole life, you recognize even their smallest movements.

Lysander watched me for a few moments, then turned and limped to the door that led back down into the building.