Everything burned. Everything. He’d swallowed fire and it dug at his heart like a sharpened spoon.
“Poor broken blackbird.”
The voice, musical and feminine, called to him.
Raef could not feel his hand, only the fire—the cut—the place where it had been.
“Not a bird,” he said, his voice dry and creaking, hoarse from disuse. “No wings.”
“Look again,” she said.
He opened his eyes. He lay naked on a metal floor, arms straight at his sides. Metal shavings scraped his back.
Raef tried to rise, but his body felt like stone.
“Who are you?” he asked.
She stepped into view.
She wore a cloak of swirling shadow. It floated around her, a nimbus of darkness that reminded him of the moonless sea. Her eyes were black.
“Hush,” she cooed. “I’ll make it better. I will help you fly.”
She leaned closer, an inkwell and pen cradled in her hands.
“What are you doing?” he asked. “What is that?”
He tried to squirm, to thrash, but could not move.
“This is water from the Ebon Sea.”
She dipped her pen into the ink and reached for his severed arm. “You had a little before. It’s time for more, every drop for every feather.”
Raef looked where he did not want to, to the swollen, misshapen place where his hand had been.
“Don’t touch it,” he said. Tears spilled off his face, dripped into his ears. He couldn’t shirk or roll away. “Please.”
The pen pricked his flesh. The ink oozed and flickered like a thing alive, like the mark. Its touch stole the unbridled heat that had rolled through him. It chilled worse than any ice, any winter.
Raef could only sob as she used his skin for parchment. It went on forever. She drew along his arm and over his heart. Then she went lower, circling his belly in thick, spiraling lines.
“Why are you doing this?” he ground out when she paused.
“To make it better,” she said, lifting Raef’s leg to encircle his ankle in the freezing ink. She left no part of him unmarked. Done with his body, she knelt to scratch across the floor, drawing him a set of wide, feathered wings.
“I don’t understand,” Raef said through chattering teeth.
“No one placed the mark upon you. Phoebe didn’t give it to you. It has always been a part of you. The Ebon Sea has always been part of you.”
“You’re not real. You can’t be. I’m imagining you.”
“Oh, I’m real enough. I’m here.”
Raef tried to focus on her, but her features flowed like water. He did not know her.
Down in his gut, in the break in his heart, he knew her name but could not say it.
Sati. This was his mother, the demoness who’d birthed him.
“Where am I?” he asked.
He could not see much. The place was all metal, welded together. A flickering darkness gathered around them, fingers of black flame the shadowsight could not penetrate.
A cold sweat broke across his naked skin.
“This is Helios’s Forge, where he crafted the weapons of the Gods’ War. I brought you here to mend you, Hraefn. Then you can open the Moon’s Door for me.”
“They smashed it,” he said. “They took the key. They took—”
He looked to the end of his arm. She’d ringed it in black whorls. The cold of the ink had dulled the fire.
“The key was never the mark, never just your wrist,” she said. Reaching, she cradled his arm in her hands. “You have always had everything you need. You’ve always been everything you need.”
“Why?” he asked, failing to hold back the tears. “Why show yourself to me now?”
“Because time grows short. The day approaches, the one day when Hyperion doesn’t guard the way.”
“The Day of the Black Sun.”
She nodded and gently added, “And who else am I to haunt? Who is here for me?”
“I met another,” he said. “On Thiva. I killed her.”
“Haerwen,” she said, shaking her head. “There was always too much madness in that one. Do you feel better now?”
“I feel cold,” he said. “I still can’t move.”
“You will, when you awake.”
“This doesn’t feel like a dream.”
“It is and it is not.” She shrugged her slight shoulders. “This is twilight.”
“Why?” he asked. “Why did you have me?”
“I’ve already told you.” She paused and cocked her head as if listening to someone he couldn’t hear. “But I can tell you a little more, since it’s just the two of us. I serve he who would return.”
“Who is he?” Raef asked.
“Only the Moon’s Door matters, child. Open it. Let your goddess back into the sky. The Grief will recede, the tides will return, and you will save the world.”
“And your master will return.”
Her mouth bent, but her head dipped with a demure nod he felt certain she did not mean.
“Yes.”
“The Hierarch was right, wasn’t he?” Raef asked.
Even with all of the terrible things Logrum had done, murdering Phoebe’s priests, sending Kinos to trap Raef. Despite all of it, he’d been right: the demons would come back too.
“Who is he?” Raef asked. “Who do you serve?”
“It doesn’t matter. Awaken, find the Moon’s Door, and live.”
The paralysis ended without warning. Cold metal remained beneath him, but he was no longer naked.
He was inside the box.
Raef squeezed his eyes shut, forced himself to calm and see if the cold would take him back into sleep. It did not. He tried banging on the lid with his remaining hand, but with so little room to maneuver, he could only knock. It wasn’t going to open this way.
“No,” he moaned.
His other arm ended in a cauterized stump. They’d taken the mark. Sati’s drawings were gone.
His chest tightened. He gulped but found far less air than he needed. It was the crypt again, the knight—Zale—choking him. Blackness crept in at the edge of his vision.
She’d said he had everything he needed. With nothing else to trust in, Raef forced his body to lie still. He searched inside himself, down through the wide, wide break in his heart.
The fire of the Hierarch’s cut burned, seared him inside and out, but he reached past it.
The shattered glass feeling was worse, so much worse. Just touching the place where he’d come to care for Kinos, all he’d done—the betrayal—it felt like dropping into a cauldron of molten glass. He wanted to flee from it, to not feel it, but it had happened. It had.
He had to reach past it or he would not survive.
The pain cooled when Raef found the place inside him where the shadowknife lived. It slept, pulsing, black and blue, like a dark star.
The blade emerged from Raef’s truncated wrist. With it came a ghostly hand. It did not feel like flesh, but he could grip the knife.
Tears welled, but he had too little time.
The blackness was closing in. His lungs ached as if he’d dove to the bottom of the sea.
With another labored breath, Raef twisted, trying to make enough room to push the knife into the center of the lid. That’s where he’d hit the lock before.
He willed the knife to solidify, turned the hand. Nothing happened. He coughed, rasping. He sucked in breaths, but found no air. Eyes wide, teeth clenched, he fished around inside the metal until the knife caught on something.
The box hummed and rattled. It took too long. He’d pass out. He’d die.
The lid unlatched.
Raef pushed it open and gulped down air. Feeling trickled back into his limbs. Climbing out, he stumbled free and landed on his back.
Though he could flex the fingers, his new hand had no feeling, no sensation. Raef could sense the shadowknife inside him, waiting to be called. Knowing he had not lost it filled him with such relief that he collapsed. He leaned against the box, racked by sobs born of pain and relief.