The morning dawned dark, an odd hum rattling in my teeth. Alistair was curled up in a ball, his back pressed into me, and I eased out from under the blanket. He grumbled and burrowed deeper under the blankets. My noblewright, its presence today an insistent thrum, created five deep lines of blue across the back of my hand. I touched one, and they faded.
I’d asked my noblewright to create a sign when Julian made his move, and this must have been it.
“Alistair!” I shook him awake.
He grabbed my arm painfully tight, opened his bloodshot eyes, and let go. “Lorena? What—”
“Julian escaped and is trying to open the Door,” I said and threw back the blankets atop him. “Come on.”
I stumbled out of bed, yanking the curtain aside. I crawled out after him. My crinkled clothes were twisted and confining.
Alistair knotted his hair back with a leather tie. He grabbed a dagger from his bedside. “How do you—”
“Trust me!” I pulled on the red glasses he’d given me and tossed him his. “Come on.”
Create my thoughts in Hana’s ears, I prayed. Take my panic, please, but leave the fear.
“It’s time, Hana. Don’t let any of the peers know. Have the noblewrought send word to the others.”
It was only right to be afraid of this.
We raced down to the Door. The stairs were dim and slick with condensation, our feet slipping over the stones. Alistair burst through the tunnel before me and ran straight for the Door. I sprinted to the cells. Julian’s was empty, the hinges of the door removed. Will, free, was in the middle of the hall. The rest of the surviving councilors were gone.
“Ah,” he said, running a shaking hand through his hair. “Of course you know.”
“Let me guess,” I said, squaring myself between him and the exit. “You’re all running free to alert your conspirators so you can make a last-ditch effort to save only yourselves?”
“You are eerily informed,” Julian’s father muttered.
“And you’re letting Julian open the Door?” I asked. “Or are you going down together in some sort of self-righteous glory?”
“Julian,” said Will slowly, “knows what needs to be done, and we imagine the Vile are not opposed to making a deal with us.”
They had no idea what sacrifice meant and would never offer enough.
“It hardly matters,” Will said. “You are also too late. We got word out already. Our people in Mori will be safe within the hour, and messengers will spread from here.”
“So people, like the soldiers carrying those messages, will know you opened the Door?” I smiled, mouth stretching painfully, and his eyes widened in fear. “Most of Cynlira will know that the council that was meant to represent them opened the Door and let the Vile in, content to retreat to havens while people suffered?”
“What does it matter if they know?” he asked and hesitated. “How will they know of the safe havens?”
“Because they were the Crown’s property—my property—the moment you were arrested, and I’ve been moving folks into them since your trial.”
“What have you done?”
“The Door isn’t really a Door,” I said, stepping toward him. “It’s more like a veil. The Vile won’t spill from it. The veil over our world will be lifted, and suddenly, we will be able to see them and they will be able to see us. They’ll appear in Mori and Drail and Felhollow at the same time, and eventually, everyone will know this was your fault. You spread the word. You’re the villains this time around.”
He laughed, head in his hands, and said, “You know we only kept you around because Old Ivy wanted a healer for Felhollow? She should’ve let me gift you to the Crown. Least the gold we’d have gotten would’ve done some good.”
My wrights, so wrong, so warm, so weighted on my back, curled around my shoulders like the family I didn’t have.
“I’m tired of hearing your voice,” I said, “and all the unsurprising terrible things you say.”
His words. Feast.
My vilewright unfurled from me, peeling from my skin, and Will gagged.
“It’s your arrogance that got you stopped. Know that.”
He mumbled and blood poured from his mouth. My vilewright tittered, its laughter settling over me like searing noonday sun. I grabbed Will’s arm and dragged him to the cave with the Door.
Alistair stood in the entrance. He glanced back, his red gaze falling to Will.
“Ignore him. He’ll be dead soon enough,” I said. “Julian can’t know that the Vile will appear all over Cynlira when he opens the Door. He needs to think that the councilors are still safe and that opening the Door will fulfill their plan.”
“If he opens it, you mean?” Alistair asked.
Will tried to pull away, and Alistair laid the dagger against his neck.
“No,” I said and stepped into the cave. “I don’t.”
Julian, white skin streaked red, stood at the cusp of the Door’s territory where blood and bone dust stained the dirt. Dangling in his hands were my penknife and a small blade carved from the rock shards of his cell. He stared at the Door, head cocked slightly.
“Hello, Lore,” he said softly, with such tenderness and familiarity it made my skin burn. He didn’t know me. He didn’t have a right to that name. “I hoped you would come.”
Hold Will. My blood.
My noblewright created two loops of flowing red about his hands, holding him to the ground. The liquid shifted and hardened to iron. I leaned over Will’s shoulders and turned his head to the Door.
It was only fair he witness what he had wanted for so long.
“So,” I said, stepping into the cavern’s mouth. “You want this to be your legacy?”
“I’m comfortable with dying,” Julian said, back still to me. “Will and I got the word out, so our people will be safe. Cynlira was dying anyway. At least this way, some of us live and can rebuild eventually, and they’ll know it was because of my father and me.”
He glanced over his shoulder, green eyes beacons above the half-moons of his exhaustion. Behind him, the Door opened an inch. My mother’s amber eyes glowed in the crack. Her hand, burned and weeping, scratched at the jamb. Will shrieked. Julian didn’t notice at all.
“And I think the Vile will be happy to leave the two of us alone when I offer them you and that boy.” Julian’s gaze fell on Alistair. “And you know, if I die today, I’m fairly all right so long as I take you with me.”
“Lorena,” said what might have been a voice if not for the odd creaking between the words. Doors opening. Teeth clenching too tight. “Darling, please. Let me out.”
“Shut up,” I said, stepping toward it. “You’re not—”
Pain lanced through my throat. Alistair screamed. Footsteps thundered toward me, then stopped. An arm hooked around my waist, Julian’s arm, and hoisted me up. I grasped my neck. My fingers slipped through the long cut across my throat. Blood dripped between my hands. It abandoned me with each heartbeat. Faster. Faster.
Please, I prayed, but I didn’t know the parts of the throat like healers did. They were never part of funeral rites. My noblewright whined, high and piercing, and Alistair screamed again.
I fell. Julian wiped my penknife on his shirt, blood smearing across his chest. I gagged, trying to think of a way to heal the wound, to close the hole, but nothing came. Spots crowded my vision. Julian pushed me toward the Door.
“Goodbye, Lore.”
Alistair tackled him. They rolled in the dirt, weapons forgotten. Alistair punched Julian in the face, and Julian rammed a knee in Alistair’s stomach, doubling him over. Julian shoved Alistair aside and flailed out with the knife. It cut Alistair’s cheek. He hissed.
Behind them, Will struggled against his bonds. I crawled toward him.
Re-create my damaged flesh.
My noblewright growled and fought, the vagueness tearing it in two.
Use Will’s throat.
Will Chase gasped and choked, and pain gnawed at the edges of my wound. My splintered bones snapped into place, and Will collapsed over his knees. Veins and muscle healed so fast it hurt. I clawed at my throat. I vomited blood and breathed.
“Lorena?” Alistair asked. “What is your plan?”
He had Julian pinned to the ground, one knee on his chest and his knife to Julian’s throat. His gaze dropped to my throat. He smiled.
Julian jammed his knife deep into Alistair’s chest. Alistair looked down, glasses slipping from his face. He touched the knife protruding from the scars where his binding once was, and Julian shoved him off. Alistair crumpled, his vilewright writhing in the red glare of my glasses.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, “but this is my plan.”
Alistair’s head lolled to me, eyes wide, and he laughed. Blood speckled his tongue. The words bubbled and popped in his throat. “I know, but how are you getting out of here?”
I brought my bloody hand to my face and drew my fingers down it. Alistair choked and shook his head. I traced a red line over my mouth.
Then, slowly, he dipped his hand into the wound of his body and smeared Death’s sigil across his face. A hand reaching from an open grave. An invitation. An understanding.
I was a graveyard so Cynlira wouldn’t be.
“Look at you. Different scar, same crown.” Julian shook his head, tears washing the blood from his face, and brandished his knife at me. His eyes never left Will’s corpse. “You really think those folks up there are worth this?”
Cynlira was broken because it had been built on coins and costs, and we’d one last price to pay.
“You child,” I said. “Why is everything about worth with you? People aren’t worth saving because they’re worth something. They’re worth it because they’re people!”
“It’s not my fault they’re not prepared!” He froze, hand fisted at his side. “You’re the one who changed. We made a deal with you, and you went back on it!”
“Your father was a councilor. He was supposed to protect Cynlira. They all were, and they didn’t. If any deal was broken, it was the one they made with the people they represented.”
“You’re punishing people for succeeding,” he said and took another step back. Three steps to the Door. “What are you going to do? Stop me, Lore? Kill me?”
I opened my mouth to answer—truthfully because I had not left—and a breathy laugh stopped me. Julian and I turned to the Door. It began to open.
“You can have them!” Julian gestured to me. “I’ll open you if you take them and let me leave.”
“That’s not how it works. A life isn’t equal to just any life. It’s the intention. You have to make the sacrifice matter.”
The Door rattled. Whispers leaked through the cracks.
All the lives we’ve taken—the councilors and the courtiers, Alistair and Julian—and the peers who will die soon enough. Take them. Use them. Destroy the Vile’s ability to deny my request.
“You never understood self-sacrifice,” I said and touched the Door. “Let me teach you.”
Take me, and create a contract between the Vile and all of Cynlira.
“Do you really think that fragment of a Noble can bind us?” asked the Door in my mother’s voice.
Julian stumbled back, whimpering.
“No,” I said, “but I think you’ll want to take my deal, because you may be immortal, but we know what to do with immortal overlords these days.”
Whispers built up in the dark behind it. Voices howling, overlapping one another as if scrambling to be heard, until finally a sound like a boot crushing a beetle echoed through the cave. The Door opened another sliver.
“You can have the peerage. You can have all of them except the children, and the wrought won’t try to stop you.” My voice wavered. “But you can only have them if you agree to leave the rest of Cynlira’s people alone for a decade. No deaths. No tricks. No Vile can kill a mortal not part of the peerage. If you disagree, there are hundreds of wrought unbound and ready to fight. They can make your newfound freedom very uncomfortable.”
“Deal,” it said in a dozen voices. “Done.”
And I opened the Door.