31

THE WYRM,
COILING

The first time I ever see the beautiful seaside country of Avel, it’s in dreams. And covered in blood.

Blood drips from my fingers like slick, gleaming syrup—half of my fingers made of wood. Varia. I’m in her body again, watching through her eyes and feeling what she does. A port town in front of us on fire, the proud redwood of Avellish buildings charring quickly to black. Valkerax circle above, ten of them flying in rainbow halos—no, twenty. Thirty. Fifty, at least, catching high air above the port town like a lazy tornado of untold death. Their tails fly out behind them, the white banners of victory giving us only a fraction of satisfaction before the clenching pain of the maddening song returns.

DESTROY DESTROY DESTROY DESTROY DESTROY DESTROY DESTROY DESTROY DESTROY DESTROY DESTROY—

I focus on it, focus on how it’s not my hunger, not my song, and pull myself out of Varia’s body. Floaty, and visible to her now. She can see me and I can see her, but neither of us is happy to. Her body is drenched in blood—the rags of her dress so far gone, barely covering her at all, her skin caked in blood and dirt and rubbery, fleshy patches that I know aren’t hers. Parts. Parts of people. Her cheeks are sallow, gaunt, her wrists thin and her collarbone stark. She looks famished—starving, her ribs showing through in her shreds of dress. But her face is the worst of all, her expression hollowed out, empty of anything resembling thought or emotion. Like a doll. No—emptier than even a doll. A glass shell, transparent and thin. It hurts just to look at.

Varia, I think to her.

She doesn’t blink, her deep black eyes staring at the same space over my shoulder, the flames of the Avellish port burning gold in her irises. I try to get closer to her, even if the idea scares me more than any nightmare—if she touches me, she could turn me to her side. I felt it last time, and I can feel it now. She’s more Bone Tree than mortal. I can feel it ringing in the air. Powerful. So powerful that as a fire-cracked beam falls from a nearby house and onto her, she barely twitches one finger before it instantly explodes into a fine cloud of ember splinters.

“Varia,” I say softly. “It’s me. Zera.”

Her eyes move only at the last word, flickering over to look at me. All my insides turn to ice at her gaze—there’s nothing. None of Varia behind those eyes. No mirth, no pride, no grace, no determination, no cruelty. Just…nothing.

“Th-They’re worried about you,” I stammer. “Everyone. Fione most of all.”

Another flicker of her eyes, this time inward. She still recognizes names. That’s good—she’s not too far gone. I can still bring her back. But first, I have to goad the thing inside her. Draw it out like a poison.

My ghostly, half-dream gaze travels down to her neck, the Bone Tree choker made of valkerax fangs seemingly tighter in her skin, digging points into her flesh that drip blood. Her own blood, for once.

It really is eating her.

“I heard”—I try a smile—“you’re going to name your kid after me, aren’t you?”

Varia blinks slowly but betrays nothing.

“But what if it’s a boy?” I hum softly. “Hmm. Zeran might work. With an N. Fione might hate that one, though—you’ll have to confer with her.”

Varia’s face twitches as if something is fighting inside her, thrashing with no escape, so deep down, it can only ripple her surface. She’s still in there. Her love for Fione, her hopes for the future—she still has hope. Hope that I’ll save her. That this will end, and that she’ll live to see another world made with her love at her side. An impossible wish, she must think.

But nothing’s impossible at the end of the world.

It’s time to twist the dagger in the wound.

“I’ve decided I’m not going to save you anymore.” I inhale. “I’m not going to put you back together.”

Her head tilts slowly, eerily. I try desperately to keep my dream-voice even. Honest-sounding. Luring out the Bone Tree, one root at a time.

“We’re going to split you again.”

“No.” Her voice rasps out instantly, but it’s not hers. It’s deeper, darker. Far older than she. Than me. Than anyone.

“Yes.” I lift my shaking chin. “It’s the only way to stop you. I tried to help you, but you killed too many people. You can’t be allowed to keep hurting others like this. You deserve to be punish—”

“YOU,” the Bone Tree thunders at me, Varia’s canines flashing in her rotting gums. “YOU. DESERVE. TO BE PUNISHED.”

The valkerax circling in the smoke above suddenly roar in tandem, an earsplitting symphony conducted on high. A valkerax lunges out from the sea, striking its long body across the beach and to Varia’s feet in an instant, all its thousands of teeth bared at me and its six white eyes snarled up into one another. Looking right at me. Dream-me. But I have no doubt if it tried to eat me, it would succeed, because I’m more than just a dream. I can speak, think, feel. I’m connected to Varia. We all are.

we are her fingers. we are her swords.

I fight against my own hunger as it turns traitor for her. It belonged to her once. She was my witch at one time, and the hunger remembers that, reaching out for her furious face with my hand, my dream-body leaning toward her like a plant leans for the sun—

Black hair, black eyes, long lashes, proud nose. Even in anger, even in hunger, even in ancient thrall to a Tree, she looks so much like Lucien.

Lucien.

I wrench my body back, pinning my hand to my side with my other arm.

“I’m going to split you apart again and again!” I thunder. “I’ll split you until you’re nothing, insignificant, too small to even see! Until you can’t hurt Varia again! Until you can’t hurt anyone ever again, you hear me?”

She turns away, putting her half-wood hand gently on the valkerax’s side. Shaking.

“YOU HURT US FIRST.”

She whirls. What’s left of Princess Varia d’Malvane’s face contorts into a wrinkled, skull-hollow horror, her black eyes gleaming, blood pouring from beneath the tines of her collar in frenzied rhythm with her furious heartbeat.

“BUT WE WILL HURT YOU LAST.”

Her hand snaps out faster than I can move my torpor dream-body, fingers digging deep and instant into my chest, as if I’m made of cotton. Fire. Fire everywhere, in my flesh, in my veins—the otherworldly fury burning out of her eyes and into me as she speaks with a triumphant rasp.

“THERE YOU ARE.”

The pain is so great, it wrenches me out of the dream gasping for air. And unlike most dreams, it follows. Lingers. The motion of the jolt up from Lucien’s lap sears across my chest—five small holes buried in the flesh there, and about the exact size of fingertips.

“Heart, I’m here,” Lucien murmurs comfortingly, pulling me close and putting his hand over the wounds. I can feel his magic pouring into me like molten salve, numbing and easing all at once. He wasn’t lying—magic here is easy and strong, like the finest well-decanted alcohol instead of the usual water.

“What happened?” Fione asks, brows knit as she hovers over me. “Did you see her?”

“She’s…she’s on her way,” I gasp between breaths. “And she’s not happy.”

“Good.” Malachite narrows his eyes at the darkness all around us. “They get sloppy when they aren’t happy.”

“You included,” Lysulli cuts in. Malachite opens his mouth to retort but Lucien cuts him off with just a look, holding my hand firmly in his.

“Everyone should spread out and take positions,” the prince says. “I’ll head into the cave and wait for Varia to approach.”

“We have to let her near the Tree,” Yorl muses. “But not so many valkerax near that we’re overwhelmed. A tricky thing.”

“How will you know when she’s close enough?” I ask Lucien, my breathing finally evening out as the pain recedes and the fingertip wounds close.

“It’s a feeling.” He smiles wryly at me.

“This battlefield will be unpredictable.” Lysulli frowns, pale lips thin. “So stay flexible. The valkerax could do any number of strange maneuvers under a singular commander.”

“The Tree of Souls might seem tame now,” Yorl agrees. “But it’s very likely to react to Varia’s presence.”

“Hopefully to our benefit.” Fione perches on a boulder, crossbow deadly at her side.

“Nothing to do, then”—Lucien looks to me—“but wait. Would you care to join me?”

He motions to the First Root in the little cave, and I nod, following him into the low hole. This dim little crevice…our last haven. The two of us, sitting aside the gently bleeding First Root, hands in each other’s hair, around each other’s waists. Our last moments.

Our first moments.

I make sure to think it, but Lucien’s skinreading doesn’t seem to notice the slip. Or if he does, he doesn’t say anything, looking me over with gentle onyx eyes. Thinking. Thinking about us, him, Cavanos.

He can’t know.

He’d talk to me otherwise. Because this is our last chance to.

But he’s afraid like me. Nervous like me. How could we not be? His sister, the most powerful being in the world, maybe, is coming to kill us. And all we have is a hope, a prayer, and a plan made of an old book.

Time drips on, slower than the pearlescent sap collecting in the little pool to our left. It reflects us, our outlines wavy and tense, but clinging to each other to the last. Something like exhaustion pulls me under and into the darkest lake. It’s a different tiredness from the mental toll of staying awake for days—this feeling is more dire. More pointed, and pointed right at my core.

you will die here, forever.

It’s dug deeper than a thorn in my unheart, my empty chest stone-heavy all of a sudden. Resignation? Maybe. Or maybe this is simply what the beginning and the end of the world feels like.

monsters have no soul. you have no soul.

I’ve done so much. Learned so much. Been so many things to so many people. And now here I am. But who is “I?” Am I really me? Did I spring from my forgotten mother’s womb as me, or have my friends and loved ones made me?

pointless.

The sum total of me is every moment I spent with Lucien. With Fione. With Crav, Nightsinger, Peligli. Every loss. Every gain. Every smile and joke and tear. Undeath tried to stop me. Tries to stop me still, whispering despair into my ears.

you are nothing, nothing, NOTHING.

I am everything.

Life has made me. The world has made me me.

And it’s my time to return the favor.

“Our time. Together, Starving Wolf.”

I start up, the familiar voice echoing in my head. I heard it for so many weeks, in that pitch-dark arena below Vetris.

Lucien blinks drowsily, gripping my hand harder. “What is it, Zera?”

The clamor outside the cave comes instantly—the clash of bone armor on bone armor, beneathers shouting in their language, the sound of bowstrings being fired. Lucien and I jump up as one just as a shadow appears at the mouth of our cave, folding itself in half to look in at us with ruby eyes.

“Valkerax,” Malachite pants. “Nearby.”

“Is she here?” Lucien demands.

Malachite shakes his head. “No sign. But if the valkerax are here, she isn’t far behind.”

“Wait.” I swallow. “I don’t think—”

“Ready the first round of tranqs, for the love of the spirits!” Lysulli’s shout from outside dumps cold water into my veins. I dash for the cave exit, squeezing past Mal and running furiously to the front line, legs pumping over rubble.

“Wait!” I screech. “Wait! That valkerax is a friend!”

A beneather soldier looks up from his bow like I’m absolute batshit and scoffs. “Yeah, and it’s here to politely ask us to dance.”

“Prepare yourselves!” Lysulli’s faint orders resound as they stride up and down the firing line, and I sprint around broken pillars and piles of traveling packs to reach them. The archers draw their bows tight, eyes focused and scanning the silently howling darkness just past the golden glow of the flowers. No shadows, no light. Just yawning nothingness out there.

I freeze when something moves.

Deep in the black, something slithers. I hear it, so they definitely hear it with their long ears.

Yorl comes skidding to my side, nose twitching madly. “It smells like valkerax. Is it Evlorasin?”

I nod. “We have to get Lysulli to stop—”

“There!” a beneather soldier suddenly cries out. “P’ashath ora!”

The whole firing line rises up with cries of “p’ashath ora,” and Yorl breathes an unthinking translation beside me, his green orbs locked in the distance.

“The wyrm cometh.”

From the depths rises a white line, slow at first, slithering over and under rubble, into and out of the ground. It’s massive. I still viscerally remember just how massive Evlorasin was, is, but with it surrounded on all sides by the giant canyons and headed off by the monumental, ghostly Tree of Souls, it looks no more than a toy. A string. Something quaint and small, until it darts in closer, its five white eyes catching golden-flower light and glimmering in the darkness and all of a sudden it’s huge and everywhere.

“Starving Wolf,” Evlorasin says in its calm, guttural voice. “I’ve come to aid you.”

“Fire!” Lysulli yells.

“No!” I spin on my heel, wrenching a beneather’s bow out of their hand. “No, no! It’s friendly! Stop!”

But the line doesn’t listen to me—only to Lysulli. They nock their bows, and I watch in horror as a hundred archers pull, tense, and then fly loose their arrows. Some tranq, some not, but they all soar toward Evlorasin’s exact location, exactly at its five white eyes and undulating whiskers—

And then they stop.

The hail of arrows stops just before Evlorasin, who slithers fully out of the darkness, white scales and long halberd claws on display, its wolflike paws pattering down the earth in heavy thumps as it nears, leaving prints the size of horse wagons on the canyon floor.

“Didn’t you hear her?”

The voice seems to boom around the stone, and Yorl and I watch in shock with the archers as a white crow flies to the front, hovering just before the wall of unmoving arrows frozen in space.

Lucien.

The crow’s feathers meld to his armor, his cape, his smirk as he looks back at us.

“This one’s a friend.” The arrows suddenly bunch into one dense knot in the air, floating back toward the line of archers and landing softly on the ground just before them. He’s so powerful. This place…it’s made him a giant. That’s supposed to make me feel happy. Satisfied.

But all it does is terrify me.

will he be strong enough to stop us?

Lucien just throws me a small grin. “Always wise to save ammunition in a time like this, isn’t it?”

“Prince!” Lysulli booms. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing? The thing’s next to you—”

Evlorasin slithers just behind Lucien, and joy pierces me as the prince turns to pat it on the nose.

“See?” He looks at Lysulli. “Gentle as a rabbit.”

“It’s the one I told you about.” Malachite sprints over to Lysulli far easier than I with his beneather agility. “The one Zera tamed.”

Yorl hems and haws. “‘Tamed’ isn’t really the correct phraseology—”

I push through Yorl’s words and the firing line and dash toward Evlorasin and Lucien, half-real gold petals scattering as I throw my arms around the prince and then bury myself in Ev’s chest mane.

“Thank you,” I mutter. “I didn’t think you’d come.”

“I felt the yearning of you,” Evlorasin rumbles. “And so too did it become my yearning.” The great wyrm narrows its five eyes at the firing line, the beneathers clearly jumpy and still ready to attack at a moment’s notice. “Will they have me?”

“I’ll make them have you,” I laugh, teary.

“Any bit of help is welcome,” Lucien says, a twinge of uneasiness to it as he tries to speak directly facing the valkerax. He can’t hear it speaking like I can—to him it’s just hissing—but he must be guessing how the conversation is going based on my words.

Evlorasin blinks down at Lucien, slowly and scrutinizing, sniffing the air around him intently. “This is your mated?” Ev snorts. “It seems rather…small.”

My laugh bubbles up, and I hug the beautiful beast closer.

It takes more than a little negotiation on all our parts to get Lysulli to stop ordering the archers to keep constant aim on Evlorasin. Especially when it breaches the firing line with me and circles my body like a lazy dog assuming its place before the hearth. But somehow, between Malachite’s cajoling at Lysulli and Lucien’s fearless, careful touching of the valkerax to communicate its friendliness to the battalion, we make it. None of the beneathers looks happy about letting the valkerax through and behind them, constantly checking over their shoulders as it curls up on the rubble and waits with us.

Lysulli won’t even approach closely, shouting from the firing line instead. “If it kills my men, I kill you!”

“Fair enough!” I shout back, and then put my hand on Evlorasin’s velvety wet nose. “You’ll have to be careful when the fight breaks out, Ev. They won’t be able to tell you from the rest.”

“Then I will battle deep.” The valkerax thrashes its tail. “Where arrows cannot reach.”

“You have to be careful! There’s a lot more of them that can fly, now. I saw them.”

“Care cannot be afforded against blood kin.” Ev’s whiskers undulate in a deceptively calm rhythm. “We are of the song and will only cease for it.”

“Still!” I pout, patting down its mane. “You’ve gotta be—”

The five white eyes slick over to me in their sockets, nictating membranes blinking. “I will not die, Starving Wolf. Not until my kin are free.”

I know how stubborn Ev is. How stubborn I am. A small smile pulls at my lips. “It’s a promise, then.”

Ev drapes itself over the mouth of the cave, and I duck beneath it to join Lucien again. Our fingers intertwine just near the pearl puddle, waiting. Waiting for maybe-death. For all of us.

The amethyst bracelet on my wrist, the heart locket around my neck. Both of them glimmer.

“Will they write books about us, you think?” Lucien asks softly.

I put my head on his shoulder and laugh. “Gods, I hope not.”