MY MOUTH DROPPED open, but I choked on air, unable to scream the way my body instinctively longed to. The sensation split my mind in two: part of me deeply aware of the wrongness of the shadow entering my own body, sliding between my muscles, fingering through my ribs; the other part of me insatiably hungry for the sensation, relishing the way the shadow seemed to feed upon my life.
When my hand brushed against my heart, it stopped beating.
The color drained from my face. In the mirror, I could see myself.
Dying.
Some part of me had enough life left to pull my hand back, and the shadow withdrew. My heart beat—once—tentatively, as if unsure of how to operate. Then another thud, stronger, defiant.
I gasped for air.
My living body pulled at the shoulder attached to the shadow arm, revolting against my brain that whispered death would give me peace. I forced my shadow arm to withdraw more slowly than felt natural, and when the fingers finally pulled away from my skin, they were twined around a single golden thread.
Not my whole soul, but a piece of it. A living person was a tapestry of light; I could afford to unravel this one string. It remained connected on one end to my heart; the other end floated as if being lifted by an ethereal breeze.
I pulled my iron crucible closer with my right arm. I knew if I just held the thread of light to my sister’s empty body, it would fade to nothing. Souls had to travel through the crucible before my necromantic powers could affect them.
And—my breath caught. Deep within the blood iron, I could sense the near-invisible traces of my family, irrevocably entwined with the metal. I could not touch them. Not with my flesh, not with my shadow arm. But perhaps . . .
I poised the thread of my own soul over the crucible’s lip, then used my shadow hand to push it inside.
My mind filled with—not images, exactly, but feelings, impossible to put into words. Chaos tumbled through me, as if the thread of my soul had opened a floodgate of hundreds of different ideas and memories and emotions and tastes and scents and hopes and nightmares and fears and loves. They swarmed over me, filling me up, drowning out myself with other.
I felt what it was to die—over and over, from each of my revenants. I felt the loves they lost, the hopes that died with their bodies. I experienced each soul that had passed through my crucible.
Somewhere, deep, deep in my mind, I thought, Further in.
My parents and my sister had been the first souls to touch my crucible. They were the furthest away.
The thread of my soul dove deeper.
It swirled in a tornado of echoes, unable to pick apart the three individual souls of the people I loved the most, unable to find a way through to my sister. My parents were already barely a whisper within the crucible; how could I find them amid such noise?
Love.
I homed in on that feeling, the familiar feeling of my parents’ love for me, my sister’s hand in my own, family dinners, laughter by the fire, my father’s voice as he read aloud to us at night, my mother’s arms wrapped around me, the belief that this was eternal, the security and sense of safety that existed by their mere presence.
And I found them.
The other souls faded to silence.
My soul found my parents’ souls. Nothing conscious—I could not talk to them, but I could feel them.
I could feel their love.
I sobbed, my back bending and my chest caving in with the overwhelming emotion of it all.
And then I felt Nessie.
Her soul was stronger—there was more of it within the crucible. The iron had been forged with my parents’ ashes, but it was bound together by my sister’s soul, whole and freshly freed from her body at its formation.
Neddie, she said, her voice clear and loud in my mind.
Take it, I thought, shoving my own bit of soul toward the incorporeal presence that I sensed was the truest part of her left. I felt resistance, though I wasn’t sure if it was her or the crucible or the limits of my untrained power. I was operating so blindly, relying on instinct. Let it be enough, let me be enough, please, please—
And then the shell of my sister’s body twitched. My eyes grew round as Ernesta stepped closer. Her face—for the first time since she had died—took on life. Her eyes shot to mine, and I knew—I knew—she was seeing me, really seeing me, as clear and present and true as anything.
I wanted to spin around and grab her, hug her to me. But I was careful to keep the strand of my soul in the crucible. It was the lifeline, the connection between us.
“Neddie,” Ernesta said, hope and wonder in her voice. Her voice. From her lips.
She was back with me.
And then her eyes filled with a horror deeper than any I’d ever seen before.
“Nedra,” she gasped, her voice already weaker. I turned to the thread of my soul that connected us—it was dimming. I shivered, suddenly aware of the cold.
“No,” Ernesta said.
At first I thought she meant, “No, it’s too soon to go.” Because already the light was fading from her eyes, the life evaporating from her body. I could see her consciousness slipping away.
But then the darkness touched me, and I felt the source of Nessie’s terror. Without my noticing, black had begun to stain the golden thread of light from my heart, creeping up from the base of my crucible. Fear washed over me.
“Don’t,” Nessie said, the word barely a whisper.
And then she was hollow again, nothing more than a shell with no hint of her own soul.
I stared down at the thread that extended from my heart into the iron crucible. It was turning the deepest kind of black, an utter absence of light, the kind of blackness that shouldn’t exist.
My body shuddered.
It was so cold.
The blackness stretched out, swallowing the once-golden thread. I watched, as if entranced, as the darkness traveled the length of the thread.
And up toward my heart.
The moment the black touched my skin, my body seized so violently that I fell out of my chair. The mirror on the table slid down, smashing against the tabletop and sending shards of silvery glass over my body. A sliver sliced into my cheek and blood flowed out, so hot it seemed to steam against my icy skin.
My eyes darted to Ernesta. For a moment—for a single, shining moment—she had been herself.
But now her body stared at me impassively, watching me die.
I could die, I realized somewhat dully. And Death did not, in this moment, feel like an enemy. My heart slowed. I am dying.
Don’t, I heard Nessie’s whisper again, only a memory. But it was enough. I pulled with my shadow hand, wrenching the black thread free.
I had watched my parents die, I had carved runes upon their cold flesh, I had torn my sister’s soul free of its body, and I had held the soul of a living person in place while I killed her. I would not succumb to this.
Death would never claim me so easily.
The black strand fizzled in my shadow arm, writhing like a snake whose head had been sliced off, twitching violently in the throes of death.
Then it stilled and faded to nothing.
I panted on the ground, the silvery shards of the broken mirror scattered on the floor around me. I had torn myself away from the dark power, but at what cost? Had I just lost a bit of my own soul for one moment with Nessie?
If I tried it again, would I be able to break free?