WHEN I BROUGHT Nedra her breakfast, she ate voraciously and quickly, and before I’d taken a single sip of my tea, she pushed aside her plate and turned to the stacks of books she’d taken from the copper crucible.
“What are you looking for?” I asked around a biscuit sweetened with honey.
I had half expected her to deflect, but then she lowered the book and looked directly into my eyes.
“Necromancy isn’t about restoring life to dead people,” she said. “It’s about holding on to souls.”
I couldn’t hide my confusion.
Nedra got up on her knees and crossed the short distance to me. “This,” she said, brushing her hand from my chest to my lap. “Your body. It’s just a shell to hold your soul. Your body is a house your soul lives in. So when your body dies, your soul can’t stay. It has nothing to hold on to.”
“Souls . . . hold on to life?” I asked. “What does that say about your role in raising the dead? That the souls hold on to your life?”
Nedra nodded gravely. “Through my crucible, yes. That’s why I’m connected to my revenants. Why I can hear them, and see their souls.”
I tried to push away the image of slimy souls crawling over Nedra, slithering monsters that left trails of muck all over her body.
Nedra frowned. “You don’t understand,” she said, a statement, not a question. She pulled out her iron crucible and laid it down on her open palm. “What do you see?”
“An iron sphere.”
Nedra’s gaze intensified. Her focus shifted; her pupils seemed to reflect more light than was natural. Energy crackled between us—no, between Nedra and her crucible.
“There is light here,” she said, her voice eerily still. She moved her residual arm, as if there was still a hand at the end of it. “And darkness,” she said. “A black, raw sort of power.”
When Nedra raised her eyes to me, I could almost see what she meant. There seemed to be a glow about her eyes, almost as if they were reflecting sunlight.
“The light is the souls,” Nedra continued. “I can see them. I can touch them.” Her eyes darted around, focusing on something I couldn’t see, then her gaze shifted to me, sorrow passing over her like a shadow. “All except Nessie’s.”
I thought of the way Nedra’s twin wasn’t like the other revenants. If the body was a container for the soul, there was nothing left of Ernesta but the shell. She was an empty house, not even haunted by invisible ghosts.
Nedra stared down into the depths of her crucible.
“I’m not going to pretend to understand,” I said. “I don’t think I would make the same choices you have. But I’ve also never had to make them.” I opened my hands, palms up, admitting defeat.
Nedra didn’t speak for a long time. When she finally did, she didn’t meet my gaze. “It scares me sometimes,” she said, her voice so low I almost didn’t hear her. I didn’t speak; I barely breathed, I was so worried of breaking the moment. “The power here,” she said, gripping her crucible, “I don’t know what it is.”
When she didn’t say anything else, I spoke. “But it comes from you. Your power is yours alone.”
She shook her head, the barest movement. “You have no idea what went into making my crucible.” She finally raised her eyes to meet mine. They were—wrong, somehow. The color in her irises was too light, too reflective, but rimmed in black. Her voice didn’t sound like hers, either, gravelly and low.
“Nedra?” I said, fear rising in me. “Ned?”
“I can show you, Grey,” she said. Her residual arm still moved over her crucible, as if invisible fingers were stroking the iron.
“No, I—” I scooted back, swallowing hard. Nedra drew closer to me, and she seemed to be reaching for me with her residual arm, even though she had no hand with which to restrain me.
Something inside me moved. I gasped in shock, but I couldn’t breathe. My heartbeat slowed to nothing. My mind faded, black around my thoughts.
Nedra’s smile was feral. Hungry.
I looked down at her residual arm, and I could see then, just barely, a ghostlike arm extending from the flesh limb, twining a golden thread between shadow fingers.
“Souls are such little things,” Nedra muttered, cocking her head and studying the golden thread of light.
With dawning horror, I realized what was in her hand.
A soul.
My soul.
And I understood—
Ernesta was a shell, separated from her own soul. That’s what I was. My body was still, motionless, but my mind screamed with desire to move, to shout, to snatch my soul back from Nedra’s grasp. How horrific it must be for Ernesta, for her soul trapped in Nedra’s crucible. Ned dipped her ghostly hand down to the crucible, holding it up, my soul dangling near the lip of the iron. And I could see more. I could see the darkness Nedra spoke of. With her shadowy arm touching my soul, I was connected to her and her power. I could see as she did. And I saw the black bubbling over the edge of the iron, the simmering power that almost seemed sentient.
I could feel its hunger.
A longing ache filled me, an echo of the starvation engulfing the black within Nedra’s crucible. This was not just a simple matter of light and dark. This darkness—it was alive. It was voracious. It wanted to devour. The darkness licked at my soul, and I felt the life withering in me.
But it was not I the darkness wanted.
It was her.
My soul was a golden thread of light, connecting my body to hers, and she was connected to her crucible, a linked chain of power. I could feel the darkness in the iron aching to break free from the crucible. Its desire pumped into me as my soul flickered. It wanted to consume Nedra. Her body? I thought, but I could tell that wasn’t it. There was a glowing essence about her—her soul, I realized. The source of her necromantic abilities. It wanted to devour her soul and, therefore, her power.
No, I thought. Not Nedra. She doesn’t belong to the dark.
She doesn’t belong to anything or anyone.
Protectiveness rose inside me, like a swelling wave. It felt strong, but all it resulted in was one weak word emerging from my lips, barely audible: “No.”
Nedra’s head jerked to me, her eyes wide. I watched as the silver and black left her gaze, replaced with her own eyes, brown and warm and—
Scared.
“Grey,” she gasped, and it was her voice, her real voice, no power within it, no dark force possessing her. Nedra dropped the crucible, and my soul snapped back into my body, so violently that I fell over, my head cracking on the bedframe I’d been leaning against. Nedra scrambled over to me. “Grey, Grey,” she said, emotion making her voice crack. “Are you okay? I don’t know what—I didn’t mean to, I, I . . .” Her stuttered, frantic voice faded to nothing as I raised my eyes to hers.
“I’m fine,” I said. And I was, except for the fact that I couldn’t remember the last few minutes of my life. I felt dimly aware that I hadn’t been fine before, but it was . . . almost like a dream, already fading now that I was awake.
Nedra helped me up.
“What did you mean?” she asked urgently.
I put a hand to my head. “What did I mean by what?” I asked.
“You said, ‘No.’” Nedra spoke clearly and slowly. “What did you mean by that?” When I didn’t answer, her voice pitched up an octave. “Grey, that’s what Nessie told me, before. When I tried to pull her soul from the darkness. She said ‘no’ as well—just that. Just . . . no. What did you mean? What did you see?”
My heart hammered against my rib cage. I stared at the crucible, resting atop Nedra’s tunic. She had held it, hadn’t she? But not—not with her hand? I shook my head, and tried to focus on the iron bead. I thought I saw a flicker of light, but . . .
“I don’t remember,” I said, turning my eyes to Nedra’s desperate ones. “I know . . . something happened.” I paused. “What happened?”
Nedra’s eyes were glassy with tears. I felt an overpowering urge to hold her, to protect her.
“I tried to show you the darkness in my crucible,” Nedra said. Her gaze focused on me. “There—you flinched. Why?”
I shook my head again. “I flinched?”
“I saw you. When I said ‘darkness,’ you flinched. Like I was about to strike you.”
“No, I didn’t.”
Nedra moved closer to me, moving her hand to my cheek. “You don’t . . .” Her face showed her bitter disappointment. “You don’t remember anything?”
“Nedra, what happened?” I asked again.
“I reached for the darkness,” she said. “And it reached back for me.”