CHAPTER 40

We Were Dead, but Now We Rise

Sefia tried to grab the Resurrection Amulet from him, but Archer staggered back, shaking his head. He hadn’t known how or why, but as soon as she mentioned the Amulet, he’d known she would try to use it herself.

Now, against his chest, the metal disc burned cold, like ice, eating through his shirt to the flesh beneath, where it latched on to him—a dozen pointed talons digging deep into his skin.

From the metal, there came a low humming, dark as an ocean and deep as a sky. The sound filled the spaces in his bones until he could feel it thrumming—or was it keening? moaning?—in his marrow.

Dimly, he thought he heard voices—or glaciers cleaving, cliffs crumbling to dust—whispering, chittering, mad.

Gasping.

The last gasp of Oriyah, before Hatchet put a bullet through his skull, of Argo, of countless others, and of Kaito—sounds that haunted Archer in the late hours of the night when the darkness shuttered him in and the cold crept in through the cracks.

Then Sefia’s voice reached him, like a warm breeze, smelling of salt and sweetgrass: “Archer, the Amulet.”

He looked down at his chest. In their settings, the stones seemed to glow—no, to pulse—brighter and dimmer and brighter again, like the beacon of a lighthouse.

When he looked up again, there were tears in Sefia’s eyes. “I wanted to do it,” she whispered. “So you wouldn’t have to.”

“I know.” Archer touched the Amulet. “But whoever uses this might die. And I didn’t want it to be you.”

Sefia bit her lip. “This means you’ll have to kill again.”

His heart felt heavy in his chest. “And if I—when I . . . after all this is over, that’s something I’ll have to figure out how to live with.”

She blinked back tears as he traced her scarred brow. “We’ll figure it out together. After you help our friends and send the dead back where they came from.”

“I’m scared, Sefia.”

“I’ll be with you the whole time.”

He kissed her then, as sweet as the first time—amid the wind and the black water with the stars wheeling overhead—and every kiss since, every touch, every look, every word.

“Tell me you love me,” he whispered.

“I love you.” She nestled her cheek against his palm.

He’d already memorized the words, already fastened them to his heart. But hearing them again made him dizzy and breathless with desire.

For her. For life. For all of it.

“Tell me we’ll make it,” he said.

Her lashes were starred with tears. “We’ll make it,” she whispered.

And Archer chose to believe her, even if the fear in her eyes told him she couldn’t believe it herself.

He kissed her again. Like it was the last time.

Like it was the first.

Darkness appeared on the western horizon, spreading through the water like spilled ink. Archer could feel it approaching, drawn to the Resurrection Amulet—to him.

He thought he saw red lights winking in the deep.

Then the darkness hit the base of the cliffs and surged upward, spiraling through the air like wisps of smoke. The soldiers on the watchtower cried out in fear.

Instinctively, Archer pushed Sefia aside as the darkness reached him, spearing directly through the Amulet fused to his chest.

He gasped.

“Archer!” Sefia cried. But he could hear her only faintly, as if he were at the end of a long black tunnel. He seemed only partly in his own body, barely seeing, though his eyes were open, barely feeling the tower stones under his feet.

Instead, he felt them all—all the dead, every one—pass through him like bullets, each taking a little of his warmth, a little of his life, a little of whatever essential substance made him Archer—the boy from the lighthouse, the boy in the crate, the victim, the killer, the chief, the friend, the lover, the—

“Brother,” someone said, in a voice that resembled his own, in a voice that almost sounded like . . .

Archer turned. “Kaito,” he murmured.

The boy—or the shadow of the boy—stood at Archer’s side, like he’d done so many times before.

And behind him stood Versil, tall and slender, looking almost like his twin, Aljan, without the white patches at the corners of his eyes and mouth that he’d had when he was alive. All around the roof of the watchtower were the dead Archer had known: Hatchet, Redbeard, Oriyah, Gregor and Haku from the Cage—he’d suspected they were dead, yes, but now he knew for sure—the First Assassin, Erastis, a sick girl from back home in Jocoxa, people he might have seen only once or twice in the street, his father . . . looking the same age he was when he died, though Archer had aged thirteen years.

All the dead he’d ever known were here.

“I told you to run, girl,” one of them said, shouldering her way past the others. She was short and wide, like a small mountain. Most of her features were hazy, but her hands were well-defined, wrinkled and scarred and strong. “I’m proud that you didn’t.”

Choking back a sob, Sefia started forward. “Aunt Nin.”

The phantom held up a hand to stop her. “Don’t cry. You’ve got work to do.”

Sefia nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”

Except that wasn’t Nin, not really. That wasn’t his father, beaming at him from the tower stairs. That wasn’t Kaito from the north. They were shades—less than flesh, more than smoke—and they were a part of him.

Archer could feel every one of their spectral limbs, see himself through each of their crimson eyes.

“We’re with you, brother.” And Archer wasn’t sure if it was Kaito speaking or his memory of Kaito—the voice melding with dozens of other voices and with his own.

“Literally,” Versil added in the same blend of voices. “I think we are you. Or you . . . are us?”

“Both, I think,” Sefia said. “Until Archer sends you back.”

“Hey, sorcerer.” Versil’s spectral face shivered, his features blurring. Then he grinned.

She managed a strangled smile. “Hey.”

“Is that brother of mine still with Frey?”

“Yeah,” she murmured.

“Eh, she’s too good for him.” He laughed. “But I’m glad.”

“We’re here to save them, aren’t we?” Kaito asked, looking out over the bay, where the battle was still raging on. “We’re here for one more fight?”

Archer nodded. “Just one more.”

“All right, then, brother. Lead the way.”

Archer wanted to embrace him, but wasn’t sure if he could. “I’m sorry,” he said softly.

Kaito’s expression went hazy for a moment, but then he was back again, smiling sadly. “I know,” he replied in the voice that was not his voice. “I am too.”

Arrayed across the tower roof and the cliff below, the dead looked to Archer. He looked so small through their glowing eyes, but in this battle, they would obey his every thought.

They were his.

His army.

“Take care of him, sorcerer,” Kaito said.

She swallowed, hard. “I will.”

Archer looked to her, and he saw her not just through his own eyes but through the eyes of all the dead. He’d always known she was beautiful, but for some reason, with the breeze in her hair and the top button of her shirt undone and the glistening in her dark eyes, he couldn’t remember her ever being more beautiful than this.

Fool, he chided himself. She was this beautiful the first time he saw her, a slender silhouette against the firelight as he crawled out of his crate. She was this beautiful in the Trove, sleeping in the crook of his arm. Every time he looked, she was this beautiful.

“I love you,” he told her. “We’ll make it.”

She nodded.

As the phantoms began their march down the cliff, Archer knew he was more them than him now. He was more aware of their limbs of smoke than his own body, more aware of the waves splashing at his many ankles, the breeze cascading from his many shoulders.

Ahead of them—ahead of him—the battle waited. The Barbaro and the bulk of the Alliance fleet storming the harbor. Serakeen and the Amalthea cornering the rest in the northeast.

Only faintly did he sense Sefia taking up a stance beside him, watching over him, protecting him. The way she always did.