I don’t think I’d ever known what it felt like to burn. Not before Zabor. Not after. The fire was a part of me. Fire cannot harm a Fox. I had felt cold, of course. There were limits to the human condition, and I was from Winnipeg, after all. Suffering and surviving the harsh winters were a point of pride. But they’d never had an effect on me.
Now if I were thrown headlong into a prairie wind, I’d probably pass out.
I don’t remember ever getting a fever, either. Burning from the inside with infection. But that’s what this was — like my cells were being sizzled to a crisp one by one. Here, in the dark, in the burning. It’s all I could leapfrog between. I was awake, and aware, and I didn’t want to be. I curled around myself, shaking. I was sick.
Well, in more ways than one. I rolled over painfully and vomited. I hadn’t eaten in so long, so there wasn’t much to it, but the bile heaved through me and I quivered with the effort of just holding my head up, keeping my face out of it.
“Here,” someone said, a cup manifesting by my face. “Drink.”
I snapped my arm up to bat it away, but that took too much effort, and I fell forward on my hands. Rough gravel bit into them as my fingers pressed like claws, as the dizziness subsided.
“You have to drink.” The cup was put down next to me by a small hand, blistered with black and enflamed at the edges. I lifted my head. It was that little girl, the one I’d seen in the Meadows, the same one who had been in the woods . . .
Her black eyes caught me off guard — the coal-fire at the centre of them instead of a pupil. Ruo’s eyes, before the end. Before she’d killed Mala and turned into . . .
I dry heaved.
“I know it hurts at first. It always does.” The little girl sat down beside me, drawing her knees up in her skinny bare arms, splotchy and crackled with black marks. “Eventually your body gets used to it, I think. Eventually you won’t have to eat or drink, but . . . maybe you’ll be different. Because of the stone.”
I sat back on my haunches, willing my head to cease pounding. I’d taken the water, drank it all desperately. I was getting tired of being tired. “The stone?” For a second I had to really process her words. Then I looked down at my chest, at the Dragon Opal that had grown heavier and heavier as the months passed, that had kept me up nights and put me in danger and had made me hurt people.
The stone was dead.
I touched it, and it was as cold as me — cold as any rock or gem pulled from the earth. Still beautiful, with a lustre of the uncanny. But it was silent. No voices raged to tear me limb from limb. No searing comet of fire blasted out to defend itself. The core of it, bright like the sun, was dim, the corona edges dull.
But my skin around the stone was black, like the markings on the little girl, and the breath I’d tried to catch just now came out in quick, desperate gasps.
“What did you do to it? To me?” I looked at my hands — they, too, had dark splotches, but for now they were like pinprick freckles. Nothing like Ruo’s infection had been. Nothing like the spread of it over this little girl in front of me.
Not yet.
“It’s all right!” the girl crawled towards me, but I scuttled backward, holding my hands up. “You’re with us now. You’re safe.”
“You fucking infected me!” I snarled, rubbing my hands on my dirty jeans, as if I could wipe the black off. “No. This isn’t . . . It can’t hurt me. Can’t hurt Denizens.” But the black was still there, and I felt younger than the kid in front of me, face contorting under the sob I couldn’t control. Most of all, I’d trusted that the stone could protect me, but it hadn’t.
The little girl didn’t respond right away. She was staring at the ground, kneeling in front of me. There was something different about her; the cinder kids I’d come across had a sort of mania to them, a breathless, mindless loyalty to whatever it was they served. This girl seemed to be considering her words very carefully.
“I think the sickness is getting smarter,” she said. “It’s feeding off everyone’s fear. Off the pain of the world. And the world should be afraid. Because Seela and Urka will not stop. Not until they have what they want.” Her strange eyes lifted to mine, and they were miserable. “It’s okay if you’re afraid. I am, too.”
I rubbed my eyes hard, then immediately stopped, terrified I’d spread the black by further touching my skin. I couldn’t wallow; panic was surging through me like a drug, and I staggered to my feet. “I’m getting out of here,” I told her, told myself. I didn’t care anymore.
She didn’t get up to stop me. “It’s no use.”
“Where the hell are we?” There was a shaft of light coming down above us, but all around the walls were made of rough rock and stone. The air was slightly damp, like there was water somewhere nearby — and when I quieted my ragged breaths I heard it — rushing. Were we underground? I scaled the jutting rocks as high as I could, but the opening was still too far to reach. I started feeling around for footholds, handholds, anything . . .
This was too familiar. And my spirit-eye was happy to oblige just how familiar it was by sending a shocking briar of memory piking through my vision. Suddenly the moisture in the air was replaced by ash, and I was deep in a pit of another kind. A kind where the ground was made of glistening worms.
The scene was clear as if I were there, back in the Bloodlands, and when I looked down to my arm, a thin golden chain bound me to another.
Eli. He was right there, right beside me. We stared at each other.
“Harken?”
I counted heartbeats. “What’s happening?”
The hands of our bound arms were close, pressing into the wall of the pit. His fingers twitched, but they didn’t reach for mine.
“Looks like you’re at the bottom of another pit,” he said, looking up, then back to me. “I suppose you want me to tell you to do it again. But I think I’ve got my own pit to climb out of.”
And then Eli was gone, and so was the ashy chasm of months ago, and I collapsed backward.
“Are you okay?” The little girl had rushed to my side, clinging to my arm. When the daze passed, I flung her off.
“Get away!” I tried to move aside, but I didn’t get far. I grabbed my head. What was happening? There was déjà vu, but this was different. A sensory overload. Eli had been here, here, and I’d felt him. It had been real . . . but then again, so had most of these visions that had plagued my every moment — conscious or unconscious.
I pushed up the sleeve of my torn hoodie, exposing my pale skin and the chain-shaped scar that wound around it. The black hadn’t reached it yet. This part of me was still safe. Ever since that day, Eli and I had been connected. True, we had barely spoken. He wasn’t the text-to-see-how-you’re-doing type. Definitely never the dating type. When the hell did I have time for that, anyway?
But I had thought about him often, even before Phae had suggested I call him. Now it might be too late. He was missing — maybe worse. But he had gone through what I had, with the stone, struggling to stay in control. Somehow he was reaching out to me. Or was I reaching out to him? It didn’t matter. I glanced up at the light filtering down on the little girl and me. Yeah, Eli had tried to kill me. But now I understood why. The voices. The demands. Losing yourself entirely. Even if the stone was dead, how far away was I from that?
I wished he was here. I wished any of them were here. I’d pushed them all away . . . Phae, Barton, Natti, my aunt and uncle. And now I was a prisoner. Now I had no one. And it was very likely I wouldn’t see any of them ever again.
“It’s okay,” the little girl said again, drawing away to a distance and taking a seat on a jagged rock, tucking stray uncombed hair behind her ears. “He’ll come back for you.”
I snapped to face her; she wasn’t a Denizen, how could she know what I was thinking? “Who?”
The girl didn’t look at me, just the ground. Always the ground. “Your father.”
My jaw locked. That knowledge came back all too quickly, and I felt sick again. “Killian is not my father.”
“Maybe not yet, in your heart. But he will try to be. He will try very hard.” The girl shrugged. “Better to have a father you don’t like than none at all.”
“I sincerely doubt that, and I’d know,” I retorted bitterly, pulling myself up on a rock to take stock of things. I didn’t know how long I’d been down here or how much longer I’d have to wait for answers. To confront Killian, the real mastermind behind everything that had sent the Five Families scrambling. Killian . . . Seela . . . How could they be the same person?
I was trapped down here with this little girl. That was the only thing I had control over right now. So I best make the most of it.
“What’s your name?”
The little girl lifted her head slowly, as if I was the first person to ask her that in a long while. Her face was slack as she searched mine, as if she’d find the answer there. “Saskia.”
I nodded. “Roan.” Even though I don’t feel like Roan, I thought. I had too many questions, but I figured I’d get more out of some more personal ones. “What about your parents? Do they know you’re out here? Wouldn’t you rather be with them than . . . wherever it is we are?” She may be down here with me, but I bet she was no prisoner. Was she here by orders to watch me? Or was it something else?
I didn’t know how far I’d get with this, but it didn’t matter. I clearly wasn’t going anywhere for a while. Saskia dropped her head. “I don’t know where my real daddy is now. Maybe he is looking for us. Maybe he gave up and decided to have a different life. Maybe that’s for the best.” Her mouth twisted, but she didn’t cry. “I did this all for Albert, to bring him back. But even he’s gone now. For good, I think. You can’t bring the trees back. I know that now.” She swiped an arm over her eyes. “This is the only family I have. Seela is the only daddy any of us have. And Urka . . .” But she stopped herself, looking around as if maybe she’d said too much.
Then that hadn’t been a dream. Urka was really here, in our world, primed to wreak havoc for its masters.
I leapt up and scrabbled over to her so quickly that Saskia jumped. “How did Urka get here? What did it do to me?” I touched the stone, tried to will it to come to life and threaten her, but it was still so cold.
Saskia looked from me to the Opal, touched it herself. “Pretty,” she said, her eyes far away, like she was any little girl pining for a treasure. “No wonder Seela wants these stones. They are like magic.”
I pulled away. “Seela. You all keep calling Killian that. Why?”
She raised an eyebrow at me. “Because that is his name. Maybe Killian was his name, from before. But that man is dead. There is only the creature who is the one true child. And he wants what we all want. His family.”
Suddenly something heavy slammed open — or shut — above us. A door? I lurched up, tried to scale the rocks and slipped, landing hard on the jagged edges and cutting my hands, scabbing my knees.
“Careful now,” came a soft voice above me — soft and strange. “Wouldn’t want to damage the goods.”
I jerked back and pressed myself to the wall of the pit, grimacing. The light filtering down on us came through a grate, and I couldn’t tell if the thing on the other side of it was a man or woman. But it was alive. It looked like a hope tree, gangrenous-seeming flesh all gnarled and nasty and shaped into a mockery of a person. It wore ragged clothes, and it hooked a large, blunt limb into the grate, yanking back until the door swung open on rusted, dripping hinges.
I felt Saskia beside me. She frowned up at our monstrous jailer. “Corgan,” she said, “you’ve been gone a long while.”
The creature inclined its head. “Master went far afield. There is news on the wind. Our path ahead has changed, the Moonstone reclaimed by our enemies.” If the thing had eyes I couldn’t see them. But it did have a mouth, working around a crushed palate as if each word was a moist, rotting morsel. It reached its crooked appendages through the grate. “Up now.”
“No, don’t!” The warning was automatic, but Saskia just served me with a blank expression, held out her arms, and let the monster called Corgan pull her up and out of sight.
For a second I couldn’t see them, heard heavy steps of retreat. Panicked, I grabbed for any rock I could, trying to scramble out — maybe this was my chance —
I lost my hold when that massive, eyeless head jerked back into the space. It snapped out for me but I flattened out of the way.
“You next,” it said gruffly.
“I’m not going anywhere with you,” I snarled, and as fast as I could without splitting my head open, I scrambled back down into the bottom of the pit. I could still hear distant water; maybe there was another way out. It was time to call the fire up, but I was exhausted, weak, so when I tried it was like flicking a lighter low on fluid.
But I didn’t get more of a chance to try, because Corgan pushed itself through the opening above, landing heavily in front of me.
“My master bids you to come,” it said, rising back to its full height. Its neck was thick and long, the head hanging from it like the tip of a shepherd’s hook. “And I will take you to him.”
I didn’t know if I had it in me to fight, but I’d have to find it. “Come and get me then,” I said, feet sliding apart in the practised stance that Sil — Cecelia — had taught me.
Something black shot towards me with the force of a harpoon. I barely dodged with a slide, grunting. It had separated from Corgan’s body and stabbed through the stone behind me, shivering with the impact.
“Crap.”
Another shot out in quick succession and caught my sleeve, nailing it to the rock. I ripped free just as the monster came at me like a bear; I scampered out of the warpath on all fours.
Corgan growled, but underneath it was a hideous laugh. “Just like vermin, crawling away.” I got back up, fists in front of me. This thing was huge but it was fast. I flexed, heaving through my nose. C’mon, fire. I tried to build up the pyre within, but there was a pit inside me yawning wider than this one. At the bottom of it were white, spent ashes.
Corgan lunged, this time with its entire arm smashing into the ground where I’d just been moments before. I had been backed into the other side of the pit, and I watched as the monster struggled to remove the arm, a mass of black, shuddering cables.
I had to do something. I shut my eyes, trying to call the fire again. I muttered under my breath, “Deon, Cecelia, Ancient, anyone . . . please. Put your power on my name.” I had never felt the need to beg, had always been able to trust myself and my abilities as they grew. But the stone was still quiet, and the power I’d had before seemed gone. Was it exhaustion? Or was it the infection Urka had put on me like a curse?
“You will come in one piece or many.” Corgan finally yanked the arm free, and it retracted, almost going inside its body, like it was winding up for another strike. “Master did not specify his preference.”
I slid along the rock face. Wind whistled through the grate at my back. I didn’t dare turn my head to judge the distance. It was far. I’d have to be fast. Corgan was faster. But if I beat him, I could get out. I could run. Where? To who? Shut up, brain. You’re not the voice I need right now.
Roan.
A whisper. Faint. The last words of several dying someones. Or just one. I squeezed my eyes shut, ground my teeth. “Please.” Was that a spark? “Please.” I was struggling to flick a lighter to life around its child safety lock, finger bleeding for the effort —
When I opened my eyes again, the cabled arm had let loose like a cannon, and in seconds it would be inside my skull.
But it stopped.
I looked down. I had stopped it. Caught it, in fact; my fingers crushing it in my grip, which was clawed, furred, the arm of Deon. But something was wrong. I felt the transformation take hold, but I was still so cold. And the Opal was quiet.
And my fire was black.
“No —” But I felt myself growing, huge, taking up the pit and now towering over the Corgan-beast, which snarled through its croggled jaw. I felt my fist clamp down hard, heard the guttural scream of the creature as I snapped the arm into splinters. It crumpled to the ground, howling.
No, stop! Now I was trapped inside myself, helpless as I went after the miserable wretch and couldn’t control what my body was doing. I picked Corgan up and smashed it into the rocks like it was a toy. I saw the dark flames licking off it, licking off me, and the sick feeling inside took hold, the dark fire climbing. Where was the bright and burning flare, the god-fire that rose of its own accord, the familiar, basking warmth?
Where was I?
Roan, the voice whispered. Teasing, mocking. This is what you wanted, Roan. You wanted the power.
No, I screamed back, pulling the great demon up from the ground, slamming it into the ceiling of the cavern above me. Who are you? Get out of my head!
Push me out, it dared, as if it were the easiest thing to do. Go ahead.
I felt the demon going limp in my hands. It was over. Not yet, the shadow whispered, and the hands, my hands, tightened, bringing the body down carefully and laying it over the rocks in the scant beam of light as I stood back.
It was bleeding, if you could call it that. Dark fluid oozed from the wounds in its head. It cowered, pitiful now. It was only a servant, a lowly prison guard. Even if it was a monster, all I’d wanted was to get out of here.
I felt my nine tails rise, pointing upward like spikes, and I reached behind me — reached for the slate hilt of my blade, and in front of me the empty hilt shuddered, as if in pain.
The black fire consumed it, slow and deliberate. When it peeled back, it revealed only a blade of black, cruel glass, and in it I saw my reflection.
It was not the fox warrior aspect that mirrored Deon. My face was covered in a mask of blood-stained bone, a corroded skull that was a cruel imitation of a fox’s head.
I took the blade in both hands and looked at Corgan. It cradled its snapped arm, shivering.
The corrupted blade was hungry. I could feel its need stabbing into my arm. Could see only moments ahead when the blade hacked into the creature grovelling before me, separating it into bloody black pieces.
Do it now, coaxed the voice, as if it was comforting me.
The blade wheeled back and arced down —
— but did not connect.
“No,” I said, feeling my blood burn, fighting back for control of my own body. The blade flickered, the black fire giving way to spitting, bright sparks.
DO IT NOW. The voice was a roar, and I threw the blade aside like it was a snapping venomous snake.
I took a step back. It took everything in me, until I was stepping over the mangled creature, my head pushing through the grate it had left open. I shouldered my heavy god-body through and into a wide space, could feel myself being lost again as the dark thing at the back of my mind fought for purchase there.
But I held my ground, and soon the dark fox warrior melted away, the black flames pulling back like cracked lips, as I went down deep and untangled the knots choking the heart of me, one by one.
I let out a gasp, and I was myself again.
“Don’t worry,” someone at the far end of the space said, not unkindly. “We’ve plenty of time to work on that.”
The room was utterly dark, but then a great flame at the end of it roared to life, split in two, and shot across each wall flanking me, lighting torches on their way before sizzling out.
At the end of the room stood Killian, and with each lit torch, the Cinder-Plagued children peeled from the shadows. Beside Killian stood Saskia, eyes on the ground, holding herself tightly.
I got to my feet, but god did I ever want to collapse.
“I didna ken what I was expecting, girlie. But it wasna that.”
The children moved closer, but when I backed up, they stopped. Weird. They weren’t going to fight me. Not yet.
“What the hell did you do to me?”
Killian’s bright face fell, hazel eyes flashing in the shadows as he drew closer. “I’ve helped ye. Can ye not see that?” He levelled a finger to my chest. “That bloody thing. It wants to own ye. To destroy ye. But I silenced it. All those angry voices of the dead, envious of yer beating heart. I put them down.”
Gone was the man who had become my friend, who I thought had saved my life. Those gleaming eyes burned at the rims. Yet still he looked as human or Denizen as any other.
“Urka put something inside me,” I spat back. “Inside the stone.” I put my fingers around it, pressing tight, wishing I could turn it back to how it was, however unpredictable it had been. It hadn’t made me the thing in the pit. It had been a force for good.
Killian’s smile was pitying. “Can’t ye see? The stone has been neutralized. Whatever comes out now . . . that’s all you.”
I felt my heart cratering. The stone was still so cold. I was so cold. I know what I was, what I had been, even before the stone. And this dark thing hadn’t won. I had called back the fire to me, somehow, from some deep corner at the last . . . that had been me, not the skull fox warrior . . .
“Master . . .”
I spun, and out of the hole behind me squirmed what was left of Corgan.
“Ah, there ye are, wretch,” Killian sighed, and suddenly he had moved around me, hands behind his back in consideration. “Ye look a bit worse for wear.”
The creature bowed its head. “Please, Master. I beg you to kill me. I have failed you.”
Killian held up his hand. “Enough of that. I will show ye mercy, same as my daughter has.”
That word was a blow in itself, and I staggered as far away from him as I could get. Something was about to happen, and I looked frantically about the room, meeting only the slackened faces of Killian’s infected slaves. I couldn’t see a way out, and I couldn’t blast myself one, either. My eyes met Saskia’s, and she shook her head, desperately, and she pointed.
I looked back at Killian. But he was changing, too.
His fire consumed him, then became black, like the rest of him. As it peeled away in dark tendrils, it revealed skin of ash-grey, crackled like scales with the same brimstone glow I’d seen in the children, only now it was intense. He grew tall, and the Emerald on his shoulder pulsed, and I could see from here the dark tinges that corrupted the gem’s surface. The ground piked under Corgan and lifted the creature up, assisting it to stand before its master.
Killian bowed his head, and when he lifted it, his eyes were covered in a protruding shard of bone, like a mask. The same kind I’d only just seen in my own reflection.
He laid his hands on Corgan’s head, thumbs digging deep into the flesh-bark.
“I place my name on yours,” Killian said, though the voice was smooth, accentless, the voice of a viper. “Take power from me and become whole again. Fulfill your dark purpose. Rise.” All the breaks in Corgan began healing, stone from the ground shunting into wounds and becoming one with the creature’s body, until it stood on its own and bowed its distorted neck.
“Seela,” it whispered in reverence. “First Child of the Bloodlands. You do me an honour I do not deserve.”
I couldn’t help myself and scoffed openly.
Killian — Seela — turned towards me. Slowly. A perfect curve. I saw him fully now: almost seven feet tall, swathed in a robe of ever-changing black, tentacles of living ink curling, seeping. A cloak of oil.
No eyes. Just the mouth, a thin line cut with a knife, crimson. He opened his hands in humble petition. “You doubt my provenance, daughter?”
“Call me that one more time,” I spat.
“More’s the pity.” Seela folded his hands at his elongated waist. He looked like a stretched larva. “You have trouble accepting what is before you. What I am. What you are. Your blood is my blood.”
“Shut up!” I shouted back. “Last time I checked, my blood is Fox. I dunno what yours is, but there’s none of it in me.” Biology be damned. I clung to Cecelia’s memory, to Ravenna’s. Their strength had been mine. It had been enough.
“True,” Seela conceded. “But you saw it yourself, I think.” He took a step towards me, and I stumbled back. “Can’t you see? I have done this all for you.”
He spread his hands again, gesturing around the room and at the dead floating in the torchlight.
I was stunned. “For me?”
However evil the thing was before me, its tone was earnest. “I could have done to you what I did to the Rabbit Paramount. Corgan was not always as he is. But once he gave me the Emerald, he submitted to me. He understood what lies ahead.” The hulking monster servant drew to Seela’s side, and I couldn’t connect what he was saying to what I saw.
“That . . .” I pointed to Corgan, “is the Rabbit Paramount?”
“No longer,” Seela said, patting the stone. “But Corgan is much more than that now. He is the future. So are my children. And the trees we make together. We are building a new world. I want you to be a part of that willingly. I want you to make the choice yourself.”
I laughed, deeply and loudly and deliberately.
Seela’s jaw clenched.
“You should have killed me,” I seethed. “I’ll never help you.”
Seela came closer — not on two legs but many. A spider’s legs made of that sick, slick ink sluicing out from under his fathomless cloak.
“You are no good to me dead,” he admonished. “The Conclave of Fire would have killed you and cast you aside for that rock you carry. But you are of my blood. And we have been touched by burning shadow. That blood must not be wasted.” His body bent at an impossible angle, pushing his face into mine and a long, terrible claw tapped at the dormant Opal in my sternum. “I will free you from your demon, whose name is Deon. I will show you that breaking the stones will free not only you but this world.”
He drew away, stalking back down the hall. “We have much work to do, but our works will be great.” Then the black flames licked back up his body, to the crown of his head, and he was Killian again. Charming and handsome, pestilence hiding in a human skin suit.
“The second I see the opportunity,” I snapped back, no longer bothering to hide my disgust, “I am going to destroy you.”
Killian smiled. “Ye can try, girlie. But we have too much on our plate to stop now.” Killian’s eyes flicked, and my arms were roughly snatched and held in place by Corgan’s powerful, creaking limbs.
“Take her to the summoning chamber. See that she is fed. We will be moving again shortly to London. To test a theory.” Killian looked straight at me, his hazel eyes a match for the one I had that wasn’t touched by the Moth Queen. And the thought made me sick. “The game may have changed, but our purpose is the same.”
Flames rose off his skin, until he was consumed by them. In the great light he cast, an enormous shadow appeared on the wall behind him, climbing. But it wasn’t his own shadow — it was three. The shadows of his parents, the darklings that started all of this. They were alive, writhing, and I swear I could hear their cries of agony in my head. Impatience. Fury. And yet beyond that, a growing excitement at their impending freedom. As the room filled with the inhuman bellows and ululations, the children had turned towards the ghastly shadow puppet show, their faces raw with longing. The longing of real children for their parents. I’d felt it well.
Killian smiled at me from the pyre of his body. The shadows fused together as one black column, growing and growing, consuming the torchlight.
“Welcome to the family,” he said, before I was dragged away.