Asunder

30 SACRIFICE

I SCREAMED.

Fingers dug into my arms, through my sleeves, and Stef yelled my name over and over. I strained against her, reaching for Cris on the table. His eyes were dull and glassy; his knuckles were white around the knife hilt.

No matter how I struggled, Stef was stronger. I rushed toward Cris, but Stef yanked me back and shoved me to the floor, pinning me. “Stop it!” she yelled.

But I wasn’t flailing anymore. I was too busy watching a white light bleed into the table.

The light expanded, flooding around the table legs that stretched over the pit. It was so bright I had to squint as the glow encompassed Cris’s body.

Tears leaked down my face, from despair and shock and light. All the air swept inward, wind rattling bones and snatching at our clothes; I caught my scarf as it tried to flee my neck. Deborl’s skeleton skidded on the floor toward the pit, as though all the air were being sucked down. It strained against the shackles.

The glow flared so bright I had to close my eyes. I wanted to close my ears as the wind howled around table legs.

Beneath me, the floor moved, slick against my clothes.

No, I was moving on the floor, both Stef and me. Shrieking wind pulled us, even as Stef scrambled to help me off my back. Wind-deaf and light-blind, we had to feel our way as the pull grew stronger, like gravity was shifting.

My heart hammered with a surge of adrenaline.

“We have to find something to hold on to!” I couldn’t tell if she heard me over the rush and keen, but I reached—her arm reached with mine—and felt along the floor, trying to dig my toes in.

“No!” Janan’s voice filled the room, thunder and waterfall-crashing.

I fought the wind’s pulling, the way air thinned, and I lost track of Stef. Twice, I felt her bump against me, but I focused on not sliding as red light pulsed beyond my eyelids, and white light burned and moved.

Even with my eyes closed, I saw silhouettes of my hands splayed on the floor, desperate for traction.

And then Cris’s voice: “Ana. Stef. Go.”

I couldn’t help but sob. He’d done it. Done something. “Cris!” My voice was lost under Janan’s rage and the wind still sucking toward the pit. Bones clacked, and silver chains rattled and clanked.

Janan roared words I didn’t know, had never heard. His voice was pressure on my skin, hot as a sylph turned solid.

“Ana, now!” Cris again, like sparks catching and burning. “Please.”

It was his desperation that made me open my eyes. A gray archway waited ahead of me, just a few paces away, and mostly in the floor so I wouldn’t even have to stand. He’d done it. Freedom. His plan had worked.

Jaw clenched, gasping at thin air, I clawed toward the misty portal and hooked my fingers on the bottom lip. I just had to pull myself up and tumble out. Quickly, too, because the outline wavered, shot with streaks of black and white. Changing its destination.

If I didn’t hurry, Janan would seize control.

“Go, Ana!” Cris again, choked and smothered. Lights and air pulsed all around the chamber as the two battled within the temple walls.

Stef. I couldn’t find her.

Digging my fingers into the stone—what would happen if the archway vanished altogether?—I adjusted myself to get a better look around the room. I shouted her name, but she wouldn’t hear me over the stampede of Janan’s rage.

The table. If I squinted right, I could make out arms looped around the near table leg, and Stef straining to keep herself from being sucked the rest of the way in.

She had bumped against me before. Nudging me away from the pit?

Her attempt at heroism had almost gotten her killed, too.

I had a scarf, but even if I had been strong enough to hold on to the archway with one hand and pull her up with the other, it wasn’t long enough.

There was no asking Cris for help. The shrieking and wind grew worse, and Cris cried out in pain. I had no idea what Janan could do when they were mostly without substance, but the wailing sounded like stars dying.

I pulled myself far enough to the arch and braced my elbow inside it, then lifted my leg as high as I could. My heel caught the edge. Terrified every motion would make me slip, I tied one end of the scarf around my ankle, making sure the knot was secure.

Leg down again, the scarf whipped in the wind, close to Stef but not close enough. I couldn’t see her face in the searing light, but her arms didn’t move from around the table leg.

Chest muscles aching with the strain of holding on, I switched to my hands again, so now instead of my upper body at the archway, only my head peeked in.

Stef—I hoped Stef—tugged on the scarf, but the weight wasn’t enough to make me believe she’d taken a good hold. It wasn’t constant pulling.

Sam would never forgive me if I got this far and didn’t save her. I took three breaths as deep as I could, wind stinging my throat and eyes, and lowered myself farther so my arms stretched before me. Only my fingers stayed in the archway as the sucking wind grew stronger.

Red flashed like bloody lightning, and the cacophony grew worse. But then there was steady tugging on the scarf as Stef grabbed hold and began climbing.

“Please let the knot hold,” I whispered.

The scarf yanked on my foot, and Stef was more weight for me to keep up. My hands were numb as I struggled to hold on, struggled to keep my foot flexed so the scarf wouldn’t slip off. My muscles shook.

A hand closed around my ankle, and another on my calf. My own scream was lost in the din as I begged my arms to pull us up again. If I could just get my elbows over the edge, I would be able to fall through the hole.

Stef used me like a rope, climbing as I worked to bend my arms. The wind pulled and pushed, and lights flared. I focused on breathing, focused on the archway stretched above me. Freedom. If only Stef’s arms weren’t wrapped around my waist.

She must have been pushing with her feet, because a nudge gave me the weightlessness and strength to move my left shoulder over the lip and hang on with my elbow. Now I pushed instead of pulled, but fire still ripped through my arms and chest as I gained enough strength to move my upper half over the archway.

Stef reached for the edge with one arm. Her other around me slipped.

“Just a little farther,” I urged. The wind stole my voice.

Chasms of concentration lined her face. She clenched her jaw tighter, reached again, and caught hold enough to pull herself up next to me.

The archway had been gray when Cris opened it, but now it was midnight dark. Relief for my eyes, but I was pretty sure that meant Cris wasn’t in control anymore, and no matter how much I shouted his name, the archway didn’t change.

Stef leaned toward me, shouted by my ear. “Why aren’t we leaving?”

My tortured voice wasn’t even as loud as hers, but I tried. “Gray means outside. Black or white means inside.”

She looked ready to cry, but nodded and hauled herself higher on the archway. One foot on the left edge, one on the right. She positioned herself over it like a spider waiting to pounce.

I understood. The second the portal turned to gray, we were going through. I hastened to follow her example, screaming to Cris as loud as I could that we were ready.

But when it did flicker and the black became smooth gray, I wasn’t prepared. My foot had slipped and I was trying to push myself up with just one leg. All my muscles felt shredded, though, too worn to move.

Stef grabbed my wrist and dragged me through the gray archway just as it began to change.

Silence.

Real silence, not the temple unsilence where not even my ears would ring.

And air, windy and cold, but it didn’t try to pull me places. It was thick enough to breathe.

Frigid skin pressed against mine, and I opened my eyes to see Sine above me. Her mouth moved as though she spoke, but I couldn’t hear, so I just blinked and breathed and waited for my muscles to melt.

For now, at least, they were too cold to hurt. I reveled in the ability to lie flat on my back and not be moving.

“Ana.” Sine sounded far away. “You have to get up.”

I turned my head to find Stef staring up at Councilor Frase. She looked the way I felt. Dull. Not really here.

The market field cobblestones had never been so beautiful.

“Ana!” Sine’s shout brought me back to myself. “Get up before I find someone to carry you.”

That didn’t sound like a bad idea at the moment, but as I regained control over my body, I remembered market day, Deborl’s speech, Meuric dying in front of everyone, and the resulting mob.

I sat up so quickly Sine almost didn’t dodge fast enough. “Where is Sam?” I tried to make my eyes focus on her again, but I’d moved too fast, and dizziness swarmed inside my head.

“Hospital.” She stood and offered a hand. I climbed up by myself when I saw Stef finding her way to a more vertical position, too. “With everything that happened the other day, he received a few serious injuries, but he’ll live. He just woke up an hour ago.”

I wanted to feel numb, not vainly try to patch the cracked dam of emotions. Sam. Cris. Janan. Soon I was going to break.

Just not in front of anyone. Please.

“What day is it?”

“You’ve been missing for two days.”

It felt like a month. Maybe Cris had managed one last favor, letting us out as close to the time we went in as possible.

The dam inside me strained. I should have stopped Cris. I’d as good as killed him.

“Where’s Deborl? I’m going to electrocute him and then set him on fire—” Stef gasped as she leaned on Frase’s shoulder, hiding her face.

“Deborl and his friends are in prison.”

“Prison?” I could hardly imagine good news anymore. “What about Wend? He was there, too.”

Though Deborl had shot him….

Sine combed her fingers through my tangles. “Wend is dead.” Lines creased her face as she frowned, and a tear dropped from crevice to crevice. “None of them will trouble newsouls again, though it’s only fair to tell you that they were not ignored.”

“I need Sam.” I needed to tell him everything that had happened.

“Of course. Corin, please fetch Dossam.” She signaled to someone behind me—Corin, presumablyand footsteps retreated. “Where is Cris? They said he was with you.”

I gazed at the temple, cold and white and not quite as evil if Cris was still in there. Sam had said Cris had never done anything terrible to anyone. Even after learning they’d all sacrificed newsouls for reincarnation, I still believed that. He’d sacrificed himself for us now.

But I couldn’t answer Sine’s question.

I was going to break.

I wasn’t sure how long I stood there, holding myself together with nothing but threads, but eventually a familiar shadow fell next to mine.

My muscles felt like liquid as I lifted my hand just enough that Sam’s closed around it, and then his arm closed around the rest of me.

The dam broke and everything spilled out. Sam hugged me so tightly I couldn’t breathe, or maybe the sobs choked me. He touched my hair and face, kissed me. His affection was featherlight, as though he was afraid of crushing me.

I cried into his shirt even though there were other people here. Stef, Sine, Frase. People I didn’t know.

I wanted to hide, but I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to walk. Even now, Sam mostly held me up.

Sam, who, five thousand years ago, had taken immortality knowing the price. How could I ever look at him the same way?

But I couldn’t bear to pull away from him. Maybe I wouldn’t tell him; it would be hard enough for both of us to deal with the fleetingness of my existence.

I would just die.

Where would I go? What would I do?

So lost in myself, and in Sam’s arms, I almost didn’t notice the commotion around the curve of the temple.

“What’s going on?” I swallowed more tears.

“Sylph. Don’t worry. They’ll capture it and set it free outside Range.” He started to adjust his hold on me, but I straightened and pulled away. “What is it?” Concern lined his face.

“I just had a horrible thought.” I wanted to be wrong, but my mind worked no matter how I tried to ignore it. “Help me get there before they put it in an egg.”

He looked uncertain, but kept me upright as I limped toward the crowd gathered around a panicked sylph. The tall shadow hummed and sang, caught in the circle of people with brass eggs. It could have burned any of them, but it stayed in the center and shifted as though trying to decide what to do.

Then it saw me.

I gathered my strength and gave Sam’s hand a squeeze. “Let me through.” My voice cracked, and I had to say it again, but the team with sylph eggs backed off. Maybe they remembered Deborl’s claims that I could control sylph.

I stepped through the line of people, Sam close behind, and Stef after him. The column of smoke and shadow grew still and its songs silent. It looked at all of us and slumped, somewhere between relief and exhaustion.

It was too human.

“We shouldn’t have let him do it, Stef.” I lifted my hand toward the black smoke. People hissed, but when my fingers passed through, there was only uncomfortable warmth. The sylph hummed, calmer.

I raised my other palm toward the midnight curls, but it shivered away from me as heat grew, like it had lost control.

“Oh.” Stef sounded like she wanted to be sick. “Cris?”

The sylph twitched—acknowledgment—and a tendril of shadow blossomed like a black rose, then fell to my feet.

I clutched my chest, my heart caged inside. We’d let him sacrifice himself for us, and now he was cursedCursed.

Sylph were cursed.

Cris had said there’d been no sylph in the beginning. I still didn’t know how they’d been cursed, but I knew what Cris had done.

“Oh, Cris.”

The shadow rose vanished, and the sylph floated between a pair of guards—who stepped aside to let him pass. He flowed like ink down East Avenue, and Sine muttered into her SED. “There’s a sylph going through the Eastern Arch. Open the gates wide and let him be.”