I leave the tent and slip into the darkness holding the Vale Scythe in my arms like a stolen secret. I’m still half-lost in my dream of blackened water and luring voices, and as I move past the broken wall and into the overgrown garden, I feel as though I am swimming through the flooded river—my breath held, my limbs heavy—as I struggle against the rising current.
The wards are still alight beneath the clementine trees, shimmering neatly in an unbroken row where Lux and Briar strung them along the wrought iron fence. Rain has left the ground damp, and my bare feet sink into the mud as I walk to the edge of the wards. The sky is still heavy with clouds, but the tangled sprawl of plants is limned diffusely in shades of lilac and silver, the color of early dawn. The bloodstained light that painted the sky in gory hues has waned alongside the setting moon.
Fearful, strung tight by apprehension, I edge past a cluster of black nightshade that has sprung up in the beds of mint and lavender. Leftover rain drips from its glossy berries and heart-shaped leaves. When I reach the fence, I curl my hand around an iron paling.
Cold seeps through my skin, travels up the length of my arm in a slow tremor. I hold my breath and hear the sound of the river, the water like a whisper.
The moorland beyond the ruins is a stretch of rain-jeweled grass blanketed by trailing mist, the dark shapes of far-off trees curved grimly against the sky. Then, painted like a delicate rise of incense smoke against the darker shades of gorse and heather, I see Lux.
In her linen underdress, with her hair unbound, she moves like a ghost—a figure slipping in and out of the early light. Her skirts trail heedlessly on the ground, catching against the wet strands of grass as she walks.
I call out to her. “Lux!”
My voice is high and thin, carried across the dawn-lit stillness like the cry of a bird. I hold my breath, my heartbeat quavering, imagine all the eyes of the creatures I pictured hidden in shadows last night, now fixed to me. But the sound of my call melts into the mist. Like I dropped a stone into the river and it fell beneath the surface without even a single ripple.
Lux doesn’t turn.
There’s a narrow gate in the iron fence, a snare of ivy woven around the rust-flecked hinges. It opens soundlessly when I raise the latch. Clutching my sheathed blade to my chest, I step over the line of wards. Fear traces over me, creeping from the nape of my neck to the dip of my spine; this is the second time I’ve gone past the protection of warden magic—first at the end of the world and now here, outside the decayed remnants of Nyx Severin’s chapel.
But I don’t look back toward the tent, framed against the dilapidated kitchen, or the ruin, shadowed against the clouded sky. I only go forward, following Lux out into the moors.
I call her name again but she’s far ahead, moving somnambulantly. Her pale dress is soaked with dew from hem to knee, her hair tousled by the invisible fingers of the wind. I buckle my blade belt over my linen slip, then gather up my skirts and hurry toward her. My breath held, my feet noiseless over the damp grass. I’ve almost reached her when a shadow peels away from the mist; sharp and angular, it carries the same shape as the distant trees, carved by weather into sinuous outlines.
Then it takes form—familiar, sickeningly familiar, though I don’t want it to be. The trailing fall of a long cloak, jutting horns that pierce the mist-draped sky. The vespertine, his features still hidden by daubed corpsepaint and the honed edges of his pale mask that cut like knives down the sides of his jaw.
He places his hand at the small of Lux’s back, gentle as a lover, his onyx claws dimpling the gossamer fabric of her underdress. The sight of her with this creature—unarmored, with no protective gauntlets around her wrists or strengthened rib cage on her chest—stirs me to a desperate panic. I bite back the frightened cry that rises to my lips and force myself to be silent, to be still.
Finger by finger, I curl my hand tighter around the Vale Scythe. The vespertine bends to Lux, hand still pressed to her spine, his paint-darkened mouth beside her ear. I see his lips move, the stirring motion of his breath against her hair as he speaks.
As he speaks to her.
He whispers to her, and she goes loose and soft, bowed toward him like a sapling drawn into a gentle curve by the persistent brush of the wind.
I think of the voice in my dreams and the voice in the dark—the bitten-back anger as he spoke of murder, the way that voice was transformed in the alchemy of sleep until his words became alluring, seductive.
He called to me, and I did not go. Now he’s come for Lux, drawn her from the safety of wards and blades and the darkened ruins; he’s called her, and she has gone to him as though pulled by an invisible thread.
I draw my blade. As the Vale Scythe sings through the air, the vespertine’s head snaps up. He turns from Lux and looks right at me. Beneath the weight of his gaze, I go wretchedly still, a mouse crouched beneath a bramble thicket when the shadow of a hawk passes overhead.
I can see him clearly now, and he’s a creature from a nightmare. From worse than a nightmare.
His mask is gruesome, snarling—a skeletal wolf with fanged teeth and a jagged, open jaw. His cheeks are planed by sharply painted bones, his lips a smudge of onyx cut by grayish stripes: a rictus grin. The fur of his mantle shimmers, silver-tipped in the early light.
I stare at him, my bones turned soft, captured by the feral shimmer of his eyes. It’s as though the distance between us has closed and he’s right beside me. When he touches Lux, I feel the pinprick of his claws against my own spine. Feel his mouth against my ear, his words burning with a heated shudder. I can feel him—an unholiness that slithers over me until I’m sickened, the taste of dirt and death and defilement pasted on my tongue.
There’s a sudden sound of footsteps; I’m pulled free of the vespertine’s gaze. Briar rushes up beside me, her hair streaming loose, and her weapon clutched in a white-knuckled grip, the ribbon tied to the blade hilt spilling down from her fist. She grabs my arm tight enough to bruise, her fingers pressing sharply through the gauzy fabric of my sleeve.
“What are you doing?” She shakes me, hard enough that my teeth bump together, and I taste blood. Then, with a disgusted exhalation, she lets me go and runs toward Lux, calling her name, harsh and desperate. Briar’s voice echoes across the flatlands around us, a panicked, animalistic cry. “Lux, Lux, Lux.”
I start to run, too. We run together across the moorland, our bare feet sinking into the mud beneath the rain-wet grass, our hair flying loose behind us, our weapons drawn.
And there’s something in this moment—the two of us, side by side, filled with terror and adrenaline—that eclipses our division; all the bitterness and hurt and envy are shrouded by the breadth of this present, urgent horror. It doesn’t matter that Fenn will never be my true father, that Briar doesn’t trust me, that Lux has softened toward her… All that matters is we are wardens, sworn to hunt the unholy terror who has emerged from the night.
The vespertine turns toward us sinuously, liquid as a pooled shadow. His mouth tilts into a cold smile, baring sharpened eyeteeth. He raises a hand, his fingers splayed against the sky. A weeping line cuts across his palm, oozing and blood-slick. Briar grabs for me again with the same fierceness as before—except this time, her touch is trembling with fear, not anger.
“Lux!” I call. “Lux, please—”
Lux regards me blankly, her gaze unfocused, a dreamy flush painted across her cheeks. The vespertine plucks something from the depths of his cloak. A piece of bone as thin and sharp as one of my keenest sewing needles. He clasps it tenderly between his index finger and thumb. His smile widens. Then he curls his fingers into a sudden fist, with the bone trapped at the center. The same gesture I’ve seen Lux make countless times when she casts a spell.
He’s using magic. The vespertine can use magic.
There’s a split-second moment for Briar and me to exchange a glance, her wide eyes and paled cheeks a reflection of my own terror. Then his power hits us, brutal as a sudden storm. Smokelike clouds gather, a swift, heavy dark. The crackling scent of ozone fills the air. I fall to my knees, gasping. My weapon thuds to the earth. I try to cry out, but my voice is swept away, all sound lost to an intense, high-pitched static.
My vision blurs and twists. The light flickers, painted with impossible, terrible things. An enormous ruin with arched windows. A carved iron panel that frames a bone-studded door, the hollowed-out carapace of a cathedral. Creatures with too many eyes and too many limbs. Horns and claws and bared teeth. I can feel them, feel their hunger.
Briar collapses beside me. I scrabble in the mud, trying to reach her, but the vespertine’s magic is coiled tight, snaring me in unbreakable knots. It slithers over me, a nauseous, horrifying wrongness—the unholy power that Nyx Severin used, that he made—born of blood and bones and death.
Lux is just before me, but the space between us is unbreachable. Her wrists look so fragile without the protection of her bracers, bird-boned and delicate, her skin as translucent as parchment. I call to her, my voice lost to the howl of the wind. She regards me again with the same vague, dreamy expression, lashes veiling her gaze in a slow blink.
The vespertine extends his hand to her. She steps into his arms.
He’s still for a heartbeat, and again I feel the burn of his gaze. Somewhere beside me, I can hear Briar, her choking cries. We press together, fighting against the magic, trying to push ourselves back to our feet. My nose starts to bleed. The air howls. My bones are lit with unbearable, searing pain. I fight, I fight—then all of it, the noise and the power and the terror, rushes over me.
The vespertine cradles Lux against his chest. She curls into him, her eyes closed and her head against his shoulder, her bare feet dangling elegantly over his arm. Blood drips from his cut hand and stains the side of her dress. Droplets fall to the ground, bright and brilliant, and I see him transposed against the stained glass window in the chapel. Nyx Severin with his clenched fists and his blood raining over the penitents.
I fall to my knees, powerless to move, to scream, to do anything except watch the monster walk away with Lux cradled against him, carrying her the same way we carried the wrapped corpse of the slaughtered vespertine.
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