others’ weaknesses. She found a loose end and tugged, but the spell only unraveled a little before catching in another knot. It would have been a lovely puzzle if the air in her lungs weren’t already painfully hot. Sweat dripped from her face, slicked her hands and blurred her eyes. Asheris murmured something in her ear, but she couldn’t hear the throb of her pulse.
Abandoning finesse, she called the cold. Too soon since she’d last done it; a shudder racked her. Her bones ached, and the force of it scraped her veins like glass splinters. But it answered. Death, decay, the hungry cold that waited for the end of everything, spiraling through her like a maelstrom. She tightened numbing fingers in the collar’s loops and whorls.
Asheris shuddered now and caught her shoulders. His magic rose to answer hers: a sandstorm, a whirlwind, smokeless flame. Two faces hung before her-the man’s, and a fire-crowned eagle. She closed her eyes before it dizzied her.
Her spells were failing. The heat bit deeper; her hair was burning. But the spells on the collar died too, slowly corroding beneath the entropy in her hands. Asheris caught her left wrist, gave a raptor’s shriek of rage and pain. She smelled her skin crisping, but she was already numb.
“Stop,” Asheris gasped. “Please.”
He was more powerful than she, but not more powerful than the force she called. Storms stilled, flame smothered, and in the end even stars chilled and died. She could stop his undying heart.
But she’d die first. Ice within, fire without, more than her fragile flesh could withstand. If she left herself open to the abyss too long, it would claim her.
The last of the ward-spells dissolved, leaving nothing but gold beneath her frozen fingers. Gasping, she broke the channel. The pain of it made her scream and she might have fallen, but her hands were locked stiff around Asheris’s throat. He cried out too and stumbled, and they both fell to their knees.
“Please,” he whispered, “please-”
She had exhausted her magic. His fire would burn her, and she had nothing left to stop it. But she wasn’t dead yet, and gold was soft.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered back, raw and ragged. Then she kneed him in the groin as hard as she could.
He groaned and tried to curl around the pain, but she forced him back, driving her knees into his stomach and tugging at the collar. Blood slicked her hands, hers and Asheris’s, as wire bit their flesh. Her vision washed dull and spotted as she began to feel the pain, but she held on, shaking like a terrier with a rat in its jaws. Metal twisted, bent, broke. Strand after strand. She sobbed with the pain, tears and sweat and blood from a bitten lip splashing Asheris’s face.
Snarling, he pushed her off and backhanded her across the face, sending her sprawling on the stones. She choked on her own tears and curled into a pain-riddled ball. She couldn’t stand, could only lie shuddering and wait for the death stroke.
But Asheris didn’t spring for her, only rose to his knees, trembling like a blown horse. One hand clutched his throat as he choked and gagged. She might have crushed his larynx. As blood filled her mouth and her cheek began to throb, she couldn’t quite care.
Then she felt the pain in her hands, and something else. Gold twisted around her claw-hooked fingers, gleaming beneath the blood. And in the palm of her ruined left hand lay a blazing diamond.
She forced herself to her knees, peeling the wire out of her hands; blood welled in the cuts, dripped to the ground. She and Asheris stared at each other through witchlight and shadows.
“Destroy the stone,” he gasped. “Imran wears its twin-part of me is still bound in them. I can’t do it, please-”
The pain on his face made her look away, pain and desperate hope. She couldn’t stand to hear him plead again. But she had no way to even chip such a stone, let alone shatter it…
She turned, clumsy, and stared at the orange light glowing from the mountain’s cauldron. Diamonds were forged in the earth’s fire. That would be enough to melt it.
She stumbled to her feet, knees buckling. Her arms were nothing but pain from fingertip to shoulder, and her face was already swelling from the blow. But she could still walk.
The stones shuddered beneath her feet. Beneath the keen of the wind she heard shouts and sounds of battle. The Dai Tranh must have broken the wards. They needed to be away from the mountain as fast as they could.
So she, like a fool, was climbing up it. It made her laugh, till her hand cramped around the stone and she whimpered instead.
The lake of fire was higher than it had been, great bubbles of flame bursting on its surface. The stench of sulfur and burnt rock choked her. She crouched on her knees at the lip of the crater, afraid to stand against the wind.
She spared a heartbeat to stare at the ruined collar. Still beautiful, rubies like drops of blood amid the mangled gold, the diamond rich and flawless. He was a demon and she meant to free him. She’d never be able to stop him again if he turned on her.
Only a heartbeat’s hesitation and she flung the stone away, into the cauldron. She didn’t see it land, but flames belched high and bright. And from the landing below came a fierce raptor’s cry.
She turned, scrambled down the stone till she reached the steps. And stopped as Asheris rose in front of her on four burning wings. His eagle’s head turned, watched her from one blazing eye. Even Assari friezes couldn’t capture the beauty of the jinn.
He alit on the step below her and the light died, leaving only the man. His clothes were torn and filthy, skin lusterless beneath blood and sweat, but his throat had healed.
“Lady, it is done.” He offered her a hand and she took it, but when their fingers touched he flinched away. He stared at her right hand, her beringed hand, and for an instant she wondered if he would send her into the volcano as well, to free the bound ghosts.
Instead he turned her hand over, frowning at the blood, at the fingers hooked with pain. Then he caught her left, baring the blackened, blistered mark his hand had burned into her wrist.
“I’m sorry. I wish I could heal you-”
She smiled crookedly. “But that’s not what either of us is made for, is it? Perhaps you could help me off this mountain instead.”
“It would be my pleasure.”
The ground shook again when they reached the landing and they stumbled.
“This is bad, isn’t it?” Isyllt asked.
Before he could answer, footsteps slapped against the path and Zhirin stumbled up the stairs. Witchlights flickered around her and she raised a hand in warding when she saw Asheris.
“It’s all right,” Isyllt said. “We’re not killing each other anymore. What happened?”
The girl gaped an instant longer, then shook her head. Blood ran from a cut on her cheek, spotting her shirt collar. “Imran is dead. He burned, and I don’t know how-”
Asheris smiled, cold and cruel. “Backlash. A pity I wasn’t there to watch.”
“But,” Zhirin went on, “Xinai got away. And I think they’ve broken too many wards.”
His bloody humor fell away. “Yes. The mountain is waking.” He tilted his head, listening. “It’s been waiting such a long time.”
“Can you stop it? Like you did at the warehouse?”
He shook his head. “This fire is greater than I could ever quench or contain. All we can do is get away.”
“But the Kurun Tam, the villages, the forest-”
“Are all going to burn. I’m sorry. Imran would have done better to send me after the Dai Tranh while there was still hope of stopping this.”
The mountain rumbled, a roar building beneath their feet.
“We’re not going to make it down, are we?” Isyllt said. She didn’t feel like running anyway. It was hard enough staying conscious.
“We wouldn’t, no.” Asheris slipped an arm around her waist. “But we’re not going down.” He held out his other hand to Zhirin. “Miss Laii?”
Zhirin stared. “What-”
“Come on,” Isyllt said as she began to understand. She grabbed his waist, abused fingers clutching a handful of silk. “Zhirin, please, let’s go.”
