Savedra didn’t watch Mathiros die.
Nikos tried to intervene but his knees gave way, dragging them both to the floor. She pulled his head against her chest and buried her face in his hair, whispering meaningless sounds to drown the wet noises coming from Phaedra and the king.
When she opened her eyes again, Mathiros hung like an empty husk in Phaedra’s hands. Blood coated him, dripping from his fingers to dapple the floor. More slicked Phaedra’s hands and mouth. As Savedra watched, the red stains vanished into her skin-the splatters on her white gown remained. When the last drops were gone, the sorceress let him fall. Her face crumpled as she stared at the sunken corpse, exultation fled.
“How does it feel?”
Savedra started, scarcely recognizing Isyllt’s voice. The necromancer still knelt by Kiril, her face a half-mask of blood beneath the shroud of her hair.
“Was it worth it?”
“For a moment,” Phaedra said, almost too soft to hear. “For a moment it was. Now… it doesn’t matter now. It’s done.”
A spark of steel caught Savedra’s eye. Ginevra was awake, bound hands groping across the floor for Savedra’s knife. If Phaedra noticed the movement, she gave no sign.
“Now what?” Isyllt asked. Her eyes flickered-she noticed, and was trying to keep Phaedra distracted.
The demon stared at her hands, clean of blood. “Now I finish it, I suppose. I don’t want to wear this flesh anymore.”
“It won’t be different in anyone else’s,” Savedra said, finding her voice at last.
Phaedra turned. “It will, for a time.” Behind her, Ginevra had finished sawing through her bonds and chafed her raw wrists, jaw clenched against any sound of pain.
“Mathiros is dead,” Isyllt said. “Spider is dead. Kiril is dead.” Her voice was too hollow to crack. “You have your revenge, but your plans are ruined.”
“Perhaps you’re right. I only wanted-” Phaedra shook her head. “I don’t know what I wanted. Rest, perhaps.” She glanced at Savedra and Nikos. “Keep your prince. The other is all I need.”
At last she turned toward Ginevra, in time for the girl to launch herself off the floor, knife in hand.
Clumsy and slow, but Phaedra only gaped as the blade flashed toward her, rocked back as it struck her face. Ginevra fell, wan and sweating, and Phaedra stumbled back, one hand clapped to her cheek.
“You-” She pulled her hand away, and blood glistened on her palm. Mathiros’s blood, Savedra supposed. The slice laid her cheek open to the bone; flesh gapped as she spoke. Dark rivulets ran down her chin to stain her bodice.
“Dead flesh doesn’t feel pain,” she told Ginevra. “I’ll be more careful when I’m wearing yours.”
Ginevra’s grey eyes were dark with pain and hopelessness, but she gave Savedra a fleeting smile.
“I find,” she said softly as Phaedra walked toward her, “that I’m tired of being anyone’s pawn or plaything.” She turned the knife. Savedra’s lips moved as she understood, too slow to stop it.
The blade flashed one last time, as Ginevra drove it into the soft flesh beneath her chin.
Savedra screamed as Ginevra fell. Phaedra shrieked in rage. Isyllt breathed a name.
“Forsythia.”
A whisper was all the dead needed. Her ring sparked and the ghost appeared beside her, translucent and wild-eyed.
Isyllt reached for her magic as well, for the biting cold that gave her strength, but it fell to ashes at her touch. Her power would return, Kiril had said. She could endure this. But for the moment she was useless.
“What’s happening?” Forsythia asked, watching Phaedra kneel in the spreading pool of Ginevra’s blood. “Is that-”
“That’s her. I need your help to stop her.”
Transparent hands knotted in her skirts. “I can’t. I can’t.”
“You can.” Isyllt levered herself off Kiril’s shoulder, trying not to think of the cooling flesh beneath her. “You’re the only one who can. If we don’t she’ll do this over and over again.” She touched Forsythia’s shoulder, numbing her fingers to the bone. “I’m too weak to do it alone.”
The ghost straightened. “What do you need from me?”
“Possess me.” Her jaw wanted to lock on the words. “Wear my flesh. I can’t use my magic, but maybe you can.” Her voice shook. “It might destroy us both.”
Forsythia smiled crookedly, an echo of her mortal beauty. “I’m already dead, aren’t I? What do I do?”
Isyllt cupped the dead woman’s face in her hands, drawing her close. “Come inside.” Her defenses, already shaken and cracked, fell away, leaving her bare.
It was as cold as she’d ever imagined. Colder. Painful, too-shudders wracked her, muscles cramping and contracting, pulling her into a fetal ball. Fingernails cracked as she clawed the stones.
The pain ended, but the cold remained. With it came a fierce strength and hunger. All her aches and scrapes and fatigue faded away; she was strong again. Alive. Colors dizzied her, the texture of stone and cloth and the weight of her hair against her neck overwhelming in their intensity.
“Phaedra.” She felt her lips and tongue shape the sound, but control wasn’t hers. Dried salt and blood and mucus cracked and flaked as she moved. The air reeked like a slaughterhouse.
The sorceress rose, blood sticking her gown to her knees. Her hair fell in stormwrack swags around her ruined face. Her eyes burned.
“I’m sorry for Kiril,” she said as Isyllt tried to stand. “I never wanted that.”
“I’m sorry too.” She-they-gained their feet, and took a halting marionette step. In time she-and-Forsythia would be as strong and graceful as Phaedra, but they didn’t have that time. Was this how it always felt? The boundaries of host and possessor slowly blurring? Too slowly-she couldn’t teach Forsythia how to use the magic she’d studied for decades in only a moment.
“You can’t stop me,” Phaedra said. “You know that, don’t you? You can barely stand.”
Another awkward step, then another, and they were close enough to touch. Had Phaedra struck her, Isyllt would have been doomed, but she only watched, her demon gaze dimming with grief.
She cupped Isyllt’s cheek. “You loved him.”
“More than anything.”
“I know what it’s like to lose that much, to live with the loss.” She leaned her forehead against Isyllt’s, cold breath drifting over both their faces. “I can take the pain. It would be a mercy.”
“Yes,” Isyllt whispered. “Mercy.” She had no anger left, no strength, but she could do that much.
She pressed her cheek to Phaedra’s ruined one; the woman’s hair tickled her lips. “Take everything.”
Phaedra cradled her face in cold hands and magic crawled over them. Isyllt expected pain, but none came, even as beads of blood welled from her pores-that was a relief, at least. The blood rolled toward Phaedra, sinking into her skin.
The empty place opened and the nothing poured out with her blood. Forsythia didn’t have the knowledge to control it, and Isyllt didn’t have the strength. They didn’t need to. Phaedra drank it down.
She realized her mistake a moment later. She pulled away, but Isyllt caught her hands and held her. The world dulled around the edges, but she had a demon’s strength.
Phaedra rallied her magic, but it unraveled beneath the tide of entropy. Brown skin bruised and bled as the sorcery that kept it fresh dissolved. Stolen flesh sank, shriveled, cracked.
Isyllt knew she had to stop or the nothing would take her too, but she was too cold, too tired, and the emptiness soothed her with promises of dark and quiet. Phaedra’s wrists snapped in her grip, disintegrating like snow and ashes. With nothing to lean on, Isyllt fell.
As she crumpled, she heard Forsythia whisper farewell.
