touching.
“This is bone metal,” he said, staring at Slorn in astonishment. “What are you doing with a bone metal coffin?”
“Solving your problem,” Slorn said, propping the lid so it would stay up.
“Coffin?” Josef said at the same time. He glared at Slorn over his shoulder. “Killing her is not an option. She’s still in there.”
“I am the last man in the world who needs to be reminded of that, swordsman,” Slorn said quietly.
Josef snapped his mouth shut.
“Our only hope is to get her contained,” Slorn went on, staring up at Nico. “I don’t know why she hasn’t gotten larger, but I’ll take my luck as I find it. In any event, we should move quickly.”
“How do we contain that?” Eli said, pointing at the black pillar.
“Demons gain strength by feeding,” Slorn said. “So we’re going to start by locking her away from her food source, and then we’ll see what happens.”
Eli glanced down at the white box. Suddenly, it looked pathetically small. “I guess we’re about to learn the limits of demons and bone metal.”
“That we are,” Slorn said. “First, though, we have to get her down.”
“Leave that to me,” Josef said.
Eli started to protest, but Josef had already left his sword anchored in the stone and started marching toward the black pillar. He walked through the iron weight of the Heart’s open spirit like it was nothing, which, for him, it was. He stopped when he reached the base of the enormous pillar, his bare hands clenched into fists as he stared up at Nico.
She floated in the air above him, her bare feet even with the top of his head. Her already thin body looked skeletal in the liquid shadows, and her face was screwed up in intense pain as her mouth moved unceasingly, screaming the same words over and over.
“Nico,” Josef shouted, his deep voice cutting through the roar of the flowing dark. “I’m bringing you down. Slorn’s going to heal you. I need you to trust me and not fight.”
If she heard him, Nico gave no sign, but Josef didn’t wait for one. The second he finished speaking, he reached up, grabbing her ankles with both hands. Then, bracing his feet against the stone, Josef began to pull. The dark river roared over Nico’s body, the flowing shadows wrapping around her, pulling her back, but Josef pulled harder.
Slowly, Nico began to sink. Soon, Josef was able to grab her knees, then her waist. By this point, he was standing in the pillar himself. The darkness poured over him like a waterfall, but to Eli’s amazement, it did not consume him. When he had her low enough, Josef grabbed Nico’s shoulders and tugged her into his arms. Wrapping himself around her like a shield, he turned and walked away from the pillar, carrying Nico out of the dark and into the afternoon sunlight.
The second her body left the pillar, the blackness dissolved. The roaring torrent just melted away like snow in the sun. But as the pillar vanished, darkness began to grow around Nico’s body. It oozed up from her skin, covering her like black mold. Josef walked toward them, holding her carefully, but with every step his face grew paler. It took years for him to cross the stretch of clear ground, and by the time he reached the bone metal box, Nico’s body was nearly invisible under the shadows.
Josef fell to his knees beside the coffin and gently set her down inside. As he lowered her, Eli realized Nico’s darkness clung to the swordsman as well. Josef’s shirt was rotted away where she’d rested against him, and wherever the darkness had touched skin, his flesh was gray and unhealthy.
But Josef didn’t seem to mind his injuries. All of his attention was on Nico as he laid her in the box, his hands peeling away from her skin like letting her go was the hardest thing he’d ever done. The second his fingers were out of the way, Slorn slammed the lid down and the mountains fell silent.
The Heart’s spirit lifted the moment the threat was gone, and the sword almost seemed to slump into the stone. Eli didn’t blame it. He felt like collapsing himself, but he forced himself to stand and watch as Slorn checked the box’s seams. They must have passed inspection, for the Shaper’s bear face was calm as he got to his feet.
“We should return to the mountain,” he said. “She’ll be safest there. As will we.”
“Slorn,” Eli said quietly. “What is going on?”
Slorn raised his hand, and a white line flashed in the air in front of him, falling to the ground in an instant as the white door opened. “Come with me and you’ll get all the answers you want,” he said. “Plus some you don’t.”
Eli rolled his eyes. “Isn’t it always that way?”
Josef was silent as he went to retrieve the Heart of War, sliding it onto his back with slow, stiff movements as though he’d aged twenty years. When he returned to them, he grabbed his end of Nico’s box without prompting, and together he and Slorn lifted it off the ground and carried it carefully through the hole in the world. Eli followed after, stopping only to whisper an apology to the mountains before stepping through the cut in the veil and vanishing without a trace.
CHAPTER
18
As Eli stepped through the portal, all he saw was white, and his stomach seized in dread. No, Slorn wouldn’t have taken him back to Benehime. But the portal, the white, white world…
His chest began to heave as a cold sweat broke out all over his body, but before Eli could ramp himself up into a full-blown panic, he noticed that this white world had walls. They were hard to see, but they were definitely there. Benehime’s world had no walls, none he knew of at least. Moreover, Josef and Slorn were still here, fussing over the bone metal box. So was a new man, an older gentleman with a long gray beard wearing the finest robes Eli had ever seen outside—
Eli let out a great breath and looked up, his face breaking into a grin as he traced the tapering curve of the glowing white room. “The heart of the Shaper Mountain,” he said, nearly laughing. “Never thought I’d be here again.”
“You would not be here if the circumstances were less dire, thief.”
The deep, unfamiliar voice made him jump, and he turned in surprise to see the old bearded man staring at him with a murderous glare.
“I’m sorry,” Eli said. “Do I know you?”
“No,” the man said. “But I know you, Eli Monpress. Or rather, I know what you did.”
Eli’s smile turned sheepish. “Could you remind me, then? I’ve done a lot over the years.”
The man crossed his arms, his beautiful silk sleeves rustling like grass in the wind. “Three years ago you stole five of the finest tapestries ever woven by Shaper hands from our private collection.”
“Oh, yes,” Eli said. “One of my first big solo jobs. I still have them, you know.” He clasped his hands over his heart. “The memory of their beauty sustains me every day. I feel truly lucky to have touched such workmanship. I’ve stolen many fine things, but your tapestries are truly the jewel of my collection.”
On the floor beside Nico’s box, Josef rolled his eyes and Slorn made a little huffing sound, almost like he was stifling a laugh. The old man, however, was not amused.
“Be thankful that the only thing Shapers value more than the work of their hands is their duty to the mountain, thief,” the old man said. “Had the Teacher not given you safe passage, I’d be escorting you to one of our cells.”
Eli’s smile grew wicked. “Well, maybe once this is over, we could give that a try. I’d actually love to see your cells. A prison so shoddy that Miranda could break out of it must truly be a wonder of the world.”
The old man went pale with rage, his eyes going wide, but before he could explode, Slorn interrupted. “Father,” he said, “now is not the time. And Eli?”
Eli lifted his head. “Yes?”
Slorn flattened his small, round ears to his flat scalp. “Shut up.”
