Den paused, and his eyes sparked with a new light. “I’d thought you were his daughter, maybe,” he said, a smile spreading across his face. “But I was wrong. You were Tesset’s student, weren’t you?”
“He showed me the way to be my own master,” Nico answered, ripping his hand off her shoulder.
Den’s eyebrows shot up. “Is that so?” he said. “Well, then, as one free soul to another, let me give you some advice.” He leaned in low, bringing his face level with hers. “Run away. You may think you want to try fighting me to reclaim your master’s honor, but you should forget that. You can’t beat me.”
Nico gritted her teeth, her eyes boring into his. “No.”
Den leaned back as Nico stood up. “I made a promise,” she said, bracing her feet on the sand. “You will not pass this beach.”
Den shrugged. “It’s your death,” he said, planting his own feet. “I just hope you can give me a better challenge than your master.”
“He wasn’t my master,” Nico said firmly. “I have no master but myself.”
Den smiled wide. “Good to see you learned better than he did.” He beckoned. “Come, then. Let’s see whose kingdom is greater. Yours or mine.”
Nico didn’t answer. Instead, she grabbed a handful of her coat at her chest. The moment her fingers touched the fabric, she opened her spirit.
“Cover us.”
The words were scarcely out of her mouth before the coat obeyed. It sprang off her back, the black fabric expanding, pulling out every inch of the enormous lengths of cloth Slorn had woven into it. It grew and grew, spilling onto the sand behind her and rising overhead like a wave of night. Den held his stance, watching through narrowed eyes as the coat arched over his head. Moments after it started, the coat stopped, trapping Nico and Den inside a large, pitch-black tent of living cloth.
“Clever,” Den’s voice sounded from Nico’s left. “But blinding me won’t be enough.”
“I didn’t do it to blind you,” Nico said, fading into the dark. “I did it because I don’t want the world to see what I’m going to do.”
“And what is that?” Den’s voice was curious, not afraid.
Nico didn’t answer. She slipped through the shadows until she was facing Den’s back. She could see him clearly, but not with her eyes. Her coat was too well made for that. It blocked the light so completely that even her night vision was useless. She could still see with her other sight, though, and now that her normal vision was gone, the world of the spirits was clearer than ever.
Den hadn’t moved since the dark had fallen. She could see him holding his breath, waiting for her to give herself away, but more than that, she could see him clearly for the first time, not his body, but the actual spirit that was Den. Generally, when she looked at people, wizards or the spirit deaf, the souls beneath their bodies looked jumbled and chaotic. Tesset was the exception. His soul had looked like metal, almost like the Heart’s blade.
Den was completely different. Back in the light, she’d seen him as a fortress. Now, in the dark, she saw how much of an understatement that was. Den’s body was a vault of power. Every part of him was perfectly aligned, every angle perfectly set. Strength flowed uninterrupted from his head to his arms to his feet, and when he shifted, everything in his body moved together in perfect unison. For a moment, Nico forgot the fight and simply stared in wonder. Looking at Den, she saw the pure essence of human potential, and with it, the truth of what it meant to be absolutely, completely in control.
“Well?”
Den’s voice snapped her out of her gawking, and Nico shrank back reflexively before remembering he couldn’t see her. But even as she thought it, Den looked over his shoulder and stared straight at her.
“Come,” he said. “I’m getting bored.”
Nico fled away through the dark, coming up on his side. Den was still facing the place where she had been, and Nico breathed in relief. Maybe his turn had been just a lucky guess, or maybe he could sense her, but it wasn’t instant. Either way, he wasn’t looking at her, at least for now. Nico clenched her fist. For now was good enough. All she needed was one good hit.
She exploded out of the shadows low to Den’s right, her fist clenched as she flew toward his unguarded side. She was taking a cue from Tesset, aiming for his liver. Fortress or not, Den’s body was still human, and no human could take repeated blows to the liver without feeling it. For a thrilling second, she felt her fist connect, and then things started to go wrong.
She could see the shock wave from her blow running through the orderly fortress of his spirit. The force rippled out from her fist, but rather than shooting through the muscle and hitting his liver as she’d intended, the blow began spreading and dissipating the moment it touched him. It all happened so quickly that Nico had to play the strike over in her mind before she realized Den had shifted his spirit the moment she’d touched him, spreading the shock out across his body. Even now, she could see the echoes fading. Every piece of him had taken its part, breaking her blow down to nothing.
She was still staring in amazement when Den grabbed her arm. He snatched her off her feet before she could react and brought her dangling up in front of him, his other hand grabbing her neck as surely as though he were the one who could see.
“I told you,” he said, fingers digging into her throat. “Blinding me does nothing.”
Nico gasped and tried to kick him in the groin with her dangling legs. He spoiled the blow with his knee, spirit moving instantly to absorb the shock just like before.
“And it’s not just that I can hear you,” he continued as though nothing had happened. “I can feel your killing intent.”
He opened his hand, and Nico plummeted, crashing into the sand. The moment she hit, Den’s boot was on her back.
“You should have run when I gave you the chance,” he said, grinding his heel into her back. “If you don’t even know that, then you have no hope of beating me.”
Nico gasped in pain, bringing in more sand than air. Den’s heel was like an iron spike on her spine, pressing so hard she saw bursts of color behind her eyes. But the dark was still her highway, and the moment her mind cleared enough to slip into the shadows, she sank into dark ground. Relief flowed over her as the pressure of Den’s foot vanished from her back. She slipped sideways, coming up in the shadows behind Den as she looked down to survey the damage.
Nico froze in place, all pain forgotten. In the days since she’d first started to see as spirits saw, she’d never once looked at herself without her coat. Now, in the dark, with no coat and no normal sight to intervene between her and truth, she saw herself for the first time.
Above her, Den looked up from the sand where she had been, his face surprised. “Where did you go?” he whispered. “And why are you so afraid?”
Nico did not hear him. She’d forgotten all about Den, about the fight, about her injuries. All she could do was stare in horror as the demon’s voice filled her mind.
Now you understand why the spirits panic when they see you?
She didn’t. There was no way to understand what she saw inside her own body, beneath the frail mask of human spirit. The only way to describe it was darkness. Living, devouring, hungry darkness. And below that…
Why are you surprised? The demon’s voice was like silk against her mind. You’ve always known you were a monster.
“Knowing’s not the same as…” She couldn’t say it.
Seeing? the demon finished, his smooth voice sharpening to a cutting edge. I suppose that’s true. Poor Nico, don’t you wish now you’d taken my offer when you had the chance?
Nico snarled, snapping herself out of her terrified trance with a burst of defiant rage. She flung open her soul, slamming the demon back into his prison. Across the shadows, Den stiffened and spun to face her. Nico didn’t care. She fell panting to the sand, staring up at the blank darkness of her coat, desperately looking anywhere but at her body, if she could even think of that thing as her body anymore. But even as the thought of it filled her with fear, another voice spoke in her mind, a voice that sounded very much like Tesset’s.
Horrible as it is, it’s still your body, isn’t it?
Nico blinked. Trembling, she raised her hand, holding it as close as she dared to her face. The blackness below her skin flowed like water. Below it, the shifting yellow eyes stared at her without blinking while the hungry mouths opened and closed in a way that made her stomach clench. Black claws scraped against the thin cage of
