Stop crying.
The light brightened until the entire room was illuminated. Thick vines wound their way around stone shelves. A staircase of leather-bound volumes stretched upward into the sky. Today the library had wrapped itself into the shape of a labyrinth, an ever-curling spiral of books and pages and insects. Kite sat in the centre of a maze of words.
It could only be her. No one else — except for the mothers — knew how to make or unmake a daughter, understood the delicate magic and will and desire that went into creating a person with crocodile eyes and hands that made every touch sacred. Kite had spent her entire life studying ways to free assassins, and she was driven by more than a desire for power.
The light drifted closer, pausing at Kite’s forehead. Then a tendril of light and heat reached out from the glowing core and touched her. Kite stiffened, the pain searing through her flesh. When the light drew back, there was a hole in her forehead, and a flicker of turquoise flame lapped at the wound from inside.
Carefully, lovingly, the ball of light touched Kite all over her body: her palms, the soles of her feet, her collarbones. Slowly, the light undressed Kite from her body. It was nice to be touched; Kite had so little experience with it. And then it hurt, but Kite knew it could have hurt worse, knew that the ball of light was being kind. It was that small kindness, rather than the pain of being torn out of herself, that made her cry pieces of salt like hail. So many manuscripts ruined.
When they were done, there were two balls of light: one whiteyellow like a young sun; one bluegreen like light trapped under the ocean. They hung suspended in the air for a moment, and then Clytemnestra winked out of existence, banished to the Children’s Lair, returning to her own skin and flesh and memory.
The Beast stayed.
Kite swam through the air toward the staircase of books, slowly winding up and up, the bluegreen light making everything distorted and strange. As she ascended, a few books snapped at her, pages slicing at her essence — but she could not be cut in this form, and the attack only registered dimly as a sense of sadness. Wounded animals lashing out.
Pity didn’t stop her from singeing one into ash, however, when it blocked her path. Some injuries could not be avoided.
She had the feeling, as she always did, that the staircase was being built as she climbed, that she was guiding the Coven as much as it was leading her. Since becoming the Heir, however, there was a difference. Before there was cajoling and bargaining and trickery; sometimes the bookcases led her where she wanted to go and sometimes they trapped her in a dead end. She had played endless games with the library as a child, laughing when it buried her alive in paper and spiders and dirt, elated when she caught a handwritten note from the beak of a vellum crane swooping through the rafters.
Now she had a new power; she could feel it in the beds of her fingernails, in the pins-and-needles sensation in the back of her knees, in the fluttering wings at the core of her essence. If she pushed, she could make the room obey. She could use the power the Witch Lord had given her to force her way through.
She didn’t want to use this new and coercive power, but she would if she had to.
She thought of Eli — the smell of hawthorn petals, the taste of iron. A girl made from granite and glass, a girl made to cut shadow and shatter light like a sheet of ice.
There was another reason it had to be Kite.
No one else cared for the assassins, and the Coven could feel intention. It was moved by want. The Coven could be rebuilt or destroyed by desire.
Bring me to her kin, thought Kite, her light flickering wildly. I need them.
The Coven revolted, throwing books at her; they burned when they fell through her essence, and came away wet and ruined. This was her punishment for daring to ask. She knew there were enchantments set to keep the prisoners in place. But no one could stop the Heir Rising.
Kite’s light glowed like a spotlight, and books rose from the shelves, floating around her core.
There was a moment of stillness as the world hung, suspended by her desire.
The thread snapped. Books fell as the staircase collapsed, the pages shrieking as they plunged past her.
Then it was just Kite, alone, hovering in an empty space. Her light didn’t mark out the edges. There were no edges. There was only space.
And then a corner. A wall. Her essence started to feel its way into cracks and crevices, casting light on a long, glittering web that hung from the ceiling, glistening with water droplets. The Coven had bent to her will and taken her somewhere new.
It had taken Kite to the graveyard of daughters.
Nineteen
THE HEALER
Eli was different today. Tav could tell. She leaned back, hands resting lightly on Tav’s shoulders. Tav would never admit it out loud, but they missed the heat of Eli’s chest against their back. Eli was stiff, too, like her balance was off. Not the fluid assassin who moved like a dancer, like mist rising over the water in the early morning light.
I’ll have to be strong enough for both of us, they thought. A small smile played at the edges of their mouth. They could feel the magic pulsing in their blood, could see it in their veins and marrow. And now they could use it. Tav leaned their head back and howled at the sky, feeling more alive than they ever had. After a moment, Eli joined in, her hands tightening on Tav’s shoulders.
The city was abandoned; only a few night-shift workers and tired parents would be awake.
