Behind the stones, a bleeding wound in the fabric of space-time. Tav needed to turn it into a door. Tav needed to —
But the Heart was gone, and Tav’s magic had been drained.
Lightning struck the ground beside Tav’s face and sparks showered their body.
The sound of incantations, low and musical, heavy with the smell of freshly ground coffee and burning vegetation.
The Hedge-Witch.
Tav managed to turn their neck, looking away from the hole in the sky to the land underneath their body. Earth. Their home.
Weeds grew from the cracks in the cement, strangling and roping the metal husks animated by hatred and greed. A stamen punctured a metal plate and bloomed into a sunflower, a giant eye surveying the battlefield.
The Hedge-Witch wasn’t alone.
Humans gifted with spells, trained to fight, joined the battle. Tav glimpsed the ghost out of the corner of their eye as two brutal forces came together under a ruined sky.
The Coven’s made-army was outnumbered. Seeds burst and grew into new plant life that choked and killed, and the ghost devoured metal and magic in breathless gulps.
It was over. They had survived.
The remnants of a tortured witch army lay shattered on the pavement. Horror flowed through Tav, thick and dark, like a shadow, leaving them cold and trembling and alone.
They looked up at the sky. The Vortex was closing.
They had failed.
THE HEART
Eli materialized back on the pavement, second-degree burns on her hand and wrist. How long had she been gone this time? What happened?
Then she heard it — wasps. Horror rose in the back of her throat and she bent over, trying to cough up the fear, but nothing came out. She collapsed, exhausted, and a shadow fell across her face. Eli looked up at the girl who had been walking through her dreams. A smile like a curse, eyes wild with bloodlust. Two blades — one forged from wings and stingers, the smell of paper nests lingering in the air, the other made from screws and nails and broken glass bound together by rust and force.
Eli opened her mouth to ask — Who? Or maybe, How? But already the blade was descending, and Eli waited for the stimulant of pain or the quiet of death.
The clang of metal on stone broke through the swarm. Cam. Eli’s eyes widened. Cam had thrown himself in front of the sword, its crusted edge scraping on stone and biting into skin. Red seeped through cuts and scrapes on his bare chest and shoulders.
Eli reached for a blade, any blade, but her fingers, slippery with blood, refused to grab a hilt. Again, the blade rose, but Cam stood firm, the stone blade held tightly in his hand, his hair wild and dirty.
The blade fell.
Eli closed her eyes.
Silence.
Eli opened her eyes again. Cam was gone. The made-daughter was gone. She stared up into the sky and saw that the Vortex was closing.
A moan, somewhere to her left. The call of obsidian and leather.
Tav. She stumbled over to them to — what? Offer a hand, a clump of hair, an apology? She didn’t know; she was breaking, she had nothing to offer, no help or words of comfort to give. But still, she came. Still, she made her body move.
As Eli drew closer she could hear Tav repeating one word, over and over, like a spell, a mantra, a swear word, a love poem.
“Cam. Cam. Cam.”
Eli looked up at the glittering lights from the City of Eyes, the other world watching them from the slitted eyelids of the rift the moment before they closed.
“It took him,” she whispered. “He crossed over.”
Tav’s eyes flicked to Eli’s face. “Are you real?” their voice wavered.
Eli reached down to touch Tav’s cheek. “I don’t know.”
Tav started to cry. Eli tilted her head back and stared up until the seam was once again invisible, a bluegrey sky marred only by bloodied clouds.
Slowly, the reality sunk in: Cam was gone, and they had no way of knowing where he was, and no way of going after him.
Twenty-Four
THE HEIR
“Do you like it?”
“I love it.” Tears pooled in Clytemnestra’s wide, sapphire eyes and then spilled over her angelic face. “It’s just what I wanted.”
The made-assassin was tall and lean, with brown skin and a few freckles like spots of bleach on her left cheekbone. She had coyote ears and her eyes were mismatched — one golden-brown human eye, one pure-white and cloudy.
“Ooh, what’s that one do?” Clytemnestra reached out and poked her in the eye. The white rippled, like water disturbed by a fish. The assassin didn’t flinch, but Clytemnestra let out a yelp like she’d stuck her finger in a light socket.
“I believe it absorbs magic and uses it to regenerate her own body,” said Kite. “A really ingenious design; too bad the witch who made her was repurposed for treason. Something about trying to use her daughter to steal the Coven’s magic.”
“So she’s ours now?” Clytemnestra stuck her finger in her mouth and sucked on the burn.
The assassin turned to look at Kite, tilting her head slightly.
“She’s agreed to join us,” said Kite. “For a price.”
Clytemnestra’s eyes lit up, and Kite smiled behind her curtain of hair that today flowed like a waterfall across her face. Clytemnestra loved haggling.
“Let me guess.” The little witch clapped her hands together and narrowed her eyes. “You want your freedom?”
The assassin’s left ear flicked, and a slow lazy smile spread across her face, showing her wolfish canines that ended in glittering points. “Not just mine.”
No one knew how many assassins operated in the City of Eyes. They were supposed to answer to the Coven, but any witch with enough power and insanity could stitch together a girl from beetle shells and eyelashes. Most of them didn’t live long enough to do any damage, or to be of any use, but a few did. Those that were caught by the Coven were repurposed, broken down into their parts and fed to the living walls of the
