“An invitation from the Witch Lord,” she said softly, her hand gripping his fur. “To a masquerade.” She looked up. “Those things are bloodbaths.”
“Of course they are,” said Clytemnestra. “Even grownups know how to have fun once in a while.” Eagerness and excitement slipped into her tone, and she lowered her voice conspiratorially. “Who should we send to the slaughter?”
“An invitation,” Kite repeated, turning the card over in her hands. It was made of pure gold, the lettering written in dark blood that refused to clot. “So we’ve worried her.”
“We had better find some nicer things to wear,” said Clytemnestra, eyeing Kite’s ragged skirts. “The Witch Lord wants to parley.”
Forty-Four
THE HEART
She was standing on a cliff looking out over the ocean. It was black as ink, as if all the books in the world had bled into a single bay. Eli knew that if she touched the water it would leave a stain.
The cliff was silverwhite, reflecting the glow from the crescent moon that hung overhead in a mocking smile. Looking down, Eli stared at her filthy and bloodied toes (one was missing a toenail — it had been ripped clean off) marring the raw beauty of the rock. Monster. Human. Something that didn’t belong here. Had never belonged.
She looked up again, drawn to the call of the moon, to the whispers of home and the intoxicating hurt of a lost homeland. She frowned; she had been wrong, it wasn’t a crescent moon, it was a quarter, and it illuminated the entire bay. The water shimmered as if a coat of gasoline covered the surface. She could almost feel the slime against her tongue.
“I wouldn’t swim, if I were you,” said a voice.
Eli forced herself to turn around slowly, wincing as each step rubbed the skin from her soles, exposed flesh scraping on sharp stone.
A crow cocked its head at her, eyes like two black buttons, shiny and empty.
“What would you recommend?” Eli switched to her own black set of eyes, and saw a strange, struggling magic fighting to escape the feathered cage. Dark red and black, like dried scabs.
“Flying, of course.” The bird landed on her shoulder. “I thought your mother taught you how to fly.”
“She pushed me.”
“Sometimes fledglings need to be pushed.” He drove his beak into her shoulder. She cried out, grabbed the bird, and bit the head from the body. Then she stumbled back in horror as a smoky magic uncurled from the corpse.
“Thank you for freeing me, little bird.”
A gust of air, hot and malicious, burned Eli’s eyes. They watered, stung with grit and heat.
The redbrown sand rose in a cloud and started to form a familiar shape.
“So you’ve come back to me. What an obedient daughter.”
Eli stumbled back. “They killed you.”
“Killed?” Circinae’s essence slowly moved toward the wayward daughter, a cyclone of possession and intent. “What a romantic notion. You’ve spent too much time with the humans. I’m disappointed in you. No, daughter, they didn’t kill me — they transformed me. They trapped me. But here, I am free. And you are mine again.”
“I’m not your daughter.”
“I made you!” The storm formed a hand and reached for Eli, but it passed through her body. “What did you do? How did you do this?”
“I am not yours. I’m not anyone’s!” Eli reached for the obsidian blade but found the strap on her belt empty. Panicking, she grabbed for the glass blade, her hand drawing nothing but a broken hilt. She dropped it on the rock.
“You’re right,” marvelled Circinae. “You’re no one. And your power is running out. You broke the beautiful machine that I made. You are an abomination.” Heat surged, and boils erupted on Eli’s skin. Eli’s blades were gone, her magic was gone, and the memory of her mother was going to destroy her.
No.
Not today.
Not yet.
Circinae saw the change in Eli’s clenched jaw and the slitted pupils of reptilian eyes. The essence coiled tighter, a snake of fire and hate. “What are you going to do, broken thing?”
Eli smiled grimly. “Take your advice.”
She launched herself off the cliff.
Overhead, the gibbous moon burned like a dying ember.
Forty-Five
THE HEALER
Tav felt a surge of adrenalin mixing with something else — the dangerous sweetness of nicotine, the promise of caffeine, the heat of a backyard fire piled high with old tires and planks of rotten wood.
They had never used this much magic before. They hadn’t known it was possible.
They had created a door between worlds.
That knowledge itself was intoxicating, but the magic, too, had affected them. The sky was brighter, the stones of the wall sharper. They could hear their bones shifting position, their stomach digesting, their skin cells replicating.
Where was Eli?
Panic rose in their throat like bile. They looked around the stone room, one of the many chambers of the mad playhouse where witch children plotted treason.
No Eli.
Wait. There —
A glimmer of light on the floor, like an electrical current. The light shuddered down a body that was half there, half gone. Flick. A mouth. Flick. A hand. Flick. An ankle.
Tav had taken Eli back to the City of Eyes and the Heart had taken over, subsuming her body into light and power. Eli was suspended between corporeal and incorporeal states, between a body and a world.
Between life and death.
Without thinking, Tav moved forward, reaching for the stuttering, breaking, unstable body of the girl they loved.
The Warlord popped into the room, trailing clouds of purple smoke. She hung in the air between Tav and Eli, blocking Tav from the Heart.
“Oh no no no no nooo.” Clytemnestra clucked her tongue and waggled her finger at Tav. “The Heart is sleeping. Let it rest.”
“We have to wake her,” said Tav. “She said dreaming was dangerous in the City of Eyes.”
“Oh, it is. Very dangerous. Eli’s a naughty girl!”
“Then we have to wake her. Help me!”
Clytemnestra frowned, and then placed her chin on a chubby hand. “How do you wake a world?”
“She’s a
