The Witch Lord wanted the Heart. So Tav had to go after the Witch Lord. No way in hell were they letting Eli get torn apart by some poor-quality photocopy of Kite.
An albatross made out of tissue paper and twine swooped down beside them. Clytemnestra tossed a small package in their direction. It was wrapped in newsprint and tied with black ribbon.
“A gift from the Heir,” she said with a wink, her eyelids painted deep plum and gold. “She didn’t seem to think she’d be able to deliver it herself.”
Tav tore open the paper and the obsidian dagger fell into their hand. Before they could open their mouth to thank her, the girl and bird dove back into the fray, the blue-and-pink wings like the sails of a great ship.
The key turned in the ignition of its own accord. Tav and Ariel took off, weaving through the chaos, leaving the battlefield behind.
Going deeper into the catacombs of the Coven.
They were going on a witch hunt.
Sixty-Four
THE HEART
So much death.
So much destruction.
Where was she? Who was she? Why was she here?
Everything was dark and cold.
The light of her body moved into the space like a child moving into their bunk at camp, marvelling at the spiders and leaves and the whimpering of small animals at dusk.
Books. Stacks and rows and piles and towers and caverns of books. The light of the Heart kept exploring farther and farther, making visible the gold stitching here, a fragment of prose there — sunflowers at midnight and salt, everywhere, beloved — until all Eli could see were pages of history and promises of love that had never been fulfilled.
This was Kite’s home.
A rustling spilled from above and cascaded down like the rush of a waterfall. The pages were moving; fluttering, shaking. It wasn’t a welcoming sound.
Eli remembered this place. She had been a child, with cracks in her stone palms and scratches on her hawthorn knees, heart full of death and lungs full of fear. The place had smelled like witches, and something older and far more powerful. It smelled of empires built and fallen, of sadness sweet as honey and worlds bursting with colour and heat.
This was why Kite left her. This was the place that stood between her and the witch-heir, this room, these living words whispering their secrets in a voice Eli could never understand.
The ink had burned her witch-made body, and Eli had lashed out, thinking to protect herself, but really — she knew, now, and could admit the truth — to destroy the one thing Kite loved more than herself.
Sometimes she still dreamed of paper cuts on her wrists, of the weight of tomes on her chest, and woke up, gasping, reaching for saltwater hair and seaweed-touched hands.
“I remember you,” she told the library. The rustling grew louder, a storm of dust and patience turning into momentum and intention.
The library remembered her, too.
A single sparrow of paper spiralled downward toward her. Eli stretched a hand out to meet it, and the bird landed in her open palm. Its edges were singed, the print smudged beyond recognition. And suddenly she understood.
The Coven itself was fighting the Witch Lord. The library was leaving the safe borders of this room, where it had sealed its secrets away from the ambitious and ravenous witch tyrants. Waiting for someone to unlock their magic with love and trust. Someone like Kite.
A wing drooped, the scorch mark spreading like a stain. The rustling continued, a song of mourning and fury. More birds fell, some crumbling to white ash, others ripped and torn and bloody but still struggling to fly. The library was fighting, and the library was dying. For the world. For Kite. For the Heart. For Eli.
Eli raised her other hand to her mouth and pressed a yellowed canine to the soft pad of her fingertip. It broke like the skin of an overripe peach and beaded with a substance that was neither wholly human nor witch nor tree, but all together; it was sticky as sap and smelled of lost cardigans and moonlight. Heartblood.
Eli sprinkled the blood of the Heart over the paper sparrow. The bird glowed with an inner flame, and then darkness spread across the wings, wet and glossy, and individual feathers were etched onto its surface. It raised its head and chirped. A collective sigh echoed through the space. A drop of Heartblood returning home.
“Thank you for protecting her,” said Eli, and she walked into the maelstrom of sharp paper edges and bloody beaks and claws of leather and papyrus and recycled newsprint.
Someone was waiting for her.
For a brief moment, Eli thought it was, impossibly, Kite. She thought somehow the Heartblood and smell of old ink had summoned her, or at least the memory of her, pulled from Eli’s mind and dressed in accordion scrolls and embroidery. But as she neared the figure standing in the eye of the paper hurricane, its shape came into the light and Eli recognized it for what it was.
A made-thing.
A daughter.
Someone like Eli.
The girl had eyes like tarnished steel, their surface dull and empty of emotion. She was holding two swords — one was crafted from broken bottles and Phillips-head screws. The glassy brown and green of the smashed bottles glittered dangerously in the soft lighting. The other sword was made from stingers and thousands of dragonfly and wasp wings, shimmering peacock blue and amber and cheery red, cut crystal with dark veins running through the blade like soldered metal framing mosaics of stained glass.
The hunter from her dreams. The assassin who had stood over Eli under a ragged sky, her blade edge aimed at Eli’s throat.
“I’ve been hunting you,” she said.
“I know.”
Underneath the smell of old paper was the scent of coffee grounds and rust. Eli remembered, then, the deal she had struck with the Hedge-Witch. Three strands of hair and saliva. How had
