The Gate – Part One

The night was clear as crystal. Cold as ice.

In the sky above Ajun City, a banner of stars crowded in, innumerable diamonds glittering in the firmament. Pale towers rose up from the snowy mountainside, cast in quartz and ivory, glowing like slender ghosts. Within those towers, mothers sang their children to sleep. Acolytes pored over their books. In the kitchens, bakers kneaded the dough for the morning’s bread. At the infamous gate that warded the city, a hundred feet tall, sentries smoked black Lammarick root cigarillos to quicken the blood and fend off the cold.

All was quiet.

All was well.

But it wasn’t.

There were wolves at the gate.

All of them were with me tonight: ever-present Renfis, of course; His twin, Mirelle, wearing an easy smile; Danya, with her blonde hair flowing in a pale river down her back; Korrix, seated and silent in the snow, their hands resting on top of their fighting leathers; Foley, grinning like a rake, bouncing on the balls of his feet; Vashgidyan, with his shock of moonlight hair and his pale white eyes; Dark-haired Lorreth, the newest member of the Lupo Proelia, chewing on his bottom lip.

I faced down the slope, staring past my friends into the darkness, and fought back the urge to shiver. I was used to the cold. I’d spent half my life with a bitter wind lashing me—it wasn’t the temperature that had me shuddering inside my cloak tonight. It was dread.

As if a promise of what was to come, a frigid wind chased across the mountainside, cutting through my leathers, carrying with it the stench of rotting meat and the tang of brimstone.

Beside me, with his hair tied back into thick war braids, Ren’s face was the color of regret as he craned his neck, scanning the black sky for any sign of danger. I witnessed the moment that he saw the megalithic shadow, even blacker than the night. Blacker than the pit of hell itself. The beast’s form drank the light and devoured it. Silent Death, they called him here, but the beast had many names. The Drake. Old Blood. Grandfather Ash. Omnamshacry.

There was no thrum of monstrous, beating wings. The drake coasted over the city, riding on weak thermals, stalking the night like a wraith.

“I knew I should have stayed home,” Renfis hissed under his breath. Locking eyes with me, his hand closed around the hilt of his blade, and I saw from the furrows on his brow that he’d reached the same conclusion I had a moment ago: we were fucked.

Laughing silently, I winked at him, “Not too late to turn back.”

He snorted. “You’re joking. There’s no way down that hill now.”

“Ahh, come on.” I painted my words with sarcasm. “If it’s the vampires you’re worrying about, then don’t fret. Just go around them.”

“Just go around them? Hah! Sure. I’ll skirt around five thousand feeders on the side of a mountain. Let them march right past me into the city.”

I shrugged, scanning the sky. “Sure. Why not?”

“And I’ll just plug my ears when the children start screaming?” he went on.

“You could pack them full of snow. That would muffle the carnage.”

Renfis nodded, eyes glinting as he peered into the ink. “Who cares about the Ajun, anyway? They’ve guarded the gate and prevented untold horrors from spilling into this world for centuries, but so what? That bitter brew they make goes down way too easy. I always wake up with a hangover in Ajun.”

I smiled at that, though my stomach rolled as the air above us shifted. “Their food’s too good, too. I always overeat.”

“And their females are too pretty,” a voice added from behind us.

Crouched low, Lorreth leaned against a snow-capped boulder, sword clenched tight in his hands. Despite the freezing temperatures, a bead of sweat rolled down his temple and chased down his cheek, disappearing into his beard. “They make other Yvelian females look like bog witches. Pretty rude if you ask me.”

He hadn’t said much since night had fallen. He’d never come face-to-face with five thousand feeders before. Never witnessed what a mass of pure evil would look like, crawling up the side of a mountain on pulped hands and knees. And seeing the horde following so close on our heels, not seeing the dragon as it now patrolled the dark above our heads? Well, the newest member of our brotherhood wasn’t exactly feeling confident about our odds.

He knew how to pretend, at least. How to play the game. Ren and I had been playing for a couple of centuries now. Renfis grinned at the olive-skinned warrior mischievously. “Don’t you worry about the women here, Bard,” he whispered. “None of them are interested in you. Your charms being what they are, I’d be surprised if you could even talk a bog witch out of her underwear.”

Lorreth cast him a scathing sidelong glance. “Want that mouth washed out with soap, Pretty Boy? I would never…ever…”

My breath caught in my throat.

My friends’ bickering faded away as, all around us, the air thickened like tar.

It was too silent. Too still. Too warm.

“I bet you would,” Ren hissed.

“I bet one of those feeders is going to lay you out five minutes,” Lorreth volleyed back.

“Oh, really? What are you willing to wager on that?”

Lorreth growled like a dog. “Whatever you like. I’m not worried. If I have to pick you up off your ass once during the melee, I’m claiming that handsome dagger of yours. The one you keep fiddling with like it’s your second cock.”

“And if I have to drag you up out of the mud, I’m making you shave that stupid beard,” Ren retorted.

I closed my hand tighter around the hilt of my blade, staring up into the night sky. “Quiet, you two.”

“What’s wrong with the beard? It makes me look powerful.”

“It’s patchy. Makes you look like your balls haven’t dropped yet. And anyway, hell will freeze over before I go down in a fight.”

Lorreth snorted, gesturing out into the night. “From where I’m sitting, hell’s looking pretty frosty. Its foulest legions have crawled up its throat and are coming for us as we speak.”

Ren scoffed, as if this weren’t true. “All right, well—”

“Quiet!”

Their grins vanished as they both looked to me. My brothers. My friends. Right now, I wanted to knock their heads together. “What is it?  You hear something?” Ren asked.

I squinted back up the mountain, toward the graceful towers of Ajun and the thousands of innocent souls inside, so ignorant of the peril at their doors. “No, I don’t,” I answered on an exhalation. “I hear nothing at all.” The wind had died. The feral snapping of jaws from further down the mountain had stopped. Everything felt…wrong.

‘Move. You must go. All must move. All must go. Together. Together. Together. Go.’

As always, the rush of voices spoke only to me. I felt the vibration of the quicksilver in my eye and knew it must be shifting. Once, the restless movement of the metal had been uncomfortable, but I’d grown accustomed to it over the years. Now, I only realized it was happening when others witnessed it and forgot to hide their shock.

“Together. Move,” the quicksilver insisted. “Go. All must go. Now!”

A wave of nausea crashed down on me; the quicksilver felt strongly about this. It wasn’t going to let up until I gave it what I wanted. It made ridiculous demands all the time. I wasn’t about to give in to it. But then came the reek of sulfur and panic sank its claws deep.

I turned and bellowed for all I was worth. “RUUUUN!”

My friends were moving before I had time to suck down a fresh breath. Danya became a silver blur, tracing up the incline. To my left, Ren stuck close to my side, eyes alert. Korrix and Mirelle were behind somewhere.

Heat scorched the air. A ball of yellowed light flared brilliant as the forgotten sun. Dragon fire lit up the side of the mountain, illuminating not only our band of fighters but the foul shadow that had been nipping at our heels for the past two days.

The horde.

Not all of it. Malcolm wasn’t stupid enough to send all of his forces to claim this one choke point. Perhaps he’d sent a fifth of his demons to drink Ajun dry. Maybe he’d sent half. We hadn’t been able to confirm their numbers, but that was irrelevant now. A fifth. A half. It didn’t matter. He’d sent enough. Feeders swarmed up the slope, barely hindered by the waist-deep snow and the shelf of ice beneath their feet.

No one spared them a second glance. As we hurtled toward the city, all eyes were glued on a more pressing danger. Dragons had never been known for their mercy, but this one? Gods above, this one was death wreathed in hellfire itself.

The drake descended from the sky with tattered wings outstretched to cushion his impact as he landed. His scarred scales were black mirrors, flashing along the sides of his monstrous body. Baring rotting teeth the length of two men, Omnamshacry wheeled around, massive claws gouging into the snow, his split tail thrashing at stone and ice, and he roared.

The world trembled in answer.

One dragon, I’d faced before. Back when I was younger. A much smaller creature, with iridescent blue scales. The fire that dam had breathed over the battlefield had been white-hot, and had burned warriors inside their armor, incinerating them where they stood. The fire this old drake produced was nothing of the sort. When he arched his spined neck, tucked his head and unleashed his fury, molten lava and brimstone spewed from his jaws. It sprayed into the snow around us, hissing viciously, shooting thick columns of steam up into the air.

“Fuck!” The chaos exploding around us stole Ren’s cry. “We’re never going to reach the gate!”

“Not if you keep running like you just shit your leathers,” Lorreth panted.

“Move. Move. Together. Move,” the quicksilver chanted in my head. Behind the three of us, the rest of the Lupo Proelia moved as a pack, sprinting up the steep slope toward the city as if they had heard the quicksilver’s command. They sped up, gathering themselves around me, trying to protect their commander.

“Yes. Together. Together…”

“Fan out!” I roared. “Split up! Do it now!” The words tore out of me, nowhere near as loud as the second furious roar that shook the ground beneath our feet. My wolves heard me, though. They didn’t question the command. In a heartbeat, they were spread out, moving lightning fast on different trajectories, scattering into the darkness.

‘No! Together! Together, we said!’

“I will not use my men as a fucking shield,” I snarled.

“And why? Why not? You are more important than them. More important. Most important.”

“Shut…the fuck…UP!” I launched myself over an outcrop of jagged rock, spearing up through the snow. Inches below my feet, a spray of molten brimstone hit the rocks, liquifying them.

Fuck, fuck, fuck!

I called up a swell of shadows and rode on black wind, buoyed up just enough to carry me out of reach of the spitting lava, my heart lodged in the base of my throat. This was not the plan. We were supposed to reach the gate before the drake knew we were even on the mountain. We were supposed to have alerted the people of Ajun. We were supposed to have prepared them for the attack. The people of Ajun knew all about the attack now, though, and the guards at the gate were scrambling, running in fear, abandoning their posts.

The gate that secured Ajun was imbued by ancient, formidable magic. No fell creature could breach it. In all recorded history, the gate had never been breached. But there was one small problem. The gate only protected the city when it was closed…and right now the towering iron barricade stood wide fucking open.

“Late,” the dragon rumbled. “You arrive too late.”

To my left, charging through the curtains of my smoke, I saw Lorreth, white as a sheet and horrified as he sprinted. “They talk?” he hollered.

I didn’t have breath to waste on a reply.

“Back inside! INSIDE!” Somewhere, Renfis thundered the command at the people now spilling from the gates out onto the mountainside. The accord between the Fae and the dragon had held for over three hundred years, but now those who saw him painting the mountain in fire were afraid. They saw the pact was broken and had no intention of finding themselves trapped inside a burning city. They had no inkling of the thousands of Feeders waiting for them, though. No comprehension of the nightmares that waited of them out there in the cold.

“Get back! Back inside the walls now!” I joined Renfis in his cries, but not a single one of the Ajun Fae heeded us. They screamed, clutching babies to their chests, dressed in their night things, brandishing weighted candle sticks as weapons, their feet bare in the snow.

Fools.

They were already dead.

Even if they made it passed the dragon, even if they weren’t taken down by the feeders, then the mountain would end them sure enough. I spit a curse through clenched teeth, pressing onward to the gate. There were those still inside the bounds of the aery. Thousands of Fae. Innocents who didn’t deserve to die. But even as I ran, my mind calculated a darker form of mathematics. For years now, Malcolm had been amassing his numbers. Bolstering his army with as many new feeders as he could manage. Many Fae who received the midnight kiss never awoke from the slumber that came after. They died and that was it. But one in five did wake. And even though I wanted to save the lives of the innocents within the Ajun keep, I had to prevent Malcolm from claiming the twenty percent of them who would rise and join him. Nothing mattered more. If he exacted his toll, this freshly minted war between the living and the dead would be over before it had even begun.

“They’re sounding the horns!” a female voice cried. Danya, maybe? Mirelle? I couldn’t tell with my blood hammering in my ears. I couldn’t hear the horns blaring out across the mountain range, either, but yes. There it was, in the soles of my feet, the hollow of my ribcage, the roof of my mouth: the vibration of three twenty-foot-long horns sounding out into the mayhem.

The gates were close now, black, and twisted, and fearsome.

I halted, then, spinning around, sword raised aloft in defiance of the beast and the undead as I waited for my wolves to cross the city’s threshold. The dragon gouged its claws into the steep slope, sinking through snow, rock and ice. Nightmare made flesh, it weaved its head from side to side, golden eyes glaring as, one by one, we made it through the open gate into Ajun.

The dragon took a prowling step forward, and I reacted. Thrusting a hand in front of me, I forced the magic roiling behind my breastbone outward with all my might. It came fast, hungry, begging to be unleashed. Shadows blasted out of me, the power incomprehensible as they chased across the snow and built upon themselves to form a rippling wall. They blotted out what little could be seen of the mountain, obscuring the surging crowd of feeders from sight. There was no concealing the dragon, though. He was just too big. My shadows slipped up his body, sliding over his scales like silk until they reached his wings.

Lorreth watched in amazement. “What are you—” But the question died on his lips. Clenching my jaw, I pictured a spear in my mind. Even as I did so, the smoke coalesced, forming a replica of the shape above the drake. The beast snarled, sensing what was coming, but he couldn’t move. My shadows had formed shackles around his legs. They had solidified to hooks that bit into his flesh, anchoring him to the ground. In the blink of an eye, the spear I’d formed above Omnamshacry plunged downward point-first, staking him to the ice by the wing.

The dragon screamed. Blood flowed in sheet over the tough membrane of his wing, pouring out into the snow, stinking and black. “Cursed-born! Release…me!”

As if I would simply obey. As if I would be cowed by his temper or his threats. I stood and watched as he thrashed and bellowed, unmoved. It brought me no pleasure to see a living being suffer…but this was different. A dragon was a curse. Their hearts were hollow, black voids, where no good thing could survive. There would be no sympathy for this kind of evil.

“Will the feeders be able to pass through that?” Ren asked, gesturing to the wall of shadows that now formed a perimeter around the city.

The answer to that question was undeniable. “Yes.” There was no way to keep them out for good. My shadows were a part of me. My magic. They required energy to maintain, and the sheer size of the barricade I’d thrown up between us and the horde was too big to sustain indefinitely.

“How much time do we have?” Korrix’s dark eyes shone with fascination as he watched the dragon thrashing against its restraints.

I set my jaw, exhaling long and slow. Eventually, I answered. “Not long. Where’s Vash and Foley? Mirelle?”

“Inside already,” Korrix grunted. “Mirelle’s gone to prepare healing stations for when the wounded start to pour in. Vash and Foley are looking for the armory.”

“Good. Enter the city and round up as many of the weak and the vulnerable as you can,” I told him. “Lorreth, Ren, you two head to the top of the eastern tower and see if you can find someone who can scry a message out. The King needs to know what’s happening here.” We all knew the King wouldn’t care. He didn’t care about the fate of Ajun, and that was precisely why there were only eight of us here to protect it now. But if a message wasn’t sent, the bastard would pretend he knew nothing of the danger threatening Yvelia’s most northern outpost. I would be blamed. Somehow, some way, Belikon would lay the blame for all of this at my feet.

“We should stay with you,” Lorreth said.

I shook my head. “I’ve got Danya. Go.”

We’d found ourselves in predicaments like this before. Okay, perhaps those situations in the past hadn’t been quite this dire, but we’d always found a way out of them, and my brothers trusted me because of it. Wordlessly, they nodded and turned, sprinting into the city.

When I spun back to face the dragon, he had ceased his struggling and was watching me with baleful eyes, his hulking form wreathed in shadow.

“What now, Fae Thing?” Old ‘Shacry seethed. “You stand upon hallowed grounnnddd…but the gate stands ajar. The gate that cannot be touched. The gate that cannot be closed. Not by the likes of youuuuuuu….” His words buzzed the air, sank into the earth, and shook the very bones of Yvelia.

Were they through yet?

All of them?

Breathless, I cast around, but the only shapes I saw moving away from the city’s gates were the Ajun Fae, too gripped in their fear to think straight. It was done then. My friends would be safe, at least. The remainder of the city would be, too.

“Fisher! What now?” Danya shouted. “What do we do?”

Because the dragon was right. The Ajun Gate had been forged to keep out the abominations of this realm…but it had also been designed to withstand the tampering of the Fae as well.

Iron.

The Ajun Gate was forged from iron, and no member of the Fae, high born or low, King or peasant, could touch it without suffering the consequences. That was the reason why Malcolm had sent his horde now. The Ajun Fae were celebrating the Mayheillen Festival, which meant that the gates were kept open for five days and five nights—a symbolic gesture, supposed to welcome good fortune into the city and allow trapped spirits to escape out into the cold. Superstitious pricks. Of all the archaic, ridiculous rituals to observe, leaving the gates wide open had to be stupidest of all.

Only a few of Yvelia’s creatures were impervious to the effects of iron. The fire sprites usually charged with opening and closing the gates had been summoned by those blaring horns, but they weren’t going to make it in time.

Omnamshacry was already here. And so was the horde.

Taking a deep breath, I steeled myself, turning to face the dragon. “What bargain did he strike?” I called. “What treasure did Malcolm promise you that could convince you to break your oath?”

A low ticking sound emanated from the dragon’s gullet. “The dead who fall and do not risssseeee,” he answered. “His vipers bite, and his vipers drink…but they do not eat the flesssshhhhhh.”

“The Ajun have given you gold. Silver,” I snarled. “The most valuable gems yielded up from the earth.  All of it they gave to you in exchange for watching over this city.”

“Silver is good, yes. Gold is betteerrrrrr. Diamonds and rubies stud the walls of my lair. But a dragon has other appetitesssss,” he hissed. “A dragon must eat. Let me through so the feasting may begin.”

“Fisher! What the hell are you doing? Move!” Danya cried. “Get inside the city!”

But I couldn’t go inside. Not now. There was only one way to keep my friends safe. Not only them, but the rest of the Ajun, too. It would kill me, but it had to be done.

I took a step back, and I closed my hands around the Ajun Gate.

“Fisher, no!” The shout rang hollow out into the silence. “No! What are you doing? Let go!”

Renfis had been buzzed by an iron-tipped arrow once. The arrowhead had barely grazed his skin. Even such fleeting contact with the metal should have meant death for him, but he was strong. For a week, he’d sweated in a healer’s tent on the outskirts of our war camp, fighting for his life. I’d determined then and there that no iron arrow would be the death of me. I’d started conditioning myself, holding my hand over small amounts of iron filings at first. After a while, I’d progressed to pressing a fingertip against the ground-up powder. Over the years. I’d progressed so that even clenching an arrow tip in my palm caused no more than an uncomfortable nausea in the pit of my stomach.

But this was different. This was tons and tons of iron. Magically warded iron. And it wanted me fucking dead. My palms began to smolder the second I curled my fists around the thick bars.

“Fisher, what the fuck!” Danya rushed forward, pale blue eyes swimming with fear. “Stop this. The sprites are coming!”

I ignored her. “Take the children to the libraries. The observatories. As high up into the city as you can manage,” I told her. “Barricade them indoors. Dawn will be here in five hours. If the dead get into the city—”

“This is madness! Just stop. You’re killing yourself!”

If the gate had been made of any other metal, I’d have closed it with ease. But it didn’t matter how much the iron weighed. The magic rendered it immoveable. I groaned with the effort, shoving my weight behind myself as I threw myself at the gate.

“Go, Danya. Get them to safety. What…the fuck are waiting for?”

It didn’t budge. The iron burned a pathway into my skin, sinking through my flesh like a hot knife through butter. The metal only stopped once it hit bone. The agony was like nothing I’d ever experienced before, but I put it away. Shut it behind a door. Buried it. Moved on.

“You can’t…be serious.” Danya stared in horror down at my smoking hands.

Behind us, Omnamshacry laughed. “Ahh, that smell. Such a smell. Scorched Fae flesh. Soon it will be mine. All of it will be mine. A mountain of meat, yes. It will sate us for a thousand years and more. This place is but a graaaaveyard. I will pick your bones clean.”

The bastard could whittle my bones into chess pieces for all I cared. So long as I got this damned gate closed first, it could have whatever was left of me. Nausea slammed into me, rolling through the me like a tide. Behind me, the sound of maddened barks and snarls intensified. The horde had crested the summit of the mountain and weren’t far now. From Danya’s wide eyes, she could see them coming.

I wouldn’t look.

I hurled myself forward again, crying out, forcing my hands to lock around the thick iron posts. The soles of my boots found purchase against the ice…and slowly, too slowly, the gate began to move.

“Why does it always have to be you?” Danya whispered. “There are eight of us, Fisher. Let us help.”

The ground trembled as the feeders behind me broke into a run, and I gave everything I had to that godscursed gate.

“Fisher!” Danya sobbed as I pressing my shoulder into the spelled iron and roared. The skin beneath my armor didn’t touch the metal, but it smoked, too close to the layered spell work that had protected Ajun City and its people for millennia.

The gate moved. The feeders charged. In the courtyard on the other side of the gate, children wailed. Beyond the cacophony of sound, above it all, the dragon laughed. Blood ran in rivers from my hands, beneath my gauntlets, covering my chest plate and dripping into the snow.

Stark red on white.

Drip.

Drip.

But then, the crimson droplets falling into the snow turned a glossy metallic silver.

Like lightning, the magic that bound the gate forked down into my exposed bone and sang the most terrible song up my arms. I felt myself shatter from the inside. Felt the blood begin to boil inside me. Felt my body start to fail and my mind along with it. But there was still time. And there was the quicksilver.

“We do not bow,” it raged. Many voices, all speaking as one. Forever a curse crouching out of sight in a dark corner of my consciousness, it rose up and spread through me like a wildfire, galvanizing my veins and dousing the pain. “We are not bound by foreign magics,” it seethed. “Nor shall you be.”

Like the flame of a candle battered by a sudden wind, the magic that had been assaulting me guttered and blew out. The agony of the iron was still there, but with the magic now gone…I could do this.

“Quickly,” the quicksilver urged. “Faster, faster. They come. They come!”

I didn’t need telling twice. On the other side of the gate, Danya let out a choked scream, watching me work. Down the long, stone staircase on the other side of the interior courtyard, Ren and Lorreth finally reappeared, swords in their hands. They spat ferocious curses when they saw what I was about.

“Fucking idiot! What are you doing?” Ren was the first to reach the gate. He thrust his arm through the iron posts, attempting to push me away from the metal, but I bared my canines at him.

“Do not open this gate,” I snarled.

“What do you mean? It’s still fucking open! You can make it through!” Lorreth, this time, face splattered with blood and dirt. “We’ll close it from inside!”

“Don’t touch it. You touch this gate and you all die. You need to stay and help them.”

“Fisher! Ren, tell him!”

But Renfis withdrew his hand through the bars of the gate, a strange calmness settling over him. He looked at the gap that remained between the gate and the wall.

Seven feet now.

Six and a half.

He turned his gaze back to me, and his eyes didn’t leave mine again. “If he closes it from inside, there’ll be no one left out there to defend the city,” he said quietly.

“He’s one male!” Danya bit out. “One male against five thousand feeders and a fucking dragon.”

Gods. Hearing it out loud made me falter. Against such a force, what could I possibly accomplish? The truth was simple. I wasn’t going to hold them back. I couldn’t. What I could do was close this gate. In five hours, the feeders would either burn up in dawn’s light or would have to find cover. Belikon’s army would arrive, and the might of a thousand Fae Elite would take on Old ‘Shacry. It would be bloody. Many would die, but…

My boots slipped in the snow.

In a single breath, my grip was gone. I hit the ground with a staggering crack! the breath rushing right out of me.

Exhaustion fell on me like a hawk upon its prey. The small voice inside of me, the one that was all me and not the quicksilver, whispered quiet words that were hard to ignore. Just stay down. Finally. Just…stay down. All hope fled, then. It was over. Done. If I stayed here, lying in the snow and my own blood, it would be over, wouldn’t it? All of it. The constant fighting. The constant pain. The constant sacrifice—

“Get up.”

My mind stilled.

I opened my eyes, and there, on the other side of the gate, Renfis crouched, less than a foot away, his jaw clenched with determination. “Get up,” he repeated.

“I don’t…” I gasped. “I can’t.” The iron had done its work. I hadn’t just let it touch my skin. I’d held onto it with both hands, knowing what it would cost me. It was a miracle I was even still breathing. The cold leached into my bones. My life leached out into the snow. It was only a matter of time now.

“So that’s it, then? You ruin your hands and give up your life to save all these people, and now you’re just leaving the job half done?”

I raised my head at that, rankled by his tone. “I tried.”

“Oh, okay. Perfect. When the historians revisit Ajun in a couple of centuries, I’ll make sure they chisel that into your headstone, then. He tried.”

The asshole.

I knew what he was doing.

“Oh, wait, that’s right. I won’t make sure they come back and do that because I’ll be dead, too, won’t I? Me, and Lorreth, and Danya. My sister. Vash. Korrix. Foley. All those who matter most to you. Not to mention every single member of the Fae within these walls. Dead.”

“Bastard,” I groaned.

He gave me a grim smile. “Indeed.” But he said no more. Didn’t need to. His ploy had worked, and I was already hauling myself up onto my knees, then to my feet. Every cell of my body was on fire, but I lifted my ruined hands and wrapped them once more around the gate.

My brother rose with me. “You can do this,” he said softly.

So, I did. Not because I believed that I could. But because he believed that I could. And with my last living moments, I wasn’t going to let him down.

I pushed.

I grit my teeth together and I roared.

Slowly, through ragged breath and blinding pain, I moved the cursed gate.

“Four feet,” Renfis murmured. “Come on, Fisher. Push.”

“Come on, you lazy fuck,” Lorreth added. “I’ve seen you strain harder to take a shit. Push the damn thing.”

I let out a bark of laughter, despite all of it—the pain, and the blood, and the monsters straining against my wards. Tears streamed down my face. “I’m going to…haunt the hell out of you, asshole.”

“I’ll be pissed if you don’t,” he answered. I heard the raw emotion in his voice but couldn’t see it. My vision had narrowed, focusing down to one point: the two feet that remained between the gate and the wall. I panted, desperately trying to summon the strength to close that gap. It wasn’t far.

“Come on. That’s it, Brother. Push,” Renfis urged.

The wards were fracturing. One by one, piece by piece, I felt my shadows rushing back to me, returning home. Time was running out. I pushed with what little energy I had left, and the gate ground forward an inch.

Two.

Five.

Then, there were hands at my back.

Fuck!

My pulse soared. The feeders! They—

But it wasn’t the feeders. They hadn’t broken through the ward. Not yet, anyway. The sound of the voice behind me damn near broke me. “Come on, then, you stubborn ass. We’ll do it together.”

The hands at my back were Ren’s. Lorreth’s. Strong. Steady. Firm. The hands of my brothers, who stood beside me on the wrong side of the gate, ready to help me. Ready to stand with me. Ready to die with me. They had slipped through the gap, right before it had become too small, and now they were here with me. They couldn’t touch the gate itself, but they could lend me their strength to complete this task. And just as the ward failed and Malcolm’s ravenous horde broke through my shadows, I pushed at that fucking gate, and my brothers pushed me.

The sound of iron crashing against stone rang out into the night, thunderous and beautiful.

It was closed.

The people inside the city were safe.

I dropped like a stone the second it was done, my limbs failing me. The night was already so dark. I could barely see anything anyway, but the edges of my vision grew even darker, closing in.

“You shouldn’t have done…that,” I panted. “Neither of you.”

“I think you mean all three of us shouldn’t have done it.”

A flicker of brilliant white light flared into existence, briefly lighting up the dark, and there, twenty feet away, Danya stood with her sword held high, the flat of the blade rippling with iridescent blue-white flames. When she glanced back at me over her shoulder, I saw that she was grinning like a sinner in a whorehouse. “What? I wasn’t going to let these bastards claim all the glory, now, was I?”

She spun her sword—Celeandor—with a flourish, and wisps of flame crackled up into the air. I’d almost forgotten that her father had gifted her the god sword at last. It was good that she had it. With it, there was a chance the three of them might be able carve a path through the feeders and charge down the mountain. A slim chance, but…

“Your shadows,” Lorreth said under his breath. “The wall’s gone. They’re coming.”

I heard them, sure enough. The sound was unmistakable: an army of ravenous demons with the frenzy was upon them, maddened by the knowledge that they were about to taste blood. The jostling black tide flowed up the last hundred feet of the mountainside toward us.

It would be quick now.

Too quick.

There wasn’t much time.

“Renfis…”

He looked down at me, panic carved into the lines of his face. “No,” he whispered.

“Yes. End it,” I wheezed. “If I can’t fight, you can’t…let them…take m—”

“Gods alive, will you shut the fuck up,” Danya groaned. “None of us are going to kill you. You’re not leaving us with that kind of trauma. You’re going to be fine. We all are.”

The dragon further down the slope bellowed, his rage fouling the air with sulfur. He could sense it: the tiny fragment of power I still possessed was failing, and with it the shadow spear that still pinned him to the ice.

Danya’s blind assessment of the situation could not have been more ridiculous. Once ’Shacry was free, he would feast on us, but our bodies would already be cooling in the snow by then.

“You should g—gg—” I choked as a gout of salt and copper surged into my mouth. When I touched my fingers to my lips, I expected them to come away red, but instead they dripped silver. Why is there so much of it? Wh—

The sky exploded with light.

Not from brimstone or fire.

Daylight, sudden and brilliant scorched my eyes.

The world was still.

Calm.

Quiet.

I blinked, my breath catching in my throat. The pain was gone and with it the horror of the mountainside.

“Shh. Don’t be silly. He’s second handsomest,” a lilting female voice declared.

I was no longer on the slopes before Ajun. I was somewhere else. A warm sun beat down on me, melting the ice crusted to the front of my chest plate to water. Long blades of dry grass whispered and rushed all around me, swaying on a gentle breeze.

I launched myself upright, pulse pounding. “My friends! Where are my friends?”

Soft giggling sounded nearby.

I found myself in the middle of a sweeping range. Close by, a mighty tree stood atop a knoll, though far away enough that I could only just make out the shape of the figure seated on a rock beneath it. There was another figure up there, too. Slighter. A female, by the looks of things, though I couldn’t make out her features. I didn’t care about the male or whoever he was talking with, though.

I knew precisely where I was, and I was fucking furious about it. “Send me back!” I shouted. “Right fucking now.”

Twin females rose from the dancing grass, beautiful and grinning. They glowed with mischief, their dark hair floating on an invisible breeze as they picked up their skirts and laughed, rushing toward me with fingers pressed to their lips. “Shh,” the girl on the left urged. “Quiet, Fierce Heart. We aren’t allowed guests to visit without Father’s permission.”

I glowered at the girl, blood and quicksilver spilling from my mouth when I spoke a second time. “Send me back, Mithin.”

The girl—the goddess—looked wounded. “I’m not Mithin. I’m Ba—”

“You are Mithin. Now send me home.”

The godling pouted prettily, disappointed that her lie hadn’t taken hold. “You know, you’re the only one who has ever been able to tell us apart. Even Father sometimes confuses us.”

Next to her, the other goddess, identical to her in almost every way, dropped down into the grass. “You always ruin our games, Fierce Heart.”

“This isn’t a game. I have to go back. My friends need me.”

“Oh?” Bal eyed me coquettishly, fluffing out her skirts as she sat down beside her sister. “And what do you hope to accomplish, should we give in to your very rude demand?”

Mithin leaned forward, fingertips brushing my chin. “You’re very sick, y’know. If we do send you back, you’ll surely die.” She popped the tips of her fingers into her mouth, giggling when my blood hit her tongue. “Oh my,” she breathed.

Bal’s crystalline eyes flared; staring at her counterpart, she demanded, “What does he taste like?”

“Mm. Like hope.” She thought for a moment. “A little fear, perhaps. Unmet potential. And love.”

Love? That one caught me off guard. But what could a godling know of love?

Huffing petulantly, Bal balled up her fists and sulked. “That’s not fair. I want to taste.”

Quickly, she reached for my face, but I batted her hand away before she could touch me. There was no pain as I moved, but I felt the wrongness inside me. I was balanced on a knife edge, about to topple over a ledge of some sort…and even though I couldn’t see it, I sensed that the fall on the other side would be eternal. I didn’t have the luxury of ruminating on that right now, though. “I’m not your pet. You can’t just taste me without my permission,” I snarled, pushing away from the twins. I felt no better on my feet. No less disassociated from my body. “Why did you bring here? And answer truthfully. No games.”

Bal pouted, still stung that I hadn’t let her lap my blood from her fingers. It was Mithin who answered. “Our life here is very limited, Darling.” She threw herself onto her back in the grass, stretching like a cat. “We spend a great deal of time observing you. It stems the boredom. We couldn’t exactly let all those cruel creatures eat you now, could we? What would we do then?”

The gravity of what she was saying hit hard and fast. “So, you intervened. He let you intervene?”

Bal rolled her eyes, ripping a stalk of grass out of the ground next to her. “How many times have you visited us in our realm, Kingfisher?”

I didn’t have to dig deep for the answer. There had been the first occasion, when I was just a boy and Belikon had sent me into the Quicksilver without a relic. Then, there had been another time, three centuries ago, when the God of Chaos had approached me with a proposition—one that I had summarily rejected out of hand. “This is the third time,” I told her.

“And how many times have you seen our father intervene to prevent catastrophe in the universe?”

“Never.”

“Precisely. Your presence here has nothing to do with Zareth.” Mithin smirked at this, as if this was something she was very proud of. “We brought you here. As we speak, his mind is elsewhere. He probably doesn’t even know that you’re here.”

The Gods were full of misdirects and mischief. I had discovered this firsthand when I was little more than a child. But there was a tone in Mithin’s voice that snagged in the back of my mind, and interested or not, a part of me sat up and paid attention.

A scent blew to me on the breeze, then, electrifying every part of me. Like lilies, and sugar, and light, and laughter, and smoke, and…

I couldn’t fucking breathe.

“Who is that?” I gasped. “Up there on the hill with him?” No matter how hard I squinted, I couldn’t see her. The sudden ache in my chest was more powerful than anything I’d ever experienced before. It overrode everything.

Bal and Mithin laughed in chorus. They jumped to their feet as I began to head in the direction of the hill, stopping me, each of them taking one of my ruined hands. “That is the future,” Mithin chided.

“This is the past,” Bal added in a sing-song tone.

Every fiber of my being needed me to be on that hill. The goddesses were older than the bones of the universe, though, and their light touch on my hands was all they needed to anchor me to the spot.

“Our home is strange,” Bal purred. “Time exists upon itself here. Time upon time, upon time, upon time…” Her voice took on a dreamlike quality, blurring around the edges. “But that is not your place. Not yet.”

“She’s hurt,” I whispered. I could smell it: her blood, intoxicating, like a siren song, calling to me. “Some…something’s happened to her. She’s—”

“She is safe,” Mithin soothed. “Our father is telling her of things to come. Things not meant for your ears. Come.”

A bright lance of pain brought me back to myself. The goddesses were holding my hands tighter now, both of their own hands clasped tightly around mine. A brilliant white light spilled between their fingers and dripped into the grass at our feet. “He hasn’t given his permission to act,” Mithin said. “But our father knows all things that have been done and will be done. He has not prevented this, which makes it his will. You will be healed. You will be sent back…”

“But—”

It washed over me, through me, scattering me in every direction: so much power that, for one brief split second, I was no longer concerned about the inconsequential follies of the universe. I was the universe. And then I was not.

The goddesses dragged me back, away from that tumble into eternity. I came back into myself, and when I opened my eyes, a new weight had settled in my freshly healed hands. No longer their hands, but instead a glittering black sword.

I frowned down at it, unable to conceal my shock. “What’s this?”

It was beautiful in its way. Not traditionally so. It bore no elaborate engraving. Its hilt was bare. But there was a rawness to it that called to me, and when I closed my hands around its grip and held it before me, studying its dark edge, it felt as though a part of my soul that had been missing since birth had finally found its way back to me.

“An ancient blade,” Bal said coyly. She stepped back, linking arms with her sister, and the two of them watched me, quietly beaming with approval.

I twisted the weapon, feeling the rightness of its weight. “What’s it called?”

Mithin’s laughter rang out across the meadow like a bright silver bell. “That’s not for us to say. Only a sword’s true owner may name it. This one has been waiting for millennia for you, hasn’t it, sister?”

“Indeed,” Bal answered. “You will know what to call it very soon, we fear. Speaking of which…”

The twins began to walk backwards, their long skirts rustling in the grass. A panic spiked in my chest, then. They weren’t telling me something. There was something I needed to ask them. Something I needed to know. I…

I took one step forward and plunged face-first through their reality. Like I’d accidentally stumbled into deep, cold water. I flailed, gasping…

…and suddenly the meadow was gone. The goddesses, and the knoll, and the distant tree, and…something else, someone else was gone.

I came to, standing at the foot of the Ajun Gate.

The horde were mere feet away. My friends were bracing for impact. Renfis was screaming something, already running out to meet the dead, the beginnings of a blue orb of energy forming in his hands. I was exactly where I had been mere moments before…

Except that now I was whole.

And now, I held a god sword in my hands.