Sorcha had her hands pressed to the wound in his side, staunching it as best she could. The world seemed to be tilting. No one was explaining this phenomenon to Raed, and breathing was taking all his concentration.
“He did it; Zofiya is safe!” Sorcha was practically screaming to be heard above the wrenching of rock; she was as outraged as he at the unfairness of it.
“They needed royal blood.” Nynnia shook her head, dark curls coming loose to spill down her cheek. Her eyes widened. “The fountain!” She pointed to it, the stone tilted at an angle. “It is draining into the ossuary.”
“What are you talking about?” Sorcha pressed harder on Raed’s wound, but the pain was distant now.
“The Emperor and the Pretender share much of the same lines . . . Ancient blood to wake the Murashev is pouring into the White Palace.”
It was cruel to be dying and know it was for nothing. “It is rising,” Merrick said as the ground again rumbled. “They must have connected the pipes to some sort of summoning circle below.”
“I believe the expression is, Done”—Raed spat out a great clot of blood and grinned weakly—“and dusted.”
“Do something!” Sorcha’s expression was dark and dangerous under the wave of her copper hair, and it was turned on Nynnia. “He’s dying.”
“I can’t heal without my foci,” Nynnia said, her voice cold even while reality seemed to be getting hotter. “There is only one lord who can save him.”
Raed felt the impact of her words and he knew what she meant immediately. Sorcha, however, was distracted by the madness around her, the groan of the underworld rising up to meet them.
It was Merrick who grasped it first. “The Rossin—by the Bones, you mean to use him.”
“He has his part to play, as we all do.” Nynnia shifted in his vision, for a second looking bright, like a glimpse of the sun. Raed knew he was dying, but by the Blood, he was going to die as himself, not as some raving beast. He tried to shake his head, but there was so very little strength left in him.
Out of the corner of his wavering vision, the Pretender saw Sorcha shoving her Gauntlets on in a sharp gesture. Her face was like stone. “Then we Merge.”
Never been done with so many Bonds. Even Merrick’s thoughts were hurried and full of fear. Images filled the Pretender’s failing mind. To Merge and become one entity was the final act of desperate Deacons—ones who didn’t expect to live.
Raed’s mouth was full of the taste of iron. “What part of desperate do you not see about you, Merrick?”
The young Deacon was pale, and it was hard to tell if the shake of his hand was due to the tremors of the earth or his own inner fear. Yet he smiled back, a sharp flash of grim humor, the kind that Raed had seen plenty of times on other young men in the heat of battle. Courage was filling him: reckless understanding that this was the end.
Sorcha placed her Gauntlet-encased hand on his head; it was warm like her skin. I cannot say how this Merge will go—the Rossin is unpredictable.
No need to tell me. Raed closed his eyes. I’ve been living with him my whole life.
White light burned through his eyelids and the Pretender realized he should have been terrified—yet there was a moment of bliss as he let it take. He surrendered to it, as he never had to any battle in his life.
Four strands of base metal twined together in the forge of the Bond’s making. The fear of being lost within one another was overcome by the giddy rush of joining. Flesh and mind were flayed open in pain and ecstasy until only one creature remained. One creature created out of four. The wild core of this being was the Rossin, the geistlord trapped for so long in the bodies of the line of kings. But the others were there; the young and brave Sensitive, the angry power of the Active, and the ancient strength of the Pretender. The Bond wrapped them tighter than twins or lovers, holding mind and flesh together. It not only had the power of the Rossin—it had the vision and runes of the Deacons.
The massive cat towered over Nynnia so that she had to tilt her head back to meet its eye. Standing larger than any feline that had ever walked, its hide was tawny rather than the black of the Rossin, but it was patterned with the runes of the Deacons—even the feared Teisyat. Its eyes flickered from blue to brown to hazel and then gold in a spiral of sparks. As the White Palace erupted around it, there was no fear in the Great Beast. The ground shook as the bones ruptured paving stones and houses, destroying all that humanity had built with shards of what they all eventually came to.
The Beast braced itself on its massive paws, and it roared. It was a sound that proclaimed its ascendancy and rivaled both the screams of the fleeing populace and the rumble of the arriving ossuary. Even Nynnia flinched from it, and the Beast was proud. It was more than the world had ever known; a Merging of the royal line, the geist and the Deacons.
And now it would hunt. The boneyard that punctured Vermillion like a white row of spears was but a sign. The Beast snarled, its curved scimitar canines sliding over its lips. It smelled something below, something that wakened ancient enmity in the deepest core of its brain. Something that made its claws flex and clench into the crumbling stone of the fountain.
When Nynnia reached out and laid her hand into the deep fur of its dark mane, it flicked its head around, ready to destroy her. She too smelled of this enemy; the scent more distant and muted by the wrapping of human flesh, but definitely there.
While the Beast recognized fear in its parts, it was full of its own pride and power. Whatever was below was prey and deserving of death. Even though the woman at its side was at least partly the enemy, her human form protected her from its rage. It even tolerated her hand in its mane. This was nothing to do with the Sensitive deep down relishing her touch. No, certainly not—no human could influence it.
“Come,” she said, taking a step down from the broken dais and into the dust of the bones. “The Murashev awaits.”
The Beast and the woman picked their way down the stairs into the White Palace, and there was an eerie beauty about it. Rows of skeletons were stacked up on each side; walls made of thighbones and topped with skulls. All of these bones were ancient, their domes crushed in and smelling of dust.
The Beast’s scything shoulder blades brushed against the curved roof as it swung its head from side to side, inhaling. Humans had been here, humans that part of it recognized. Deacons had passed this way, smelling of old man and incense. A growl disturbed the massive chest.
The Beast could see better than a cat in the dark and could now make out a light ahead. Those swirling eyes narrowed to slits and the rumble in its chest threatened to become a snarl. The Rossin core recognized the light and was ecstatic. The light of the Otherside—home. However, the Deacons within and the uncrowned king were cautious. Something had already breached into this world.
The woman’s hand slid out from its mane, and it paused to glance at her. “You must go on ahead,” she said softly. “I have to get close to the Murashev without it seeing me.” In the near darkness, there seemed to be a glow coming from her, even through the shell of human flesh.
It did not bother the Beast, though deep down the strand of the Sensitive was confused. The creature padded forward on paws of silent velvet through once-tidy rows of bones and skulls.
Whatever had just happened had thrown this section of the White Palace into disarray. Tumbles of ancient skeletons lay all around, and the Beast could not help but crush some as it drew nearer to the light. Not that it looked down; its eyes were riveted to the scene before it. It was obvious that a doorway had been opened because this chamber in the White Palace was full of shades, flickers of white mist hovering around the source of light like eldritch moths.