Chapter 184: Needles Finding North

The staff screams in my hands.

Sera screams with it.

Every violet line still left in the Great Hall turns toward us at once... thin bright needles swinging north... and I feel them coming like a thousand cold fingers reaching for my throat.

"Vey, drop it!" Rhydan roars from behind Marguerite.

"I cannot!"

My palms are locked to the cracked wood. The pale light pouring out of me... out of him inside me... is eating its way up the staff toward Sera’s fingers and she cannot let go either. We are stuck, connected and burning together.

Sera’s eyes are huge and wet and furious.

"Let go, you bitch... let go...!"

"You first!" I scream back.

Seeing Marguerite distracted, Rhydan moves and grabs Marguerite again, holding her back and away from me.

But Marguerite wrenches sideways with a snarl. Her forehead smashes into Rhydan’s already split brow. The impact stuns him just long enough for her to plant both hands on his chest and heave.

He is thrown off her by sheer desperate strength and the last dregs of power still clinging to her skin. His back hits the pillar again and the piece of him inside my chest responds in white-hot pain.

My knees buckle and I cry out.

The staff jerks in my grip as the pain destabilizes me. Sera gains a foot of ground and pushes the silver orb toward my heart but misses.

Rhydan is already moving again.

He does not stay down. He never stays down. Blood running into his eye, ribs screaming, he drives back across the floor like something that refused the grave and hits Marguerite at the waist before she can shape another working. They go down in a snarl of limbs and silver hair and his growl shakes the marble under my feet.

I feel every impact through the bond.

His shoulder into her ribs becomes a shock in my own side. Her nails raking his face become fire down my cheek. When she gets a hand free and slams violet light straight into his chest, I choke on nothing and nearly lose the staff.

"Rhydan...!"

"Hold it!" he snarls through gritted teeth, pinning Marguerite’s wrists to the floor with everything he has left. "I have her... I have her... do it...!"

Wait, do what?

I do not know.

I only know the light in my hands suddenly wants to pull again.

So I pull again.

Not at Sera...

I pull at everything feeding the staff, harder this time.

And the needles answer.

Violet tethers snap free from slumped students and whip through the air toward the orb. Power screams down the lines... stolen power... dying power... and the pale light in my palms meets it and refuses to let power stay rotten.

The power goes in dark and comes out clean and the clean power from the orb rushes into my arms like ice water and fire at the same time.

My back arches.

Sera shrieks as the feedback climbs the staff into her hands.

"Grandmother... Grandmother, it burns...!"

"Hold the staff!" Marguerite howls from under Rhydan. "Do not you dare let her take..."

Rhydan headbutts her.

The crack of bone on bone is loud and awful. Marguerite’s nose breaks. Blood sheets over her mouth.

For one second her thrashing falters and Rhydan gets a better hold... forearm across her throat... knees pinning her skirts... his gold eyes blazing down into hers with pure murderous love for the girl holding the other end of the staff.

"Hurt her through me again," he breathes, "and I will end you with my teeth."

The piece of him inside me sings.

More tethers tear free.

A second-year boy at the far tables gasps and color floods back into his face. A professor sobs as her power returns in a rush. Maren’s head snaps up. Cassian groans and rolls onto his elbow. Each tether I clean and take makes the light under my skin brighter... heavier... more sure.

Sera is sobbing now.

Her hands are blistering on the wood. The glamour is completely gone. She is only Sera... young and terrified and stuck.

"I cannot hold it... Veyra please... please it is going to take my hands..."

"Then let go!"

"I cannot!"

Marguerite recovers and thrashes under Rhydan and gets one knee up. Violet light builds bare-handed on her palms though still pinned... no staff needed... and she shoves it into Rhydan’s side at point-blank range.

He roars.

I feel his ribs give.

The pain drops me to one knee but I do not release the staff. Tears stream down my face. Blood runs from my nose. The piece of him in my chest is frantic... pushing heat into my limbs... trying to keep me upright from the inside while his body takes the beating on the outside.

"Rhydan, get off her... she is going to kill you...!"

"Not... before you finish..." he forces out.

He stays on her.

God help me, he stays on her.

I pull harder.

The silver orb cracks wider with a sound like a gunshot. A chunk of it falls off and shatters into black dust. The needles of tether light are a storm now... dozens of them... whipping into the staff and through me... and I am shaking so hard my teeth chatter but the light keeps coming and the well behind my navel is opening quietly and something vast is turning over in my bones.

Sera’s knees hit the floor.

"Please..."

"Let go, Sera!"

"She will kill me if I let go!"

"She will kill you if you hold on!"

Marguerite gets a hand free and claws for Rhydan’s eyes. He catches her wrist and slams it back down hard enough that the marble chips. His other hand is locked on her shoulder. His blood is dripping onto her face. He looks like a boy fighting a war with nothing but will and the girl living behind his ribs.

"Vey," he gasps. "Whatever you are becoming... become it now..."

I look at him.

Through the bond, he looks at me without turning his head.

And I stop pulling gently...

I take forcefully.

The remaining tethers in the hall snap free all at once and slam into the staff. Students cry out as their power rushes back into them in a reverse tide. The violet storm above Marguerite’s body collapses. The staff in my hands turns white-hot and Sera finally screams high enough to break glass and lets go.

She falls backward, hands ruined, curling around them with a broken wail.

I am left holding the staff alone.

It is dying in my grip... black cracks racing down the wood, the silver orb a ruined shell. All the stolen power it once held is either cleaned through me or gone.

And Marguerite sees it.

Her face goes blank with pure black terror.

"No..."

She throws Rhydan off with a bare-handed blast born of pure desperation. He slides ten feet across marble and leaves blood in a smear. I feel the hit and stagger but stay standing because the piece of him inside me refuses to let me fall.

Marguerite scrambles up.

No staff.

No tethers.

Just an old woman in a ruined dress with a broken nose and the entire Binding Circle system still knotted inside her chest like a black heart.

She looks at me.

At the pale light crawling under my skin...

At her granddaughter sobbing on the floor...

At Rhydan forcing himself to his hands and knees again, gold eyes locked on her like a wolf that has already decided the taste of her throat.

"You children," Marguerite whispers. "You do not understand what you have started."

I take a step toward her.

The ruined staff falls from my hands and hits the marble with a dead sound.

"Then explain it to me," I say softly, "while you still can."

Rhydan gets one foot under him.

Then the other.

He stands... swaying... bleeding... beautiful... and the warmth of him inside my chest settles into something that feels like a vow.

Marguerite backs up toward the dais.

And for the first time tonight, there is nowhere left for her to climb.

Sera crawls out of her way, ruined hands leaving red prints on the stone, and neither of us looks at her.

Only at the woman who started all of it.

I take another step.

The light under my skin brightens.

And somewhere under twenty feet of sealed marble, the dragon hits the wall one more time... hard enough that dust rains from the ceiling... as if it can feel us becoming something it recognizes.

Marguerite lifts her empty hands.

Rhydan starts walking toward her from the left.

I start walking toward her from the right.

And the Great Hall holds its breath.