“AND THEN, INSTEAD OF RENEWING THE WORLD, HE’LL SEEK TO UNMAKE IT. HIS RULE WILL BE ONE OF CHAOS. HATRED AND MURDER.”
Mia dragged her hand through her hair. Cigarillo smoke and the wine’s red hum filling the hollow nothing inside her chest.
“He has my brother,” she said. “I have to find Cleo.”
Mercurio scowled. “Scaeva’s got nowhere to run and no one to hide behind now. We’ve got a sorcerii. A pair of gladiatii. Two of the sharpest assassins in the Republic and a lad who seems near unkillable. We could just head to Godsgrave and gut him where he lives.”
Sidonius nodded at Mia. “Seems a better plan than your suicide to me…”
Bladesinger nodded. “Agreed.”
Mia looked about the assembly, slowly shaking her head.
“Scaeva’s beyond any of you now,” she murmured. “You can’t help me in this.”
“You don’t know that, little Crow,” Mercurio said. “We haven’t even tried.”
In answer, Mia simply held out her hand, palm upward. The black around them quavered, the darkness stirred. The girl lowered her chin, closed her bloodshot eyes, her hair moving as if in a faint breeze. She slowly curled her fingers into a claw.
Sidonius cursed. Mercurio caught his breath as Adonai muttered words of power. Everyone in the room found themselves wrapped in tendrils of shadow, coiling about their waists and legs. Mia twisted her fingers like a puppeteer, and each of her comrades cursed or gasped in wonder as they were lifted gently into the air.
“The truedark I was fourteen,” Mia said, “I reduced the Philosopher’s Stone to ruins. I skipped across Godsgrave in the blink of an eye, cut cohorts of Luminatii to pieces with blades of living darkness, ripped the statue of Aa outside the Basilica Grande to rubble. I had a single fragment of Anais inside me. Goddess knows how many were in that pool of godsblood. And truedark is coming.”
The darkness sighed and Mia opened her hand again. Gentle as falling feathers, her comrades were borne safely to the ground.
Her eyes were on her mentor.
“He’s got Jonnen, Mercurio.”
“We can still get him back, we can still—”
“Scaeva’s stronger than me now. Than all of us. At truedark, he’ll be stronger still.” Mia shook her head, took a long and bitter drag on her smoke. “I have to even the scales. And there’s only one place where that kind of power exists.”
A cold silence settled on the room, until Sidonius cleared his throat.
“Crow…” He proffered the Nevernight Chronicles. “Have you read these?”
Mia eyed the books with disdain. “Only a wanker reads her own biography, Sid. Especially if it’s got footnotes.”
“The first page…,” Sid murmured. “It tells how your story ends.”
Mia dragged on her smoke, exhaled gray.
“All right, do tell,” she finally sighed.
“You reduce the Republic to ashes,” Sid said.
“You leave Godsgrave at the bottom of the sea,”’Singer nodded.
“I sense a ‘but’ waiting in the wings,” Mia said.
“You die,” Mercurio said.
Mia looked to her mentor. The man who’d raised her. Who’d given her a home and love and laughter when everything else had been taken away from her. Noting the tears shining in his eyes as her father’s voice echoed in her head.
“If you start down this road, daughter mine…”
“You die, Mia,” Mercurio repeated.
She stood silent for an age. Looking out at the books below them, row upon black row. All those lives. All those stories. Tales of bravery and love, of good triumphing over evil, of joy and happy ever afters. But real life wasn’t like that, was it? Thinking of eyes of sunsburned blue and lips she’d never taste again and—
“Do I get him, at least?” she asked softly. “Scaeva?”
Mercurio looked to the books in Sid’s hands. Shaking his head.
“It doesn’t say.”
“Well. Looks like we’ve some suspense left after all, neh?”
Her old mentor narrowed his eyes. “So eager for an ending now, are we? Lost your girl and your hope besides, is that it? You’ve fought your whole life, Mia Corvere. Goddess knows you’ve seen times this bleak before. And you walked through. Giving all, not giving in. This needn’t be the end.”
Mia exhaled a plume of gray and shrugged.
“Even daylight dies.”
Her comrades looked to each other. Fear in their eyes. Silence between them dark as the evernight above their heads, as the shadow now settled over Mia’s heart.
The girl glanced at Aelius with flint-black eyes.
“Seems you get your way after all, Chronicler. I suppose this is farewell.”
He sighed and slowly nodded.
“S’pose it is.”
“Cheerio, you withered old bastard. Thanks for all the smokes.” Mia’s lips twisted in an empty smile. “Fuck