Mia spread her arms, and the dark erupted. A many, a horde, a legion of daemons, bursting from the shadow at her bare feet, from within the black of her gown. They streamed past her on black wings, pounced forward on black paws. Dozens, hundreds, a roiling, furious multitude.
They wore the shapes of night-things: bats and cats and wolves and owls and mice and crows, all the shapes of all the darks the world had ever known. Drowning out the winds with their snarls and roars and cries. They gnashed their teeth and curled their claws and crashed into Scaeva like a flood, falling upon the serpent about his throat and ripping Whisper from his master’s shoulders.
The shadowviper hissed in fury, tumbled among the countless other shapes, biting and spitting and flailing. He was darker than the rest of them—dark enough for two—the taste of a murdered not-wolf still fresh on his not-tongue. But the many tore at him, relentless, the hunger burning inside them, pieces of him spattering black upon the floor as he cried out to his master.
“… Julius, help me…!”
“Release him!” the imperator roared.
Scaeva’s hand cut the air, the dark turned sharp as knives. But though he stabbed them, bled them, scattered them across the hall like the rising smoke, Mia’s daemons were simply too many. Tumbling and tearing at Whisper as his cries grew piteous, his form grew thin, trembling and fading. All of them feasting on him until not even a shadow remained.
All save one.
He sat on Mia’s shoulder, wearing the shape of a cat. Paper-flat and semitranslucent, black as death, his tail curled around her throat. His not-eyes were fixed upon Scaeva’s serpent as it perished, as if savoring his screams.
“… that…,” Mister Kindly whispered, “… is for eclipse…”
“You dare…,” came the trembling growl.
Scaeva turned on his daughter, fingers curled into claws, black fury bubbling over his lips as he roared at the top of his lungs.
“YOU DARE?”
Mia’s lips curled in an ice-cold smile.
“How does it feel to lose something you love, bastard?”
Lifting one pale hand, Mia pointed to the gravebone stiletto he wore at his waist. The dagger gifted to her years before by the shadowcat now riding her shoulder. The dagger that had saved her life. The dagger she’d buried into the heart of a doppelgänger and dared to dream all this might end another way. Its eyes were red amber, twinkling in the gloom. Its hilt was fashioned into the likeness of a crow with wings spread—the sigil of the familia this man had so utterly destroyed.
“That belongs to me,” she said.
“Nothing belongs to you,” Scaeva spat, black tears bleeding from his eyes. “Do you not yet understand? Everything you have, everything you are, you owe to me.”
“I owe you nothing, Father.”
Mia raised her longblade between them.
“Nothing except this.”
Scaeva’s shadow boiled. Black eyes fixed on his daughter. Black drool on his chin. The darkness deepening between them until nothing else remained. He glanced to the place Whisper had perished, lips peeling back from his teeth as the pure and perfect rage inside him spilled upward and outward, finally and forever taking hold.
“Come give it to me, then,” he whispered.
Mia vanished without a sound, reappearing a second later in the air above and descending with her sword raised high. The shadows warped, curling into grasping hands, slicing through the air. But instead of vanishing, stepping aside, Scaeva reached up with a roar and caught her by the throat. And with titanic strength, he spun with her momentum and slung her backward onto the floor.
A thunderclap sounded, the marble and gravebone splitting asunder as she struck the ground. Mercurio flinched away from the shards cutting the air, the boom ringing white inside his skull. In a heartbeat, a black shape flashed up from the ruins, a dark phoenix rising, striking Scaeva in the chest and driving him upward into the gables. The ceiling shattered like ice as they struck it, great shards of gravebone falling about them as they crashed back down to earth. Mia’s longblade skidded across the floor, coming to rest among the rubble.
Mercurio could see Mia’s body was shrouded in shadow now. Ink-black tendrils sprouted from her shoulders like wings, ribbons of razor-sharp darkness springing from her fingertips. The old bishop could barely recognize the daughter he loved as the power inside her finally and completely broke loose. Her hair was longer, flowing about her like