his knees. Lightning split the skies above, waves crashed upon the jagged shorelines, the red glow of an inferno was blazing in the streets beyond. All Four Daughters had woken at their brother’s fury, battering at his grave in the hopes of keeping him inside it. Jonnen was terrified in a way he’d never known, his whole body shaking, tugging at the bars about him and searching within for some fragment of the steel he saw in her. Turning his will onto the shadows and trying to make them his own, eyes narrowed in concentration.
“Bend, curse you,” he whispered.
And there in the darkness, he caught a flash of gold amidst the crushing gloom. Looking to the broken double doors, Jonnen’s heart stilled in his chest as he saw a pale figure on the threshold, dressed in a white gown, smudged with dirt and blood. Her hands clutched twin gravebone blades, her fingertips stained black. Her eyes were black, too, her face beautiful and pale, long blond braids moving across her shoulders as if they had minds of their own.
“Ashlinn?” he whispered.
Her dark eyes were turned up to the shadow titans, swirling and clashing across the shattered hall. Grip tightening on the hilts of her swords. But the storm of daemons swept over her, past her, through her, whispering with a hundred not-voices.
“… the boy…”
“… THE BOY…”
“… THE BOY…”
She turned to him then. Eyes darker than the place she’d dragged herself from, lips parted as she whispered his name.
“Jonnen.”
A horrifying blow from his sister drove his father down through the floor, into the twisted mekwerk and the cellars beyond. He tore upward like a black spear, wings streaming behind, the pair of them cleaving through the broken levels above with a deafening crash. The gravebone shattered, shrieking glass, splintering timbers, the noise so loud, Jonnen was forced to cover his ears as the entire top half of the first Rib began to shear away from the base. The mighty tower held a moment longer, inertia fighting a ponderous battle with gravity and finally losing. Thousands of tons of gravebone toppled and fell, crashing into the third Rib and ripping it free with an ungodly booooom.
“Jonnen!”
The boy blinked in the blinding dust, opening his eyes and looking into darkness, shot through with the light of a million stars. Ashlinn’s hands were pressed against the bars, trying in vain to bend them.
“Stand back!”
Ashlinn hefted her gravebone swords, hacking at the black hemming him in. Jonnen wondered at the futility of it. But his eyes widened as the blades sank deep, splitting the shadows asunder. Ashlinn struck again, swinging as though she were chopping wood, more of the dark sheared away. And Jonnen saw the truth of it all then. How all of it fit together. The bones. The blood. The city about him and the titans above him and the fragment inside him—all of it was connected.
All of it was One.
So he opened his hands toward the darkness. Entwined with the black around him, within him, a single fragment of the greater whole. His fingers curled as he took hold, cold and slick beneath his grip. And teeth gritted, face twisted, he tore the bars apart, the shadows shattering about him.
Ashlinn caught him up in her arms, slinging him onto her hip with one hand, the other still holding a bloody sword. They looked up through the broken rib into the truedark sky as two black shapes streaked overhead, crashing into the cobblestones outside and splitting the island down to its foundations. Ashlinn staggered, even the strength of the grave barely enough to keep her upright. The tremors shook them, the City of Bridges and Bones thrashing in its death throes. Jonnen saw water rushing in through the cracked wall now, covering the street outside, its scent heavy in the air.
“The ocean,” he whispered.
“Never fear,” the girl replied, kissing his brow. “I’ll not let you drown.”
He’d heard those words before. Aboard the Bloody Maid, as the tempest roared and the lightning flashed and the Ladies of Storms and Oceans tried to drag them down to their doom. He remembered Mia sitting across from him, cross-legged and soaked to the skin. He’d hated her, back then. With all he had to give. And still she’d squeezed his hand and sang to him in the dark and promised not to let him sink.
Ashlinn was making her way through the broken wall now, ankle-deep in the rising seas, cradling him with one arm. Beyond, the city