Chapter 48

The scars beveling my skin burned awake for the first time since Delilah drew the strange symbols on me. I tore off the coat, discovering the pinkish flesh that had healed over now glowed once more. My breath hitched, choked in my throat as I swallowed down a cry of pain.

Felix and his men surrounded the barrier. It was a scene I knew before with different faces taking the place of the ones in my memory. Instead of Delilah and her assistant, it was Felix and my brother.

"What are you doing to me?" I managed to ask between breaths.

"Felix is going to fix this," Aramis said, his tone attempted to be reassuring. "Once Chaos is destroyed, everything can go back to normal—"

A hollow laugh took the place of the tears pressing behind my eyes. "We will never go back to normal. When will you understand that this is who I am? You cannot remove the parts of me you don't like. There is no science or magic that will change me enough to fit your mold."

"I'm not trying to change you, Camilla. I'm trying to help you."

I scoffed. "If you think I'll forgive you after this... Hells, after all the times I defended you, Nico was right all along. I should've walked away from you when I had the chance."

He didn't flinch, his face hard and still as any mask. "You'll soon understand, it was the only way."

Hot tears broke free, spilling down both of my cheeks, and I didn't know if I cried for the pain of the runes or his betrayal. Both stung worse than any wound.

"I trusted you."

Aramis looked at the floor, where old stains discolored the concrete. "I know. Which is why this worked so well."

Felix stepped beside him, catching my attention. "If only you knew the sacrifices your brother was making on your behalf, you wouldn't be so unkind. Is this really the last conversation you'd have with him?"

He was right. If that were the case, if these words were my last, I'd make them count. Make them hurt.

Aramis continued to avoid my gaze, though I was certain he could feel the way I drew daggers with my glare. He removed his jacket and stripped down to his bare chest while another alchemist, the only person here not in armor or a party gown, came behind him. She held a bowl filled with a thick, crimson liquid.

"What are you doing?" I asked. The symbols across my skin burned incandescent as she dipped two fingers in the bowl and dragged them across my brother's back. Just as Delilah had done when she connected us.

"He's taking your remnant," Felix answered me, to my surprise. "So that when we open Oblivion, you will not have access to your full power. It was our deal."

"Why would Aramis want my remnant?"

"Because despite being the child of Chaos and everything the Orders fought to destroy," Felix spat, "he loves you. This was our deal. That he would bring you here, but we would not kill you."

It wasn't quite what I'd consider love. Love was honesty and trust. It was unconditional and lacked requirements. Impossible to earn, even more so to lose, the truer its form. Love was what I had with Nico and his family, and I wondered if Aramis even knew the word. Whatever pity remained for him in my heart ached.

"I told you, Camilla," Aramis said. "If there was a way to take this from you to give you a normal life, I would. And I found a way."

Dread dipped its icy fingers around my chest. They weren't going to kill me—not if I no longer had a remnant. Aramis would take my place.

"Where the hells are they?" Felix asked a guard. "He should be here by now. I sent Vanya to retrieve him."

"Who?" I asked, still looking at my brother. "Who, Aramis?"

The swing of the front doors replied for him. A pair of watchmen carried a man between them. His boots dragged against the stone floor, his head limp between broad shoulders. Dark hair fell from the wax hold styling a harsh undercut. They propped him up in a chair in front of the boundary without binding him. Felix and Aramis stood beside each other, leering at their new victim.

Nicolai.

I lunged for him, but my hands ran into the edge of the boundary, crackling an unseen energy through an invisible wall. I winced as twin currents of electricity jolted through my palms and pushed me back. Nico sat just out of reach, beyond the milky line of the arcane border. He roused when I shouted his name. Sleepy eyes blinked open.

"Milla."

I didn't need to look at his hand to know he was powerless. The watchmen wouldn't be so careless as to not give him a dose of glint. He made a clumsy attempt to stand, but the click of a revolver spinning a bullet in the cylinder ceased his movements.

"You actually did it, Marchese. I'm impressed," Felix murmured as he slung the gun around his finger.

If Aramis was pleased, he didn't show it. "You got the Attano, you have the codes, you have my sister's remnant. I did good on my end. I expect you to make good on yours."

Felix used the barrel of the gun to tip Nico's chin up, forcing his gaze to lift to him. But my husband didn't take his eyes off me, nor did I him as we listened to their exchange.

"And if I don't?" Felix asked him.

"I have ensured you will regret such a thing," Aramis replied dryly. "You are not the only one who has connections in this city, Firenze. Double-cross me and your family will burn."

A lengthy pause followed, snagging my breath. The alchemist slid his tongue between his teeth before his lips stretched into a wide smile, laughing in that deranged way of his. "I bet you have. But I'm a man of my word, Aramis. I'll restore your family name and fortune. I'll make sure the Marcheses—what's left of them—get back the house and the property, the shares and the riches." His oily stare slid to me—over me. "Your sister will be taken care of."

Nico's neck thickened with tension; his shoulders rose as he took a massive breath. "Don't you fucking touch her—"

His head snapped back then, like someone had snatched him by the hair, his throat exposed to Felix's revolver. He was doing something—using magic to control him. Felix had occult power like the watchman who'd compelled me to submit at Sabina's docks.

His height, his build, that laugh.

It was Felix who'd led the legions of watchmen against the bleeders.

"Felix, please," I begged as his finger slipped over the trigger. There had to be something I could barter with for Nico's life, but I had nothing. My brother had stripped away all my power, stole all my moves, left me with nothing to offer the alchemist in exchange for my husband.

"I have been waiting to finish this job for a long time," Felix whispered. "You thought you could take everything from me, Attano. The train, the girl, the power. You just couldn't stay on your fucking side of the city." Felix swallowed hard, teeth gritting. "When I'm through with you, I'll hunt down the rest of your kin one by one, until the Isle has been purged of bender blood."

My eyes slammed shut as the gun went off, and my heart was ripped in two as if thrown into the path of the bullet. The acrid scent of spent gunpowder penetrated the boundary of the circle, the loud bang from the shot ricocheted off the bare walls of the warehouse, all followed by Felix's curse.

"What the hells, Marchese?"

My eyes flew open, breath stuttering in my chest as my pulse skipped with it.

The gun was no longer pointed at Nico, but in the air. The bullet had busted through a skylight, spilling moonlight and broken glass around the pair. Aramis gripped Felix's arm in a last-minute attempt to redirect the shot.

Nico's chest rose and fell rapidly, eyes wide, shocked, knowing he'd been spared.

"Not like this," Aramis spoke firmly. He released Felix to reach into a sheath tucked against his hip—one the watchmen checking at the front doors had conveniently missed. A red blade—a Niner blade—slid out, and he let the tip graze Nico's chest. "He deserves to die slowly, knowingly. Just like his mother."

"Fuck you," Nico hissed.

"No, Attano," he said. "I've been planning this day since the moment you stepped into my courtyard. Even then, with the union between our families, I saw a glimmer of opportunity for revenge. The only reason I let you have my sister, Bender, the only reason the Firenzes didn't retaliate after the stunt you pulled, was because we were playing a very long game. One you didn't even know you were a part of until it was too late for you."

"Then finish this," Nico snarled. "Be done with it. Do what I couldn't, Marchese."

"Aramis, don't!" I shouted, but he wouldn't listen. He never did. My words fell on the deaf ears of the man who had controlled my whole world since it mattered, who had destroyed it with the fall of a blade.

Aramis plunged the Niner dagger into Nico's side, sealing his fate.

Nico cried out, a grunt to hide the shriek of pain. Even as my brother withdrew his weapon, the poison on the blade had begun to eat at him from the way he couldn't even bear to look at me any longer. His eyes smashed shut, his teeth bared, as if holding any evidence of his pain hostage.

"What have you done?" I cried at Aramis. Disregarding the sprints of pain it caused, I slammed my fist against the boundary, beating fist after fist into the opaque veil that separated us. Nicolai was dying, and I couldn't even touch him. Couldn't hold him as the poison from the blade cleaved his future from mine. My time left with him drained like sand in an hourglass, and with Magrahel bringing the void so near to the weak and dying, I feared there weren't many grains of sand left in the vessel.

"Just... just hang on, Nico. Let me reach you at the very least—" Another fist to the barrier shot a current down my spine, sending me to my knees.

"Milla, stop," Nico gasped, looking at me at last—steel-grey and steady despite their glossy glare. "You're hurting yourself. Save your strength for when it counts."

"Let me out!" My voice burned in my throat as I repeated the demand, each one followed by a swing of my fist against the boundary.

The pain in my flesh—in my heart—quickly shifted to something more useful. Anger swept through my blood until I was full of it. Desperate to bleed my wrath on my brother and these men, who were circling the boundary as the markings worked on my remnant. The circle didn't dull my power. It was still there, filling my fingers with dark magic. But the symbols glowed against it, obeying another master.

I glared at the Firenze and his men through the dark strands of loose curls that had fallen over my face. "You are all cowards," I told them. "You know you stand no chance against me, so you lock me away like you do anyone who threatens you. Suppressing what frightens you because you know beneath your money and your codes and your fucking poisons, you are powerless. And so you hunt those who would prove it so to your city and undermine your influence. You steal what makes them special, not because you hate them, but because you hate yourselves for not possessing their gifts. You"—I glanced at them all, distributing the shame—"are the most pathetic kind of evil."

Felix paced the warehouse slowly behind Nico, watching me torture myself by beating down the barrier. He said nothing to contest my accusations, not that it mattered. He had won. No matter what happened tonight, I'd lose my husband, and there was no victory, no vengeance that would justify his death.

I looked to Aramis then, my voice breaking. "I love him."

He nodded, swallowing hard. "I know."

"And I will never forgive you for taking him from me."

My brother looked like he was going to be sick. "Good. Hate me. It'll make this next part much easier for you."

The alchemist returned to finish her work, to transfer my Chaos for them to destroy. Nico grunted, catching my attention. The way he looked at me, like he was studying me, like it might be the last time before we were separated forever—it split me in half.

"Don't let them take your fire, Milla."

"But you are my fire, Nico." The well in my heart was empty of tears, but my lips trembled. "I can't do this without you. I need you here."

The corner of his mouth tilted. "You never needed me, my love. You're enough all on your own. It's time they all realized the same."

Tendrils of shadowed flame swirled my fingertips, gathering from their summons. It filled the circle, building on every bracing breath that left my lips. Heatless in its form and yet more destructive than any earthly fire, it lashed around the barrier, seeking something to sink its malice into. With nothing to devour, it grew and gathered and wrapped my form in a void-like darkness.

"Hurry!" Felix's voice was muffled over the hiss of fire. "Finish the runes!"

The place where the demon marked me long ago burned with a fresh fire, though not unpleasantly. Beyond my wrath-filled form, in the dark where the flames danced and threatened, something came to existence. A tear, obvious by an arch of stillness that contrasted the endless churn of swirling fire. This darkness was not mine, nor familiar.

A void. That abysmal black called me into its calm and granted me a way out.

"I'll come back for you," I whispered my last promise to him before slipping through the thinning veil of Magrahel.