Chapter 40

A bitterly cold wind hissed as it tore through the hall, shoving me toward Nash's back, blowing out the magic flames of the lanterns on the wall. The shouts that rose in response were swift and fierce above us. No sooner had the thundering of hoofbeats and the gleeful whoops of the riders filled the air than a chain of explosions was set off. The whole building shook with the force of each blast. Screams, human and monstrous, rained down through the floors.

In the cellar, however, it was terrifyingly still. Silent.

"Do you not recognize your own brother, Erden?" Lord Death asked, amused. "I admit, I am surprised to find you alive. Your reckless manner should have seen you dead a thousand times over."

Erden. I looked to Nash, watching his reaction. The weight that settled over my body made it feel as though I were sinking into the floor. Brother.

The three fair-haired brothers on the tapestries.

It's true, I thought. It's all true.

The only sign of Nash's distress was the way his jaw tightened as he chose his words.

"I see the face of Arthur Pendragon, long lost to us," he said, finally. "Stolen by one I no longer recognize as the brother I loved."

The smirk slid from Lord Death's face. I wondered then, distantly, what his original features had looked like—if they'd been similar enough to Nash's that seeing him was like looking into a mirror of his past self.

"You turned your back on me before," Lord Death said. "And now you choose to do it again, at your own peril. I will not protect you from my riders."

"I wouldn't expect that," Nash said. He inclined his head toward the door. "Seems your standards have fallen a bit over the centuries. Then again, those men have always been lapdogs who believed they were wolves."

As Lord Death moved toward us, stalking forward slowly, we moved too. I lingered a step behind Nash, gripping the back of his leather jacket like a child afraid of becoming lost, as he eased us toward the stairs.

"Where is the girl?" Lord Death asked.

Nash assumed a fighter's stance. One hand drifted behind him, but there was no blade there. The sorceresses had confiscated everything, even the one hidden in the toe of his boot. My heart jumped to my throat.

He's talking about Neve, I thought. But how could he know about her?

Lord Death reached for the sword hilt at his side. The movement shifted a long silver chain out from under the collar of his tunic. A crimson gemstone hung upon it, so dark it was nearly black. Threads of silver death magic writhed and churned inside.

After the merging, in the ruins, he'd claimed he was carrying the souls of Avalon's dead with him—was this how?

Lord Death's blade sang as he unsheathed it, relishing the crackling magic that danced along its razor edge.

"For the blood we once shared, I'll give you this last chance to step aside, Erden, or I'll kill that petulant girl you seem to believe is worth protecting."

"She is a stranger to me, Gwyn," Nash said. The formality of his tone was grating. It was as if he'd become a different person in a matter of moments. "Allow her to go, and you and I will settle this, as we should have all those years ago. I was always the better swordsman, but you've had centuries to improve, haven't you?"

But Lord Death did not move to strike. His blade was still in his hand, its magic roiling the air between us.

"How frightened you are," Nash said, his tone turned mocking. "You call yourself Death, and yet it haunts you most of all."

"My power is reward enough," Lord Death said. "It is endless. Eternal."

"Like the emptiness that thrives inside you now," Nash said. "It has fed on your anger and hatred for years and hollowed your heart. All because you were denied what was never yours."

"All because she was taken from me!" Lord Death stalked toward us again, and this time Nash didn't retreat. I flattened back against the nearby wall, unable to make myself run.

"She made that choice herself," Nash said. "Only you couldn't accept that."

"How does it feel to finally be the lesser son?" Lord Death taunted. "You may have been Father's favorite, but where is your kingdom now? Where is your power, your glory? I subjected the dead to my will, I won my crown. And you, Erden, you are what you have always been. A pathetic, waning shadow behind greater men. Nothing. "

I shifted, sliding along the wall until my foot struck a large stone that had come loose.

"It seems you need to convince yourself of that pretty speech more than me," Nash noted.

Lord Death sneered, bringing the tip of his sword to Nash's neck.

Above us, the Wild Hunt raged through the building, rattling more stones loose from the ceiling and walls. Glass shattered in a nearby room. As I looked back, sorceresses bolted past the doorway at the top of the stairs, throwing curses over their shoulders as the hunters pursued on foot or ghostly steeds. The air screeched with the clash of metal against metal and the hunters' cries of fury.

"Gwyn," Nash said quietly. "You were my brother. I would have fought by your side until the sun failed to rise and all the worlds withered to dust. But you made a terrible choice, and we are all still paying for it. Is your pride so great you still cannot see that?"

"She was mine," Lord Death growled. "I loved her."

"That was not love," Nash told him. "That was obsession. Envy."

"Nash?"

My gaze swung toward the base of the stairs, where Cabell stood. Silky gray smoke billowed through the hall behind him, making his black hair and black clothes all the more severe. And somehow nothing that had happened in the last few days had managed to kill that unconscious relief that came from seeing that my brother was all right.

But the blood of Avalon, the dead at Rivenoak, the ashes of the guild library flooded the chasm between us.

He looked terrible—his cheeks had hollowed and his eyes were underscored by bruised darkness. Yet there was a flicker of something in his expression, and he looked like the boy he had been, not the monster he'd become.

Nash said nothing, but I could feel the wheels of his mind spinning and spinning. It was only then, as Lord Death lifted his sword and took a step back, that I understood that something had drastically shifted.

Lord Death looked between the stunned Cabell and Nash, a low, menacing laugh building from the pit of venom in his chest.

"Surely not," Lord Death said, his lips curling as his gaze slid back over to Nash, and then to me. "Surely."

Terror turned my heart to stone. I fought for my next breath, even as the shadows of the hall encroached on my vision.

This is not the curse, I told myself. I'm not dying here.

"Nash, what are you—" Cabell began, coming toward us. He held out a hand, his expression bewildered, as if he wasn't sure that what he was seeing was real. His voice broke over the words, "Are you really here?"

"Yes, Cab," Nash said finally. "I'm sorry I was so long in coming."

Cabell stopped a short distance from us, his eyes drinking in the sight of Nash after so long .

My brother had dreamed of this moment for years. He'd believed that Nash would come back until I killed that hope in him. And it was as if everything our life could have been if that one thing had changed, if we had never gone to Tintagel, surrounded us like ghosts now, tantalizingly close but never to be had.

The strange spell that had overtaken the room shattered with a single word.

"Her?"

Lord Death turned to me, his expression of disgust and dismay warring with the way his body shifted closer.

"She's not a stranger at all, is she, brother?" Lord Death hissed.

Cabell flinched with surprise at the word brother. "What?"

"He told me of his guardian, the one who had vanished in search of the Ring of Dispel," Lord Death continued. "A Hollower. A disreputable man."

" Disreputable should have been your first clue, Gwyn," Nash said solemnly. "As we can both attest, a bird may shed its feathers, but they always come back the same."

"What's going on?" Cabell asked, a new edge to his words.

"All this time, all these many centuries, you've been working against me," Lord Death said. "Hiding her from me."

Nash smirked. It seemed he'd come to a conclusion of his own, and now the ruse was at its end. "How it must bite to know she's been in front of you this whole time and you couldn't see it."

"Her mother cast some enchantment to ensure I wouldn't," Lord Death said, furious.

"No," Nash said. "You never saw Creiddylad for who she truly was, so how could you recognize her soul in its new form?"

Cabell sucked in a harsh breath, finally understanding. Slowly, I dropped into a crouch, my fingers closing over the stone beneath my heel.

Lord Death's nostrils flared. "You dare—"

I whipped my arm around, chucking the rock at his head. Lord Death dodged it with ease, but the moment's distraction was enough for Nash to slam his hands down on the blunt side of his sword, flipping it out of his brother's hands and into his own. He advanced, forcing Lord Death back.

"Cabell," Nash said. He didn't take his eyes off Lord Death, but now he reached his own hand out toward Cabell. "It's all right now. You can come home. You can always come home."

Cabell's throat worked. "We have no home. We never have."

"That's not the truth," Nash said. "Our home has been us three, wherever fate brought us. You chose to be with us all those years ago. You chose to become what you are, and now you get to choose again."

Cabell's entire body seemed to tremble, but he didn't move. He didn't react at all.

"He left you, Bledig," Lord Death sneered. "He let you believe you were something you were not, and hid your true nature—"

Nash continued, undaunted. "I didn't want to leave you. I never meant to."

Cabell didn't move as Nash came toward him slowly. His face was almost pleading, begging for that to be true. "But you did. Annwn is my real home."

"That is a world of darkness. You don't belong there."

"Don't I?"

The question forced Nash to turn back. The words blazed out of him. "You're my boy. There's no magic in any world powerful enough to change that."

I'd been watching Lord Death out of the corner of my eye, waiting for him to strike with death magic, or another weapon we'd yet to see. Instead, he offered Cabell his own hand.

"You know what you are," he said as Cabell looked at him. "You know where you belong now."

There was a movement at the top of the stairs. I whirled toward it in time to see the swirl of patterned emerald fabric. A wand that burned another symbol into the air in three quick strokes.

The curse made no sound. It didn't flash or erupt like an explosion, even as the stench of its magic scorched the air. It was a faint thread of light that shot like an arrow right at Cabell's chest.

I threw myself forward, but Nash was already there, knocking Cabell to the floor. The blast of magic struck his left arm and sent him spiraling back through the air on a wave of pressure. I screamed as he struck the floor.

The fighting roared behind me; the screeching of the hunters, the sorceresses bellowing commands. Curses flashed in the air around my head, scorching chaotic paths that blew chunks out of the walls, cracked the ceiling, and singed my arm. I threw myself to the floor, trying to cover my head to protect it. A curse glanced off the door beside Lord Death as he seized Cabell by the shoulder. The two of them disappeared into a swirl of shadows.

"Nash!" I stayed low, even as the fighting shifted away, retreating deeper into the headquarters, crawling toward his sprawled form.

Breath sawed out of him. His pale eyes widened as they locked on my face. His hand felt across the floor to seize mine. It was the grip that frightened me, squeezing with each shudder of pain, even before I saw what was happening to his body.

Gray stone erupted from the hole the curse had left in the sleeve of his overcoat, spreading over his arm like wet cement, hardening too quickly to wipe away.

Terror seized me as I turned toward the door again, screaming, "Help! Help! Please, someone!"

A sorceress had cast the curse, and another sorceress would have to break it—

"L-Look at me."

I did, feeling my body heat with panic and desperation.

"You know … what this is. "

Stone's Embrace. One of the earliest curses he'd taught us, when we were barely old enough to write our own names.

Nash's eyes seemed to drink in the sight of me in the darkness, even as he fought to smile. The stone spread over his left side, from his shoulder to his feet.

"Just—hold on, okay, old man?" I said, my voice strangled. "You don't get to do this—you don't get to—"

"Tamsy girl," he said again, gasping hard for air as the stone passed over his chest. "Now … I know you'll … be all right. You … feel them … because your … power … is …"

"Nash, don't—don't—" I couldn't get the words out.

His gaze was still fixed on me, his free hand squeezing mine as his lower body and organs petrified and the curse swept upward, pain overtaking him.

"Could never have … dreamt a better … tale … than … my imps …" His last words came in a breathless rush as the curse stole over his chest. His throat.

His hand turned to stone around mine, trapping me there. Forcing me to watch as the stone swept over his mouth, his cheeks, his eyes.

And like the turning of a final page, his story was at its end.