Chapter Fifty

Elegy remembered this place. The unornamented metal steps to the lower level of the ship that made up the heart of Union. She remembered her footsteps on that metal; the sound echoed like the distant workings of some terrible machine.

That's what…that's what she'd become. A machine. A thing, not a person. Bereft of choice, personality, and soul. All had supposedly been burned away, leaving the Cinder King with his perfect killer.

But she remembered. Old memories. Not just when she'd been led from this place as a newborn Charred. But before. Just…those sounds. The footsteps. She remembered descending. Terrified. And she remembered…light?

She found a door at the bottom of the steps, left ajar by people entering in haste, dragging Rebeke behind them. How did they feel? Knowing some offworlder monster in a suit of strange armor was assaulting their city—and Charred were going wild—yet being ordered to go execute a captive?

Elegy pushed the door open the rest of the way, and the light was as she remembered it. Hundreds of sunhearts set into slots on the walls. The city's reserve. A mausoleum. Full of souls taken by the sun. And one Charred guard.

The man growled and charged at her as soon as she entered. Elegy blocked his swinging cudgel with her forearm and stared him in the eyes. For once, she didn't feel frantic. She felt haunted. Remembering those lights, being towed down this hallway, knowing everything she'd been—everyone she'd loved, everything she'd accomplished—would soon be burned out of her. Like a disease to be killed off by the coming fever.

She tossed the Charred to the side, which shook the wall and rattled the sunhearts. As he struggled to his feet, she took him down with a swift punch to the throat, leaving him gasping through his own blood. A second Charred burst in through the door, but again, she felt calm as she stepped aside, grabbing his arm and using his own momentum to slam him into the wall.

He dropped.

She remembered. Just the pain, though, and terror. She didn't remember what she'd loved, known, or believed. She only remembered knowing she'd lose it. That seemed a worse cruelty, to be left with the panic and pain, but not the original pieces of herself that had evoked such emotion. She pushed forward through the corridor lined with souls.

She stepped over the body of the first Charred and burst into the chamber where new Charred were made. Along the wall, a line of frightened people waited. New subjects to transform into Charred, to fight those she had freed, perhaps. Only three officials worked to prepare them, and they were being sloppy in their haste. For example, they strapped Rebeke into place without disrobing her.

That meant that as they engaged the machine, a spear tipped with a burning cinderheart descending to touch Rebeke's chest, it set her shirt aflame. Elegy remembered screaming when it had happened to her.

Rebeke looked to the side, toward Elegy, eyes wide with terror—and the light in them started to fade.

No.

No, not that.

Not to her.

Elegy screamed again, in tune with her scream in the past, and both moments resonated as one. She leaped across the room, grabbing the machinery and ripping the spear from its place. She pulled at Rebeke's bonds, breaking her free, and hauled the younger woman off the table.

But the cinderheart had implanted. Rebeke's skin turned ashen, darkening before the fire—which flared brighter and brighter.

No, no, no, no!

Elegy scrambled, feeling at her waist. Where had she slipped that sliver of sunheart? Rebeke was trembling, eyes unfocusing, a wail leaving her lips.

Elegy could feel it. The terrible fire at her core. Consuming everything, the moment stretching like heated metal, as loves vanished, hopes evaporated, memories became ash…

Shouting something raw—a word unformed—Elegy pulled her sister close and felt Rebeke's warmth against her hollow of a chest. Where her self had been destroyed. She clung to Rebeke and whispered the words. "Bold one on the threshold of death, give my cinderheart your heat, that you may remember and bless those who still live."

Their cinderhearts couldn't touch, not with Elegy's sunken so far into her core. She felt something anyway, a violent warmth coming into her from Rebeke. Through their skin, moving from one vessel to another.

That heat burned away the last memories Elegy had—mostly of pain, but also of this room, of those echoes of footsteps on metal. The final remnants of her old self died. But when she pulled away, she found that the cinderheart had stopped sinking into Rebeke's chest.

Instead it had embedded into her like a gemstone into a piece of jewelry—leaving her with a burst of ashen skin around it, creeping up her neck. Her breasts were whole, however, and her chest cavity had not sunken in or been burned away.

Rebeke blinked, then breathed in, her eyes focusing on Elegy. "E…Elegy?"

"Yes," Elegy said, shocked to feel tears on her cheeks. What was this feeling? It was nearly as overwhelming as the desire to kill.

"You stopped it," Rebeke said. "I'm still me. I remember…Elegy! You saved me. You're holding me, looking at me like… You remember me, don't you?"

"Yes," Elegy lied. Because it was the right thing to say, the right thing for her to be. "I…do not remember, but I feel. Some things. From before."

"The rest might return too!"

It wouldn't. Elegy was confident of that. She'd just given away what little had remained. Still, she had stopped Rebeke from being taken. That was enough. She settled her sister, then checked on the officials in the room, who had pressed themselves against the wall. One was reaching for a gun on the counter. Elegy met his gaze and shook her head.

He backed away, hands up. There were still those two Charred in the hallway, though. She had crushed the throat of one of them, but the second would still be dangerous. She checked on them, but found them standing in the corridor outside, eyes distant. As if dazed.

"Elegy," Rebeke said, "I can feel them. The Charred. Why can I feel them?"

"The cinderhearts link us," she said, "through the Cinder King. The process didn't complete with you, but perhaps you gained some of that link. Can you hear his thoughts?"

"No. But Elegy, how does the Cinder King control the others?"

"Through his cinderheart," she said. "One that—" Elegy turned toward Rebeke and the glowing cinderheart embedded into her skin. "One that didn't consume him like it did us." She knelt, eager. "Can you control them?"

Rebeke frowned. "I…I'm trying."

The Charred in the hallway looked toward her, heads cocked. But didn't move.

"I'm trying to make those two come into the room and sit down," Rebeke explained. "But something is blocking me."

"The Cinder King."

Rebeke nodded. "He's stronger than I am, Elegy. But I think…I think the other Charred will ignore me—or at least not attack me. What should we do?"

"All I know is how to break things," Elegy said. "You'll have to make the difficult decisions."

Rebeke grimaced at that, looking overwhelmed.

"Rebeke," Elegy said. "Zellion is fighting the Cinder King. Before we separated, he asked me to tell you something. He said…there is a way to recharge sunhearts, so people don't need to die to make more. The Beaconites know about it. He said the more people who know, the better."

Rebeke's frown deepened. Then she took a deep breath and stood up with Elegy's help. "We need to get to Union's command center."