Chapter 23

  Richard cupped his hands and boosted me onto the fire escape. The metal shrieked beneath my boots, rust and age protesting every step. I tried to make myself light, but adrenaline weighed me down. Richard followed in a single fluid motion, moving with a predator’s grace that made the steel groan again under his bulk.

  The rear window gave with a shove of his shoulder, and we slipped into a narrow corridor that reeked of mildew, gun oil, and dust so old it clung to the throat.

  A whisper of movement—then a guard rounded the corner, eyes widening.

  Richard didn’t hesitate. He flowed forward, blade flashing in silence. One heartbeat the man was on his feet, the next he was crumpled against the wall, throat cut so clean the blood hadn’t caught up yet.

  Another guard lunged from a side door. This one saw me, not Richard. He grinned like he had the advantage.

  The crow dagger was already in my hand. Its hilt burned hot against my palm, like it wanted the fight more than I did. When he swung, I slashed upward, catching his arm. Blood sprayed the peeling wallpaper, black-red in the dim light. He howled, stumbling back.

  “Stay down,” I hissed, though my voice shook.

  Richard’s hand clamped briefly on my shoulder—steadying, approving—before he pushed forward, deeper into the building.

  We reached the top floor door. A faint glow pulsed beneath it. Chants leaked through—low, guttural syllables that made the air seem heavier. My skin prickled.

  Richard met my eyes, mouthed ready?

  I nodded, though nothing about me was. He kicked the door in.

  The room stank of smoke and copper.

  Steve and Martha sat bound to chairs, ropes digging into their wrists, gags tied too tight

  against their cheeks. Their eyes went wide when they saw me—relief and terror all tangled together.

  And behind them—Corwin.

  He looked worse than I’d imagined: pale, sweat-slicked, his shirt dark with blood that hadn’t stopped flowing from the wound Richard had given him in the Spanish Chapel. But his smile was sharp. In his hands gleamed a curved ritual blade, slick with both his blood and someone else’s. Shadows writhed around his feet like snakes.

  “You made me bleed,” he rasped at Richard, voice thick with hate and delight. “That never ends well.”

  Richard drew steel. His blade was Vatican-forged, etched with faint sigils that flared when the candlelight struck them. “It ends tonight.”

  They collided.

  Steel rang on steel, sparks flaring. Corwin fought like a man possessed, his strikes frantic but fueled by something deeper—magic thrumming under his skin, shadows leaping to catch Richard’s blade and twist it aside. Each clash threw bursts of heat, static crawling along the floorboards.

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  I stumbled to my parents, sawing at their ropes with shaking hands. The dagger cut through hemp like butter, hissing as if the fibers themselves feared it.

  “Go,” I whispered fiercely, shoving Steve toward the door, yanking Martha after him. “Run!”

  But Corwin saw. With a snarl, he knocked Richard back a step and lunged, blocking the door. Shadows flared like a wall.

  I froze, my parents cowering behind me.

  “Little crow,” Corwin crooned, his voice thick with power. “You think you’re the rescuer, but you’re the prize. Your blood is the hinge. Through you, the Queen will burn the world clean.”

  Behind me, Martha whimpered through her gag. Steve pulled her close, glaring at Corwin like he could kill him with fatherly rage alone.

  Richard forced himself upright, blade trembling in his grip, face pale from the effort. He was losing.

  The chanting rolled again, spilling from Corwin’s lips, filling the room. The corners

  darkened, shadows stretching into clawed shapes. The floor shook.

  I tightened my grip on the crow dagger. Its heat traveled up my arm, not painful but demanding. Cargo is ransomed. Cargo is stolen. Cargo is insured. Better to be captain. Elizabeth’s words from the car burned through my skull.

  I feinted left. Corwin’s blade followed.

  Then I drove the crow dagger up under his ribs.

  The sound that tore from him wasn’t human—it was the roar of a storm sucked down a chimney. His chanting broke mid-word, shadows collapsing like tar melting into the floor. The ritual blade clattered from his hand.

  His eyes found mine, wide and furious. Blood bubbled at his lips. “You’ve only freed worse things,” he whispered, and then the strength left him all at once.

  He crumpled at my feet. The room went still.

  For a heartbeat, all I heard was my own ragged breathing, the drip of Corwin’s blood pooling across warped boards. My hand was locked around the dagger, so tight I thought my fingers would break before I let go.

  Then Corwin twitched. His head snapped back, eyes burning, and he flung his hands toward Richard.

  Bolts of warped fire and shadow ripped through the air—unnatural things that sizzled like acid when they struck the walls. Richard reeled, barely able to parry with his blade. Each deflection cracked the floorboards, sparks flying, the sigils on his sword flaring dangerously bright.

  Corwin laughed through the blood choking him, forcing one last volley. Richard staggered, nearly losing his grip, the spells hammering against him like fists.

  And then the crow dagger’s heat surged again in my hand. I twisted it deeper, breaking whatever tether kept him upright.

  The magic sputtered. Corwin’s body convulsed, his last laugh cut short, and he went slack on the floor.

  Richard stood panting, blade still raised, eyes locked on the smoking scorch-marks gouged

  into the plaster.

  I could barely breathe.

  Richard staggered to me, chest heaving, eyes searching my face. Gently, he pried the dagger from my grip. The hilt seared his palm too, but he didn’t flinch.

  “You did what had to be done,” he said quietly, pulling me against him. “No one else could have saved them all.”

  Behind us, Steve and Martha clung to each other. Candy and the Templars swept in, hustling them toward the stairs. Nina lingered in the doorway, pale, eyes wide—not at Corwin’s corpse, but at me.

  And then Elizabeth entered.

  She swept through the shattered doorway as if it were a throne room. Her red hair flared in the lamplight, her gown catching stray cinders from Corwin’s extinguished ritual as though they’d been choreographed for her entrance. She paused, looking down at the body sprawled across the boards.

  “Pathetic,” she said, her voice cool and sharp. “That twat had me locked up for years, feeding off scraps of power, pretending his little rituals kept me chained. And now—” She tilted her head at me, her smile both amused and appraising. “Now look who cut him down.”

  The silence after her words was heavier than any chant.

  Elizabeth’s gaze swept the room, lingering on Richard, then me, then the Warrens trembling in the hallway. “The funny thing about prisons,” she added, tone almost conversational, “is that they rarely hold the right monster.”

  Her heels clicked as she turned, leaving as easily as she had entered, the smell of smoke and ash trailing behind her like perfume.

  I shivered. Because Corwin was dead, but with her words, I understood: something worse was already free.