Then his expression hardened, and he leaned in, voice low. “We can’t let anyone see your burns. They can’t guess at how you got them. Do you understand?”
Tears blurred Ellery’s vision, and with a sick lurch, she realized her performance was not over.
“I understand,” she whispered wretchedly. She cast a hasty illusion over herself. A mask to hide her injuries, her terror, her all-consuming guilt. And not a moment too soon, because Sharpe limped up the stairs. Crimson wept down one of his legs, but he still held himself upright.
“There you are,” he said urgently. He clasped Ballathim with both hands. There was something terribly wrong with it. Strips of its blackthorn wood peeled away and crumbled into dust.
“Wh-what’s happening to it?” she stammered.
“It’sdying,” Sharpe snarled. “Just like all the others. You have to fix this.You have to fix this.”
Ellery took in the battle before her with a new, terrified focus. Gold magic sputtered out as the Living Wands disintegrated in their wielders’ hands. Ghasts advanced upon newly defenseless magicians. Cries of horror rang out across Main Street.
No. This doesn’t make sense.
But for however well Syarthis knew the past, it couldn’t predictthe future. It had been wrong about Living Wands enduring unless the cataclysm came to pass. With Winter in control of Alderland, the Summer wands couldn’t survive.
The Order was destroyed. And it was all Ellery’s fault.
But the magicians didn’t know that. Gaze after gaze turned to her. Beseeching. Begging. Clinging to hope that she would save them even though she was the one who’d condemned them.
Ellery couldn’t bring back what was lost, but she alone could protect what remained.
And now that Winter ruled, its champion could finally end this war for good.
She staggered to the center of the steps. Then she pointed Iskarius down at Gallamere and listened for the winterghasts’ heartbeats. First she heard several, then a dozen, then too many to count, thumping within her rib cage in a massive, erratic rhythm.
Her shadow undulated like a train around her, then spilled across the city she loved, seeping in rivulets down every alleyway, every sidewalk, every bridge. It engulfed Mercester Square and the Crystalline Pavilion. It swept across Gallamere Gardens. And within its tenebrous embrace, one by one, the winterghasts began to glow. Silver pinpricks shone across the streets, each creature gleaming as they succumbed to her power.
“Surrender,” she commanded.
In a great ripple of refracting light and shining ice, the winterghasts bowed.
Then they disappeared, evanescing into clouds of frost. The seeds of their hearts clattered to the ground in their wake.
Ellery heaved out breath after breath as her shadow shrank. Unbearable pain coursed through her burns as she lowered Iskarius.
Then she turned from her awestruck audience, and she crumpled.
LVIIIELLERY
WINTER
Ellery dreamed of burning. Flames crashed against her in excruciating waves, then yanked her down in an undertow of memory. And yet she didn’t wish to resurface, even as her flesh blistered and charred and peeled away, leaving nothing behind.
At last she bolted upright, the name on her lips crumbling to ash before she could speak it. Her hands were clenched in starchy, unfamiliar sheets. Iskarius sat on her bedside nightstand. She stared blankly at the rest of her surroundings: neutral, impersonal furniture, a window with the curtains pulled shut, bland canvases hanging on beige walls. She was in a private infirmary room at the Citadel.
“You’re awake.” A person sitting at her left stirred, then rubbed his face.
“Julian?” Her throat felt raw and crusted over.
“So you know who I am now. That’s good.”
But before he could say anything else, she coughed, and a clump of blood and wet soot splattered into her lap. An echo of Summer’s magic seared through her chest. Sweat beaded at her temples.
“I should be dead,” she rasped.
Domenic’s face flashed in her mind, frozen, agonized; she whimpered; she thought she might faint,wishedit even—
