Nocturna (A Forgery of Magic #1)(51)

“I can see it inside him,” the prince said, his face ashen. “He’s full of it.”

Finn squinted at him. “Full of shit?”

He blinked down at her. “No. The dark magic, it’s inside him!”

She looked back at the man and grimaced. “Well, that can’t be good.”

She’d expected the dark magic to reduce people to dust, like the victims in the palace, not to live inside of them, like some sort of parasite. Was an echo of this man still alive and being controlled by the magic? Finn’s jaw tensed. She knew too well the agony of being trapped in your body while another pulled the strings. Her hand twitched, wanting to conjure a dagger to put this man out of his misery. But when the man crawled over the bar with a guttural growl, Finn knew she’d been wrong. No. This creature was not a man any longer. He’d become something else entirely, and Finn was afraid to find out what.

He stretched a black-nailed hand toward them, his breaths hoarse, his knees digging into the shards of glass on the bar. Finn flicked her wrist, pulling a dagger into her palm, but as she took aim at the man’s throat, his skin began to break open, black fissures spreading over his body like splinters in broken glass. Piece by piece of him began to slough away into black dust, as if his flesh were burning from the inside out. Finn stared, her mouth agape as he fell away into nothing without a sound. Not a cry of pain or surprise came from his lips. All that remained of him were his clothes and the black dust on the bar that sat to be soaked up by the thickening blood.

“What the hell just happened?” Finn said, taking a tentative step toward the bar.

Alfie grabbed her by the arm, his voice thin with fright. “Wait!”

A dark curl of smoke, a smaller version of what she’d seen in the Blue Room, rose from the ashes of the body. The magic had burned the man from the inside out and now it would seek a new body to smolder. She’d be damned if it was hers.

Beside her, the prince stood still, the stink of fear marking him like a dog marks a tree.

She grabbed him, her nails digging into his shoulder. “Do your maldito thing! Trap it!”

Her touch seemed to spur him back to life. The prince pulled a necklace over his neck; hanging off it was a deftly carved dragon figurine. He bit his thumb until the skin broke and messily drew a circle on the dragon’s chest.

Alfie took a deep, shaking breath, raised the dragon high, and shouted, “Cerrar!”

Finn waited for something, anything.

Nothing.

Not a maldito thing happened. The dark smoke paid the prince no mind. It kept rising slowly from the ashes, collecting in a horrid ball of darkness over the bar.

Alfie looked down at the dragon, his mouth closing and opening uselessly.

Finn glowered up at him. “Really?”

His voice a hushed whisper of fear, he said, “It’s not working, it’s—”

“Yeah, I can see that it’s not working! We’ve got to get out of here!”

“No! I have to keep trying,” Alfie shouted. “Or it’ll hurt someone else!”

“Yeah,” Finn sputtered. “And that someone else will be you! Let’s go!”

Alfie opened his mouth to protest when a moan of pain rang from farther into the tavern, among the overturned tables and still bodies. A man stood up from the carnage, limping, somehow alive. He’d been so still that they’d mistaken him for a corpse in this scarlet tapestry of death. His eyes weren’t blackened; he was still normal. Clutching the bleeding wound on his side he looked at Finn and shouted, “Help, help me, please!”

The coil of dark magic twisted at the sound of the man’s voice. It zoomed away from Alfie and Finn and poured itself down the man’s throat as he screamed in pain. Alfie cried out, his arm reaching forward as if he could somehow help the man. The stranger fell to his knees, convulsing. Alfie took a step toward him but Finn held him back, her arm outstretched before the prince’s chest. Then the man fell still and slack, his head hanging, face hidden. Silent where he knelt among the broken furniture and shattered glass.

“It moves from body to body.” Alfie’s voice was hushed with horror. “Killing as it goes.”

Finn stepped forward and squared her shoulders. “Hey, you!” she shouted at the still, black-eyed man. “I don’t care that you’re related to some stupid god. You’re going to answer my maldito questions. What do you want?” She hated herself for letting a quiver of fear wriggle into her words, but the way the man stood, tremors of excitement running through his body like a child about to receive a sweet, made her stomach roil. “Answer me, or I’ll skin you alive!”

He flexed his fingers and smiled at her like a cat would at a limping mouse.

“You’ve been singing of our master for lifetimes, calling him,” he said. Black, raised veins squirmed beneath his skin like worms. He opened his mouth and sang, his cry a crooked twist of countless voices twined as one:

The Black King, turned to bone,

In your heart he’ll make his home

Your eyes will bleed, your soul burned black,

At his feet, you’ll bend your back

So hurry little ones, off to bed!

Lest Sombra wake and take your head!

It was a lilting children’s song about that stupid legend. A song one sang to a friend for a scare and some laughs. Now each word rang in Finn’s bones like a threat. Like a promise.