Vespertine (Vespertine #1)(109)

A strange double vision overtook me as my eyes fell on the knights invading the convent through the breached lichgate. I felt as though I were back in Naimes, except this time, instead of watching helplessly from afar, I could stop it. I could make it so that the thralls never took another step, never raised their swords. I could do anything.

I stretched out my hand. The knights collapsed like toppled toys, the wraiths that had possessed them streaming violently from their bodies. Another wave of knights followed, and they fell in turn. The effort barely registered. I no longer felt human. I was a vessel, forged to bear the revenant’s power.

The sister watching from the ladder gave a strangled cry. She clambered down, stumbling as she fled. A moment later, mist seeped over the wall, pouring down its side in a silvery curtain. At its touch, the ivy curled and browned; a sparrow dropped dead from the withered leaves. More mist crept through the open space where the gate had stood, reaching its fingers into the convent. Within, barely visible, strode a tall, black-robed figure.

On the battlefield, I hadn’t dared unleash the revenant’s full power near the soldiers and refugees. The same risk had held me back in the square. But now I had no choice. I had wielded the revenant’s ghost-fire before in my own convent—perhaps I could control it again here.

“Revenant,” I said, “attend me.”

I had almost forgotten how it felt. The triumphant howl of power unleashed, the spreading of a great pair of fiery wings. My cloak and hair seemed to lift around me, weightless. Flames roared forth, tumbling over the convent’s grounds. The mist evaporated in their path. The confused, roiling wraiths vanished like stars smothered behind a spreading cloud. I felt a distant twinge of regret at their loss, but it quickly faded to nothing before the towering onslaught of my hunger. The fire spread onward to engulf the city, racing through the streets, sweeping over rooftops, flooding into every window and alley and cellar.

Everywhere, souls flared to life. I could map the city by their glittering multitude alone—the rats skittering through the walls, the constellations of insects clotted around the foundations of buildings; the families huddled fearfully inside their homes, wrapped in each other’s arms. But it was Sarathiel who glowed the most brightly, its brilliant light condensed into the shape of a man like molten silver poured into a mold. With distant, starved amazement, I realized that I could see the priest’s soul, too—glimmers of gold drowning in Sarathiel’s light.

I needed to destroy Sarathiel. This much I remembered through the consuming haze of hunger. But I couldn’t devour its essence without consuming everything else—every living thing in Bonsaint, down to the worms in the graves and the weeds poking up between the cobbles.

And why not? I no longer remembered why I cared. The world was radiant. My thoughts were silver fire.

“Artemisia,” pled a girl’s fearful voice at my side, but I dismissed her as a mere annoyance. Once, I remembered, I had wanted to kill her. I wasn’t sure why I had changed my mind.

Then I felt a waver of uncertainty. A part of me had wanted to kill her—but there was another side of me that hadn’t. And that same side thought that I shouldn’t give in to the hunger. That I should restrain myself. But if I wanted to destroy Sarathiel…

The golden glimmers of the priest’s soul caught my attention. They were shining more brightly, spreading in patches, overtaking the silver. His body doubled over; he buried his head in his hands. Now he was more gold than silver, Sarathiel’s essence pulsing furiously at the intrusion. I realized what was happening. Against all odds, the priest was resisting.

I doubted he could keep it up for long, but at the very least, he might delay Sarathiel.

And then I remembered—the ritual. I had to finish the ritual.

The fire snuffed out. The howling inside my head vanished. The coppery tang of blood filled my mouth and nose, and my clothes were faintly steaming.

The sisters were staring at me with their mouths open. Without the Sight, the civilians hadn’t seen what had happened, but they were staring too. They had clearly sensed something, whether it was a shiver down their spines or the hairs rising on the backs of their necks—a force greater than life and death sweeping through them and sparing them all.

Marguerite’s hands caught at me. She and Charles and Enguerrand were speaking to me, but I couldn’t hear them. “Go,” the revenant snarled, its voice miserable with hunger, “hurry,” and then I was being bundled toward the chapel, helped along by more people than I could count.

The doors juddered open. A familiar smell of old wood, beeswax, and incense enfolded me, so unexpected that my eyes stung. It smelled exactly like the chapel in Naimes.

I blindly reached for the knife as we careened up the aisle, and found it in my hand. As soon as I had made the cut on my arm, already falling to the floor, the revenant seized control and tore the carpet before the altar aside to expose the flagstones.

The final rune began to take shape, scrawled clumsily in red. My fingers cramped. Frustrated, the revenant flexed my hand as though willing it to work. It could strengthen my body, but it couldn’t help my scars.

At the periphery of my vision, I saw the sisters fail to close the chapel’s door. Leander had appeared, holding it open, his arms braced wide, his white-streaked hair hanging disheveled, blood shining on his upper lip.

It wasn’t Leander—it was Sarathiel.