Oblivion Heart (Darkling Mage 4)

Royce grinned at me, his hand still wrapped across my brow, me the Hound, and him the forceful Mouth and master. “Leveling the playing field. How am I expected to kick the living shit out of you when you’ve got that sentient sword coming to your rescue at the slightest provocation? A very useful weapon you have there. We really should confiscate it.”

“Useless to you,” I groaned. “He’s attuned to me.”

“If you say so.” Royce’s fingers dug into my skull, and I hissed at the sudden pressure. “Now, while I have you here, may as well find out more about your employer. Tell me, Graves. We know who you work for. The question is, why all this interest in our siren friend?”

“No,” Mona screamed. “Don’t let him probe your brain. Don’t listen to him.”

Don’t think of the Boneyard, I told myself. Anything but the Boneyard. It was the one thing preventing a total raid from the Lorica: the hideout’s location.

I thought of burgers. I thought of steaks, of raw meat. Of blood.

I licked at the corner of my mouth.

Blood.

“You’re resisting,” Royce said. “Interesting. You’re trying to block me out. Cute. Maybe I just need to apply a little more pressure.”

“Maybe,” I grunted, my head lolling. I was putty under his thrall. But the blood remained, and the blood reminded me of one last thing I could do. “Or maybe you should have read my dossier a little more closely. Maybe you shouldn’t have made me bleed.”

I wish I could tell you that Carver’s close instruction and all those hours I logged with meditation apps had drained away the bloodlust that lived in my bones, but then I’d be lying. My scar, the star-metal dagger that had plunged into my heart, all of that had changed me. I could control myself, to a point – but I had learned to enjoy inflicting pain.

I slammed my open hand into the ground, calling on the agitated mists of the Dark Room to come to my aid. All around me, from the pools of shadow cast by my body, by Royce’s, came the slivers of solid darkness, blades emitted from the pure night of the Dark Room itself.

Each was razor-thin, each a slender, deadly spine, all of them aimed at piercing my attacker full of so many holes from which the Dark could drink its fill of blood. But again, all Royce did was disappear. I slumped to the ground. Angered, dissatisfied, the shadows retreated to the Dark Room.

We had seconds to act before Royce showed up again. I was exhausted, too drained to move, but Mona was already at my side, one hand shoving Vanitas’s scabbard back into my knapsack, the other gripped tightly around the hilt of his sword. She nudged me with one hand, and when I looked in her face I was taken aback by its sudden hardness. Her cheeks were tear-stained, her eyes wet, but her fear had been taken over by resolution, perhaps even resignation.

“I didn’t want to do this,” she said, “but it’s our only choice. Pull yourself back together, Dust. Were you wearing earplugs earlier?”

“Yeah,” I muttered, my vision still swimming from the pain of Royce’s blows and the exertion of opening the Dark Room.

“Well put them back in. There’s only one thing left to do. My cell was warded to muffle the power of my voice.” She breathed in deeply, and when she did the ends of her hair seemed to come alive, electric. “But out here, I can sing again.”

“What – what are you going to do?”

She said nothing more, digging through my pockets and stuffing the earplugs into my head herself. Mona pulled me to my feet, handing me Vanitas. I steeled myself, forcing my vision back into focus. The whole point of this was to protect her, to save her. I could do this. We could do this together. I held Vanitas in both hands, feeling him thrum with power against my skin, waiting for his sentience to return.

But Royce returned first. This time he appeared further down the corridor, as if to taunt us. Maybe he spotted Vanitas in my hand, or the blades of the Dark Room had given him a scare, and he knew to be warier.

He said something I couldn’t hear, something that could have been “Give up now.” I don’t know, I’m not great at reading lips. I could, however, clearly tell that the smile was gone from his face.

Mona gripped my free hand tight. I turned to her, still unable to hear anything, but I followed the line of her finger as she pointed at Royce, her mouth opening and closing rhythmically. She was singing. Royce collapsed to his knees, heaving what looked like blood onto the ground. But everything looked like blood in this sector. Everything looked like blood in the Prism.

I wondered why Mona hadn’t sung her song from the very start, until I felt something warm trickling out of my nostrils. Even with my ears plugged something about the vibration of her voice was innately destructive.

For a brief second I panicked – maybe she really had killed all those people after all. But no. This was a last resort. Mona wasn’t a murderer. She was only doing this to protect us. I clenched my teeth against the pain, straining against the ache building in my head, squeezing my eyes as the world appeared to spin around me.

No, I was wrong. The world wasn’t spinning. It was shaking. It was breaking. The crystal walls of the Prism were beginning to splinter. We ran past crystalline walls already lined with fissures, past Royce still retching his guts onto the ground. I kept my eyes on the exterior walls. With the collapse of the Prism came the destruction of the crystal barriers that sealed the prisoners within their cells.

We made it to the entrance as the first chunk of ceiling crashed to the ground. Mona and I thrust our clasped hands at the seven-sided crystal, and I threw one look over my shoulder, at Royce on the floor, and at the escaped prisoners of the red sector bearing down on him.

I blinked, and we were gone.

Chapter 17

My sneakers squeaked as they skidded across the wooden floors of the Gallery’s hub. Mona bumped into me as she stumbled out of the Prism, then pulled on my arm, supporting me when I threatened to topple over.

I was still hurting from Royce’s assault. I knew Scions were forces to be reckoned with, but I never expected them to be so physically strong. My hand ran under my nose, clearing away the blood, my ears still ringing from the force of Mona’s terrible song. I hissed as I plucked out the earplugs, air and sound rushing right back, just in time for me to hear Mona’s soft, urgent whispers.