At the top of the stairs, another hall, and Lila followed the sound into a room, and saw—
A door.
Or rather, a doorway. It stood in the middle of the room, open onto black, onto nothing. There was no sign of a persalis, and the door’s edges were uneven, tattered. A breeze blew toward the open door, dragging at Lila’s tunic, and as she watched, the frame seemed to splinter, and spread, throwing cracks out through the air itself.
“You can see it too, right?” she asked as Kell arrived beside her. He nodded, gaze scraping over the door. He approached it, hand grazing the air, the wind tugging on his hair, his sleeves. Kell circled the doorway, vanishing for a moment behind the blackness as if it were a curtain before appearing again on the other side.
Only one person—and one supposedly ruined object—could have made this door. Lila searched, and found Tes on the floor behind the desk. She was curled on her side in a pool of dark hair, as if she’d fallen asleep. But her skin was grey, and she didn’t move, even when the sound shook the room again.
Lila knelt and grabbed the girl’s shoulders. “Tes. Tes, wake up.”
At first, nothing. Then, the girl opened her eyes. They were glassy, and Lila could feel her pulse flutter, unsteady beneath her skin, even as she smiled.
“I didn’t help them,” she said softly, as if she were drugged, or dreaming. “I didn’t—” Her eyes widened sharply. “Look out.”
Lila rose and turned in time to see Bex lurch into the room, blood-soaked and breath rattling in her chest even as she flung the blade at Lila’s heart.
She reached out, and the knife shuddered to a stop, inches from her skin, Bex’s will too weak to counter as her blood pumped onto the floor.
“You just don’t want to die,” said Lila, plucking the knife out of the air. “Let me help you.” She swept her hand sideways, and the wind in the room turned sharp, slamming Bex into the waiting black embrace of the open door. She fought, boots sliding, but as her arm met the surface, it seemed to grab her, dragging her limb by limb into the dark.
Lila turned back to Tes. “Where does that door lead?”
Tes gave her a weak smile. “I have no idea.” And then a shadow swept over the girl’s face, and her limbs folded. Her head hit the floor. Lila shook her, but this time she didn’t wake.
“Kell,” called Lila, and he was there beside her. “Get her out of here.”
He took the girl into his arms—she looked too young, too small, too still—but didn’t leave. He looked past Lila to the door.
“We have a problem,” he said. Lila saw it. The door was still spreading, those cracking tendrils growing wide and deep as they split the air.
“You get her out,” she said, “I’ll close it.”
Kell nodded, and was gone, leaving Lila to face the door. She touched her fingers to her cheek, where Bex had sliced her. The cut was still weeping. Her hand came away red. She touched her palms together, staining both as she approached the door.
The wind was getting stronger by the second, a sucking force. The whole thing reminded her of an open mouth, a devouring dark. But mouths were like doors. They could be closed.
She wrapped her fingers around the frame, careful not to touch the black inside, felt the door’s edges beneath her hands as she took a deep breath.
“As Staro.”
Seal.
The wind weakened as she said it, the edges of the frame narrowing beneath her hands as the door began to close. The two sides drew together, the space between them shrinking. But halfway there, they stopped. The sides of the door trembled under her grip. As if pushing back against it.
Lila scowled, and clutched the frame.
“As Staro,” she said again, but as her will slammed into the door, the door slammed back, shoving her arms apart as it sprang outward again, yawning wide. Lila staggered back as the cracks deepened and the horrible, earth-shaking sound came again.
BOOM.
Lila stared in horror at the door. It hadn’t worked. She was Antari. The strongest magician in the world. And the spell just—hadn’t worked.
The door cracked and spread, the wind whistling in her ears.
Lila didn’t know what to do.
She didn’t hear Kell return to her side until he laid a hand on her shoulder.
“You have to get out,” she called over the rushing air. He shook his head. “I can’t stop it.”
“Put on the ring!” he shouted over the tearing world. And for a single, confused second she thought he meant the black band, the one she’d been too proud to wear, until she saw the heavy gold chain in his hands. The magical device that had just torn away her power, and given it to Berras. Kell was already wrapping the chain around his wrist.