“As Travars.”
The darkness around her went solid. The world came apart.
But this time, she did not fall.
There was no terror, no rush of air, no body plunging down from a tower that was not there. And yet, she seemed to land, the ground around her sending up a plume of ash that hovered, and began to sink, windless, to the ground.
She rose, and looked around, gripped by the sudden fear that Holland had not followed, that she was alone again in this cursed world. But then the ashes around her settled, and he was there. He stood several feet away, his back to her, staring out at the wasted landscape, and despite the stillness of this place, the strange breeze that always surrounded Holland’s image was still there. His pale cloak rippled, and the white hair rose off his cheeks, and somehow, he seemed even more the saint.
Until he sighed.
The breath came out ragged, so undeniably human, as if he were steeling himself against this place, and Kosika remembered the stories he told, of being cast into this place, near death, drawn back from the edge by a demon who promised to resurrect his world, in exchange for his body, his life.
“Holland.” Her voice carried like a shout in a hollow hall.
He turned his head, exposing the line of his jaw, his cheek, his black eye. She wanted to ask why they were here, but he held a finger to his lips. The black eye fell shut, his head tipped faintly to one side as if listening.
Kosika fell silent too, and looked around. They were standing in what once might have been a market square, the stones splintered beneath their feet. The buildings to every side had once been spiked and spired, but most of the points had broken off, and crumbled, taking rooftops with them.
“Hard to believe, isn’t it?” said Holland softly. “That once, this place was the source of all power.”
It was hard to believe, looking at it now, as cold and dark as an abandoned hearth.
But Kosika knew that it was true—that once, all the magic in the worlds had come from here. That it had emanated, rolled across the worlds like heat, cooling the farther it got from the source. Then it was poisoned, and that had carried, too.
A twitch of movement—she turned to find Holland walking away, stride by careful stride, though his own steps made no sound, and never stirred the ash as hers did.
He reached the center of the square, and knelt, placed one palm flat against the broken stones, fingers splayed as if he were flesh and blood instead of ghost. After a moment, his lips moved, his voice barely a whisper, though the words still reached her.
“Do you feel it?”
She knelt, and touched the ground as he did, expecting a shiver, a dread, a prickle of rotten magic. Instead, she felt only the surface of the stone. No magic, and for a moment she was a child again, before she found Holland’s body in the Silver Wood, before she woke the next day with the world humming inside her skin. And even that was not quite right, since before she had magic of her own, she could still feel it in the world, a strained and straining force, leaning out of reach. This was different. This was like when Kosika was nine, and she had stepped into a warding spell.
The kind designed to sever a body from its magic.
It had been one of the first—but certainly not the last—times someone had tried to take the young queen’s life, and Nasi had been there, blade in hand, to cut the killer’s throat, and pull her from the trap, but in the moments after she’d been trapped, and before she’d been saved, she’d been overcome by the strangeness of the spell.
The warding hadn’t hurt. It had felt like this. She had felt like this—a vessel emptied out.
An empty thing.
Holland was on his feet again, moving toward her.
“Do you feel it?” he asked again.
Kosika shook her head. “I feel nothing.”
“Exactly,” said her king, the word rushing out with his breath, his shoulders sloping in relief. “When I saw the crack in the world, I wondered. I did not dare to hope. But now, I know.”
“Know what?”
“It’s over.” He stopped before her. His eyes had a glassy shine, his voice tight with feeling. “Osaron’s fire has at last gone out.”
Osaron.
The shadow king. The piece of magic that became a god, and ruined everything.
“Gone out?” It was true, she felt no power in this place. But the mark of Osaron’s ruin was on everything. She found herself holding her breath, unwilling to inhale the ash, lest it have traces of corrupted magic.
“Do you know what this means?” he said, dragging his fingers through the air. “We can rekindle the fire now. We can restart the source.”