Page 89 of Boy of Chaotic Making

No.

He slammed into it again, but the blasted stone was too heavy. Hulda pushed as well, but it wouldn’t so much as budge. The sharp edge of a picture frame sliced into Merritt’s shoulder, sending a spurt of blood into the breeze.

NO.

Screaming, Merritt shoved the boulder bodily, and it collapsed into sand. A stone consumed by chaos.

Merritt dropped on Owein. The wind swept the sand and blood—so much blood—away. A scream echoed in the room, and distantly he knew it was Cora. Maybe she wanted to stop. Maybe shecouldn’tstop.

But Owein. Owein was dying.

Merritt picked up the half-crushed dog in his arms. Threw up a wardship spell and walked toward the front of the room. The wind knocked his wall down. He threw up another one, and another, until his body grew so weak from use of magic he collapsed to his knees, not far from where Blightree was barricaded into the wall by a broken sofa.

“Help him!” Merritt cried. “Blightree!HELP. HIM.”

The old man crawled out, staying low to the ground. A shard of glass whipped by and cut a long line on his balding head, but the necromancer didn’t seem to feel it. He put a hand on Owein, whose chest rose and fell in uneven rhythms. He panted, his tongue a lifeless worm. The skin under his fur was slick with sweat and blood.

“I can’t!” Blightree called back. “My magic works only on humans!”

“Heishuman!” Tears whipped from Merritt’s eyes.

But Blightree shook his head.

“Thenmove him!” Merritt screamed. “Put him in the new body!”

“It’s not here! And we can’t leave!” Another boulder fell from the ceiling, shaking the room.

Merritt grasped Owein’s head in his hands.Hold on, Owein. Hold on.

Owein didn’t answer. His breaths were growing short.

No. It couldn’t end like this. Not like this. Not when they were so close—

Merritt lifted his head. Grabbed Blightree’s wrist. “Put him in me!”

“What?”

“Put him in me!”

The necromancer blanched. “I ... I can’t! I don’t know what will happen! Two spirits in one body—”

“I don’t care!” he bellowed. “We’re losing him, damn it! Put him in menow!”

The ceiling around the chandelier gave way, and the crystals slammed into the wall behind them.

Blightree placed both his hands on Owein, one on his neck, one on his ribs. He closed his eyes, and the pressure around them seemed to grow heavy, like they were sinking into a lake, deeper and deeper, the pressure increasing with every foot.

Then Blightree stiffly grabbed Merritt’s hand, and a sense of supernatural wrongness overtook him, like his spine was being tapped, or his body stretched from the inside out. For a moment, Merritt felt very, very old, like he’d turn into sand just as the boulder did. All of Owein’s years, added to his own.

And then . . . power.

That flare of chaocracy he’d felt when the boulder dissolved increased tenfold. It buzzed through his fingers and to the tips of his hair. And something new, somethingbig—alteration spells, likeeverything around him was nothing more than putty, waiting to be shaped by a master’s hand. The power pushed and pushed, unsure of its new vessel, unsure of where to go.

Hello, Owein,Merritt thought.

And released it.

He pushed it all out of him at once, uncaring for the consequences. It burst out like it had on the island, when Merritt had pulled trees up by their roots and turned the sky to violet snow. It swept through the room, reorienting the toppled, fixing the broken, breaking the fixed. The walls caved in and warped as alteration spells shrunk and reshaped them. The drawing room crumbled and reoriented itself over and over. The outer wall tore away entirely, sending Cora’s building wind with it.

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