Page 96 of Still the Sun

Heartwood’s brows draw together. “So are you, my friend.”

Moseus hisses. Darkness curls out of him, growing, growing—

Heartwood turns to me. Grabs my shoulders. “Hide, Nophe.”

Words jumble up in my throat. “But—”

“There is no time.”

Heartwood leaps, and immediately the colorless, dark streak of Moseus collides with him, knocking him off the tower. A scream rips up my throat, but they don’t fall. Even broken, they are not bound by the world the way mortals are.

But Moseus is about to become far more than Heartwood can manage. The Devourer will swallow him, and us, and all of Tampere, and that will only be the beginning.

I have to do something. I can’t let Cas and the others’ sacrifices be fornothing. My skin tingles at the thought.Nothing.That’s my only chance, if I can move quickly enough.

Running for the protrusion, I jump down, then throw myself through the portal into the fifth floor. I collide with Salki.

“You’re still here?” I grab her and push her toward Machine Four. “Go, Salki!Go!”

She doesn’t question me. With the speed of a far younger woman, she climbs onto the head of Machine Four and starts scaling her way down, breathing hard. The entire tower shakes; not from the movement of the freed Serpent, but from the battle of gods overhead.

I turn back to the acetic silver. It’s the only weapon I have. It hurt Cas’raneah and Heartwood; it’ll hurt Moseus, too. I shove my hands into it, trying to cup the airy-feeling liquid, but it slips through my fingers like my hands are sieves. No matter how tightly I press them together, I can only get a coin’s worth in my palms. I need a bucket, a syringe,something—

The tower screeches as something slams into it, knocking me forward. I catch my hands on Machine Five but can’t stop my momentum. My forehead smacks against a truss. Pain bursts between my brows.

Had my hands not been gripping the machine, I would have been whipped away with the top of the tower when it blew off.

I can’t hear my own shriek over the sound of the breaking and the torrent that follows. Sky dark as a bruise—nearly dark enough—swirls overhead, highlighting the bodies of the two weakened gods hurling themselves at one another again and again. Orienting myself, I take in my surroundings and the seconds I have left. I need a bucket. I need—

A bucket.

The tower walls curve around me, the floor firm beneath my feet. A bucket.

Blinking sweat and blood from my eyes, I bolt halfway down Machine Four. Press my body against it and reach between its beams, fumbling for the lever that rotates its body. I pull it. Jump to my feet and run up its length as the behemoth turns. I stumble, barely catching my balance, and dive into Machine Five’s chamber just before Machine Four seals it off.

Grabbing my tools, I duck beneath the acetic silver and drop to my knees. Memories restored, my hands work with the practiced efficiency of decades as they remove bolts and nuts and plating. I know exactly where the fountain is, how it works, how to dismantle it. A wrench, a turnscrew, atwist, and I break the thing myself.

The fall of silver recedes and seeps out from the base of the machine, pooling on the floor. I shift a lever to close off the intake in the floor, and the silver begins to climb my legs. Grabbing the machine, I heave myself up and climb to its top, blinking blood from my vision. Heartwood has Moseus pinned to the broken lip of the tower but struggles to hold him. The creature’s corporeality fades with the light. Any second now, he will be the Devourer in full.

I race along the top of Machine Five, over the protrusion. Heartwood looks up.

And I realize there’s only one way to do this. But we’ve all sacrificed something, haven’t we? I suppose it might as well be my turn.

Let him go,I mouth.

Heartwood does.

Moseus shoves the forest god away, reaching both hands for the night sky—

And I embrace him from behind, holding on to everything left, digging my hands into his empty middle to chain us together. Wrenching us both backward, we fall back into floor five, where the machine has dribbled out the last of its acetic silver into a pool a meter deep.

I hold my breath on instinct, but the floor knocks half of it from my lungs. The silver swallows us, muffling Moseus’s screams as it eats away at him. He writhes and claws, and I lock my legs around him andpull, forcing him against me. Holding him under the surface of the god-searing silver.

I feel his body burn. Feel the way it liquefies and seeps into my nose and mouth, strangling me from the inside. Slides under the cut in my forehead and tears. Slickness dives into my ears and shouts into my brain, burying every thought buthold him, hold him, hold him. Moseus squeezes my lungs, ripping away my last traces of air, ravaging every part of me he can find, fighting me, hurting me, violating me.

But I am the Devourer’s prison now, and even in death, I will not let go.

His efforts begin to lose strength, but I do not relent. My body spasms, mind darkens, chest blazes, soul hurts. I have just enough of myself left to realize the faint sweetness amidst the bitter—that there is still something of Heartwood in the evil I hold.

---