Page 75 of The Nightshade God
Eoin huffed a sound that wasn’t quite a laugh. “Did you bring it?”
A ruffle of cloak fabric. Then a hiss. The smell of fire burned in Gabe’s nose.
“A handy thing,” Eoin said.
“My farrier uses it.” The Brother’s voice was strained, as if hewas holding something heavy. “Helps direct heat. Apparently, they’re used all over what used to be Myrosh.”
Whatever Eoin was doing with the tool the Brother brought was quick work. The hiss shut off, and the burnt smell abated. “Excellent. That should stay secure until I’m ready to open it again.”
“How exactly do you plan to do that?”
A grin in Eoin’s tone, all teeth. “It shouldn’t be a problem.” A rustle of fabric. “This one, though, stays with me.”
They mounted the stairs, boots on stone. The wall next to the staircase extended a few feet in either direction before hitting another; Gabe pressed himself into the far corner, where the dark was deepest, and pulled his hood over his head. He was fairly certain Eoin wouldn’t harm him, even if he was found out, but he didn’t want to test the theory.
The shadows were deep enough to give cover, and when Eoin and the unnamed Brother opened the door, the dim light from outside only served to deepen them. Eoin wore a pair of thick leather gloves, and he grimaced as he peeled them off, shaking his hands. “We’ll have to come up with a solution for that. The tongs worked to get it off the statue, but we can’t rely on them forever.”
“At least the dagger doesn’t give you trouble.”
“Silver linings. Though Mount-mined metal used to be all over the continent; they couldn’t charge such exorbitant prices for it if no one could touch it.”
The other Brother cast an uneasy glance behind him. Gabe held his breath and pressed hard into the corner.
They left without seeing him.
Gabe counted to two hundred, slow, giving them time to get away. Then he crept down the stairs.
At first, he couldn’t tell what was different. The same packed dirt floor, same false Fount, same stone walls.
Well. Almost the same.
In the corner, there was now a metal door. Or it would be adoor if it hadn’t been melted shut at the edges. The copper bubbled, still hot from the fire Eoin had used, better than any lock.
Clearly, he’d hidden something here. And Gabe had a good idea of what.
He could melt the door off, take the Fount piece, and put the door back. No one would be the wiser.
His hands were already raised to channel fire when he heard footsteps at the top of the stairs.
Fuck.
There was no time to dart back to his dark corner, and the room was lit with sconces, all open with nowhere to hide. Desperation clawed at his gut, nowhere to go, cornered like a mouse with a damn cat—
Use it.
It wasn’t a suggestion so much as a command.
And Gabe followed it, because he had no choice. One moment, he was solid and corporeal. The next, he was fire.
Not quite fire. The potential of it, every atom of heat in the atmosphere. It tore him apart, flung him out into composite pieces. If he’d still had a mouth, he would scream at the pain of it, the wrongness.
Because those spaces of himself were wide enough for something else to inhabit.
Every movement was an instinct rather than something thought through. Gabe traveled through the air, out the door, over the streets of Farramark, an invisible and unheard war. Hestraon was strong; Gabe grappled with Him, trying to hold on to the bits of himself with more desperation than he’d ever tried to do anything. He understood Malcolm’s fear now, understood what it felt like to have yourself obliterated while something else tried to gather the scraps and turn them to another will.
We want the same things.Hestraon in his mind, Hestraon fighting forward.I can do them better than you. Let Me.
But he couldn’t, he couldn’t.
