Page 77 of Alpha’s Divine Claim

Then the columns nearest him bend inward. They don’t come fast and that’s the part I’ll remember. The light moves in on him the way water moves into a low place, from every side at once, taking its time, because there’s nothing left in this chamber that can stop it. He could run, there’s nothing’s holding his feet in place. He looks at Nyxiana instead.

I don’t catch whatever passes between the two of them. She doesn’t move, doesn’t look away from him, doesn’t give him one thing. Then he turns his head back, lifts his chin, and the light takes him. I feel it happen. Every anchor in this realm is mine now, so it’s my hands doing this whether I put them out or not. He doesn’t make a sound. There’s a man standing there, then there’s light where he was standing, then the light is just light.

Centuries of him worked into the grain of this place, and it takes about four seconds to take him back out of it. The only sound in this realm since we came through has been him tearing at it. That stops when he does. What’s left is the way this place is when nobody’s damaging it, which is nothing at all.

I’ve spent my entire life being a lock without knowing it. I want to hear somebody say out loud what just happened to that man.

“Is he held?” No echo comes back. In a room this size there ought to be one.

“No.” Bancroft doesn’t turn his head. “He is unmade. There is nothing left of him in this realm or any other, and there will not be.”

Nyxiana’s wings come down lower than they’ve been all night. Her flame banks down to nothing. The gold drains out of her eyes with violet coming back in from the edges.

Then Samuel speaks. “You chose the harder thing.” He says it to Nyxiana, across the chamber, and he says it like her grandfather instead of like a member of the Council. “It was always going to be the right one.”

Her throat works once. Her eyes, violet again, go bright. She holds them on him and says nothing at all.

Bancroft comes next. “The anchors answer to Valen now. The Council will not dispute that claim. Tonight, or ever again.” He says it the same way he’s said everything since we arrived. It isn’t a welcome and it isn’t thanks. It’s a ruling, and I take it as one.

Gavin shakes out his arms and his wings together, loose after hours of holding. “I’m taking a vacation,” he says to nobody in particular. “A millennium. Possibly two.”

“The seal will hold,” Rainer says.

Bowen comes across the floor. He puts a hand on my shoulder and grips it once, hard. Then he gets an arm around Nyxiana, pulls her into a quick warm hold, and lets her go again.

“Good,” he says.

That’s all of it. He goes back to his brothers. The hum settles. It’s still in me and it always will be. I know what it’s for now. Nova. Harper. Kari. He had a hand on all three of them from in here, a realm away. It died when he did. There’s nothing pulling on any of them now. The pressure comes off Ash Hollow. Every night I ever walked that perimeter and however long that valley has been holding a breach with everything it had - every one of them is still on their feet at the end of it. I turn to tell her. She’s gone white.

She’s burned corruption centuries deep out of this place, taken three constructs at once, and she’s still bleeding from the hit she took for me an hour ago. There’s nothing left in her.

“It’s done,” I say. She looks me over before answering, checking whether I’m standing on my own.

“Not all of it.” She’s right. Faelan found that crack, didn’t make it, it’s still there, it isn’t going to close. What’s changed is that it’s mine to hold now. There’s the other thing too. Neither of us has said out loud what we are to each other, neither of us is saying it in front of five angels. Then she sways and I’m there to catch her and get her up off her feet. There’s nothing of her at all.

Chapter 47

Nyxiana

He’s carrying me. I don’t remember him picking me up. Valen has one arm under my knees, the other around my back. There’s dried blood along his collarbone from the construct that got through. His hair is stuck to his forehead. Everything I look at keeps going gray at the sides and then coming back.

Samuel reaches us first. He crosses that floor fast for an angel who’s been holding a seal for hours. He isn’t Council by the time he reaches us. He’s the angel who came every year of my childhood and never came empty-handed. He puts the back of his hand against my cheek.

“Look at me, girl.” I do. It takes me a while. I can read him. I always could. There’s never been anything hidden in him to find. He’s afraid. He won’t say so in front of his brothers.

“She’s spent.” He says to Valen, not to me.

“I know what she needs.”

My grandfather looks at him for a long time. Then takes his hand off my cheek.

“Then go, take care of her.”

“The realm will hold while you do.” Bancroft hasn’t moved from where he’s standing. “It answers to you now. Take whatever you need out of it.”

Bowen puts a hand on Valen’s shoulder on his way past, the same way he did before. He says nothing this time. Then they go. Bancroft first. My great-uncles after him. Samuel last. He looks back at me once. Then the light closes over where he was standing. Where they stood the light holds their color for a while. Then it fades out. There’s nobody left in this place but the two of us, a floor with no edges, a ceiling nobody has ever found.

“Put me down.”