White Heart of Justice (27 page)

I slid the White Heart under first and then I lay down on the floor and squeezed back into that coffin-like ditch that led to the outside world.
If only I could emerge immediately up top next to Rafe!
I'd already decided I was going to give him the biggest, longest, sloppiest kiss ever.

Slipping out of the strong room seemed to take a lot less effort and time than slipping in. Maybe it's because I'd already done it. Or maybe it was because the hard part was over. Or maybe it was because I now knew that we were on the “and back” part of this race to Hell and back. Whatever. Didn't matter. The fact that I was on my way out buoyed my mood considerably.

Once out of the strong room, I scooped up the bulkier clothes I'd shucked in order to slip into it and ran back through the narrow passageway. I threw my clothes and the sword into the bucket and hopped in. I yanked on the rope, signaling to Rafe that he should start turning the crank and pulling me up out of this blasted pit. When the bucket lurched upward, I sighed with relief, thinking how glad I was that I'd never see this place again.

Chapter 25

T
he trip up to the top of Tartarus' mining pit took forever. I was impatient and not nearly as fatalistic as when I'd been heading down. I craned my neck upward toward the growing gray circle the entire time. When I finally arrived at the top, my neck was aching and my arm felt like a rat had crawled inside and started to gnaw on it.
But I was free.

As soon as the bucket rose above the mouth of the pit, my face was hit with millions of ice pellets. The wind was relentless. It felt like I was standing on the bow of a boat, but instead of the warm, sun sparkled spray of the Lethe, I was being sprayed with hail from a sky that looked like the dark billowing plume of an explosion. Faintly, beneath the roar of the wind, the out of tune violin played on. I wasn't sure which gave me greater chills, the wind or the discordant melody. I narrowed my eyes and raised a flat hand to my forehead so that I could see Rafe as he pulled me toward him with the shepherd's hook. But it wasn't Rafe.

It was Peter.

My relief turned to alarm. I spun around looking for Rafe. His welcome face emerged out of the shadows. He looked relieved to see that I was out of the pit, but he also looked wary and angry—because Brunus was holding a knife to his throat. Rafe's hands were tied and he'd been gagged.

I scrambled to unhook the shepherd's hook from the rope that was holding the bucket. I didn't necessarily want to be suspended over this pit, but neither did I want Peter pulling me out. The bucket swung wildly from side to side. The pitching and rocking of the bucket, the jarring musical notes, and the swaying images of Peter scowling at me and Brunus holding a sharp, fiery blade to Rafe's throat, all combined into one big, dark, delusional nightmare. But I knew it was real.

Brunus stared at me with those mud brown eyes of his. Like Rafe, both he and Peter had grown beards. Brunus' beard was big and bushy, covering the entire lower portion of his face. But his eyes were all too visible. Even if I couldn't sense his signature, I would have known we were in trouble. Brunus' expression was deadly, vengeful, and tinted with dementia.

But his signature was worse. Brunus' magic had always smelled rotten to me, but tonight it felt noxious. It felt like radiation poisoning, pulsing with sickness, greed, jealousy, and hate. Like a concave mirror, it seemed to absorb all of my positive emotions and turn them upside down so that, when I felt Brunus' signature, all I felt was a hollowed out, twisted version of mine. His signature reflected, and amplified, all of my fear, hunger, and pain. My arm felt as if it had been sawed off. I realized I hadn't eaten anything in almost twelve hours. And I became almost paralyzed by my own vulnerability. Not just because I hung suspended over a three-hundred-foot pit with only a thin rope holding me in place, but because my Guardian Angel (whom I loved with my recently scarred heart) was being held captive by my heartless opponent.

“Nouiomo Onyx,” Brunus sneered, “
Primoris
of the second year class at St. Luck's, daughter of the executive, ex-field partner of former classmate Aristos Carmine, and teacher's pet.”

The bucket swung left, right . . . left, right . . . I realized, in this wind, it might never stop. I widened my stance and gripped the rim of the bucket with my left hand, leaving my right hand free to hold a weapon. But I held back lighting anything. I could sense in Brunus' signature that he wasn't just standing on a physical edge, he was on a psychological edge as well.

“I'm hardly the teacher's pet, Brunus.” I thought of all the times Rochester's teaching methods had nearly killed me in Manipulation and how disappointed Glashia often was with my inartifice. But Brunus scoffed at me.

“From the start, you were favored. Seknecus gave you his Manipulation books to study from, Rochester arranged to have his old friend, Delgato, train you in unorthodox ways disallowed by the faculty, and now this semester, you were allowed to compete in the Laurel Crown Race even though your academic history is littered with the evidence of your weakness and inferiority.”

Rafe shifted, twisted, and rammed his head back into Brunus' face. Brunus' nose started bleeding. He leaned in close to Rafe's ear and said something too low for me to hear. But Rafe looked at the rope and then me as he stood stiffly in front of Brunus. Brunus smiled and the temperature seemed to drop another ten degrees. Peter reached for the bucket with the shepherd's hook again and this time I let him. In hindsight, attempting to reason with two attempted murderers while swinging over a three-hundred-foot pit wasn't the soundest plan. As I came closer, Peter's gaze swept over every exposed inch of me, from my bloody arm to my leather bustier, from my bare décolletage to my newly blackened demon mark. His face registered equal parts surprise and disgust with just the slightest hint of hesitation.

Good,
I thought.
He
should
be afraid of me.

I neared the edge and Peter reached for the bucket and clamped it into its small dock. I started to hop out but Peter grabbed me by the arm. My left arm. I winced and wished immediately that I hadn't. I could almost hear Glashia's hiss of disapproval. I straightened my back and looked Peter squarely in the eyes. An odd moment passed between us. I remembered the countless hours we'd spent together as children, swimming together in Cocytus Creek, walking together along the Lemiscus, hanging out at the Etincelle docks. I remembered Peter throwing stones at my bedroom window, the messages he'd left for me on my bedroom mirror, the secret meetings in the Aster garden, and the night we found Lucifer's tomb—the night he'd first kissed me. Peter must have sensed the direction of my thoughts. His face softened and his grip on my arm loosened. I wasn't sure I wanted to hear his answer, but I had to ask.

“How could you have used the
Suffoca Ignem
curse against me? Did you really mean to kill me, Peter?”

For the span of a single heartbeat, I thought he'd beg my forgiveness or try to convince me he hadn't. The part of me that didn't want to be the victim of such a horrible betrayal wanted him to. But then his expression hardened and his grip tightened. Instead of my childhood friend, he became a stranger again. He became somebody who hated what I'd become.

“Brunus asked me for a curse that would take you out of the race. I meant for it kill your magic, not you,” he said. “Now, where is it?”

Whether intentionally or not, Peter had laced his voice with bitter magic and it hurt to hear it. It was a blunt reminder of how powerful his spellcasting could be. And my own spellcaster was still incapacitated. I saw out of the corner of my eye that Rafe was starting to give Brunus trouble again, but he was at a severe disadvantage. I tried to step back from the edge of the pit, but Peter held me tight. I fired up a sword and held it low in my hand. Brunus hit Rafe on the back of the head with the butt of his blade. I knew the next time Brunus struck Rafe he wouldn't use the blunt end.

“Where is what?” I said, feigning ignorance and stalling for time.

“
Album Cor Iustitiae
, Noon. The White Heart.” With each word, Peter's voice grew louder, angrier, and more laced with magic. “The sword Metatron made for Justica. I want it.
Now.
” By the time Peter said the word
now
, it felt like he was driving a spike through my ear.

“I don't have it. It wasn't down there.”

“Glashia gave you something, didn't he?” Brunus shouted. “Always the favorite, right, Onyx? He gave you a map. Or more clues. There's a reason you went down there.” But instead of pointing into the pit, he moved Rafe closer to it.

I started to get scared. Rafe didn't know a levitation spell. We'd proven that much climbing our way in here. And if Brunus let go, there would be nothing, not even a thin rope to stop Rafe's fall.

“Glashia gave me nothing,” I said, not caring that my voice now sounded desperate. Glashia wouldn't approve, but I didn't think pretending I wasn't afraid would help either.

“You're lying,” Brunus said, pushing Rafe farther toward the edge. Rafe started struggling again and Brunus held the knife closer to his throat. A few drops of blood trickled down Rafe's neck.

“It wasn't Glashia,” I said, talking quickly. “It was someone else. But you're right. I had a map. Orcus kept a strong room down in his mining pit. But the White Heart wasn't in it.”

Peter leaned over the bucket's rim and peered inside. He stared at the White Heart, which was nestled amongst my clothes at the bottom of the bucket, for longer than he needed to in order to recognize what it was.
What was he thinking?
In an alternate version of my life—one in which Peter had not betrayed me—it might have been Peter and me trying to bluff our way out of this deadly situation. But that wasn't the version of my life I was living in. Peter raised his head up and met my gaze. His look was hard and then he turned to Brunus.

“She found it,” was all he said.

With those words, I watched Brunus' next two moves in what seemed like slow motion. His grip on the knife tightened as he prepared to draw it across Rafe's throat and his body tensed as he prepared to shove him off the edge and into the pit.

I remembered all of the times that Brunus Olivine had been the cause of my pain, discomfort, humiliation, or worse. The time he'd knocked my books over before that first class we'd had together, the rush of magic he sent up my legs when Rochester introduced us, the countless times he'd tried to kill me with his beloved nadziak, the broken noses, the burns, the blood—the time he'd tried to bludgeon Night at the Barrister's Ball. The fact that he'd killed Martius Einion during the rank matches. And more recently, Brunus' horrid and heart-wrenching treatment of Telesto. How he'd sliced him, stabbed him, and finally killed him when the poor beast no longer could or would serve as his mount. I remembered that Brunus had committed attempted murder when he'd shot an arrow that was laced with the
Suffoca Ignem
curse toward my heart.

Brunus Olivine was a vile and loathsome person. But that wasn't why I did what I did. No, in those last few moments, two other images came to mind that cinched my decision. The two skeletons at Corterra's bailey gaol and Kalisto's warning:
One out of every two hunters who follow the Old Trail will not return.

It was simple really. I didn't want Rafe and me to be the ones who died.

After that, instead of in slow motion, everything seemed to happen at once. Brunus pressed his knife into Rafe's throat and stepped forward, Peter leaned into the bucket to retrieve the White Heart, and I threw the brightest, strongest, most densely controlled blast of waning magic I'd ever thrown right between Brunus' eyes. It was better and more brilliant than the diamond-strength shaft I'd thrown that had instantly killed Serafina, the first demon I'd ever killed. A second later I threw another blast—a rougher, cooler one that had more
push
than
penetrate
behind it—at Rafe's shoulder. Then I jammed the heel of my hand into Peter's nose, wrenched the White Heart free from his grasp, and shoved him backward.

I too stepped back from the edge of the mining pit, just in time to see Brunus' body tumble into it and Rafe fall backward onto the ground.

I unsheathed
Album Cor Iustitiae
and stood before Peter likely looking like vengeance personified. I could feel my hair writhing in the wind as I raised the White Heart in the air. I felt its eerie magic gather, causing the hairs on the back of my neck to raise. In the predawn light, the White Heart glowed like white fire.

“Run, Peter,” I said. “Run very far because if I ever see you again, I will kill you.”

His wide, wild eyes narrowed as he glanced from me to the pit to Rafe and back to me again. He glared at my black mark and stared at the White Heart and then finally, he turned on his heel and left.

I watched him walk through Tartarus' bailey toward the barbican and portcullis. He never looked back. When he passed from sight, I lowered the White Heart and ran over to Rafe, crouching down next to him.
Still alive
, thank Luck! I ripped the gag out of his mouth.

“Fara warned me about you,” he croaked, sitting up. My hands were shaking but I managed to untie his hands. “She told me not to play with fire, but I couldn't resist.” I wrapped my arms around his neck and he reached up to rub his shoulder.

“Damn, Onyx, you throw one hell of a fiery punch.”

He started murmuring the words to a healing spell and I fought not to burst into tears.