“We woke the Beneath,” I repeated dully. “That’s what killed Sonja and the other elders. It wasn’t Shane.”
The Beneath.
Impossible, I wanted to say. But Iris was right. I had felt it. I had Known it, just as it had Known me.
We’ve met before, it had told me in Shane’s body, with Shane’s voice.
Iris tilted her head, her gray hair rustling against her. The triple knot swayed on its chain. “At the moment, it’s choosing to inhabit him,” she said. Her voice had lost some of its hoarseness, as though she was slowly remembering how to speak. “But it’s not going to stop with him, either. It’s gaining in power. Gathering strength.”
“And we woke it?” This was so far beyond my comprehension, I couldn’t even begin to process it. I just kept staring.
“You have to put it back to sleep,” Iris said.
“With what? A lullaby?”
Her eyes were hard. There was no smile on her face now. “Kill Gideon.”
“Right. You know, for a second there I forgot I was talking to a murdering psychopath. Thanks for the reminder.”
“You need to listen to me,” she said, almost hissing again. She took half a step toward me, and then seemed to think better of it. “Gideon is the problem, Audrey. He’s connected to the Astral Circle, just like you are. But he’s a Harrower. That means he’s also connected to the Beneath. When you released the Circle’s power, the Beneath woke up. And since then it’s been feeding. Drawing on the Circle’s energy. That power is what’s keeping it awake. Sever his connection to the Circle, and it goes back to sleep.”
“Why should I believe a word you’ve said? You don’t care about the Kin. You’ve been Beneath all this time, and now you just pop up out of nowhere and tell me to kill my best friend? For all I know, you’re still trying to get me to unseal him.”
Her face twisted into a sneer. “You’re wrong. You don’t know anything. If it were just you and your mother, I’d say let the world burn. But I won’t let it have my family. I won’t let it have my sister.”
“What is it going to do to Elspeth?” I asked, recalling Sonja’s body being dragged Beneath. We are being Harrowed, I heard Esther say.
“What it’s going to do to everyone if it isn’t stopped. You remember Valerie. Her vision. The end of the Kin. She saw what was coming. She knew it would happen here. But that Harrower you killed got it wrong. It was never about the Remnant. It was about now. It was about this.”
Valerie’s vision of the Kin’s destruction was what had begun Susannah’s search for the Remnant. It was the reason she’d come to the Cities, the reason she had gathered an army Beneath.
But Val hadn’t just seen the future, Daniel had told me.
She’d seen two.
Two futures.
The Remnant was never the one who decides it, he’d said. You are.
My mind raced, stray thoughts that reached toward understanding, and then skidded away. Memories surfaced. You set something in motion that night on Harlow Tower, Susannah had told me. That was the night Valerie had had her first vision, she’d claimed. The night she saw the doom of your Kin.
“No,” I said. I shook my head. “You’re crazy if you think I’m killing Gideon.”
“It has to be you. You’re connected to the Circle. To him. You have to do it. You’re the only one who can.” She turned her head, listening to something beyond my hearing. In the street behind her, a blackbird stalked back and forth and then suddenly took to flight. A feather floated down on the air beneath it, blown upward by the breeze. Iris closed her eyes. When she opened them again, they were white as a Harrower’s. “And you have to hurry. You have to go. You have to do it now.”
Alarm surged through me. A familiar chill crept over my skin. “What’s happening?”
“The Beneath. It’s near. Gideon is part human now—it can’t inhabit him. It’s going to unseal him. Hurry, Audrey. Go.”
I spun around, groping toward the car.
The driveway at Gideon’s house was empty. The drapes were closed, the windows dark. One of his sisters’ bicycles lay abandoned in the yard, but there was no sign of its owner. No one home, I thought at first, fighting down panic—but no, Iris had told me to go, to hurry. Whatever she’d sensed was close. And I had felt that chill of dread, that rush of horror. It was coming here. It was going to unseal Verrick.
I parked quickly, leaving the car running. I’d tried Gideon’s number as I drove, but my calls had gone unanswered. I tested the door and stepped inside when I found it unlocked. I made for the basement at half-gallop, not pausing to see if anyone else was there. Nothing mattered but getting to Gideon.
“Gideon!” I called when I reached the basement steps.
I didn’t know what I was going to do when I found him. I didn’t have a plan beyond reaching him. I would drag him to the car if I had to, and then I’d just drive. Drive and keep driving, until we were so far from the Circle that no Harrower could push through, no matter how powerful. After that, I would decide what to do. I would think of something to tell him—anything but the truth. But I’d think of it later. First I had to find him. First I had to save him.
“Gideon!” I shouted again.
“Audrey?”
Relief poured into me. I ran down the rest of the steps and pitched myself toward his room, nearly colliding with him as he opened his door and stepped through it. He looked like I’d just woken him from a nap. His hair was sticking up, and he blinked at me sleepily, rubbing his face with his hands. I grabbed his hand, gripping it tightly and drawing him toward the stairs.
He didn’t resist, but his pace was sluggish. “Are you okay? What’s wrong? What’s going on?”
I kept tugging him, urging him to move faster. “I’ll tell you later. You need to come with me. Just trust me, okay? We need to go. We need to go right now.”
“Go where?”
“I’ll explain, I promise—”
Abruptly, we were flung apart. Gideon’s hand was jerked from mine, and I found myself airborne, crashing against the wall. My shoulder took the impact, but I felt it all through me, sharp pain shooting out along my limbs. Dizzily, I groped my way back to my feet. Through the fog in my vision, I saw Shane.
My stomach plunged. My throat constricted. I had failed. Shane was going to unseal Verrick, and I couldn’t prevent it. Leon would arrive any second, I knew. And this time he wouldn’t even pause. He’d just grab me and teleport away.
“Gideon, run!” I cried.
But he couldn’t run. I knew that, even as I shouted it. There was no exit here, no avenue of escape. Shane—or the Beneath—had found him. If Gideon moved, it would follow. If he ran, it would give chase.
And it would catch him.
There was no question of that.
Gideon lay on his side, clutching his head. He made a noise, trying to pull himself to his feet. Shane stalked toward him.
His feet were still bare, I saw. The bottom ends of his jeans were brown with dried blood. Up to his ankles.
“I have heard the singing of your blood, prisoner,” the Beneath said with Shane’s voice. “I hear the drag of your chains. I am here to loosen your bonds.”
I wondered how I had ever mistaken it for Shane. I felt its malevolence in every word it uttered, every gesture it made.
“Run!” I screamed.