They col apsed, hitting the trampled grass with fleshy thumps. Only one dancer remained standing, her red hair wild around her face and her cheeks glistening.
Hol y’s hands flew to her head, her fingers digging along her scalp. “I’m al here, right? I’m not . . . ?”
“You’re good.” I didn’t stop running. The piper was already picking herself off the ground. I shot Hol y a already picking herself off the ground. I shot Hol y a desperate glance. “Get out of earshot of that spel .”
“What about you?”
I didn’t tel her I’d be fine—that might have been a lie. My grip tightened on the dagger and a smal dog yipped. PC
jumped over a leg twisted unnatural y under a fal en dancer, and I almost stopped, my sprint cut short as a wave of relief washed through me. But I didn’t have time to celebrate yet.
“Take PC with you,” I yel ed to Hol y.
“But—”
I wasn’t listening anymore. The reaper opened his coat and pul ed a looped whip from a strap in his belt. The whip rustled as it uncoiled. He flicked his wrist and a loud crack thundered through the clearing. I faltered, my hands covering my ears without conscious thought on my part.
Then a new sound competed with the ringing in my ears.
Pipe music fil ed the night, and my body responded to the sound. No. No. I wouldn’t dance.
I couldn’t help but move, my feet leading me in a turn, a leap. And I wasn’t the only one. Falin, his teeth gritted and his hand clenched around his remaining blade, also danced. She’s playing for fae souls now. Only she wasn’t playing. The pipes played themselves, the magic coalescing in the air streaming through them.
“Rianna, why?” I cried as my legs carried me in the dance.
The piper turned, her cloak moving as she tilted her head. Then she pushed the hood back and I wasn’t staring at Rianna’s sunken green eyes and lank red hair but at the face of a stranger. Relief coursed through me, though it didn’t last.
“You should have helped me. Told me how you touched the dead. Opened realities for me,” she said, frowning at me, and I realized with a sick sense of shock that I recognized her more handsome than pretty features.
“You’re the woman from the Bloom. The one who thanked me for releasing you from the endless dance.”
me for releasing you from the endless dance.”
“Yes.” She smiled, but it was a smile cut with sadness and darkened with hate. “Trapping me in the Eternal Dance was some fool’s idea of an ironic punishment, but you freed me and soon nothing and no one wil keep me from my love.”
Her love. The reaper.
Another crack cut through the air from the reaper’s whip, but I didn’t have enough control over my body to cringe, let alone twist to see what was happening. The piper—Edana, that was what she had cal ed herself—closed her eyes, her head tilting back as magic coursed through her and the pipes. No, not just magic. An unstable gap opened behind her, the edges wavering, flickering through planes of existence.
No. She couldn’t merge realities.
But she was.
I struggled against the spel , fought to stop dancing. To stil myself. My body continued twisting and jumping.
Beyond the circle, the gray man and the raver fought the dragon, jerking souls free one after the other, but the construct didn’t shrink. A leap and swirl in the dance turned me away from Edana so I couldn’t see the spreading rift.
But I could see the reaper. His whip snaked outward, wrapping around Death’s neck. Death winced, but grabbed the length of the whip, holding it immobile as the reaper tried to jerk him forward. Death held his ground, not budging.
Then magic slammed into his back.
Death toppled forward, fal ing to his knees. A woman’s laugh twined with the pipe music. I couldn’t see Edana, but I could see the thick black lines of the spel she’d hurled. A spel with lines not only slamming magic into Death but pul ing something out of him as wel .
His essence.
“You’re exactly what we need,” she said, and the dance turned me, bringing her into view again.
turned me, bringing her into view again.
“Stop. Leave him alone!”
She glanced at me. “You’l have your own time to fuel the spel . Be patient.”
I swal owed. Falin and I were both part of the spel now. I could see him in my peripheral vision, stil whole and alive.
The spel holding us was kil ing us slowly. Whatever she was doing to Death was draining him fast.
I have to stop her.
Grave essence leached off the fal en dancers’ bodies, the magic their souls had generated fil ed the air, and Aetheric energy shot through al of it. The gap had spread, the bodies closest to the center of the circle rotting away as the land of the dead touched them. Aetheric energy swirled in the air, dark tendrils wrapping around Edana as if she’d plugged herself into the very fabric of the magic realm.