I forced my shields wider, opening myself to everything, blocking nothing. The chil of the grave rushed into my body, but there was more magic to be had than just grave essence. I drew it in indiscriminately, pul ing power until my skin felt ready to burst. Then I let it explode out of me, hurtling toward Edana.
She wasn’t a corpse, so my power couldn’t sink into her, or jerk her soul free of her body. It slid over her skin, her life and her shields protecting her. No. I had to do something. I had to.
Fred had told me that when the world decayed I’d have to do what was against my nature. According to Kyran, my nature was to weave reality together, but I could also shove it apart. So that’s what I did.
I shoved.
With everything I had inside me, I shoved at the realities converging around Edana. I started at her skin, pushing outward. As it had when I’d been in the shadow court, reality buckled and then moved under my magic’s touch. I poured more power into the effort, thrusting with my magic.
The enchanted pipes slipped out of Edana’s hands as The enchanted pipes slipped out of Edana’s hands as though she could no longer hold them, and the music stopped.
I tumbled to the ground, my legs col apsing under me. My whole body shook, a darkening light-headedness threatening behind my eyes. Stil I pushed with my power.
Layers of reality peeled away from Edana, leaving an area like a giant bubble around her clear of everything but mortal reality.
The spel draining Death fizzled out of existence. He slumped forward, and I released the power channeling through me. I tried to climb to my feet, but al my limbs were numb, too heavy, too slow. A scream interrupted the sound of my teeth chattering.
Edana backed through the gap she’d opened, and the bubble I’d created moved with her. Layers of reality pushed aside, bunching around the tear. As they fel back into place, the already tenuous gap snapped closed, reality righting itself everywhere except the bubble I’d created around her.
Edana screamed again, stil backing away. “No! What have you done? What have you done?”
The reaper dropped the whip, letting it fal to the grass as he ran toward her. “Love, what is it?” he asked and then stopped short three feet away. Right on the edge of the bubble.
He couldn’t pass. His reality didn’t exist around her.
He pounded on the empty air. “No! What’s happening?”
As Edana lifted hands suddenly withered and liverspotted to her rapidly wrinkling face, I wondered the same thing. Before my eyes, she aged until her back bent and her skin turned paper thin around a skeletal frame.
Then she crumbled, turning to dust.
I swal owed. I’d cut her off from al realities, al magics.
Even Faerie. And changelings relied on Faerie’s magic to keep their years from catching up with them. Soon al that was left of Edana was a dim, sickly yel ow ghost standing in was left of Edana was a dim, sickly yel ow ghost standing in the middle of a dead spot. But the land of the dead didn’t exist in the bubble, and her energy dissipated as she tried to retain a sense of herself.
Then she faded from sight.
“No!” the reaper yel ed, stil pushing on the bubble of reality. Then he spun around to face me. “You.” His eyes were hard, fierce, and if I could have backed away, I would have. But my body stil wasn’t working.
The reaper stormed toward me, the air crackling around him. “You did this. You took her away from me.” He lunged for me, his fist slamming into—and through—my chest wal .
“Alex!” Death jumped to his unsteady feet.
He wouldn’t be fast enough. We both knew it. The other two col ectors had finished off the dragon, but they were stil too far away to get to me in time.
I stared at where the reaper’s wrists disappeared into my sternum, knowing what would come next. He would pul my soul free and it would be over.
Then something flickered in the moonlight as it soared over my head. A fae-wrought blade buried itself in the reaper’s chest. He blinked at it, as if he couldn’t believe it, and his hand fel from me. Falin’s dagger fel free as soon as the reaper released me and I stopped acting as a bridge between him and reality. But the damage was already done. Dark blood seeped from the chest wound, and the raver grabbed him from behind.
She wrapped her long fingers around his upper arms.
“End of the line,” she said, and they vanished.
Falin pul ed me to my feet, and held me there when I would have fal en. “I’ve got you,” he whispered. “Are you okay? Is he gone?”
I nodded, leaning into Falin. My soul might be a bit jarred, but I would make it. Death final y reached me, but the gray man grabbed his arm, pul ing him back.