ItCP40

## Chapter 40

**Chapter 40** of **Into the Crooked Place** follows **Tavia**.

## **Full Version**

WAR WAGED AT TAVIA’S footsteps.

Wraith-like incarnations of their army sprouted from the Kingpin’s orb and took shape. They slaughtered one another by her feet, moving through the room like ghosts, howling with every blow.

Crafters and buskers and the Kingpin’s people who looked to be a mix of both, stabbing and shooting and sending blasts of energy toward each other. There was blood and there was screaming and the skies wept down on them all. Rain like a torrent on the fighters and the bodies of those whose fight was over.

Tavia stumbled back and Wesley’s hand locked into hers.

She didn’t have time to question the feeling that rippled through her, or to savor it.

This was their army on the shores of the castle, dying at the Kingpin’s hand, and Tavia didn’t know if it was a vision of what was to come, or a reality of what had happened. She didn’t know if their people were already dead, killed outside of these walls before they even knew the battle had begun.

Saxony held out a hand to touch the image of Karam. It went through her cheek. Karam raised a sword and brought it down upon a guard. Then another. And another. Until a Crafter with eyes as red as the fire-gates shot a beam of lightning her way.

It crushed against Karam’s spine and sent her catapulting through the air. Through the battlefield. Through the walls of the room and out of sight.

“Karam!”

Saxony ran to the stone wall and pressed her hand against it, as though it might open and reveal her on the other side.

Wesley’s grip tightened around Tavia’s hand. He was shaking.

“I know what you’re thinking, Wesley,” Zekia said. “And you shouldn’t.”

“You’re not in my head now, kid. You have no idea what I’m thinking.”

“Then let’s fix that.”

Zekia launched herself into the air, nails like claws.

Quickly, Wesley shoved Tavia backward and Zekia landed on him like a jungle cat, the force of it sending them both across the room.

And then the Crafters attacked.

They threw magic like skipping stones. A shard of ice cut through the air and skimmed Tavia’s cheek as she jumped out of the way.

Saxony returned the blow with a gust of fire that set one of them alight in an instant.

He barely had time to scream before he was ash.

“This will be fun,” Asees said, with a horrible, unfamiliar smile on her lips.

Saxony conjured another flame in her hand, throwing it up and down. “I plan to enjoy it as well.”

She heaved the flame at the same time that Tavia reached inside one of her charm pouches and threw the first marble she felt. There was no time to read it properly, so she had to go by gut and her gut was telling her to throw every single thing she had at these bastards.

One of the Crafters pounded his fists into the floor and it cracked. Tavia straddled a broken line and heaved another charm their way. It exploded above their heads and a great mass of stone crashed down onto one of them.

*Two down.*

Saxony lifted her shield, letting it envelop Tavia as the remaining Crafters circled.

They needed to send the signal to the others and let them know it was time to set those damn charges off.

Tavia whirled around. The Kingpin was watching, unmoved from his shadow throne. A spectator in his own war.

And Wesley. *Many Gods.* Zekia threw him across the room with little more than a flick of her wrist. But he was up in seconds, firing off bullets from one hand and orbs of energy from the other.

Tavia felt the ground shudder.

The Crafters were throwing charms at them, over and over, pounding against the shield Saxony had created.

Saxony stumbled back a few steps and screamed. From her fingernails flame flew out like darts. The Crafters dove to avoid it.

“Go!” Saxony yelled. “Help Wesley!”

Tavia ignored her and pulled out another weapon charm, fingering it. Then she arched her shoulder and threw. The air above them gurgled and groaned. Lightning spat down on the Crafters, striking one in the heart.

He fell to the floor, lifeless.

But Tavia didn’t have time to feel guilt or relief. There were still four remaining.

Asees grinned at her fallen comrade and then threw her hands toward the lightning, pushing water and wind until it quivered and dissolved.

She was a Spiritcrafter, just like Arjun.

Tavia cursed.

Her tricks were just that. *Tricks.* Against Crafters she felt like an amateur.

“I can handle this,” Saxony said.

“You can’t hold them off alone.”

“Many Gods damn it, Tavia!” Saxony squeezed her fists so the force field thickened. “Go and make sure your fucking boyfriend doesn’t kill my sister.”

Tavia whirled to see Wesley diving toward Zekia with a knife in hand.

He sliced across her chest and Zekia lurched back. Wesley threw the blade and she lifted a hand to block it. The dagger stuck in her palm.

She pulled it out, slowly, as if she felt nothing, and sent it hurtling back to him.

It lodged in Wesley’s knee.

Tavia cast one last look at Saxony, who was practically breathing fire. Her skin alight, eyes like coal. The more magic the Crafters threw, the higher her flame rose.

Then Tavia ran.

She ran across the throne room and toward Wesley, skidding so that her leg burned across the cracked floor. She reached for a charm, took her time to feel the weight of it. The shape. The way her soul curved around it.

*Cutting charm.*

Zekia approached Wesley. He pulled the knife from his leg and tried to stand.

Tavia crushed the charm in her hand. The shards scattered across her palm like glass and, with Saxony’s little sister in her sights, Tavia blew on them like a wish.

They shot through the air. Ready to spike across Zekia’s precious little face.

Only to stop inches from her.

The Kingpin stood.

Tavia blanched.

And then she was thrown across the room.

“Let my children fight among themselves,” the Kingpin said.

He stepped down from his throne.

His footsteps were like drums. Pounding toward her.

*One. Two. Three.*

*One. Two. Three.*

Wesley yelled her name and Tavia saw him try to run to her, but Zekia threw him onto his back. He grunted in pain.

Even though she was a child, Zekia’s magic was almighty.

No wonder she had been chosen to lead the Rishiyat Crafters.

*One.*

*Two.*

*Three.*

Tavia was pulled back to standing by the Kingpin’s magic. Grabbed by her hair and pushed from under her feet. Squeezed at the neck, until she slid up the wall and was gasping and tearing at her throat to pry off his invisible hands.

She couldn’t breathe. *Many Gods.* She couldn’t breathe.

The room blurred and refocused. Wesley’s screams echoed.

The Kingpin’s shadowed outline loomed and Tavia could see it now—the blacks of his eyes against the blacks of his cheeks. The barely there tracing of a face beneath the darkness of a once-man.

“I know you, little busker.”

She wanted to tell him to go to the fire-gates, but all she could do was gag.

The Kingpin was choking her. Not enough to kill her, but enough to keep her on the precipice of death. Relieving the tension every few seconds so Tavia could gulp in air and then pressing again, harder and harder, so he could squeeze it back out of her.

“I remember your mother well.”

Death. His voice was death.

“You remind me so much of her. Poor, beautiful Coralina.”

Tavia stilled.

A tear slipped from her eye.

She couldn’t stand her muma’s name in his awful mouth.

“She was one of my firsts,” the Kingpin said. “Before Zekia became my light, back when I thought all the Crafters in the realms were dead. I tried to forge my own magic. It was addictive, but not much else. It drove people mad with the cravings and then mad with my voice, but I couldn’t control them like I can now. Oh, how I could whisper, though.”

He leaned in closer to Tavia, voice slicking into her ear.

“Coralina hated the whispering.”

The Kingpin loosened his grip on her neck, as though he wanted to bask in the grief of her response.

“You killed her,” Tavia managed to say.

“Oh no,” he said. “She killed herself. The only way to make the whispering stop. Poison, I think, though the details are a little vague. One pitiful human blurs into another.”

“Murderer,” Tavia spat.

And she actually did spit, right in his disgusting face.

The Kingpin didn’t flinch. “You should be pleased, little busker, that Zekia was able to bring my vision of the Loj to life. Your mother was one of the few who helped me perfect my legacy. Her madness was a great lesson.”

Tavia’s chest shook with her sobs and she tried to catch her breath, but the Kingpin’s magic was still so tight around her throat.

Her muma’s face flashed through her mind.

Her muma’s smile.

*It’s okay,*ciolo. *It’ll all be okay.*

What had this monster stolen from her?

“My magic crawled through her veins until she couldn’t differentiate between her thoughts and mine. We trialed it on so many in the outskirts,” the Kingpin said with near glee. “Don’t you see, little busker? Magic sickness is a myth. It was always me, my power, experimenting on one worthless street scum at a time, until I finally cracked it.”

Tavia lowered a hand to her side.

He’d taken her childhood.

Her past and her future.

He’d ruined her.

Stolen the one person Tavia had and taken her off the streets under the guise of saving her. Convinced her to sell the very thing that had killed her muma to someone else.

And it wasn’t just her family. He’d torn apart countless others. Even Wesley’s.

Tavia gritted her teeth.

Dante Ashwood was just a man on a power trip and that didn’t make him invincible. She could kill a man. She could kill him like he’d killed her muma.

“Feel that anger inside you and its thirst for darkness,” the Kingpin said. “You have the potential to be just like me, little busker. To be just like my Wesley.”

Tavia clasped a hand around her knife. Felt its hilt strong in her hand.

She looked up at Ashwood, her eyes darker than his could ever be.

“Wesley is nothing like you,” she said.

And then she threw the knife into the Kingpin’s heart.