And screamed.

Maude’s axe had fallen, and with it, the abbess’s stone hand. It fell, hitting the floor with an ungracious bang, is if it weighed a hundred pounds.

I sprang forward. When our bodies collided, mine and hers, the sound was that of stone crashing into stone. A terrible, vociferous crack. The abbess fell, and I clattered over her, our feet upon the chancel. She reached into her gown—pulled a knife. The same one she carried with her during a Divination. It slashed through the air, and when it collided with my breastplate, the peal rivaled the ringing of cathedral bells.

I looked down at where she’d struck me, and so did the abbess. My armor was dented, a blooming pain radiating through my chest. She struck me again and screamed, as if she could not fathom why I would not break. Like she expected me to be made of nothing but gossamer.

“Am I all that you imagined?” I said, looking down at her. “Or am I so much more?”

I slammed my fist into her jaw, sending a dozen cracks, like tributaries, into her face. She hit me, too, with such force it felt as if the flesh beneath my armor had burst. Dropping the knife, she struck me with both hands, hitting my breast, my ribs, my arms—kicking at my legs. My skin broke, my armor dented.

But I did not diminish.

With one vicious tug, I had her careening forward, screaming as she scraped over the chancel, over the edge of the spring, falling into dark, rotten water.

I grasped the stone ledge with one hand and with my other I pressed. The abbess cried out under the water. Clawed and yanked at me. Flailed. I kept a grip over her throat and pressed. Bubbles filled the water. I kept her down. I pressed and pressed, drowning her. Then, with all my strength, I pulled her from the water. Threw her down upon the chancel.

I loomed over her. The gargoyle came to stand with me, then Rory and Maude, and finally Benji. There was no question of which we would take from her—hands or throat. There was no question at all.

There was only stone, and the tools to make it yield.

The abbess was writhing, seething, spitting chunks of limestone upon the chancel. I looked into her eyes—eyes just like mine. Then, with her own tools, with hammer, with chisel—

I struck. Right upon her stone heart.

I was not exact as I had been with the Heartsore Weaver. This was an annihilation, and Aisling would bear the mark of it. My blows were unbridled in their violence, stone flying, hitting my face as they flew by, scoring me with pain. Still, I kept striking her.

With hammer, with chisel, I hit her until she was dust. Until Traum was free of its false gods. Until her last breath came—not loud like the peal of a bell, but frail. Still I kept striking her. I struck and I struck and I struck.

Until the final Omen was dead.

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CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE THE LAST DIVINER

The cathedral was a tomb—utterly silent.

We stood in a crooked line upon the chancel. From the rubble that had once been the abbess’s body, Benji extracted the loom stone.

“The final magical object,” Maude murmured.

Rory didn’t look at the loom stone or the abbess. He was only looking at me. Wrenching my chin up, searching my eyes. “Are you hurt?”

I didn’t know. I couldn’t feel my body. “The last object isn’t the loom stone,” I whispered. “It’s the spring.”

My gargoyle, my Bartholomew, came up beside me. Nodded at my hammer, my chisel. When I spoke to the king, I hardly recognized my voice. “When will the knights come?”

“I don’t know. Soon.”

“Do you still want Aisling to shutter?”

He studied my face. “I do.”

I tightened my grip on my hammer. Looked to Rory and his coin. “Then help me.”

Aisling Cathedral was harder to slay than any Omen—it did not yield easily to our violence. But Rory had his coin, and I my hammer. Maude had her axe, and the gargoyle his stone claws, and Benji a zeal I had never seen in him before. He was throwing stones, ripping pews from the floor, tossing fallen rubble into the spring, and hitting anything he could with his sword and the inkwell’s corrosive ink.

When Rory’s coin took out the south wall, and I its commanding pillar, we all ran to the other side of the transept as the stones fell. Benji picked up a broken piece of rubble. Threw it with impressive strength.

And shattered the rose window.

Colored glass rained down, catching moonlight. We all stopped to watch. “Huzzah,” the gargoyle cheered.

“It’s not enough.” I could still smell rotting flowers. Still taste them on the back of my tongue. “We need to bury the spring.”

The tendons of my arm ached every time I struck a pillar, a wall. I was going for the cloister—the system of pillars along the ambulatory, imagining them veins to a heart that needed severing. I slammed my hammer over and over. Cried out in pain.

“Sybil.”

I kept hitting.

Rory was next to me. “Let me help you.”

I didn’t. I bore and bodied all my anguish, beating the pillar again and again—

My hammer shattered, breaking down the heart of the head, then the handle.

A terrible crack began, spreading up the wall, into the vaulted ceiling. Dust began to rain, and a noise, like thunder, filled the cathedral. I dropped the chisel.

“Time to go,” Rory said, catching my arm.

We ran.

The tor trembled, and the stones beneath my feet fissured. I caught the gargoyle by his hand, like we were finally escaping that wretched place, and brought us out of the narthex at the heels of Benji and Maude just before the cathedral fell.

The world shook.

We fled into the courtyard, all the way to the gnarled apple orchard, shards of debris shooting after us. Maude tripped and Benji caught her. Rory held my arm so tightly, the five of us running until we were at the wall, panting and sweating.

We watched as Aisling Cathedral fell in on itself, a dragon slain.

When the stones stopped rolling and the world stopped shaking, I felt a great stillness in my body. I let go of Rory. Let go of the gargoyle. Moved to stand alone in the shadow of the wall. Then—

A familiar sound came on the wind. Horses, whickering. Were I to climb the wall, I knew what I would see. Purple banners.

The knights had caught up to their king.

“They’re here,” Maude said through a wince. “I can hear them coming.”

Benji’s voice was full of fire. He came to stand by Rory and the gargoyle and drew his sword once more—as if Aisling had bowed to him, prostrate. “About fucking time.”

He swung.

His sword lodged in Rory’s side, into chainmail, into skin. Rory let out a sharp gasp—

Benji caught his wrist. Took his coin. He shoved Rory to the ground and kicked him in his wound, then let the coin fly.

It hit the gargoyle, shattering his left wing, putting fissures up his arm and into his chest. He stumbled back. Blinked his stone eyes.

Fell.

I screamed.

Maude lunged forward, but Benji’s sword was already there, pointed in her face. “Lower your axe,” he told her. “Throw it over the wall.”

Her voice came out soft. But her green eyes were beyond recognition—brimming with pain. “Benji. What are you doing?”

“Your axe, Maude.”

With jerking motions, she did as she was told.

I don’t remember how I got on the ground, only that I was in the grass next to Rory, next to the gargoyle, crawling over blood and broken stone to be near them.

Rory’s hand was on his side, the warmth in his skin gone. “Oh gods.” I pressed my hand over his wound, blood seeping between my fingers. “Rory—Rory.”