Free Power & Majesty by Tansy Rayner Roberts

right, as familiar as my ma’s beef and apple soup. ‘There’s still time.’
    ‘Time for what?’
    ‘Time to give it back,’ said the not-Ash, and he didn’t look fifteen any more. There were scars along his arms, and on his neck, and on that face of his. My scars. I did that to him.
    Then he was gone again, and it was Poet in my frigging face, his hands clawing at my ribs. ‘I’ve got you,’ he said. Stupid kid never did know when to give up.
    ‘What are you planning to do with me?’ I demanded. ‘The rift is closing.’
    It wasn’t just that I couldn’t feel my legs. I didn’t know if they even existed any more. No one knew what lay beyond the sky, but I was damned sure it wouldn’t do me any favours.
    ‘Get him out of there!’ yelled Warlord as he streaked past, wrestling tendrils of ice and light.
    ‘I could amputate everything from the waist down,’ snapped Poet. ‘Do you think that would help?’
    Priest was there too now, fat fucker, so bloody satisfied with himself. ‘Burn him out if you have to. If he’s going to die, we need him dead on this side of the rift.’
    Aye, Priest, I frigging love you too.
    ‘No one’s going to die!’ insisted Poet.
    The sky swam around me. I was dizzy from their impressive levels of stupidity. When I opened my eyes, I was in bed with Tasha.
    You never met her. I’m not going to waste time telling you how beautiful she was. As golden as the day I killed her.
    ‘Promise me,’ she said, arching her back against the warm pillows with a sleepy pure-sex smile.
    I could hear the voices of Poet and the other Lords trying to free my body, but none of that mattered, not with Tasha here and warm and alive.
    ‘I’ll promise you anything,’ I said.
    ‘Stupid,’ she said scornfully. ‘Wait and see what I’m asking first. Have I taught you nothing?’
    I felt fifteen years old again. How could I not?
    Tasha was talking, expecting me to hang on her every word like we always did. ‘We’re getting weaker. Day by day, with every soul we lose to the sky, the Creature Court is diminishing.’
    I remembered this lecture. She wanted us to promise that when we got ourselves killed, we’d be generous enough to do it in the gutter like real men, instead of wasting our animor by letting the sky swallow us whole. Death meant something if the ones left behind got to quench you, to suck you down and take your power into themselves.
    ‘Screw that,’ I said aloud, and, just like that, I was back in the rift. My lungs were tearing at me. I tried to push my body into gattopardo-shape, but it didn’t take. Too exhausted for chimaera, as well. Frig. Out of options.
    ‘You know what you have to do,’ said the hallucination Ashiol, back to torment my last few moments.
    I laughed into his scarred face. ‘The real Ash wouldn’t be pleading with me to “do the right thing”. He’d know better than to frigging ask.’
    ‘You’re right,’ said the hallucination. ‘I’m not him.’ His dark, broad-shouldered figure shaped into a narrower bodywith sleek muscles, pale complexion and bright red hair. ‘I’m you.’
    ‘Is that supposed to impress me?’ I sneered. Now I was torturing myself—there was a certain poetry in that.
    ‘You’re the Power and Majesty,’ my other self said to me. ‘Act like it. If the rift takes you, your animor and Ash’s are both gone for good. He’s the last King and you’ve crippled him. If you take his power with you, there will be no one left to lead the Creature Court. The whole fucking city will go up in smoke. Another forgotten relic, just like Tierce. Will you let that happen?’
    I grinned. ‘Apparently you don’t know me very well, friend.’
    My body slipped a little further into the rift.
    ‘We’re losing him,’ said Poet.
    ‘Blast his bloody head off and drink him dry,’ said good old Priest. ‘He’d do the same to you in a second.’
    It was nearly dawn. The sky was lightening. If I could just hold on for another few