Green, serpent-like vines wrapped around the columns, tangling over the steps. Aesira was careful where she placed her boot, trying her best not to disturb the life growing there. It was so precious, to see so much growing from the ground, when back home was so barren.
She and Stone tip-toed into the building, a single torch in Stone’s hand lighting their way. Inside, more vines swept across the walls, wrapping around the columns that held the ancient building up. Pebbles and loose rocks kicked under their feet, echoing through the vast room.
“Where did the birds go?” She clutched Stone’s arm.
“The birds?” He held the flame higher. “I haven’t seen any.”
“But you heard them? All day yesterday and even today. And now they’re just…silent?”
Something crunched under Aesira’s boot and the sound and feeling was so painfully familiar, flashes of the Strix in Dire blurred her vision, she was afraid to look down.
“It’s after sunset,” Stone said. “The birds are asleep.”
Aesira pointed toward the back of the building where another large arch opened up into a small room. “Let’s try this way.” Moonlight crept over the walls and onto the floor from a huge crack in the ceiling. More crunching under their boots and when Aesira braved a look she was relieved to see, it was a mix of broken glass and dead twigs.
No bones.
No discarded limbs.
The torch filled the small room with warm light but it was more of the same. Crumbling ruins. Leafy vines. Broken glass. But there, in the center, was a lone short column with a glass case on top and inside the case, sat a single, glowing gold flower.
Stone propped the torch against the wall and the two of them together circled the small, domed case. “What is it?” she asked. The flower glowed faintly, pulsing every now and then, reminding her of the Lunaris moths and their wings.
“I think it’sastra.” Stone knelt on the ground, putting his face as close to the glass case as he could without touching it.
Aesira’s brows pinched. “Astraisn’t gold. It’s purple.”
“How can you be sure?” Stone looked up at her from where he knelt.
She’d only seenastraonce, when she first was stationed in Vargah.
There was an incident with one of the water workers and Aesira was called in to manage the situation. He had been attempting to steal extra water for himself. He was so desperate, she remembered, he pleaded with her that he needed it for his family, to get through the next few days until Naming Day, but she had arrested him anyway. Threw him in jail and handed off the key like it was as normal as reading the morning parchment. The water reservoirs were kept in the same vicinity as theastrareservoirs, and because she was curious, she peeked.
Theastraflowers were similar to the one in the case, only the ones in Vargah shone purple, not gold. Which is why, she assumed, Vargah had chosen purple as their city colors centuries ago. To match the magical flower from Celestria.
“I saw it once in Vargah when I first arrived.” Skipping the details of how. How heartless she had been to that man who was only trying to save his children. “There’s a mural in the temple, it shows Celestria balancing the moon andastraas well. It’s purple.”
Stone shrugged. “Only one way to find out.” He moved to lift the case but Aesira slapped his hand.
“Don’t! What about the warning outside? Surely this isn’t sitting here just for us.”
Stone glanced around the vacant, decrepit room. “Who is it for then?”
The light of the glowing flower flickered, drawing both of their attention. “Someone put this here for a reason is all I’m saying,” she said. “It feels wrong to disturb it.”
“Fair enough,” Stone said, grabbing the torch. “Let’s keep walking then.”
As wrong as it felt to disturb the flower, it felt more wrong to leave it. She could admit that while the color was not the same as theastrashe saw in Vargah, the flower was unsettlingly similar. A taut line pulled at Aesira’s middle, drawing her back to the golden flower, but Stone trudged forward with the torch so she ignored the tightness in her stomach and followed him into the dark.
Twenty-Eight
Stone
Stone and Aesira’s boots crunched against more dead twigs and glass and bits of stone from the crumbling pillars. Green vines and plants grew through every tiny crevice, small slivers of light seeping in through the cracks in the walls. There was so much to see. So much to study. All of the plants and the flowers and ruins, Stone could stay perched here all day with his notebook.
But, with everything they’d seen, there was no sign of the king.
“We’ve been walking for almost thirty minutes,” Stone said, “which tells me this building stretches farther back than I anticipated. We should start heading back before Birdie and Bee begin to worry.”
