Darkness gathers.
The hoarse voice sounded again, and the flickering form flinched as if struck.
And death with it.
“Stop him,” the being said, its voice soft and crackling like the flames engulfing it.
“Stop who?”
“Save her.”
Aloisia did not have the chance to ask anything further before it vanished. Shadows crashed down upon them in the wake of its light, so thick she could barely see her hand before her face. She reached out, unseeing, in the dark, and found Tristan’s shoulder where he still knelt beside her.
“Can we get out of here?” Tristan asked, enclosing his fingers around hers.
She was in too much shock to answer, unable to arrange her thoughts enough to do so. He took her silence as agreement and guided them out the alley, trailing the wall to find their way back.
Once beyond the alley, colour returned to the world beneath the golden pools cast by the streetlamps. Aloisia blinked against the harsh light, far brighter after the plunging darkness within the lane.
“What did we see?” she wondered aloud.
“Kaja must have spiked us, or something.”
She frowned at him. “And we just happened to have the same hallucination?”
“Not impossible. Whatever that was being real is impossible.”
“You’d so easily cast aside what your own eyes have seen? What your ears heard?” The voice haunted her, the deep rasping tone clawing through her mind as if to find a crevice in which to hide, to wait. She shuddered as if to cast off the notion.
“After how much alcohol I’ve had this evening, yes.”
“What did it want?”
“To scare the living daylights out of us, most likely. And I think it rather succeeded.” Tristan linked an arm with hers, pulling her back down the street. “Come on. I need to get back before lights out.”
She stumbled alongside him, trying to process what had happened. The being’s warning echoed in her mind. Who needed stopping? And, more worryingly, who needed saving?
FOUR
AloisiaandTristanfollowedtheroadtowardstheTemple.AstheynearedthelanewhereFynnandBrighdelivedbesidetheLowerTempleGardens,thebellstolledmidnight.
“Rats,” Tristan said. “I’m late.”
“If you can’t be late on your Name Day, when can you?”
Arm in arm, they jogged, insofar as they could, the last few strides to the little winding path leading up to Temple Green.
“It has been a lovely evening, my dear.” Tristan planted a kiss on her cheek. “But I must away. The high priest is going to kick me.”
Aloisia giggled. “Just sneak in. You’ll be fine. I’m sure he won’t care, given the day it is.”
“Let us hope so.” He cradled her cheek. “Try not to dwell on that thing, whatever it was. I know how your mind works. You’ll fixate on it.”
She puffed out a sigh. How could she not? Those voices, the pressing darkness, the blue flames. “I’ll try,” she said, the falseness of her words bitter on her tongue.
“Good.” Tristan withdrew, trudging up the incline.
Aloisia glanced over her shoulder to the houses nestled in the shadow of the spires. “Fynn’s lights are still on,” she noted absently. “I would have thought they’d be asleep by now.”
