Baldair stood by a vault in the far corner. He held a torch in his hand and peered through the bars into the inky blackness.
“It’s safe,” he murmured. “No one has come for it.”
Vi walked over, standing behind him, just far enough away that he wouldn’t feel her breath on his shoulder. She followed the prince’s gaze to the bottom left corner. The cask there looked like any of the others. Vi wouldn’t have thought anything was different about it if not for the prince’s sole focus on one, single barrel.
“And no one will use it,” Baldair said firmly, walking away. The light of his torch retreated with him, enveloping her in darkness. Vi watched as that mote of flame danced all the way up along the walkways and out the entry high above.
“You’re the wisest of them all,” she whispered.
Baldair likely didn’t even understand what the crown truly was. But he did understand that some powers were not meant for mortal hands. She pulled the iron key from her pocket and slotted it into the lock on the vault door.
It fit perfectly.
Vi extended hersallvasglyph to envelop the whole vault as she unlocked the door. Iron on iron squealed loudly as she swung open the bars. But Baldair was none the wiser, if he was even still close enough to hear at all.
She knocked on the barrels. Sure enough, the one in the lower corner sounded hollow. With a grunt and brute force, she pulled out the barrel. It was lighter than a wine cask should be and there was no sloshing liquid within. The top was nailed on clumsily, as if it had been removed once by an unskilled hand.
“Juth calt.” Glyphs flared around the nails, splintering the wood. Pale blue light washed over her face as Vi peered down into the barrel. Her pulse quickened; her breath hitched. She reached forward without hesitation, like reaching for a lover, a child, a part of herself that had been missing for eons.
Her fingers closed around the crown. The light brightened in intensity until the world went white.
She stood in a room beyond time. It was blindingly bright, yet she could see perfectly. Heat washed over her, but she was quickly cooled by unseen breezes.
A window was cut from the brightness. Vi looked through it, out onto the greatest map she’d ever seen. Hills and valleys rolled into plains and mountains. All kinds of people occupied these lands, making them their own. Cultivating them with the magic she’d bestowed on them.
She had bestowed magic?
Someone moved her head for her. The world around her changed as Vi’s eyes looked in a different direction.
No, she wasn’t looking through her own eyes. Because Vi saw herself enveloped in a bed of light opposite the body she occupied, staring back at her. Vi saw her body was hollow and fading. She had not been made for this world, and now she had no place in it.
This was the end.
Or, perhaps not.
“Time for time,” a voice said, speaking with the force of every man, woman, and child on the earth below them.
“Time for time.” The words echoed, but Vi didn’t know who spoke them. Was it her? Or was it the body she was in?
She was suddenly falling. The vision slipped away as Vi reemerged into her physical form, where it lay on the cold floor of the Solaris wine cellar. She blinked several times, staring into the dim light her body was emitting.
Just like with the scythe, Yargen’s essence had sought her out and she was helpless to try and refuse it. The magic seeped into her flesh, rejoining its other severed pieces and leaving only shards of obsidian behind. One by one, she would collect the last remnants of the goddess’s power within her.
She would add up the pieces of Yargen until what the world had known as Vi was nothing more than that hollow, fading ghost.
Time for time.
“I know what I must do,” she whispered to the living goddess within her. Vi would give her time on this earth for Yargen. The goddess demanded a body—in particular, the one Vi was merely borrowing.
She knew her true purpose now. Yargen had shown it to her. To fulfill it, she first had to peel herself off the floor. The next step was crushing the obsidian shards to dust under her boot. Then, she carefully put the barrel back where it was. Vi didn’t suspect Baldair would return so soon after ensuring the crown was safe, but just in case he did, she didn’t want him to be suspicious.
After that, it was merely a matter of planting the fake crown for Victor. “It’s all going according to plan,” Vi murmured. She knew Yargen could hear her. The goddess was watching and waiting in that ethereal prison for the moment she could be whole and present in the mortal realm once more. As Vi’s presence faded in the world, Yargen’s brightened. “We’ll switch places, and you’ll save this world.”
Vi ascended the stairs and out of the wine cellar. As she walked, she fiddled with the watch around her neck. It had suddenly become heavy, constricting.
It felt more like a noose than a necklace.
Chapter Twenty-Six
