As soon as we reached the corridor, I began to sing as quietly as I could, praying in my head to Wesha that they wouldn’t recognizethe melody. I’d only get one chance for this trick; by the end of the rebellion, Death’s people had started to put wax in their ears or bang pots and pans to drown my song out.
It seemed that these Fallen had never heard the story of how Iona Night-Singer destroyed Death’s temples, because they didn’t make any attempt to shut me up. It took many more verses than it would have for a mortal—they dragged me all the way into a room decorated like the inside of one of Death’s temples. These were all the same: murals of fire on the walls, too many braziers, winged golden ornaments at the corners of the bloodstained altar. Before we reached the altar though, I got the entire prayer for sleep out, and the Fallen collapsed in unison to the floor as Wesha shut down their nervous systems.
I wheezed in relief that it had worked, nearly falling along with them, but they wouldn’t be out long. I still had one stone knife on my belt, but I wasn’t sure where the heart was located on a creature whose mother was some kind of adulterous garden lizard, and I wasn’t strong enough to decapitate them. I couldn’t risk waking either of them up with a nonlethal stab wound. I ran instead, praying my foot wouldn’t betray me again.
The corridor led to stairs, and the stairs led outside. Although it had been midwinter when I took the boat to the Gates, I emerged into a night rich with the scent of summer and snatches of distant song.
In front of me was a garden, lit up as though for a royal party, with lanterns on poles and garlands of flowers strung between them. Faraway music and the conversation of dozens of people drifted across the manicured lawn, but it was the night sky that stopped me at the top of the stairs.
There was moonlight, but no Moon. The world was lit all around the horizon by a silver glow, but the full Moon to light the night so brightly did not hang in the sky. The stars were differenttoo—bigger, brighter, and somehow individual,as though, if my eyesight were slightly better, I might pick out a form and shape behind each light.
This couldn’t be the Underworld. This wasn’t the mortal world either, not with that sky.
The Summerlands.
I was beyond the Gates of Dawn. In the land of the gods, forbidden to anyone except immortals and their chosen priests—a group that I still did not belong to, no matter what the Fallen thought. Wesha had given the other gods entirely new reasons to want to kill me when she sent me to the Summerlands.
There was a howl of sheer rage from the storerooms below as one of the Fallen woke up. I ducked into the shadows along the wall, running along the side of the building I’d escaped from. I had to get away from the Fallen and the immortals both, somehow escape back to the Gates and explain to my goddess that, no, there must have been some miscommunication, what I actually wanted was to take one dead mortal and go home, no trip to the Summerlands required.
The stone wall ended at the elaborate brass gates to an empty garden. All around me loomed the shapes of ornate villas. Thinking that the Fallen might hesitate to follow me into the residence of some immortal, I sprinted away from the party toward the nearest building, a few hundred yards away. It was a broad, low-slung structure of pale pink marble blocks and flower-capped columns supporting a green slate roof. The imposing front door, decorated with white bursts of datura blossoms and golden stars, was providentially unlocked, so I slipped inside and shut it behind me.
With a closed door at my back, I stopped to catch my breath and rub the tremors out of my foot, which throbbed from the force of my flight. This villa was palatial, its walls covered in bright murals depicting the deeds of Genna and the other Stoneborn, andevery floor a gaudy mosaic or padded with silk carpets. A king’s ransom in oil lamps turned the halls to midday. Ordinarily, I would have stopped to gape and touch and scoff at the wealth that had been carelessly poured into such luxury, but I took a deep breath and set off in a random direction, panic urging me faster. I’d find a place to hide for a few hours and find my bearings.
Each time I heard voices, I turned a corner or cut through darkened interior rooms. I quickly lost track of which way I’d come in, trying only to keep out of sight.
Eventually, my luck ran out. I spun through a doorway into a small interior courtyard with a decorative fountain and flowering almond trees reaching to the night sky above. There was only one other door, on the opposite wall. As I approached, it opened to emit a waft of humid, wine-scented air and male laughter. Before I could fully turn around and retreat, two men staggered into me, taking all three of us to the ground. We tumbled onto the mossy flagstones like empty bottles.
I tried to scoot away as soon as I landed, but my legs were trapped under a young man who was clearly an immortal—his pink skin gleamed like the inside of a clamshell, and the wet hair that clung to his forehead was the color of seaweed. This godling had landed on his knees, and he made a vaguely disappointed grimace before flopping forward to vomit a bellyful of wine on the lawn. I barely escaped the splash in my scramble to get away, but this backed me right into the drunken god’s companion, who’d rolled free on his stomach.
“That was my best wine,” this one scolded his heaving friend, but his richly amused voice locked the air in my chest. I stopped trying to get away, slowly turning my head as though if I looked too quickly, this reality would vanish.
The second man propped himself on an elbow and blinked brilliant, familiar green eyes at me.
“Oh. Are you lost, darling?” Taran asked.
7
Taran wore thegaudiest golden cloak I’d ever seen, draped over a floral-patterned silk tunic and equally lurid trousers, but I knew every breath of him. Still kneeling, I lurched to press my hand over his heart, right where his body had been most torn by Death’s last attack, but there wasn’t even the texture of a scar beneath the fabric. I couldn’t see through his shape, and his skin didn’t glow with foxfire. He was as solid as the last time I’d touched him.
I’d often thought the Allmother had her most inspired moment when she made him. His sharp cheekbones and the straight blade of his nose might have made his face ascetic if they weren’t softened by a full mouth and thick, dark hair that brushed his jaw. His square chin and determined jaw might have suggested arrogance, but few people noticed when disarmed by the dimples in his smile and the dark eyelashes that framed his bright eyes. All of him was as perfect as the day I met him, and all of him was whole.
“Taran?” I whispered his name, fingertips burning from the heat of his body. The chains that had bound my chest since he died loosened, allowing a single gasp of joy to fill my lungs as my hands curled into his tunic. “You’re alive?”
After a blink of surprise, his smile widened to match mine—
Until his gaze dipped to the knife buckled over my white dress. At once the open, friendly expression on his face vanished, replaced by three heartbeats of wariness. He shot his eyes at the drunken godling, and I watched the playful mask drop back onto his features before the other man noticed the change.
“What have you got there?” the godling said, wiping his mouth on his shoulder and staggering to his feet.
Taran sat up just as slowly, offering me his palm to pull us both up. I clutched his hand. Warm. Alive. I didn’t understand.
“A little lost priestess,” Taran said, eyes roaming over my clothing again.
“Yes, but whose? I don’t recognize—oh! Is she a maiden-priest?” The immortal’s bloodshot gray eyes widened. There was a disorienting, swirling movement to his irises that made my gut shrink. “I didn’t think there were any left.”
“Why don’t you go back to the party?” Taran asked his companion in a disinterested tone, though his gaze didn’t leave me. “I’ll handle this.”
Both his words and tone stiffened my shoulders.Handle?There was intensity in his face, but as he examined me, I realized there was not a shred of recognition in it. My blood froze into shards.
