I almost laughed. I was neither sun nor moon. And I was no one’s solace.
Except, perhaps, my own.
What had dragged me out of the dusk toward the light? My legacy. What had gleamed bright as sunlight when I’d doubted my own power? My legacy. And what had driven me to overthrow the darkness lurking in the heart of the empire? My legacy.
I clenched my eyes shut, forcing my awareness inward to the well of colors churning always inside me. Imagining sunlight into the dusk was like trying to imagine hope into despair. I did it anyway.
Violet clouds draped over a livid sun.
Dusk-lit swords and sunlit armor.
Blood on mirror glass.
The bright shining heart of an ambric throne.
I screamed, and thrust my power outward. Blades of brilliance sheared away the black heart of Dominion and cut open the gemstone luster of daylight. The darkness fled, leaving me kneeling on a stone floor in an echoing passageway wreathed in shadow and draped in cobwebs. A damp tomb-chill ate into my flesh.
I stood, willing my heartbeat to slow and my knees to stop trembling. Radiance blurred along the corridor, illuminating the edges of things and casting others in darkness. Looming pillars—or were they petrified trees? Gargoyles whose faces changed as I neared—teeth elongating and eyes widening. Windows—a hundred windows of stained glass and quartz, staring at nothing and echoing my pale looming face. And at the end of the corridor, a door, its edges rounded and its face painted with an all-too-familiar image.
The glowing ambric face of the sun.
Even faded with time and covered in a layer of dust, the door shone magnificent. Crushed ambric was layered over tarnished kembric—a gilt-bright lamina sharpened upon lathes of glittering tesserae. The sun’s corona—echoing the symbol at my breast—struck sparks in the dim and splashed me with warmth.
But there was no knob.
I pushed on the door. A pulse of energy jolted me to the elbow. I snatched my hand away, then put it back. Nothing happened. The door stayed resolutely shut.
Damn.
I stepped back from the door. Like I had in the alcove, I ran my eyes and hands over every inch of it, then beyond to the wall it sat in, looking for symbols or indentations or—
My fingers brushed against grooves scored into the wall at waist height. I leaned in, pushing my illusory luster closer to another sunburst. I unlooped my Relic and pushed it against the symbol, but the grooves were far too large. They were more the size of—
Hands.
I put my necklace back on and lifted my palms, joining my wrists and splaying my hands so my middle fingers pointed north and south. I pressed them into the wall.
The door sighed open. Twin pulses of excitement and fear scalded my veins. Beyond, I saw a glimmer of radiance, like sheer sunlight on a perfect city. I braced myself to go through, and lifted my hands from the wall.
The door snapped shut.
I frowned, and repeated my actions. I splayed my palms against the wall—the door opened. I lifted them away—the door closed. Frustration bloomed inside me, fierce and sudden. How was I supposed to go through the door if I had to stand here to hold it open?
I gritted my teeth, slapped the recalcitrant door, and retreated. The moment I gave up, exhaustion swept over me like a heavy blanket. The luminous colors painting the hallway dipped and darkened, and I quickened my steps.
I’d found something miraculous. Something spectacular. Something everyone else had forgotten about.
No—I hadn’tfoundit. I gripped my ambric Relic, intuition breathing against my neck. I’d beenledto it.
Severine’s diary had called this place the Oubliettes, which meant a place of forgetting. But as I fit my pendant into the floor and rose back up into Coeur d’Or’s dungeons, I thought perhaps it might be a place of finding. I just didn’t know whether that would be a Relic, an Amber Throne, or the road map to the world I’d dreamed of, so long ago in the dusk.
If I hadn’t awakened to dust-black feet, smears of ancient dirt on my nightgown, and a ragged memory of sneaking invisible into Belsyre Wing, I would have thought the Oubliettes were just a dream. I clutched my ambric pendant and fought to separate the threads of unease and anticipation tangling within me. Part of me wanted to pretend I’d never even heard of the Oubliettes. Another part of me wanted to race back to the dungeons and slide into that impossible Midnight world once more.
Oleander took the decision out of my hands by pushing into my room without knocking, carrying an armful of clothing. She seemed surprised to see me in my bed.
“What are you doing here?”
“Sleeping is the most generally accepted activity,” I snapped.
