You use me to hide all the things you don’t want to look at.
But I wasn’t looking away now. And the path behind me churned with red masks and savage saints. A city in the grip of fanaticism, beliefs driven home with flaming swords and violence. And above it all loomed a weak man with the gift of coercion, a man who would cheat to win a throne he’d never earned.
Could I use Sunder to hide all those things? And if I did, would we ever forgive each other for it?
“I hated growing up in the Dusklands,” I said. “The darkness was like death—creeping and inexorable. If you tried not to think about it, maybe you wouldn’t notice it sneaking up on you. But I didn’t want to ignore it. I wanted to escape it. And when I got to Coeur d’Or I tried to leave those shadows behind. I tried to leave that girl who grew up there—Sylvie—behind.”
I made a memory of that discontent. “So I became Mirage. But she was just as obsessed with possessing the light as Sylvie was with escaping the dark. And I have to wonder if I can still become someone else—someone who lives in both places, who embraces both radiance and shadow in kind.”
His eyes reflected sun shards and night. “Demoiselle, what are you saying?”
“I do love you,” I whispered. “But I am not yet whole. And I cannot answer your question until I am.”
He sighed. His hands fanned across my face and swept back my loose hair.
“How can it be,” he whispered, “that it is in the darkness your light shines the brightest?”
I smiled to hide my tears. “I am too acquainted with the dusk to be afraid of the night.”
We swayed together in that space between night and day, my hands on his shoulders, his hands at my waist. Soft words and scorching kisses fell between us like stars, and I caught them against the mirror of my mind and crushed them so tightly they became diamonds. So long as they shone, I thought, this moment would last forever.
The somnolent bell for second Nocturne gonged, but still I couldn’t find sleep.
Standing at the window, a length of fur wrapped around my shoulders, with snow-heavy clouds and an ice-draped gorge in the distance, I could almost imagine the sun had set, leaving behind an inky sky scattered with diamonds. How strange it must have been, long ago, to split one’s day between such wildly different extremes—sun and moon, day and night.
I took the chunk of raw diamond Sunder had given me out of the pocket of my nightgown. I ran my thumb over its contours, frowning. Something about the mineral troubled me, but I wasn’t sure exactly what. It felt cold against my fingertips. I knew it had been mined from the depths of Belsyre’s mountains, but there was something else too—a numb shock of desensitization that left my hand stinging. It almost felt like touching Sunder.
Sunder.
I polished the diamond of memory once more:I will always be the man—or monster—who falls from the sky at the sight of you.
Part of me wanted what he offered me. But did I want it because I never thought to dream it? Did I want it because I never thought I could have it? What if the foundation of our love was simply that it could never be complete? Forever longing, forever aching, never touching. What would happen if we got what we wanted? Would we find that our common ground had only ever been hunger?
I thought suddenly of Sunder’s myth, about the wolf who ate the moon. Its cadence had wormed its way between my ribs, a heart beating beside my own. Her insatiable hunger. Her diamond pups. The sun watching her forever, in punishment for eating the soul of the world.
The soul of the world.
Thesoul.
My heart stopped. The floor tilted. I tightened my grip on my composure.
It was a coincidence. Plenty of stories had the wordsoulin them. But I sat hard on the window seat. My thoughts spun back to when Dowser first told me the story of the Relics from that old storybook—the story of Meridian’s four children. How had it gone? The dristic sword, to strong Aliette. The kembric crown, to clever Bastien. The ambric Sun, to passionate Raphaël. And—
I struggled to remember the exact words. Dowser had been confused by the translation, he’d said—
Meridian gave hissoulto his ambitious daughter Liliane, who dreamed always of the stars.
I remembered laying my hand against a circle cut into a stone dais and wondering what might fit there. I remembered crystalline warriors marching in still, silent rows, lighting the cavern with a twilight glow. And I remembered turning my face away from an illusory setting sun in order to chase a cool, quiet moon.
A moon that felt like a bit of my soul mirrored before me.
I grabbed the raw diamond out of my pocket and clutched it tight. Scion, I knew it was a stretch, but what if the fourth Relic—the Soul Relic, the lost Relic—was theMoonRelic? And what if—like that she-wolf’s shameful pups—it was made out ofmoon-stuff?
What if it was made out of diamond?
Excitement pulsed hot in my veins, followed swiftly by cool certainty. I stood.
My guess about the Soul Relic might be wrong. It didn’t matter—the Relic was still lost. Knowing what it was got me no closer to finding it. What did matter was this:
