My brow furrows. “What exactly is in the vault?”
“No idea. Probably gold and gems. Why do you ask? You don’t strike me as the jewelry type. I had to practically force you to choose something from Jacques.”
“You know exactly why I’m curious.” There are easier ways to get funding for the rebellion. There must be something of greater value inside. Or at least they must think there is. I wonder if it’s something that might help kill the emperor.
“That kind of prying is dangerous,” he warns.
“The library is upstairs, you say?” I smile sweetly, taking his warning to heart. I can’t keep making stupid mistakes like that. Brevan reads me far too easily. There has to be a way to spend some time around here without him at my heels.
“Yes.”
He leads us toward the library, but along the way, we pass an open chamber that catches my eye. Candles burn at an altar in the back of the space. A large mural, spanning several panels, spans all the walls. Each panel shows a different scene, telling a story.
“This was the empress’s private temple,” he says. “The servants still light the candles for her every day, and they leave offerings on feast days.”
“Can I go inside?” I ask.
“Go ahead.”
I step into the darkened room, and the temperature drops. Despite the candles and lack of windows, it’s much cooler in here. I look at the paintings, recognizing some of the scenes from the stories told on feast days when I was a child.
My parents would host a gathering, and friends and neighbors would come to cook and eat. Sometimes there would be gifts of sweets or wooden toys. The elders would share stories of the gods and heroes, and we’d listen with rapt attention. The best was when they’d use puppets behind a screen and act the stories out with shadows.
When we moved to the city, we stopped celebrating feasts. The people who live in Aurorium have abandoned the gods. Or the gods abandoned them. There were no more feasts, no more stories.
But these vibrant paintings are the stories of my childhood come to life. I move down the wall slowly, taking in the tales of heroes slaying beasts and receiving boons from the gods. Of thegods working together to defeat the monsters they sent to the realm beyond the veil. Of Apophis, the god of chaos, winding around the world with his serpent body in his attempt to destroy everything. And Amate, the goddess of the sun, leading the charge against him to send him to the underworld.
When I reach the center panel on the wall behind the altar, I hesitate. It shows a man and a woman wearing gold crowns, standing back-to-back with their hands clasped. Both of them have winding black gift marks that swirl around their wrists, up their forearms, then vanish under the sleeves of their tunics.
They’re dressed in white, and their dark hair is loose and billowing, as if they’re standing in the middle of a storm. Darkness and light swirl around them like shadows meeting sunlight.
It’s stunning but also sends a chill straight to my bones. There’s something so dangerous about the pair. Something familiar. I grasp at the memory, urging the tale to return to my mind.
As the story takes shape, I recall the prophecy about the return of the gods and their full magic to our world. Many people believe it would bring the return of magic to all mortals, while others say it is just for those deemed worthy by the emperor.
We all grew up knowing the prophecy, but it is dismissed as fiction. It is too dangerous to believe a tale that could be interpreted as promising magic to commoners.
The air around me shifts, and I know Brevan is standing next to me. “Is this the prophecy of light?”
“You know the story?” He seems surprised.
“Not well. I wasn’t always the best student,” I lie, hoping that a princess would have had tutors and classes.
“It was the empress’s favorite story. Some hoped she’d be the one to fulfill it since she received a god’s gift when she visited the temple, but it could never have been her.”
“Isn’t it shadows and light? A pair that finds balance?” I ask.
“Yes. That’s how I’ve heard it.” He’s suddenly very interested in adjusting the leather bracers at his wrist. “But the emperor doesn’t have shadow magic.”
My brow furrows, and I take a step closer. The shadows that wrap around the pair originate at his feet while the light starts at hers. “Is that why the emperor insists on shadows for all his legionnaires? To try to find the person who might fulfill this prophecy?”
“I’m not sure,” he says.
“Do you have shadow magic?” I ask before I can stop myself.
“No.”
“But the prince does.” I don’t like the places my mind takes me as I put the pieces together.
