TWENTY-EIGHT
Nova
While Captain Voss oversaw the cleanup and disposal of the dead Order members, the rest of us went our separate ways.
Zayn went to find Aleks. Thalia and Bastian went to make sure the guard rotations were properly set, and that every entrance to the palace grounds was being monitored. Eamon didn’t say where he was going, but judging by the furrow of his brow and the telltale way he was whispering, debating with himself, I guessed he was off to bury himself in the library archives. Again.
Phantom and I made our way toward my room, but I eventually lost him, too; we ran into Eamon’s little sister, Brynn, and she lured him back outside with a promise of fresh treats from the kitchens and a game of fetch. For all his steadfast determination to protect me and remain vigilant, it was alwaysamusing to see how quickly he transformed back into a typical dog when food and play were involved.
And it was just as well; I wanted to be alone with my thoughts. Between the soul shard in my pocket and the images I’d seen in the stable, I had no shortage of things I needed to process without any distractions.
I reached my room and promptly locked the door behind me, wasting no time taking out the shard and returning all my focus to it. My frustration from earlier immediately tried to resurface, but I tamped it down.
You could ask anything of the dead. Anything at all, and then force them back to life so that they can give it to you…
If I could do that, then it should have been easy to see what I needed from this mere fragment of a person, right?
I could do this. I simply needed to focus on what I truly needed to ask, maybe; this was a piece of Lorien’s very soul—the possible things it could show me were endless, and the things I wanted to know were equally vast.
After a bit of thought, one question rose above all the rest while I tapped my fingertips against the shard’s smooth surface.
“Show me what you know of the Order, why don’t you?”
The crystal remained cold and unresponsive.
Then another idea occurred to me.
I grabbed Grimnor from the chair I’d rested it against, unsheathing it and studying it for a long moment. As it often had these past weeks, the blade pulsed with a faint, ghostly light. Proof that Lorien was still in there, biding his time. Waiting on me to finish putting him back together, as agreed.
Not for the first time, I found myself wondering about what he would truly do once I managed to uphold my end of the bargain. And would the re-emergence of the Order change his plans, whatever they were? Would it make him more cooperative?
Did we have a common enemy in them, as I’d mentioned to Zayn earlier?
“I know you could help me if you wanted to. You can strengthen my abilities. You did it when we met in the Palace of Midna.” I spoke the words over the blade, letting my shadows curl around the steel and tangle with the ghostly light of Lorien. Watching the powers weave together made my stomach twist and turn—the same nauseous feeling I always got whenever I had to acknowledge the connection the two of us shared.
But I was determined to get answers, no matter the cost. So I let my shadows continue to wrap around Grimnor, to coax a response from the stubborn demon trapped within. I narrowed my eyes on the blade, pouring more of my will into the connection.
“Come on, you insufferable bastard—help me.”
His light flickered, then pulsed brighter, as if in answer. Unmistakable power and awareness vibrated through the sword.
I wasted no time.
I stabbed Grimnor into the shard, my balance teetering slightly as the point sank through the hard crystal as easily as piercing water.
The light of Lorien surged violently along the blade, racing toward its point. The shard reacted in kind, its surface fracturing with veins of brilliant luminescence. A synthesis of power—two pieces of the same fractured whole coming together, enveloping me in blinding brightness as they did.
I held tight to Grimnor’s handle, letting its blade channel and reinforce the magic flowing between me and the fragment, until we were both swallowed up in the familiar-by-now fog that came before a deeper, more immersive vision.
The fog rolled away, momentarily taking my breath with it. I didn’t recognize the place I stepped into, this time, but wherever it was…
I washere.
I’d finally done it.
I was in a small house, standing at the head of a narrow corridor. Bits of fog still hovered along the edges of my vision, but there was less of it at the end of the hall, as if my magic was trying to guide me to that clearer spot. I followed its suggestion and found myself standing before a closed door. I passed through it like a specter and took in the scene unfolding inside.
Lorien leaned in a corner of a small, warmly-lit study. A book was propped open in his hands, but his stare was glazed over, likely not processing a single word on the page. He looked haggard, shadows under his eyes, his clothes rumpled as if he’d barely slept. He soon gave up on the book, snapping it shut and instead pacing the length of the room, occasionally glancing toward the door.
