I felt my brother’s eyes shifting my direction. Restlessness overcame me. I made a few of my own laps around the room before finally settling onto the bed.
“I don’t know if it’s the innate bond the Vaelora share, or something that happened during our battle…some spell residue, or something else…but I hear them more and more here lately.And it’s always loudest at night, whenever I close my eyes to try and sleep.” I swirled the glass, studying the few drops of red still in it. “The alcohol dulls my mind in a way that none of Aveline’s sleep remedies have managed to do. It…it protects me.”
Bastian started to reply only to fall silent. Letting out a soft sigh, he came to sit beside me on the bed, sinking heavily onto the edge of the mattress. He leaned forward, elbows resting on his knees. It was a long moment before he spoke.
“I wish I knew how to make all of it stop,” he said.
Do I want it to stop?
The question startled me as it slid quietly into my mind.
It was torture, hearing Lorien’s voice. And hearing Aleksander’s—but not being able to answer him—wasn’t much better.
But never hearing Aleksander’s voice again would likely have destroyed me completely.
I never found the courage to say any of this out loud, but my brother was studying me as though he understood, all the same.
I stared at my hands in my lap. He put an arm around my shoulders, pulling me closer. His strength was comforting, as was his scent—like ink and old books, and something woodsy that reminded me of the little cedar chest I used to store treasures in as a child.
Something in his embrace undid me, bringing the words I’d been fighting all evening to the surface.
“I miss him,” I choked out.
Bastian tightened his hold just slightly, grounding me with a simple, steady pressure. “I know,” he said. “And I wish I knew how to make that hurt stop, too.”
FIVE
Nova
Iwoke up slightly hungover, as Bastian had predicted, but my pounding head remained mercifully free of voices.
Someone had left a glass of water and a vial of pain-relieving elixir on my bedside table. I gulped both down and dressed just as quickly, refusing to linger long enough to let any stray voices find their way in—or to let myself think too hard about what I had to do today.
A short time later, I was at the stables, greeting Bastian and King Marius. Both were busy readying their scourge stallions—beasts specifically bred to withstand the harsh conditions of Noctaris and its shadows. The stallions were like living embodiments of the darkness itself, the way their bodies rippled with power, occasionally sending twists of vaporous black energy into the air. Their eyes were like flames, burning unnervingly bright even in the relatively strong morning light.
Phantom had shifted into the shape of one of these imposing horses. But he still sat much like a dog, cocking his head as he watched me approach.
(You’re late),he informed me.
“Then let’s make up for lost time, shall we?” I said with a yawn, motioning for him to kneel so I could climb onto his back.
We rode for hours.
The distance our revitalized zone stretched across wasn’t particularly wide, but there were lots of stops to make along the way to its edges—people to speak with, re-growth to observe, detailed notes to take. Bastian spoke calmly and deliberately with the stewards we’d assigned to each area, doling out measured encouragement and quiet, stoic direction in equal amounts.
King Marius observed from a distance, never dismounting, never speaking unless spoken to. I got the sense he was taking his own kind of notes—a judge witnessing evidence.
I had little hope that his ruling in this trial would be fair.
Finally, we reached the westernmost edge of our revived area. Here, the strained limits of the Aetherstone’s life-giving magic quickly became apparent. There were patches of green, stunted and thin, and our people had started to rebuild simple irrigation lines and rough shelters, but the soil was still dry and crumbled between our fingers, and the air had a tightness to it—a tension that seemed to increase with every breath we took.
Beyond the edge, I could see the barren wasteland that made up much of Noctaris. I could see the ghosts within it, could hear their low, keening murmurs and smell the dust they stirred up as they drifted across the landscape. They watched from a safe distance, occasionally glancing into our sanctuary with dead eyes, and—I assumed—with no real awareness or interest in what they saw.
None of them tried to pass the threshold into the revived territory.
They didn’t even come close to it.
We’d had more success gathering some of the wraiths from the sanctuary cities and bringing them into these healing zones—as many as we dared, while making certain not to exhaust the resources barely sustaining the fragile rebirth of Noctaris. Even that had proven a surprisingly delicate process, getting them to step into the light after they’d spent so long in the dark.
