“Aleks is keeping his distance, isn’t he?” Thalia asked. “And here I thought the two of you were inseparable.”
I said nothing, but I couldn’t help replaying the strange moment we’d shared in the woods, just before I’d heard the towers of Rose Point crumbling down. The anger in his voice. The fear in his eyes.
Thalia’s expression darkened. I suspected she was biting back a disparaging comment—or three—about Aleks. I braced myself, but she only shrugged and begrudgingly said, “I suppose this is hard on him, too. Whatever role he played in summoning the Vaeloran magic that destroyed this place, it can’t be easy to truly see that destruction. To see what it’s done to you.”
I slipped my hand into my coat pocket, feeling for the shard of Lorien’s soul. It hummed against my skin as my palm pressed against it. “I don’t think it’s merely bad memories bothering him,” I told Thalia.
She tilted her head toward me.
“I think it’s…this.” I held up the shard. “He couldn’t stand to be near it earlier, or to even look at it.”
She considered it for a moment, her fingers tapping restlessly along her staff. “Can’t we just destroy it?”
I clenched it back into my fist. “That wasn’t the deal I agreed to.”
She let out ahmphbut didn’t argue. We both knew there were consequences to breaking deals with demons—and we could only guess at what they might be.
I slid the shard back into my pocket.
With a sigh, Thalia gripped the edge of the bench, leaning back and lifting her gaze to the sky. “One down, two to go,” she muttered.
We tookrefuge several miles away, in the home of someone I recognized: Alistair Finch. This was the same man who had brought me to the entrance of the Nocturnus Road all those months ago. I’d seen him several times before that, too—mostly while I was halfheartedly eavesdropping on clandestine meetings he’d had with Orin. Meetings I should have been listening more closely to, I guess; yet again, I found myself feeling like a fool for overlooking so many clues about the grander picture and greater destiny I was apparently meant for.
Finch was aware of who I was.WhatI was. And there were several other figures like him who had been secretly helping Orin protect me throughout the years—an entire network of connections, a web far more intricate than I could have ever imagined.
It made my head hurt just thinking about it all. So I didn’t focus on it for long; instead, I took the shard we’d obtained in the Hollow Grove and put some distance between myself and the others. The flickering images I’d seen when I first picked it up had been haunting me all day.
I needed to see more.
Similar to Orin’s house, the one we were hiding in backed up to a narrow creek that cut through dense woods. I settled down on a secluded stretch of that creek’s bank and took out the crystalline shard. Glancing around one final time to make sure I was alone, I wrapped it in my shadows and let my magic sink deeply into it.
I opened my eyes.
My heart lurched. My surroundings swirled. A vision washed over me just like it had during my encounter with the sentier—much more immersive than my usual fleeting glimpses of the past. Maybe because of our Vaeloran connection, or because it dealt with my magical predecessor again…I didn’t know.
I only knew I wasn’t sitting beside the creek any longer.
Instead, I stood in the shadow of a grand palace. Moonlight gleamed off white marble columns and terraced gardens blooming with bright flowers. It was so perfect and intact that, at first, I didn’t realize where I was. Then I noticed the banners fluttering from the highest towers. Black and white banners featuring three stars along the bottom, curved beneath three swords—one standing straight in the middle with two others crossed over it.
This was the Palace of Midna.
The sound of boots striking the stone path made me jump.
“Only a memory,” I reminded myself in a whisper.
But it all felt so immediate, so…real. Real enough that I had no problem locating the source of the noise; a group of palace guards moved through the gardens, their armor glinting in themoonlight. They were calling out a name, splitting up to search different paths.
Lorien was walking among them—of course. This was part of his soul’s memory, after all.
He looked younger here than he had in my last vision. A boy, really; he couldn’t have been much older than fifteen, with softer features that hadn’t yet fully matured and eyes that were an arresting shade of deep brown rather than the reddish color I knew, and which still held something resembling innocence. He lagged behind the others, his gaze sweeping the gardens with poise and purpose.
Then he saw it, and so I did, too: a flash of a white dress racing behind a hedge.
Someone clearly trying to avoid being found.
The company of guards didn’t seem to notice anything, even as Lorien slowed his step, separating himself from the group.
I slowed to a stop as well, watching.
