The hairs on the back of Francine’s neck went up. “The Weaver of Souls?”
“There were always two gods. Now there is only one. The kraken captured him, held him in place, and the shadow dragons built the prison around him. They drove it deep into the ice and built the fortress above—a keep forged from magic, so that nobody could enter without their knowledge and permission. And if we failed—if all the shadow dragons were killed—the fortress would fall and take the Soul-Eater with it.”
Every instinct was telling Francine to run. Instead, she forced herself to slowly walk around the column of ice and the monster in its heart.
“But—he’s already dead in there. Isn’t he? You said he’s been there hundreds of years. Frozen in ice. He can’t be alive.”
“He’s caught in a magical stasis. Neither alive nor dead.”
A shiver crept into her gut. “Why not just kill him?”
“Because then he would come back. The Soul-Eater and the Weaver of Souls are linked by their magic. They always reincarnate, once both of them are dead. And we could never knowwherethey would reincarnate. The Soul-Eater could destroy so many lives before he was killed again, and even then, shifters would only be safe until he rose once more.”
“So instead you trapped him here. Where he couldn’t die.” She frowned. “Which means the other one wouldn’t reincarnate either. Is there some immortal shifter out there as well?”
“The Weaver of Souls? No. She died a natural death, years later. And never reincarnated. She sacrificed her power of returning to the world to keep shifters safe from him.”
And all that magic was lost. The good along with the bad. And now, hundreds of years later, the shadow dragons’ magic was fading as well, and taking them with it.
So much shifter history had been lost.
“What else don’t we know about ourselves?” she breathed, staring up at the captured god.
And it stared back down at her.
“Shit!” She stumbled back. Julian was at her side in an instant. *What’s wrong?*
“Nothing. I scared myself looking at it, that’s all.” She forced herself to look back up into the monster’s face. It was entirely alien, a mixture of insect and snake and something like a wolf. Whatever magical stasis had preserved it this long had preserved the stains on its fangs. The bright red gleam of blood.
And its eyes—
Were almost closed, barely a slit of glittering black behind lids crusted with blood and hair and scales.
Francine swallowed. “I thought—” she stopped.
She could swear the creature’s eyes had been open. Staring at her.
“We don’t need to spend any more time down here, now you’ve seen it for yourself,” Julian reassured her. She leaned against him and let him lead her out again, through the dark passageway, up the endless winding staircase to the living quarters again.
The Soul-Eater was frozen in time. Not alive. Not dead. Not opening its eyes to stare down at her, like it had known without looking where she was.
She must have imagined it.
32
Julian
The sight of the Soul-Eater still haunted him as he took Francine up to his rooms. The last time he’d seen it was the night before he left home. It was tradition. Shadow dragons who left for the outside world first had to see the Soul-Eater, to remind them of what was at stake if they failed in their duty.
And that failure was so close he could almost taste it.
If the Soul-Eater were freed, it would mean the end of the world. There was no Weaver of Souls to repair what the monstrous god took.
“How long do we have before Eloise and the others reach the fortress?” Francine asked. “There were overland vehicles on the ship. That would take a few days, surely? It’s not like there are roads to follow. Or—by helicopter, but that would be risky if the storm holds out…” She bit her lip, then answered her own question. “We have no way of knowing for sure.”
“A few days. Or more, or less,” Julian agreed.
“What can we do in that time?” She paced back and forth. He wished he had that restless energy. It would be better thanthe paralyzing cold that gripped him whenever he thought about what faced them. “Can we move the Soul-Eater?”
