“She told me about the fire on Mount Ulra,” Fleurie says. “She told me I would come to her aid, and that the meeting of our powers would send her to the past—my portal reacting cataclysmically with her abyss.” Her voice wavers. “But when I returned to the mount last night, no matter what she’d once told me, and no matter how scared I was to help her, I had to try to save her. She would’ve burned to death if I hadn’t. Fate, that cruel bitch, gave me no other choice. And so I reached for Raina, and she took my hand. Then we were floating in nothing—a place void of time or air or any substance—until she was ripped from me.” She wipes her cheeks with the back of her hand and exhales. “I landed somewhere in the desert. I lay there in the darkness, waiting for a portal to swallow me and take me back to Rite Hall, the same way it always has, since I was a girl. But it never came. What’s more, my father cursed me the night he took memories from you and Elias. He placed an invisible torque of silence on my voice so that I could not utter a single word about anything he didn’t wish me to. He allowed me the ability to scream, though. And after his death, King Gherahn made certain my voice was heard.”
Alexus’s eyes lock with hers, no doubt remembering those days of brutal torture they shared on the cliffs at the Abyss of Pensea. She hadn’t even been able to tell him what he’d lost.
“But now,” Fleurie adds, “eventhat curse is gone. It’s as though the collision of mine and Raina’s power destroyed my father’s old magick. The absence of it was so strange. So wonderful. So shocking. I instantly had the notion to return to Quezira and steal Elias away from Min-Thuret. But I don’t know that man anymore, and I just… I just couldn’t make myself go back to that place. For the first time since I was a girl, I felt freedom from my father’s clutches and from Rite Hall, and I just couldn’t go back. I felt so torn. Ripped in two that Thamaos has so thoroughly conquered Elias, and that everything Raina ever told me was coming true.”
“Raina’s really in Quezira?” Helena says, visibly shaken. “Three hundred years in the past?”
Fleurie nods. “She is. Her next several months there will be a battle. She will fall in love with Alexi all over again. But my father will come to feel threatened by her.” She glances around the room at those of us from the North. “Raina is why any of these last weeks happened to you at all. She’s why, once Thamaos learned from his Seers that she could be partly to blame for his coming death, he made certain the God Knife was made, so that if they were correct, a remnant for resurrection would exist. She’s why he made Elias a Soul Eater and used him as an earthly vessel. And all these many years later, she is why he sent Elias to raze the valley.” She turns her eyes back to Alexus. “Thamaos wasn’t only trying to reach Colden Moeshka, yet another pawn. He wanted to eradicate the silent witch his Seers warned him about. A woman he met at Min-Thuret, at a ball held in his famous Great Hall. A woman he eventually feared could prevent his return from the Shadow World should his life be lost. He just didn’t know which village she belonged to. That was knowledge he did not hold because you fought him with all you had to keep that information locked deep inside your mind, to protect her. But he knew she was from the valley, and when the time arose, he simply commanded Elias to burn them all.”
The wave of disbelief that washes through the room is visible on every face, especially those from the Northlands. Helena leans onto the table and buries her head under her arms, shoulders shaking as she cries. Rhonin curves around her, trying to soothe. Zahira, Callan, Keth, and Jaega sit eerily still with blank expressions, struggling to process the slaughter that took place on our land has been three hundred years in the making.
All in the name of Thamaos’s quest for revenge and power.
“If what you’re saying is true,” Alexus says, “then what happens to Raina?” His every word is drenched in two things I’ve never heard in his voice until today: heartbreak and bleakest fear.
Fleurie lifts his hand to her cheek, her brow knitted, her eyes glassy. “I don’t know. I wasn’t there when she left us, and you and I were kept apart for some time after, until my father died. All I know is that one rainy night, everything went horribly wrong. I was dragged into Rite Hall and forced to watch my best friends endure tortures of the mind and body. I was questioned for answers I did not hold. Raina was already gone—you and Elias somehow helped her escape. But too soon, all memory of her was gone as well, except for the memory of her that still lived in me. I alone held a mind my father could not infiltrate, so he took my ability to speak of her or Elias or any of his wrongdoings instead.”
“This isn’t possible,” I mutter. My voice doesn’t sound like my own. It’s a whisper, a faint shadow. Distant and hopelessly lost.
Alexus releases a shuddering breath, his chest suddenly rising and falling hard, his reply coming out broken. “You’re telling me that you don’t know if she willreturnto me?”
Fleurie shakes her head, sitting back on her heels. “I don’t, Alexi. I’m so sorry.”
The world starts spinning, making me even sicker and weaker than I was minutes before. My knees give, and though I sink toward the floor, Neri catches me, holding me firmly against his body.
“Hey now, little bird.” He brushes his fingertips across the tears at my temple. “Stay with me.”
I try. Gods, do I try. But when I look up at his handsome face, it blurs and fades, and my world goes black.
7
NEPHELE
When I rouse, still hovering in that space between sleep and waking, I think I’ve been dreaming. But within moments, every unimaginable thing Fleurie said rushes back to me, each word resonating soul deep.
My sister is lost.
The sickness I felt in the meeting room, accompanied by that same overwhelming weakness, gnaws at my stomach and aches in my bones. It was real. Even if I don’t want to accept that anything I heard was true.It was real.
The first thing I see when I fully open my eyes is a shaft of late day’s golden light, spanning an ornate gold and white ceiling. I turn a glance toward the window only to see a man sitting beside me, head bowed and elbows at rest on widespread knees. I would know that dark hair, those wide shoulders, and those rugged hands anywhere.
Alexus holds my wrist with a delicate grasp. His knuckles are clean now, but still a bruised and wounded mess from the fight with Neri. Carefully, I slide my hand into his, and he lifts his head.
The blood from earlier is gone from his face, but he still looks battered, emotionally and physically, his expression so weary. He tries, but he cannot smile, and not because of the busted lip or the black eye Neri gave him in the desert. The effort is there, but the sorrow hanging heavy as an iron mask is too much weight to fight against.
“Are you okay?” He tugs the blanket further up my body and leans an arm on the pillow near my head. “You scared me.”
I give his fingers a slight squeeze. “I’ll be all right. After everything you’ve been through, I should be the one soothing you.” I press the heel of my palm to my aching temple. “It’s just too much.”
“I won’t argue with that.” He looks up at me, eyes squinting around a question. “Colden and the prince?” He shakes his head. “I didn’t see that one coming either.”
“You heard?”
“Of course. Neri carried you here from the meeting hall. After you were settled in and the physician looked you over, we stood here for a few minutes just watching you. I asked about Colden. He didn’t hesitate to give me details.”
“I don’t believe there’s any way we could’ve known,” I say, trying not to think about Neri carrying me anywhere.
“No. If Colden wants to keep a secret, he buries it deep. He’s wise, though. I trust that he found a glimmer of goodness in Elias or else he wouldn’t have returned for him. So perhaps all isn’t lost with the prince.” He pauses. “I just keep wondering if perhaps Raina knew. If she saw them together, in the waters, and just didn’t say anything.”
