I shake my head and hold my ground. “Rowenna wouldn’t have trekked up here if it wasn’t important. Could you tell what Alaric dug up? That must be the key.”
“Orthis could just be how Alaric harnesses his power to move the earth, and Rowenna had nothing to do with it.”
“Shouldn’t Soren be up here too, then?” I point out. “It’s too much of a coincidence.”
Delphine casts me a pitying look, and I know how desperate I sound—like an exhausted climber, dangling from a cliff by my fingertips.
“We’ll think of something else,” Delphine assures me, offering a hand up. But before I can take it, a flare of golden light blooms around Alaric, and we drop back to the ground with a gasp.
Twenty-Four
Golden light unfurls around Alaric like petals of fire, growing taller and brighter until he’s completely consumed.
“What is that? What’s happening?” I whisper to Delphine.
She shakes her head, gilded light dancing in her frightened eyes. “I don’t know.”
We watch, mouths agape, as the light flickers and jumps, burning so hot and bright, we’re forced to look away. Alaric, however, sits calmly in the middle, seemingly uninjured.
After a time, the bright yellow and gold flames cool to deeper shades of ocher and umber, and swirl into an image of sorts. The walls of a phantom room erect themselves around Alaric, who hasn’t moved from his prayer position. The details of the room are impressive: walls made of dark-paneled wood, a vast collection of books fill the floor-to-ceiling shelves, and a long black carpet slashes through the center of the room like a crevasse.
“That’s the king’s council chamber,” Delphine whispers. “I’ve cleaned it before.”
The room is every bit as imposing and austere as I’d expect from King Soren, but even more unsettling are the floating wisps of shadow that drift across the strange apparition world and form into people.
“Is this real?” I ask. “A projection of the room in this very moment?”
“How should I know?” Delphine shrugs. “It certainly looks real.”
I turn back to the scene, feeling more uneasy by the second. If Soren and Alaric have somehow learned to manipulate time and space, in addition to the earth, they could be everywhere at once. Always watching. Eternally a step ahead.
I drag myself through the sharp pebbles until I’m just a few lengths from where Alaric sits. Close enough to parse out more details of the room and the people within. But that only makes me more confused.
Instead of Soren and his blue-robed councilors, a little boy, no older than five, sits on a wheeled ladder attached to the bookshelves. He’s chubby and red cheeked with gorgeous black curls that hang in his stone-gray eyes.
It’s so clearly a younger version of Alaric, I gasp.
Thankfully, grown Alaric doesn’t stir from his prayer pose in the center of the light.
A second boy, slightly older, with paler skin and a thatch of brown hair pops up on the other side of the ladder, grinning.
Delphine slithers up beside me and stammers, “Th-that’s Besnik. The king’s eldest son who died years ago.”
“So this is the past?” I whisper. “Like a memory?”
Delphine shrugs again, and we watch as phantom Besnik throws his weight against the ladder, and the two boys giggle as it zips down the track, crashing to a stop at the far end of the shelf.
“Again, again!” little Alaric cries, and Besnik happily obliges, pushing them back and forth until they both topple off onto the rug, laughing.
From the center of the light, grown Alaric says something, and the glowing images smear. When they reassemble, the boys are still running wild around the same wood-paneled room, but now they’re noticeably older, leaping from armchair to armchair and chasing each other with swords that look disconcertingly real. They laugh and parry, taking turns attacking and defending. A harried-looking man without a speck ofhair watches from the corner, begging them to calm down and keep quiet—their father is in meetings on the other side of the wall. But that just makes Alaric and Besnik shout louder and laugh harder.
When they finally slump onto a settee to catch their breath, their eyes are wild and exuberant, their bodies a tangle of smiles and laughter. They are happiness and completeness. Friendship and solidarity. Two parts of the same whole.
Like Rowenna and me.
The tightness in my throat is almost strangling, and I breathe a sigh of relief when grown Alaric mutters again, causing the scene to blur and reform.
This time, it depicts the two boys as adolescents, but now neither is smiling. And no one is laughing.
