Nothing happens.
I turn slowly. Every lamp is dead. The bridge, the streets, the buildings beyond. Lunaris has gone dark.
My hands tremble as I raise them and summon fire. The flames that answer are small and wavering. Abysmal, Mother would say. The memory of the word brings another with it.
The crack of a wooden ruler against my lower back, my stomach, my thighs, teaching me to focus through pain. My shoulders snap back. The flames grow taller, steadier, casting long shadows across the stone. I start moving, slow shuffling steps toward the end of the bridge, counting as I go.
Forty-seven steps from one side to the other. I've walked this bridge a thousand times. I'm already at twenty-three. Twenty-four. Twenty-five. Twenty-six. Something moves in the darkness ahead. I freeze.
My flames shrink and sputter as I sweep them left, right, then forward again. From the corner of my eye, I catch a ripple in the dark, but there’s nothing there. I force myself to breathe. In through my nose. Out through my mouth. Focus. Then I notice the silence. The lack. Even the river has stopped flowing.
A light, cool breeze passes through. So light it barely makes the flames in my palms waver, but I feel it. The hairs on the back of my neck rise just before the stillness arrives. Fear seeps into me slowly.
So slowly that by the time it settles in my bones, my flames have already died. I shake my hands at my sides, desperate, as if friction alone could reignite them. But I'm not a match. I'm a conduit who has lost her focus. Worse, I'm a conduit who has lost her belief.
I squeeze my eyes shut and reach for my gift, but doubt floods in instead. Ignata. Mortiana. The Flame I bargained with. Which god have I been praying to all these years? Which one am I supposed to search for now? It doesn't matter. None of it matters if I'm dead. And if the Shroud creatures are near, death is exactly where I'm headed.
I force myself to focus. Find the source of the stillness. Figure out which way to run. A sob builds in my chest when I locate it. I swallow it down, careful not to make a sound as I clench my fists and open my eyes. A pair of glowing eyes stares back at me from the darkness. Then I scream. And run.
For all the stories, all the warnings, all the training, I am completely unprepared for this encounter. I scream again when something cold grazes the back of my neck, and trip on a raised cobblestone, but I keep running. Goddess, I don't want to make another bargain, but I don't want to die, and I'm not sure which fate is worse. As if one of the gods heard my thoughts, the lamps at the edge of the bridge flicker to life. Hope surges through me. Then the lights die again, and the hope dies with them.
“We remember you, empath,” a voice hisses in my left ear, scratchy and wrong.
I scream and stumble. This time, I go down hard, hands and knees slamming into the cobblestones. Adrenaline forces me to push up, to keep moving, but before I can rise, a cold weight crashes onto my back. I'm slammed face-first into the stone.
The weight presses down, pinning my chest, my knees, the side of my face against the cold, damp ground. I can't move. I can't breathe. I thrash beneath it, trying to twist free, but the weight shifts and pins me harder. The sob I've been holding breaks loose as a whimper. Those glowing eyes appear inches from my face.
“You were ours to claim,” it rasps. “You are ours to claim.”
I try to refuse, to scream, but the sound comes out muffled and broken. Cold air slides down my throat, thick as smoke, choking off my voice. I brace for it to take my soul. It doesn't.
It just stares. The accounts say the Shroud creatures can be killed, so I assumed they were made of flesh, but the thing in front of me is all smoke and shadow. Formless except for thefaint outline of a face. Soft features. Almost delicate. Almost beautiful.
My eyes fall shut as the cold sinks deeper. Into my spine. Around my heart. Through my lungs.
In the darkness behind my lids, I see everyone I love, flashing through my mind like pages torn from a book. Jordi's face. Hear Naima’s laugh. See Margot’s knowing smile.
Feel Arlo’s hand squeeze mine. Casimir’s arms wrap around me. Mother’s stern expression. The arguments we've had, the words I never got to say aloud. Freida’s fierce embrace. Anala’s warm smile.
The thoughts shatter and suddenly I feel myself being pulled upward, outward, somewhere else entirely. Weightless. Untethered. Floating in a void that has no beginning and no end. Then, a flash.
My eyes open. I’m no longer on the bridge. I’m standing before the Undying Flame in the Temple of Veritas, warmth flooding my face, two hands clasped in mine. Anala’s voice reaches me, distant but clear.
“Your gift is precious and singular. That’s why you must stay behind closed doors, away from outsiders who would use it to harm you.”
A memory. One I'd buried so deep I'd forgotten it existed.
“You were ours to claim,” the voice scrapes through it, dragging me back. “You are ours to claim.”
Another voice joins the first, layered over it like an echo. “We know what you are. What you hide. He unmade us with that gift.” Cold fingers trace my jaw, and I shudder. “But you... you, healer, could undo it. You could undo him.”
My heart seizes. They can't know that. No one knows that. Unless … unless they saw me heal Jordi? Ronnie did. But why not take me then? I open my mouth to scream, but the cold pressure on my lungs is too much.
“Ours,” the voices hiss in unison. "Ours to?—”
Heat punctures through me suddenly. My eyes fly open and I gasp as the warmth travels through me, thawing my lungs and flooding my limbs with strength. The weight vanishes. I shove myself upright.
The lamps ahead flicker to life, wild and stuttering. I run toward them. A cold tendril grazes my neck, and a massive shadow swallows my own on the cobblestones below. I stumble again. My knees hit the ground hard. Before I can rise, something wraps around my torso and hauls me off my feet.
