It's the resignation in his voice that makes me stop fiddling with the lock. I look at the map. My eyes land on the thick wall of darkness known as the Shroud. Even rendered in ink, it seems to pulse with something almost alive. It stretches across the northof our forest —a rift between Lunaris and the kingdom it once belonged to– like a wound that refuses to heal. Veritas scholars believe it’s a manifestation of the curse placed on Tenebris, but no one can explain why our island was spared.
Both the Veritas maps and the Council’s are titled “Isle of Lunaris,” but that's where the similarities end. The Veritas maps show the continent above. The kingdoms, mountains, and rivers none of us will ever see. The Council's maps show only Lunaris itself, as though nothing else exists. As though nothing else ever did.
Just as well. You can't miss what you don't remember. And none of us remember anything from before we arrived. Memories for asylum. That's the price everyone pays to live in Lunaris. The cost of the perfect society. The price of freedom.
Here, we are free from war, famine, and pain. Or rather, free from the memory of such things. Free from the grief and terror that drove people to seek refuge on these shores. We still hurt, of course. Still bleed and break and lose the ones we love. But the old pain doesn't follow us here. Not the way it once did.
I know this because I've felt the grief, the loss, the terror trapped in the golden brown memory stones. I’m sure if he could experience it, he’d understand why people choose to part with those memories and start a new life here. The times I've been foolish enough to touch them, I've ended up in the healing chamber for hours. Weeping for people I've never met. Mourning lives I never lived.
Besides, at least they got a choice. They seek Lunaris. Choose to live here. We never did. We were children when we arrived alongside twenty-three other orphans, all under sixteen. Too young to have manifested our gifts. Too young to understand what we were giving up.
Jordi refuses to acknowledge any of it. Refuses to accept that we had no say in the matter. It's almost as maddening as himrefusing to leave with me when I begged him to. Almost as bad as him standing here, showing me all the things we can't change about this place.
The way I see it, things could be worse. We could be residents of the town below, where the Council rules supreme. At least the Sages give us choices. The freedom to learn, speak our minds, hone our gifts. The Council forbids all of that, and then some.
I look at the map the Sages commissioned Jordi to draw, which shows the continent above as it appeared three hundred years ago. It's impossible to draw anything accurately without a current reference, and even the merchants from neighboring islands can't get past the Shroud to the kingdoms above. But at least the continent is there. At least someone acknowledges it exists.
The older map bears a small flame where the Temple of Ignata once stood. A monument to the goddess we're taught to revere. The one who lit the Undying Flames in every kingdom and appointed Sages to guard her ancient secrets. Most of the Veritas maps still honor that ground, but it’s missing from the map Jordi recently finished.
The biggest difference isn’t the missing flame, though. It’s the Shroud. On the older map, it looks more like a shadow. Less like a wound and more like a fading scar.
And cutting through the darkness … a path linking Lunaris to the land above. My heart climbs into my throat when I check the date in the corner. Circa 280 A.S. Twenty years ago. My eyes snap to Jordi's.
“What does this mean?” I whisper.
“Notice there’s no mark where the temple once was.” He points at the empty area in the forest and pulls out the map commissioned a few years ago. “This one has it.”
He lays out more maps. One after another in quick succession. The flame appears and disappears across the yearslike a guttering candle. Finally, he sets his recent map beside the twenty-year-old one.
“There’s nothing there,” I say. “And as the Sages graciously pointed out when they extended my apprenticeship and granted you the title ofOfficial Mapmaker for the Veritas Order, the temple was there until the Council demanded it be torn down,as per the Veritas Treaty.”
Jordi scowls. “You know Freida and Anala had nothing to do with your apprenticeship being extended two years. That wasallMother, and I will never understand why you continue to roll over and take her lashings instead of fighting back.”
I scoff. If he knew the extent of my defiance, he'd be proud rather than annoyed. But it's best he doesn't. Mother's ire is a hurricane. I'd rather shove the people I love into its eye than let them be torn apart by its winds.
Two years. That's what she promised. Even she can't go back on her word. Not when I made her repeat it in front of the other Sages.
“It doesn’t matter. My two years will be up at the end of the Moon Festival.”
“I know, but you could speak to Anala and Freida?—”
“No.” The word cuts through the air. “Last time I tried that, I ended up teaching alchemy to first years. I just need to keep my head down until the Moon Festival is over.” My gaze drifts back to the map. To the Shroud. To the path that shouldn’t exist. “No matter how curious I am about this.”
“What about the Undying Flame? Do you really think they moved it?”
I shoot him a bewildered look. “You’ve sat in front of that Flame enough times. You know it’s there.”
He slams his hands on the table. The raven and I both jolt. “You’ve sat in front of it! I've sat beside you, sick to my stomach,praying you heal quickly because they demand too much of your emotive gifts.”
The words hit like a fist to the chest. I swallow hard. “At least we know we have gifts. The Council’s residents wear their amulets day and night. They don’t even know what they’re capable of.”
He scoffs. “Mostof our gifts.”
My spine stiffens.
“The year we arrived was a Reckoning year. I think that’s why the temple isn’t marked on it,” he says suddenly.
The mention of the Reckoning gives me pause. I frown as I study the map again. It occurs every ten years and is the only time the curse on the kingdom of Tenebris can be lifted. It should be important.
