Fiona
I appear in the middle of Azric’s room, and he’s standing right in front of me. For the first time since I met the Prince of Bones, I see something in his expression that I don’t expect. Sadness that echoes my own.
“You did well,” he says, not mentioning Darian. “Now you need to prepare for the final trial.”
I shake my head and give a little hysterical laugh. After what I’ve gone through, he wants me to worry about what comes next already?
“You can’t give me even a single night to simply exist?”
He takes a step toward me, and I notice his jaw is clenched. “What else are you going to do?”
I shrug, but the sadness inside me is turning into anger. I’m supposed to be hiding in a hole and wallowing in my emotions. “I don’t know? Stare at the wall? Breathe without being worried some terrible creature is going to sneak into my cave and murder me? Maybe drink as much water as I want? Really enjoy a steaming hot bath? Maybe, just maybe, mourn my friend’s death. I think I could imagine quite a few things I’d rather do than worry about how to kill the people I laughed with only a few hours ago.”
Azric frowns for a moment and takes a deep breath. “Fine. Let me take you somewhere.”
“Azric, I’m serious. I don’t want to think about the fourth trial.”
He shakes his head slowly. “You don’t have to. I just… Let me take you somewhere, Fiona.”
I take a step back. “What’s going on? Why the insistence?”
He seems to collapse on himself, his broad shoulders sinking. “I… I just thought it’d be nice to be around someone who… someone who didn’t expect me to be the Champion of Lysara. I just thought it would be nice to…not be alone. There’s only one place I feel safe enough to let down my walls.”
It hits me. He’s just as alone as I am, and he’s known Darian for far longer than I have. They were close. He’s the only one that Azric has ever seemed to appreciate. Just like me, he knows Darian isn’t coming back. He’s mourning and wants someone near him, but he doesn’t know how to say that.
“Where are we going?” I ask.
He looks at me as if he’s going to question my change in attitude, but he doesn’t. “To one of the few places in Castle Lachlan that’s worth visiting other than the dragon roost.”
He extends his hand, and I take it. When did I start trusting the Prince of Bones? When did his emotional well-being start to matter? Have I really let myself become one of the people I was trained to kill? I should treat him as an ally, just as Rhaskar treats Ainslee. Instead, my heart goes out to him. He lost the one person he cared about on Nyth.
I’m not the woman I was when I entered the trials. But what else has changed? I can’t remember changing. I can’t remember when I became comfortable around the man that nearly killed me with a kiss.
The thought doesn’t last long as I take his hand. We don’t linger in the Void as he shadow walks us to a place I couldn’t have imagined. Rather than duskthorn walls and beautiful tapestries, this place is plain. Made of rough gray and black stone that must be what Castle Lachlan was built from, theroomseems raw.
The closest thing I could compare the space around me to is a cellar. The damp air is reminiscent of the cellars of Stormhaven, but there’s no scent of earth. Instead, an oily scent lingers in the air. Through the center of the room is a thin gap where the blackest water I could ever imagine flows in a steady stream. The only light comes from strange glowing mushrooms that are clumped along the banks of the water. The scents of duskthorn trees, of mist ina deep forest, and of deep, rich soil full of life assail me from that dark water.
“This is the Origin of Night,” Azric says as he walks over to the crumbled ruins of a boulder and sits down. I follow him and continue to look around. The room—which I still hesitate to call it—is far larger than any cellar I’ve seen. It’s almost like a cave rather than a room. The ground is uneven, though there are no stalagmites. It’s a hole that was scooped out of the earth. “This is the seat of Nyxthos’s power in Dunloch, and this river is the path from Nyth to the Realm of Night,hisworld.”
My eyes open wide. “Where are we, Azric? I can’t leave Castle Lachlan!”
He chuckles and pats the piece of stone next to him. “We’re under Castle Lachlan, though you’d have to be a very, very clever individual to get here without shadow walking. Echo brought me here once when we needed to discuss something away from powerful ears.”
Is he saying that the gods can’t hear us here? “I thought that you and Echo weren’t exactly on good terms. Wasn’t that why you killed her?”
Azric stares at the water for a few moments before bowing his head. “No, Echo and I disagreed on what needed to happen. She was an opposing voice against my thoughts, and she was strong enough that others rallied to her arguments, which kept anything productive from happening. Echo was… She taught me what it was to embrace the shadows. She showed me what no one else could. We weren’t as close as I am to my aunt and uncles, but we were closer than anyone else. No, I killed Echo because I had to. It was one of the most terrible things I’ve done. I don’t regret that I did it, but I hate that she’s not still here.”
The last thing I wanted was to make him feel any worse than he already does, so I change the subject. “Do all the gods have little rivers running through their kingdoms?”
Azric shakes his head. “Not all of them. Some origins are rivers. Kaelith has a little patch of mist. Draeven has a pool. I’ve heard that Ravess has a pile of bodies. I believe that Saelira’s origin is a road that’s never been traveled, though that’s just theory since no one living has ever been to her world.”
He gets a little lost in his explanation, and I can see his tension fade some. “Each of them has some connection from Nyth to their world, though. It’s the only way through, and it lets them stay hidden. Shadow walking, as you probably know already, requires a shadow to enter the Void and a shadow to exit where you want to go. All the gods’ worlds have broken the connection between their shadows and the Void, so it’s impossible to use them to enter or leave their world. Being unable to shadow walk to any of them keeps them safe. Someone would have to stumble upon a cave deep under Castle Lachlan to find their way to the Realm of Night.”
“That’s probably important if the Hunters come.”
Azric nods. “Whenthey come. The gods feel safe in their worlds because they don’t think anyone can find their origins. I think they’re wrong, but they obviously don’t listen to me.”
He looks up, his gaze going back to the little river. I want to keep him talking, but I don’t really know what to say. So, I askquestions because he obviously doesn’t seem to have any hesitation in answering them. “Why’d you and Echo come here to talk?”
