CHAPTER
17
KORI
In the pit of my stomach, there’s a hollow gap for terror that should be present and most definitely isn’t. The rest of me feels set alight, struck like a torch amidst the endless night, blooming and crackling with newfound possibility.
This is what I wanted, isn’t it? A chance to try and live—reallylive, not just maintain life-sustaining functions—beyond Chloe’s ever-present grasp. So what if that chance is amidst the Daylands’ enemies, cloaked in near-impenetrable darkness, and offered by a shadow queen who could silence my breath with the idle flex of a claw?
I know Ishouldbe afraid. I’m foolish, not dead. But those teeth are arranged in something that’s almost a smile, that clawed hand steady and honest and cold as truth in my gloved one. Possibility overwhelms my good sense.
I tell myself that her smile—brightening the blue-tinged white of her high cheekbones, making her violet eyes sparkle like gems—has approximately nothing to do with it. Or at least a marginal effect. Aspect is better at statistics and percentages than I am. I’m sure it’s negligible in the grand scheme of things.
We wander the archives for some time, my fingers trembling at the sheer wealth of information. Adria catches me by the wrist and slides my hand toward a particular rectangular record with a blinking orange identifier on the rim.
“Your people live out their days underground as much as possible. Send mechs to the Passage to do their grunt work. But the nightfolk have spent many sleep cycles in the gap, exploring it for themselves. You might learn something valuable to your people’s future.”
I can’t help but notice what Adria doesn’t say, but must be thinking: If I were to obtain data on the Shadowlands itself, that information could be used by the Daylands military upon my return home, if they ever wanted to challenge the nightfolk for total control of Pagomènos. But data on the Passage, by comparison, can’t easily be weaponized against the nightfolk.
I narrow my gaze. “I thought this tour was supposed to be a gesture of trust.”
She’s still holding my wrist, tightly but not painfully. Adria seems to register that the contact, even if it’s over the glove-armor mesh of my wrist, has gone on for too long, and she withdraws.
“Trust goes both ways, Kori. You can at least have a look before you dismiss the data’s value.”
My name in her voice, low and rumbling like an approaching quake, mangles my center of gravity. I tell myself it’s the fear I should’ve felt long ago, making a delayed but welcome appearance.
“All right,” I say, and slide the tablet from the shelf.
The tablet’s surface blinks and hisses to life in a shower of pixels. The file’s title slides across the dark screen in neon green:THE PASSAGE.There’s a hyperlinked table of contents at the top, varying in subject from flora and fauna to standard temperature expectations, but my brain stops and seizes on the introduction, aptly titled,THE PASSAGE AND THE GREAT EXILE.
“Exile …?” I feel like someone’s pressing down on my shoulders,crushing me into the floor. “Chloe … my mother, that is … always told me that the nightfolk destroyed the land.”
“And why would we do that?”
“So dayfolk couldn’t live there.”
Adria cocks her head, curious violet stare wide on mine, not unlike her three-headed pet. “Read,” she says curtly.
I do. The file proceeds to detail the nightfolk account of how the Passage came to be.
AFTER THE CATACLYSM, THE DAYFOLK REJECTED THE DIAKÓPSEI’S GIFT, FEARING WHAT THEY DIDN’T UNDERSTAND. THE NIGHTFOLK TRIED TO ENLIGHTEN THEM WITH THEIR REVELATION, BUT THE DAYFOLK WERE WARLIKE, FEROCIOUS IN THE DEFENSE OF HOW THE OLD THINGS HAD BEEN. WITH WHAT REMAINED OF THEIR EARTHSIDE TECHNOLOGY, THEY DROVE BACK THE NIGHTFOLK, NOT ONLY FROM THE DAYLANDS BUT ACROSS THE PASSAGE BETWEEN.
THE EXPULSION WAS SO FEROCIOUS, AND THE NOW-LOST WEAPONRY SO DEADLY, THAT THEY OBLITERATED THE PASSAGE IN THE PROCESS. THE DIAKÓPSEI, IN ITS INFINITE WONDER, HAS SINCE RAISED MANY OF THE FLORA AND FAUNA TO NEW FORMS AND NEW LIFE. BUT THE GROUND, WHICH MIGHT HAVE BEEN PAGOMÈNOS’S LAST RECOVERABLE LAND BY DAYFOLK STANDARDS, WILL NEVER BE THE SAME. THE NIGHTFOLK FLED TO REGROUP IN THE SHADOWLANDS AND MOURN THEIR DEAD. THIS IS CALLED THE GREAT EXILE.
My eyes sting. I reach for them instinctively, only to remember I’m wearing a helmet. I lightly tap a button on the side, which sends a light gust of air to clear my vision.
“Is this supposed to make me feel merciful? Guilty?” I feel both thosethings wrestling inside me, and I resent them. “Your people attacked first. They wanted to infect all of us, make us like … like …”
Adria has taken a step away from me, but not nearly far enough to slow my pounding pulse. I expect her to regard me with disappointment. I wish she, too, were forced to wear a mask, so I could superimpose my preferred emotion over her face. Instead I’m forced to look upon the cool, serene line of her mouth, the piercing depth of her gaze that invites me to keep speaking and yet stills my tongue in the same moment.
“Like me?” she says, her tone serpentine. “Are we going backward so soon? I believe we established that I am not the monster you expected.”
“You are nothing I expected,” I say without thought, and I avert my eyes from hers again. “But neither is this. I can’t copy this into Aspect’s memory core.”
“Why not? It might broaden their perspective.”
“Because it’s historical heresy, that’s why!”
