CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Soon, the young maiden was a maiden no more, and the lowly messenger god who had stolen her heart had also stolen her mind.
—Fabia’s Fables, “People of the Stars.”
Atwisting formed a knot in my stomach, and my throat bobbed. “Protect what?”
“Many things,” Xenelpha replied, “What you came for, of course. The bone of the Bellator whose sacred resting place you entered.” I took a sharp inhale, my ribs aching at the movement, the incessant buzzing from the bone flaring as if in confirmation of her words.
“And where are the rest of my friends?” I asked, changing the subject.
“Friends,” she mused, tilting her head as her eyes drifted to the glowing cuff around my wrist. “Is the one who put the rubelline on your wrist a friend?”
Astraeus.
“Do you know how to get it off?”
The massive ivory skull tilted down as Xenelpha responded, “I do. Would you like me to retrieve yourfriend’shand for you?”
My stomach churned. She meant to bring it to me without the rest of him, but I’d had enough of severed hands.
“The magic is tied to his skin, and his alone. He’s been quiet, that mage, with his magic.”
I blinked. Mage? I hadn’t realized Lord Astraeus possessed any magic. He hadn’t let a bit of it show, even in Odessa. Had Astraeus intentionally hidden his magic?
“What is it? And where are the people I came here with?”
“So many questions, yet you have not answered mine. Who will yoube, Lyvia? Will you bringdemin, destruction, orm’ando, hope? Until you can answer that, Faron’s Advetis will not yield. Even to you,Bonder.”
Advetis. The word rang through my memory like a thousand bells chiming in the wind, settling within me.Advetis, the bone seemed to whisper from behind a wall,Show me where you will take me.
“May I see the marks?” Xenelpha asked after another moment, eyes flicking to my hands.
I held them out and flipped my palms up, the luminous eight-pointed stars glowing in the blue light of the massive ice chamber. Xenelpha peered at them for several moments, unmoving.
“Twice blessed or twice cursed, I wonder,” she mused, “Either way, you must find the balance. What is it that bound them in the first place?”
I snapped my hands closed at that, sick of the riddles and tired of being a captive. I’d had enough. We were here for the bone. We would leave with the bone. I’d figure out how to harness the damned Transcindiel power if it killed me. I’d save the ashen.
“I’ll tell you who I am,” I said, straightening my spine and letting my hands fall to my sides, “I am Lyvia. The gods have hurled daggers at me, and I am sick and tired of being on the receiving end of whatever shit they’ve concocted. I’ve come for the Advetis Bone. And I’ll be leaving here with it, along with my friends. I will return to my caeluma and the other Bellators. I will keep it safe until I find its master, or they find me. We will retake Sultira. We will end Dark King Daimos.”
Xenelpha’s eyes flashed in the shadows of the skull, and I held a breath, a sudden certainty spreading over me. The command in my voice was relieved, as if it had been subdued for too long.
A line of bright white spread beneath the mask as Xenelpha’s lips tilted into a wide grin. I braced myself as she reached into her thickly furred coat and pulled out my long, sharp dagger. Talon… Or rather,Honor’sgolden gem shone in the icy chamber like an ember in the snow.
“This,” she began, as she took the blade in her gloved hand before offering me the hilt, “does not belong to you.”
I gripped the dagger, tucking it safely in my boot.
“It didn’t belong to the elf, either,” she continued, and my stomach churned at the image of Cyril’s sneering face, danger and bloodlust dripping from the tongue that flicked over his lips.
“I don’t care who it belonged to.” I straightened. “It’s mine now.”
“You may someday.” Xenelpha’s smile grew beneath her mask, and a small chuckle escaped her lips. “You and your…friends,”she continued, “may stay here for a short time. But the fate of Advetis rests on you. I will take you to the bone. Should you unlock it, you may leave with it.”
I blinked. Just like that?Why?
Xenelpha’s staff clanked four times on the ice beneath us, the sound reverberating across the vast chamber. My knees buckledas the ice beneath us shuddered and the blaring groan of ice on ice boomed through the chamber as eight massive sections of the ceiling spun counterclockwise, lifting away from the center like a blooming flower. The same way Enya’s tomb had opened.
