I ran, my feet pounding against the stone steps, spiraling up the tower.
“Maia, stop!” my mother shouted, blocking my path.
Baba’s workshop in Gangsun appeared just as I remembered it. The stool Mama had bought for me was by the window, with my basket of tools on the floor. The altar with Amana’s statues, the paint barely dried.
I could hear Finlei and Keton fighting outside, Sendo trying to play peacemaker.
“They’re fire and wind, those two,” Mama said, shaking her head. “You and Sendo, earth and water. Like the river against the stone.”
I refused to let the power of the isles devastate me. I knew it wasn’t real. And yet—memories of my family flooded back with vivid intensity. It had been so long since I’d heard Mama’s voice, so long since I’d seen her. Like last time, I almost couldn’t resist.
“Stay with us, Maia. Isn’t this what you always wanted? To be with your family again.”
Gray hair tickled her temples. She looked so real, the wind that ruffled my skirts fluffed hers, too. I gazed at her, taking in the burnished glow of her cheeks, the freckles dotting her skin, the wrinkles along the corners of her lips. She was just as I remembered her, and yet—something about her eyes were too soft and watery to be human.
“Stay with us,” Mama said again. She edged closer to me. “You are the strong one, Maia. The one who will hold the seams of our family together. You can do that, here.”
At the sound of my dead mother’s words on this pretender’s lips, a surge of anger swelled in me.
“Iwillhold my family together,” I said through my teeth. “But you are not my mother. Let me pass.”
The ghost’s lips pressed tight, and my mother’s face melted off, her black hair washing out until it was wild and white, streaming down over her starved black eyes.
She wrapped a skeletal hand over my wrist.
A ghost’s touch doomed a human to become a ghost. But I was no longer human. I flung up my hand, breaking her grip on me. My skirt flared angrily, spitting beams of light.
The ghost writhed, her shrieks slicing the air as her bones sizzled into smoke.
I leapt up the steps, two at a time, my dress lighting the dark winding stairway up to the rooftop, to the well that collected the blood of stars.
And there it was. How desolate it looked—like a stone bowl jutting from the earth. It hadn’t been so quiet the last time I’d arrived. Then again, today was not the ninth day of the ninth month. No stars bled in the sky, no silvery dust fell into the well.
I gripped the side of the well, its rocky surface scraping against my elbow. Inside surged a fathomless gulf of darkness.
This—thiswas the heart of Lapzur. Not the Thief’s Tower, not Bandur.
Not me.
I took out Bandur’s amulet. The obsidian sent a shock wave roaring through me, burning icy cold. As if it knew I wanted to destroy it.
I leaned over the well.
“Stop,” rasped Bandur, appearing on the other side. “The enchanter’s life for my amulet.”
My demon sight flickered to Edan.He was still downstairs, surrounded by ghosts, their fingers grabbing at his throat. His dagger flashed, arcs of silvery blue sweeping furiously around him as he fended them off. One touch, and he would become a creature like them.
“They prey on weakness,” Bandur reminded me. “His weakness is you, Maia. No mortal is able to resist, not for long. And heismortal now.”
I flinched.
“Return the amulet to me, or Edan will die.”
“No,” I whispered, my eyes burning, my blood blazing with anger. With my demon sight, I traveled down the tower again to where Edan and the ghosts were.
“I am the guardian of Lapzur now!” I yelled at the ghosts. “Let him go!”
They froze, confused.Sentur’na…
