Chapter Forty-Four Sylas
Death fell in love with the first Mortemagi. After centuries in the Underworld, he let her go back to the living world. He waited and waited for her, until years after her second death.
She never came back.
forty-four | sylas
Rafael Grimm mindtrapped Lyria.”
For a moment, Paltro sits still, his eyes lingering on my forearm, where Scar coils herself above Raiku. Then he leans back in his chair and drags his accusatory stare up my face. “Why was Lyria outside of the House of Poison when Gorhail is on lockdown?”
“She…” I hesitate. He’s going to blame Viola, I can see it in his eyes. Still, I don’t lie. Despite how Paltro feels about Viola, I refuse to hide my feelings for her to quell Paltro’s concerns. “She was in the library, trying to complete Mom’s lifedrain theory to give Viola her lifeblood back.”
Mom’s research is cursed; she died in the middle of it, and perhaps because of it, and now it’s doomed Lyria, too.
“This woman again.” Paltro lifts his nose at the mention of Viola. “And now your sister is as good as dead because of her. At least you had the good sense to get Scar back.” His eyes fall on Viola’s aspier.
I retract my arm. Scar is Viola’s—I only have her because she refuses to be worn with Vi’s cuff—not mine and certainly not DOTS’s.
My fists clench on my knees. Viola didn’t harm Lyria.
If he’s going to try to spin my sister’s predicament, I will leave.
“Grimm”—I stress the name—“is back. He mindtrapped Lyria, and, as you already know, Delaney is a murderer. You should focus on that instead of trying to pin this on Viola.”
He looks at me for a long moment. “Very well.” His kettle whistles, and he pours the scalding-hot water into a small white teapot, then adds two heaping teaspoons of tea. Pulling two teacups from his drawer, he slides one toward me.
“I don’t want tea.” The only thirst I have is for Grimm’s body to be ripped apart so even the Underworld can’t piece his ghost together.
“Son,” Paltro says, his eyes moist. My gut twists, my throat thick with uncertainty.
His tone echoes so much sadness. Perhaps he needs this, my joining him for tea.
Lyria was close to a daughter to him. So after a pause, I nod.
He gently pours the steaming liquid for both of us, then brings one cup to his lips.
I do the same.
One moment, I am sitting in Paltro’s office. The next, I am standing outside it, in the height of summer.
Lyria… no, that’s Mom. She stands outside of Paltro’s office, except it’s not the office I know. This one has freshly painted black walls, matching the rest of Gorhail. She clutches a small box against her chest and casts furtive glances over her shoulder.
This isn’t real, I realize. I’m in Mom’s memory. Paltro tricked me into drinking the tea he brought to Founder’s Room yesterday, the one Sierra extracted from Zoya.
Mom hurries forward, and I follow her across a greener courtyard with pink and purple flowering trees instead of the sheltered stone hallway we now have, through a different Fang’s Nest, and out into an unchanged Hollow Tree.
She waves at a girl with short black hair.
Willow. They leave through a door that leads to the Poisoned Stairwell, and she hands Willow the box.
Willow opens it, and Ysenia Faro’s Cuff sits inside.
Willow hugs Mom, thanking her, telling her she’ll finally be able to pull enough magic to resurrect her father.
Oh, Mom, how could you have been so foolish? Our ancestor locked up the cuff for a reason.
Then the frame cuts to the catacombs, and I’m already moving. Mom zips through the dark, her hands palming the limestone like it’s a familiar map. Raiku is around her forearm.
Haal, Raiku was Mom’s aspier.
Everything makes sense now, why Dad brought him to me instead of taking me to a relicsmith like he did with Lyria, and why the name was scribbled in Mom’s journal.
Mom keeps throwing worried glances over her shoulder. Then she disappears into the burial chamber. When she walks out, Raiek is around her neck, and Raiku is gone.
Everything goes dark for a moment, and I find myself in a different memory. It’s not as linear as the other ones. The frame jumps around, as if the magic is trying to hem memories together.
Mom comes back in frame, her eyes darting around. She reaches for her dagger. Then a voice speaks. “Magus Principalis Ronin. Where is she?”
Mom spits, “Even if I knew, I would never tell you.”
My heart clenches, and my eyes sting. I haven’t heard her voice in so long—I had forgotten the soft timbre of it. That same voice once told me endless stories before I slept. She never refused, even as I asked for more and her eyes began to close with exhaustion.
“Don’t make me pull it out of you,” the voice replies. I don’t recognize it. It’s weary, with a low hoarseness that doesn’t match the severity of the tone. “I know Alyria is alive.”
Mom stutters, clenching her dagger. Lyria has the same frozen look when she’s lying. Mom knows where the Deathbringer is. “I haven’t seen Aly in years.”
“My patience has limits, Ronin,” the voice threatens, sharpening its edges.
“I hope you can push those limits…” Mom replies, and I want to tell her to take her words back, not to provoke whoever that horrible voice belongs to. But it’s too late.
Three bony creatures push up from the ground, their sharp skeletal hands upturning the stones.
I grip my dagger, even though there’s nothing I can do.
They stand tall, their hollow eyes pointed toward her.
From here, they seem like they’d fall from a push, but the magic that powers them is wicked, unforgiving.
They lurch toward Mom, but she is nimble.
She stabs several of them in a row, her blade landing straight into the back of their necks.
“I was the Deathbringer’s second, Dean; are you sure you want to test me? ”
Dean. Who was the dean when Mom was in school?
The answer strikes me just as Rhea Corvi comes into view. She’s unmissable—gray hair pulled into a tight bun, face painted with annoyance, the same face that colors her later portraits in the halls of Gorhail.
“Ronin,” she snaps. “I know that Alyria has a child.”
“How?” Mom’s face sobers with the realization that she’s confirmed Rhea Corvi’s guess. Her face falls. “You’re a bitch,” she says.
“I am clever,” Rhea Corvi scoffs. “The child is a crossmage with Corvi magic and Scar. I must find her before DOTS learns of her.”
“Enough,” Mom lashes out. “You hate crossmages. You’ve sent every single one to their execution, and you’d do the same to the child. Admit it, you’re furious they tainted your perfect purist bloodline.”
“My legacy will not be a crossmage,” Rhea Corvi shouts as she raises five more undead behind Mom, who shakes her head, readying her dagger. Then the faint lights flicker, and Rhea’s head snaps to the side before she disappears, leaving Mom in the middle of a dozen undead.
I want to tell her to run back to the burial chamber to get Raiku. In fact, I think I am screaming at her to get Raiku. But of course she doesn’t hear me. She’s dead.
Mom fights three undead, killing them one after the other. The other one approaches her in the back, claws drawn, ready to stab her. I scream, but someone else shields her, taking the claws in the center of his chest.
Dad.
“Han, no!” she screams and drops to her knees, catching him as he falls.
I feel her pain as though it is my own. My mother grabs on to my father, rolling him onto his back.
“You weren’t supposed to be here.” She’s not even looking as she throws daggers at two more approaching undead.
They both screech and turn to ash. “Han, wake up, for the love of Haal.” She presses her forehead against his.
“I came down here for Raiek, to help Willow with our lifedrain theory. Nothing would’ve happened to me. I’m immortal with him.”
Raiek slithers from her neck to my father’s then, and the moment Raiek settles at his collarbone, Dad wakes, shoving Mom away from another undead.
I know how this story ends. I’ve known it my whole life.
I don’t know why I’m watching them, hopeful that she sidesteps, that she makes it, that I get to go home and hug her.
But instead of staying behind Dad, she whirls, throwing a dagger at the undead, right as another one digs its claws straight into her heart.
My own heart shatters all over again. I had always known how she died, but watching the life slowly fade from her eyes as Dad lowers her to the ground, his hands covered in her blood, breaks me.
“Tell them stories about me, Han. Remind them that it isn’t our magic that makes us, but we—” She goes limp in Dad’s arms.
I blink, realizing I’ve been watching a blend of Mom’s and Dad’s memories, and I’m back in Paltro’s office, out of breath, tears streaming down my face. My heart is pounding against my chest, and my limbs are frozen in place.
Rhea Corvi killed my mother.
Viola. Does she know? Is that why she’s helped us so much? Was any of it real, or was it her guilt pushing her forward? The weight of betrayal threatens to crush my windpipe. Her grandmother killed my mother, because of her mother, because of… her.
No. This can’t be it. I reach for the cup and gulp down the rest.
I don’t know whose memory I land in this time, but it’s the same hazy picture, as if multiple memories have been stitched together.
I’m in the middle of a forest with tall red tree trunks and low black bushes that I don’t recognize.
We’re not in Gorhail Woods. We’re in an unfamiliar clearing, and looking at the white deer grazing on the black leaves, I think we’re somewhere in the province of Aurignan.
In the middle of the clearing stands a small yellow house with a wraparound veranda.