Chapter 52 Caspia
Fifty-Two
Caspia
Hain rests on his knees at the edge of an ocean cliffside. His pale blue robes pool around his body, covering the rock beneath him. Waves crash, sending sea spray into the air. Wind whips the tall grasses around him.
Blood, as black as death, drips from his nose. His face is gaunt, his cheeks hollow.
He bows his head and whispers a prayer.
A prayer spoken in a language from across the Marixmore. A prayer spoken in Nelfinex.
“By the grace of the Divine, guide them home. By the grace of the Divine, grant these Starling the strength to do what I could not. By the grace of the Divine, welcome me to Gloree.”
He lifts his face to the sky and smiles. Blood dribbles from the corner of his mouth as he opens his arms.
He hitches his last breath. Then a blade, silver and sharp, cuts through the air.
And Hain’s head tumbles off the cliff.
…
I woke with a gasp, sitting upright so fast I shook the bed.
Andreas was awake in a blink, reaching for me. “What is it? Are you all right?”
A vision.
A horror.
“He’s dead.” I swung my legs over the edge of the bed and buried my face in my hands, pressing my fingertips against my eyes to blot out the sight.
“Who is dead?” Andreas knelt behind me, his hands on my shoulders. “Caspia.”
“Hain,” I choked out. “A vision.”
“Then it might not happen.”
“Maybe not.” But something about that vision felt inevitable.
A breeze drifted through the open windows, making me shiver.
Andreas climbed off the bed and pulled on the pants he’d discarded earlier.
His naked chest caught the moonlight as he closed each of the windows, then grabbed my robe from the chair in the corner.
He draped it over my shoulders, then crouched in front of me, his hands taking mine. “Tell me about it.”
I closed my eyes and recounted the vision, translating Hain’s prayers to Calandran.
By the grace of the Divine, guide them home.
By the grace of the Divine, grant these Starling the strength to do what I could not.
“He spoke in Nelfinex,” I told Andreas. “Not Beesan. Not Calandran. It was Nelfinex.”
I hadn’t even known he could speak Nelfinex. During our two meetings, we’d used Calandran. And the gray book was written in the old language.
“Guide them home,” I said. “Grant these Starling. Both prayers were plural. He must mean Xandra. But I can’t remember if I ever told him about her.”
Andreas ran a hand over his face, his palm scraping against the stubble on his jaw. “Maybe he learned it from Brother Nold.”
“Maybe.” If they were allies, they would have shared our conversations.
There’d been a finality to our last meeting in my carrel. Had he known he was leaving to face his death? “Do you think he died for betraying a magical oath to the Voster?”
“I have no idea,” Andreas murmured, standing to pace our darkened bedroom. “I would think that betraying an oath would kill you instantly. Though I don’t know anyone who has ever died from breaking a blood oath. Maybe his magic was able to keep him alive longer than it would a human.”
It didn’t really matter. Whatever the cause, Hain was going to die, if he wasn’t dead already. Murdered, probably by the Voster.
The burden of truth was now mine to carry.
Maybe it always had been.
How long had Hain waited for this perfect storm? A Starling descendant who came to Calandra but had not completed her ritus. Any other would be lost, like Xandra.
Was this the reason the Divine had called me here? Was this my destiny?
“I’m going to find the orbits and destroy them,” I whispered.
Andreas stopped pacing. “What?”
“It is the only way to save Xandra. And it could stop the migrations from killing so many innocent people.”
He shook his head. “You can’t be serious.”
“Andreas.” I met his gaze, knowing what he’d see in mine.
Responsibility. Loyalty. Heritage.
He wasn’t the only person in this bedroom with a duty to their family.
“I’m Starling. I can find them.” There was no proof but the feeling in my heart.
“No, Caspia.” He sliced a hand through the air. “It’s too dangerous. You heard what Hain said. The Voster will not want to lose their magic. You cannot win against them.”
No, I couldn’t. He was right about that. A lifetime spent training with the Royal Blades was nothing compared to magic. But it didn’t change my heart.
“You know I have to do this. Or at least try.”
“And if I forbid it?”
I arched an eyebrow.
My handsome protector. My strong husband. But even he couldn’t change my mind. We both knew that.
His mouth flattened, and he resumed pacing. It took a few moments but not many.
Just like our early suns together, trekking across Calandra, his faith in me was as predictable as the tide. He believed everything I’d ever told him. And he’d never let me go after the orbits alone.
“We will do this my way.” He stopped pacing and pointed to my nose. “Or I will lock you in this room and throw away the key.”
My heart swelled. I loved this man so much it was hard to breathe.
Knowing Andreas, he’d insist on coming along. He’d hire a legion to keep me safe. He’d plan and plot and spend every gold coin in his family’s coffers if it meant my survival.
But we would do this. Together. And by the grace of the Divine, we might actually succeed.
A smile, fueled by hope, tugged at my mouth.
“Do not smile when I am angry at you, Caspia.”
I bit the insides of my cheeks.
“Obviously, I’m going with you.”
“I expected as much.” I stood from the bed and walked to him, wrapping my arms around his waist as I pressed my ear to his chest. “I love you.”
He exhaled, and a heartbeat later, he wrapped me in his arms and buried his nose in my unbound hair. “I won’t lose you. Not to the Voster. Not to this dark magic. The moment I fear your life is at risk, this is over. Please don’t ask me to watch you die.”
“I vow it.”
He held me for a long moment, and when he let me go, his expression was masked with that serious look I’d come to know all too well. His mind was already working, already formulating a plan and assessing possibilities. “Hain gave you no indication of where these orbits might be hidden.”
“No.” I sat on the bed and hugged a pillow to my chest. “But I would think they’d be in fairly remote locations. If I was hiding the remains of magicians, I’d keep them far away from people.”
“Hundreds and hundreds of years ago, there wouldn’t have been five kingdoms. Even the landscape could have changed over so many years.”
“Someone must have been in power. Too bad any records from then don’t seem to exist.” Or, more likely, they’d been destroyed by the Voster to hide the truth of their powers.
“If I had to venture a guess, I’d say rulers were more fragmented,” he said. “The Cross lineage is known to have always held power in Quentis. But I don’t know how far that power extended. Possibly beyond the Evon.”
The Evon Ravine acted as a natural border between Quentis and Genesis. It was the reason we’d sailed to Roslo rather than travel by land.
Andreas had told me that it cut so deeply into the earth that only a sliver of noontime sunlight reached the bottom. And the monsters that lurked in its depths were known to be more terrifying than any other, save the crux.
A shiver rolled down my spine.
It sounded like the perfect place to hide a magician’s orbit.
“In Nelfinex, after we burn our dead on funeral pyres and seal their ashes in orbits, most are kept in temples. The Starling temple is deep below the palace in Showe, carved into the rock.”
I’d only been to the Starling temple once, the sun we put my great aunt’s orbit to rest. It had been so cold my teeth had chattered through the ceremony. I’d held back tears for fear they would freeze on my cheeks.
“If the Starling from long ago brought their traditions from Calandra to Nelfinex, then they might have chosen burial places deep in the earth. I think we should go to the bottom of the Evon Ravine.”
Andreas scowled. “I was afraid you’d say that.”
“Are there other ravines like it?”
“To my knowledge, the Evon is the largest crevasse in all of Calandra. However, there are other places known to be as treacherous. A waterfall in Ozarth that falls into a vast hole. The Grint Mine in Laine has tunnels through a chasm. The cliffs on the eastern shore of Genesis have caves that are rumored to lure people to their depths.”
Caves like the one Xandra and I had found after we landed? Could that be why we became so sick? We’d been too close to a source of dark magic? Maybe the Starling had sent the remains to every corner of Calandra.
“All right. We start at the Evon. And we keep searching until we find them all.”
“I hate this,” Andreas said.
I gave him a sad smile. “So do I. But this is bigger than us. This could mean the end of the migrations. This could mean so many lives saved.”
He came to the end of the bed, his shoulders slumping. “Is it selfish of me to care more about your life than that of any other? All I want is to hide you away and keep you to myself.”
“But you won’t,” I whispered.
He shook his head. “No, not when this could change Calandra forever.”
I rested my head on his arm. “I love you.”
Not only for wanting to protect me, but because he would fight for those who could not fight for themselves.
He kissed my temple. “I love you, too.”
“Even though I’m going to drag you to the bottom of the Evon Ravine?” I teased.
“To the bottom of the ravine, my heart.” He framed my face with his hands. “To the ends of the realm.”