Chapter 30
CHAPTER THIRTY
A trius was uneasy.
The long trek across the plains had been slow and laborious as the terrain grew rougher, but remained uneventful. We made it to the northern border of Vasai, moved to the coast, and waited.
And waited.
And waited.
Days passed. Atrius’s cousin did not appear.
Atrius and I slept together every night. By our third day on the coast, despite my magic and my sedation, he was waking up every few hours, staring at the ceiling of the tent.
I could always tell if he was awake, even when he didn’t move or speak. His body and his presence betrayed him in all the wordless ways.
I rolled over and propped my chin up on my hand.
“You’re concerned about your cousin,” I said.
Atrius didn’t confirm it. He didn’t have to.
My brow furrowed. An uneasy feeling knotted in my stomach.
Three days was not a long time when it came to the movement of armies. Yet, I sensed something uneasy in the air, too, and I wasn’t in the business of feeding Atrius meaningless platitudes. Neither of us had the time or energy for that.
“I’ll Threadwalk on it,” I said. “When the sun goes down. ”
He nodded, stared at the ceiling for a few minutes longer, then got up, abandoning the prospect of sleep.
As soon as the sun set, Atrius and I went to a deserted stretch of coastline. I hadn’t realized just how much I had missed the ocean these last weeks until a gust of wind hit us and brought with it the scent of salty brine. The beach here was especially pungent, full of vegetation and seaweed, unlike the beaches further north where the Salt Keep stood, where there was nothing to rot in the water but stone. This area was damp and foggy, often warmer than the surrounding regions. The mists that Atrius had been relying on to hide his cousin’s fleet were thick and soupy—I could feel the moisture hanging in the air like a blanket.
Atrius stared out into those mists, silent, jaw set. I did too, the hair prickling on the back of my neck.
Neither of us had to acknowledge it aloud. The foreboding.
I pulled myself away from it, gathering materials and drawing sigils in the sand. Eventually, Atrius joined me, and together we caught a lizard scampering in the rocks and killed it, dripping its blood over the sigils and then tossing it into the fire.
Then I sat down at the edge of the waterline so the cold, salty water lapped at my dress, facing the fire.
Atrius had seen me do this several times now. We both knew the routine. But just before I was about to let myself fall into the vision, he abruptly stepped forward.
“Be careful,” he murmured, close enough that his lips brushed my ear, and his breath made goosebumps rise over my flesh.
“I know what I’m doing,” I said. A ghost of a smile flitted over his lips. And he stepped away, as I let myself fall into the threads—back, and back, and back.
I was falling. I was falling so fast I couldn’t grab onto anything. It was almost as bad as it was the last time I Threadwalked—almost—but at least now, I was expecting it.
Threads flew by, smears of silver. I managed to grab one of them, hurling myself onto it so awkwardly that it hit my stomach and knocked the wind out of me. Then I hauled myself to my feet.
Everything stilled. The other threads faded into the background, millions of possibilities yet to be explored. The sky was a velvet night, calm and star-speckled.
I focused on the thought of Atrius’s fleet, bending the thread before me toward it.
Show it to me, I whispered into the night, and began walking along the thread.
The mists rolled in thick. The stars disappeared beneath the fog. I was disoriented, the thread wobbly beneath me, but I just kept walking.
And walking.
And walking.
My brow furrowed. I should have felt something by now.
But nothing. Nothing but mists.
Perhaps seering on the fleet wasn’t enough. Perhaps I needed to go farther.
Veratas. Show me Veratas.
The mists grew suddenly, brutally cold. Goosebumps rose over my skin. Shivers racked my body. I braced, but kept walking.
A figure appeared in the mist, far ahead of me.
Atrius’s cousin, maybe?
My steps quickened. The figure was walking, too, though much slower than I was. When I got within a few paces, close enough to make out their presence, I stopped short.
“Sightmother?”
Her back was to me, and the mist obscured her. But even in this intangible dream world, I would recognize the Sightmother anywhere. I briefly considered the possibility that she was actually in this Threadwalk with me—shared Threadwalks were possible, though rare and very difficult. But this version of her… she was silent, ephemeral, like a gh ost.
A knot twisted in my stomach, disconcerted by her presence here, even if I didn’t know why.
In a few long strides, I caught up to her. She walked beside my thread in steady, even paces. She wore her red blindfold, the ribbon unusually long, fluttering behind her—a lone shock of color in a world of misty grey, except for?—
My attention fell to her bare feet, and the crimson, bloody footprints they left behind her.
The sense of looming dread rose.
What could this mean? That the Sightmother was in danger?
But before I could push the vision deeper, her head snapped toward me.
She didn’t speak. But her hands reached out, cupped together as if to pass something to me. I opened mine?—
—And gasped in pain.
Scalding liquid burned my skin. I tried to jerk my hands away, but the Sightmother grabbed them and forced my palms up—forced them open to receive the fresh, bubbling-hot blood.
And then, she was gone.
With a strangled cry, I lowered my hands to let the blood fall away, flecks of it splashing onto my feet. Weaver, it hurt , like even the remnants ate through my skin second by second.
A path through the mist opened before me. There were no intersections in the threads now. Only one path forward. Inevitability.
There was nothing more frightening than inevitability.
Stop, something inside me screamed. You don’t want to see.
But I had a task. I continued. The thread cut into the bottom of my feet. Drip, drip, drip , as the blood from my feet and the blood from my hands fell to the glass abyss below.
The mist faded.
The smell of salt filled my nostrils. The breeze was warm and pleasant. Somewhere distant, the wind rustled the leaves of vegetation. The ocean sang its rhythmic song against the shore.
Pleasant.
Foreboding.
I kept walking. Faster now .
The beach surrounded me. It was beautiful—the kind of place I would dream of as a child, when I thought the ocean was a mythical thing far away. It was nighttime, the sand bathed in silver. Dwellings dotted the shore, some wood with thatched roofs, some well-constructed tents. The tents were familiar. They were the same style as those I slept in every day, alongside Atrius’s army.
All were empty. No footprints in the sand, save for my own.
Hello? I called out.
No one answered.
Show me the settlement, I pushed the vision, even though every nerve in my body screamed, Get out of here, turn back, go away. This is wrong.
Now each step was a compulsion. My hands were in agony, the skin bubbling, the dripdripdrip of the blood faster than ever.
I broke into a run without meaning to, past more empty houses and empty tents, tall trees closing in around me.
And then I tripped.
Something hard jutting up from the ground sent me to my knees.
I pushed myself up and craned my neck to look behind me.
There, sticking up from the dirt, was a—was that a rock? It was black and textured, partially buried.
It’s a rock , I told myself.
You know it is not a rock, another voice whispered.
I crawled to it, head spinning.
You know this looks familiar, the voice jeered.
No.
I started digging. My hands were so bloody they slipped against the sand. My fingernails snapped. I kept going, clawing at handful after handful of dirt, praying to my god—praying to his god—that I was wrong.
I was so frantic that my fingernails, or what was left of them, had torn Atrius’s face by the time I revealed it, marring those too-hard, beautiful features with deep rivulets of red-black vampire blood.
No.
I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. This was no longer a Threadwalk. No longer a dream. Everything about this was real.
I grabbed Atrius’s exposed horn to pull him from the sand.
But his eyes remained wide open and sightless. Blood smeared his skin, red from my hands and black from the wounds I’d accidentally gouged.
“Atrius,” I choked out.
I dug more, pulled more, trying to get him out?—
And then he came free.
Not all of him.
His head.
His throat had been severed, the cut messy and dripping. His hair was matted with blood. I let out a choked sound of horror, but I couldn’t let him go. Couldn’t look away.
Look , the voice whispered.
And I lifted my head. Forced myself to take in something other than Atrius’s head.
And then I realized it—that the town was not empty.
No, I had missed the many, many rocks, one every few feet, in the sand of the beach, in the gritty dirt of the trees, in the vegetation.
Rocks that were not rocks at all. Rocks that were actually pieces of shoulders, or heads, or hands, or legs.
Hundreds of corpses.
In a panic, I leapt to my feet. I didn’t drop Atrius’s head—instead I clutched it to my chest, as if to protect him.
The clouds rolled in. Thunder roared. The first drops hit my head, hot and fast.
Of course it was blood.
This is a vision, I told myself. I can leave. I can stop this.
But no matter how many times I said it, I couldn’t bring myself to fully believe it. Nor could I bring myself to drop Atrius. I clutched him tight, in a gruesome embrace, and threw myself from the thread.
And together, we fell.
And fell.
And fell.