Chapter 2
I was ten years old when a goddess burned down my village like it was nothing more than kindling.
Every night since, I’ve seen her eyes in my sleep, glowing silver with power.
I’ve seen her metal-colored hair, and gem-encrusted skin, glittering in the light of the flames.
I’ve seen the curl of her cape as she turned on her heel and left us all to burn.
I’m going to kill her, and the rest of the gods who have forgotten this side of the gates. Even if it kills me too.
Which means I have to survive the Culling. I have to become one of the Fifty. For them, I will survive anything. Even the haunted look in Stellan’s eyes as he watches me jump off the platform.
I can’t deal with his disappointment. Not yet. So, I use all the excitement and celebration as a cover to slip away.
The roads are crawling with the king’s guard. Their presence isn’t unusual, given how close we are to their training grounds. Still, seeing them never fails to fill me with rage.
Four years ago, in the worst of the drought, I turned a corner with a bucket of water I had carried for three hours from one of the remaining working wells, only to see a guard leaned against the wall, high on hemdrake.
He took one look at my dry, dirt-crusted face and straining white knuckles and said, “Here. Let me help you with that.”
“No, I—”
I tried to turn, but he lunged forward, ripped the bucket from my hands, and poured the water out, little by little, right in front of my face, onto the broken cobblestones. He smiled the entire time, my horrified expression reflected in his marred silver armor.
He threw the bucket to the ground and passed me by.
I learned to take better roads. This one is usually clear.
The group I encounter now steps in front of me, and my bones clench. Fury alights in my stomach.
When they see the ash arc on my brow, though, they back away. They must have been instructed not to mess with the king’s Questral challengers.
“Good luck,” one says, his voice full of whispered mirth. I hear something else, a murmur about how many challengers Raker will kill within the first hour, but I scurry away before I can hear anything more.
Choking on hot air, throat rough with thirst, I weave through the lines of caravans and carts that have been hauled from distant villages.
I don’t stop until I reach the familiar patch of light brown soil at the base of the hill I visit almost daily, and then I begin to climb the weathered stone stairs.
Panic still bleeds through my chest like my body doesn’t know it’s not in danger anymore.
My heart stutters. I stumble, before catching myself, blinded by flashes of the bloodshed—metal shattering, bodies going limp, blood turning the soil crimson, skin melting from bone in the flames.
I grit my teeth, forcing the images into the dark corners of my mind as I focus on not twisting my ankle.
I didn’t survive all of this to be taken down by some half-crumbled steps.
As a distraction, I start undoing my pins, slipping them into my pockets.
My hair gets in the way in the forge, so I always part it down the middle, then make two braids against my scalp at either side that merge into a big one at the back of my head.
It usually hangs loose down my spine, but today I curved it into the gap between braids, like threading a needle, around and around until I could pin it all against my scalp.
Now, I unravel it, releasing some tension as my braid hangs down again.
When I finally reach the ruins at the top of the hill, the full weight of what I’ve just done crashes into me.
My knees buckle, and I collapse onto what’s left of the white marble floor, heaving, hands trembling.
Only when I can breathe normally again do I fully press myself against the floor, then turn onto my back to squint up at the storm-gray sky, what’s left of the ceiling in pieces around me.
My pulse drowns out all my senses, beating loudly, as if declaring, I’m alive.
I did it. I can’t believe I did it.
I made it past the first step. I’m … going to the Culling.
I sit up. A breeze hisses through the columns of the ruins, prickling the ash arc on my brow.
This place is too broken to know what it once was, but a temple makes the most sense. Other than the Great Houses, the only structures built from materials this valuable are to honor the gods.
I found it years ago, while scavenging. At first, I wanted to try my best to finish the process of turning it to dust, because fuck them.
But when the stone proved too hard to even make a dent, I tried to loot it.
Everything of value was taken long ago …
but there was one flash of color behind a massive rock.
The border of what looked like a painting.
The idea of art, in a world of ruins … it seemed ludicrous. But it reminded me of finding wildflowers with my sister, years ago—a rare bloom in a wasteland. A spot of hope in a dark place.
So I came back every day for weeks, moving the stone blocking the color just inches at a time, until finally it was out of the way, revealing a landscape.
I instantly recognized the jagged horizon, formed by a mountain range like a serrated blade. I’d seen it multiple times.
Here.
I craned my neck past the wall and saw the same outline. This … was an ancient painting of this same view. But it might as well have been of another place entirely.
Because whereas this illustration was full of greens and blues, of forests and rivers and flower-brushed valleys—
Now I look out at endless dirt and ash.
“Why does the other side have all the magic?” I asked my mom when I was eight years old, while she combed through my hair, our nightly routine.
“We have our own magic,” she said, as she gently worked through a knot.
“We do?” I asked, eyes wide as I looked at her through the mirror.
She nodded. “We have the magic of warm socks, and nights playing cards by the hearth, and laughter, and love.”
I scowled at her. “That’s not magic.” I would have much rather had a dragon or magical sword from the stories she told before bedtime. The same ones her mother had told her.
“It’s the only magic that matters,” she said.
I didn’t believe her then. I do now, when it’s far too late.
With a grunt, I get to my feet, boots sliding in the rubble. I walk farther into the ruins, then crawl between two crumbled walls, reaching my hand deep, until my fingers brush against fabric.
I carefully withdraw my dust-covered pack.
It took years to save enough extra money from scavenging to get this simple bag and everything in it—a canteen for water, a bar of soap, some wrappings as bandages, a needle and thread, scraps of fabric, and a single gold coin that I traded everything of value for.
It’s all I could manage, and my best guess of what I might need during the journey.
Guesses are all I have. Preparation for anyone but Great House heirs is almost futile. When the gates went up, all our books about the other side were magically stripped of their ink. All the poems went blank. All the paintings were drained of color, leaving only blank canvases.
Only stories, orally told, remained, and I don’t doubt the truth was twisted over time. All that’s left is myths and legends. Even our knowledge of the gods is limited.
But the heirs whose ancestors have gone on the Questral … they have the most recent information.
If I can somehow convince Stellan to tell me what he knows, then I’ll have it too.
I stare out at Nightfell, counting caravans, studying the crowds. Even if Stellan doesn’t tell me what he faced, soon enough … I’ll know.
I will survive the Culling.
I will cross those gates.
I have to.
And then, I will see for myself all that was meant to be hidden. I will see Starside, the world that birthed a thousand legends.
“I did it,” I repeat, this time aloud, eyes on the direction of where my home once stood. I feel that relentless pull toward it, the pain and loss a gaping wound in my soul, as if part of me is still there, kneeling in those ashes. “I did it for you.”
I take one last look at the mural, at the world that once was, and start the long trek down.
The streets are full now, packed with travelers already drunk on cheap ale.
I take the long way around, through the ancient graveyard, along a row of abandoned houses, roofs caved in, paneling discolored, windows long broken.
Each neighbor packed up and left in the middle of the drought, in search of more food and water.
I still remember finding their caravans on the road, years later, their carts looted. Their skeletons. The children …
I slip through the back, hoping Stellan is in the forge and won’t hear me—only to find him waiting right at the back door, like he knew I would be too much of a coward to go through the front.
Stellan’s eyes find my pack immediately. Then they find mine. I see the hurt there as he realizes this is something I’ve been planning for a while.
I lift my chin. “Save your breath. I’m not changing my mind.” I try to walk past him, but he steps to the side, blocking me.
Then I proceed to stand there and listen to every possible reason not to go with the Watchman tomorrow morning.
Every way I could die. He maps it all out for me, as if my death is inevitable, careful not to tell me anything that could actually be useful.
He has a list of dozens of ways I’m woefully unprepared, and shoots down every counter I make.
But hours of arguing are nothing when compared with ten years of hatred. It’s like lesser metal clashing against Starside steel and shattering into a thousand pointed pieces.
Finally, I throw up my hands. “Look. I’m going. You can’t stop me. There’s no use spending our last moments together fighting about it.”