Chapter 30 Romie
EMORY’S WORDS BURROWED INTO HER, and though there was some truth to them—because yes, fine, Romie had been a tad jealous of Emory’s power, but that was before experiencing firsthand how dangerous it was—the fact that Emory believed she would stoop so low as to let that jealousy come between them hurt.
Romie had already apologized about the secrets she’d kept at Aldryn.
She wasn’t one to dwell on past mistakes.
She was more than willing to move on, go back to how things were before everything went to shit, if only Emory took responsibility for her part.
But Emory still didn’t seem to grasp what she’d done.
“You okay?” Nisha asked as Romie barged into the room.
Romie had never been so happy to see her. Unlike Emory, Nisha at least seemed more than content to go back to the way things were.
Needing an outlet for all these silly feelings, Romie related her conversation with Emory. She expected outrage on Nisha’s part, or at least for her to take Romie’s side. But Nisha merely bit her lip, looking uncertain.
“Don’t tell me you agree with her?”
“She did go through a lot.”
“So did I,” Romie argued. “I had to watch my friends slowly go mad in the sleepscape. I watched Travers and Lia disappear without knowing where they’d gone. I saw Jordyn turn into an umbra in front of my very eyes.”
“I know,” Nisha said placatingly. “I’m not saying what you went through was any less hard than what Emory did.”
“Then what are you saying?”
“That maybe everything you went through changed you. Both of you. People grow apart. That doesn’t mean they can’t find their way back to each other.”
Nisha gave her a knowing look, the hint of a smile lifting her mouth. It broke through Romie’s defenses until she was rolling her eyes playfully at her, hiding a smile of her own. “Do you have any other sage advice for me?”
Nisha made a show of thinking it over. “Actually, yes.”
“Oh?”
“Come closer.”
Romie shuffled closer, raising a brow.
“I said closer.”
The gleam in Nisha’s eyes finally registered. Romie smiled, leaning in for a kiss—and jumped back as Aspen’s voice rang out.
“Romie, do you—Oh, sorry.”
Aspen’s worried expression had Romie on high alert. “What is it?”
“I still can’t find Tol through scrying,” the witch said, full of devastation.
“This whole thing doesn’t add up. From what I know of him, Tol would never break his oath.
He might have had a bit of a rebellious streak in him, but these people saved him.
They’re his family. His oath to the light is his purpose. ”
“We should ask questions around the city,” Nisha suggested. “Find the answers that the Knight Commander wasn’t keen to share. Like what’s this Night Bringer she spoke of? And the Sun Forger?”
“The Sun Forger is their goddess,” Aspen said. “The Night Bringer, though, I have no clue.” She worried her lip. “Is there no mention of this in that book of yours?”
Romie shook her head. “There are warriors in Song of the Drowned Gods, sure enough, but they never sprouted wings.”
“Although the warrior of the story did confront a dragon,” Nisha supplied. “Surely one of these draconic knights has to be the key we’re looking for.”
Romie caught Aspen’s eye at that, a thread of understanding unfurling between them. She didn’t want to be the first to voice this suspicion growing in her mind, so she was thankful when Aspen said, “I think the key might be Tol.”
“Because of this connection you share?” Nisha asked. Romie could hear the doubt creeping into her voice.
“Yes, but it’s more than that. This song you and I hear,” Aspen said, looking at Romie, “I don’t think it calls us only to other worlds. I think it calls us to each other. This kinship I felt when you arrived at the Wychwood, this same kinship I feel toward Tol…”
“It’s like there’s an echo of the song in our souls,” Romie said quietly, recalling this thrum of familiarity, of rightness, she felt whenever she encountered Aspen in dreams, or when she’d seen her transform into Tol as she scried.
There was a profound sort of magic in whatever bond they shared.
If Romie was the girl of dreams and Aspen the witch, it stood to reason that Tol was the warrior.
She wondered, not for the first time, why she didn’t feel that same bond with Emory, the scholar. But she shut away the thought once more.
Romie, Nisha, and Aspen slipped away into the city that evening while the others bathed and ate. Someone had brought them clothes that made them blend in to the busy streets. There was a grim undertone to Heartstone, something that seemed to make its inhabitants skittish and tense.
Romie couldn’t help but note how many cats roamed about—her heart lurched at the thought of Dusk—though she seemed to be the only person here with any sort of affection toward them.
Merchants shooed the cats away from their stalls, mothers hugged their children close and cut to the other side of the street to avoid walking past them.
None of the cats looked feral. They were simply there, watching the world with keen eyes.
And so were the owls.
As the sun dipped past the horizon, the winged creatures were suddenly everywhere, perched atop arches and buttresses.
Owls big and small, with feathers ranging from snow white to ink black.
The sight of them seemed to chase away most people from the streets, and those who remained were quick to light torches and lanterns, as if scared of the dark.
“For people who live in a world full of terrifying beasts, you’d think it would take more than cats and owls to spook them,” Romie remarked.
“They fear the Night Bringer’s creatures,” someone said behind them.
Romie spun to find the young page who’d been with the draconics—Caius, she recalled—sitting on a rampart with a book he was writing in. Torchlight made his strawberry-blond curls glow orange.
Romie peered at the inside of his book. He’d sketched an owl on one page, the drawing surprisingly accurate, and a cat on the other. Both animals were surrounded by tidy handwriting listing their characteristics and behaviors. “You seem to have quite the interest in them,” she noted.
“I have an interest in all creatures. Most of them are feared because people simply don’t bother trying to understand them.
” Caius shut his book with an air of self-importance.
“Which is why I want to master as a sage. Master Bayns says my personal bestiary is already far more complete than those of most squires he’s taught. ”
“What exactly is a bestiary?”
Caius looked at her like she was a particularly odd monster. “Why, it’s only the Fellowship’s most sacred weapon. A compendium of all the eldritch beasts we encounter. A map of the evil that needs to be purged by the light.”
Romie didn’t think a cat warranted such vitriol. When she said as much, Caius laughed.
“It’s not so much the cat itself that people fear, or the owl.
It’s what they represent.” He reopened his bestiary to a page where he’d drawn a creature that had the body of a black cat and the head of a gray owl, with great wings spanning either side of it.
“Panthera noctua. The Night Bringer’s emblematic beast.”
Romie exchanged a wary glance with Nisha and Aspen. “Why do they fear this Night Bringer so much?”
“Rumor is he has returned.” Caius frowned at them. “Don’t you fear the evil deity who destroyed the Forger?”
“Of course we do. We just, er, haven’t heard the story in so long. Would you tell it to us?”
“Welllll,” he said, stretching out the word, “as you know, the eldritch beasts, like the ones we saved you from today, were born of the underworld, ruled over by the Night Bringer. And the dragons that we draconics owe our magic to were descended from the heavens, created by the Forger, who gobbled up a piece of the sun, took its heat within her heart, and spilled it into fiery mountains across the land to give birth to the sacred dragons. So the Sun Forger’s magic—the power of the sun itself—lives on in both the dragons and draconics like me.
But something happened to the Night Bringer and the Sun Forger, and they disappeared from the world, leaving behind their respective beasts.
Pitting eldritch monsters against us who are Forger-made. ”
Caius pointed at the sky. “Only recently has the sun started to burn less and less every day, the nighttime pressing in earlier than it should and stretching on past when is normal. Strange things have been happening all over, like the warmth and light of the sun has been slowly diminishing. The eldritch are growing bolder, more volatile, in the dark.”
“Hence the rumors about the Night Bringer’s return?” Nisha guessed.
A nod. “We were returning from a nearby village when we crossed paths today. The whole place was ravaged by the same corvus serpentes that attacked you.”
Romie squinted at him. “If you’re a draconic, where are your wings?”
Caius gasped like she’d uttered the worst swear word imaginable. “Pages and squires aren’t allowed to unfurl their wings outside of the training citadel. Only the masters may shift as they please.”
“Are knights masters as well?”
“Of course. There are three masteries: knighthood, sagehood, and alchemy. We pages and squires study all three before mastering in one. Knights are the warriors, sages are the keepers of the bestiaries, and alchemists are our makers, trained in the secret art of draconic forging.”
“And Tol?” Aspen asked with quiet hope. “What is he?”
Caius’s endearing enthusiasm sputtered out at that. “Tol was still a squire, but favored to become an alchemist soon.” He cast wary glances around them. “I heard you asking the Knight Commander about him earlier.”
“Do you know what happened to him? Where they’re keeping him?” Aspen asked.
“We’re not allowed to speak of draconics who’ve broken their oath.”
“But you know where he is.”
“Maybe.” He eyed them with suspicion. “What do you want with him?”
“We just want to speak with him before he’s…” Aspen swallowed back her emotion. Tears welled in her eyes. “I knew him a long time ago, before he came here to be a draconic. I would give anything for a chance to say goodbye.”
Caius considered. “I’ll be at the Chasm the day of the execution, like all pages and squires. I might be swayed to point you in the right direction before the fighting begins… if you agree to do something for me in return.”
Romie begrudgingly admired his cunning. “What do you want?”
“Master Bayns and the Knight Commander don’t believe me, but I know for a fact that corvus serpentes have no magic, at least not the kind I saw your friend using earlier.” Caius’s eyes went bright and eager. “I want to see that magic again, if only to know I was right.”
“And do what with that knowledge?” Romie asked. She didn’t like the tight grip Caius kept on that bestiary of his. Emory wasn’t an eldritch beast, but her magic, dark as it already was, might not go over well in this world.
“I swear it’s only to satisfy my own curiosity.” Caius worried his lip, glancing at Aspen. “Tol has rare magic too. They say he’s light-blessed. Favored by the Forger.”
If Caius was implying Emory might also be light-blessed, Romie doubted he would run to his masters claiming she was evil. Then again, if a death sentence was what awaited one of their own, someone blessed by their goddess at that…
She certainly didn’t think Emory was anything close to light-blessed, but she kept that thought to herself.