Chapter 20
hen I regain consciousness, we haven’t moved from our spot in the cavern.
Cygnus crouches by a crackling fire about a dozen paces away. I’m flat on my back. Something lumpy and hard props up my head. I feel with my hand and realize it’s his crumpled-up tunic.
At first, I think he doesn’t notice my stirring. But then he speaks, voice cutting through the shadow: “You’ve been out a few hours. I figured you needed to rest after all that.”
I blink at our surroundings. The bodies of the banshees are gone, but the smell of death lingers.
“What happened?” I ask.
Cygnus shakes his head and lifts a finger to tap his earlobe. I spot the stream of dark, crusted blood running down from his ears, and I groan, remembering. “Your ears. I’m sorry.”
“I can’t hear anything,” he says, too loudly.
I gesture for him to come over. “I’ll help you.”
He hesitates. “You should save your strength.”
“We’re not getting through this shit if you can’t hear a word I say.”
He still looks nervous, so I wave again, more forcefully. “Come here.”
Reluctantly, he walks over and sits beside me so that we face each other.
His eyes are sharp in the darkness, tracking every movement as I lift my hands to his temples.
I keep the touch featherlight. It doesn’t escape me that this is the most physical contact I have had with Cygnus, at least with both of us conscious.
I’m keenly aware of the space between us: his scent, the heat, each cautious breath.
The wound is easy to isolate. The pain in his throbbing eardrums carries a distinct signature, almost like a scarlet thread in an ivory tapestry.
With deep breaths, I sink into my consciousness, diving further and further until I reach the coil of imaginary thread at the base of my spine.
I draw it out, letting the magic surge through my skin until the threads curl around Cygnus’s severed ones. Healing and soothing.
I remove my hands as soon I finish.
Cygnus wobbles his head, like a dog trying to slough off extra water. “I’m going to have to start tallying my life debts,” he mumbles. “You own my soul a few times over at this point.”
I huff a weary laugh. “Monsters are my specialty, apparently.”
“Any idea what those were?”
“Banshees,” I say, scowling.
Cygnus falls quiet, staring at me with a strange expression I can’t place. I always have such a hard time discerning what he’s thinking. After a long pause, he asks quietly, “Does it hurt?”
My brow furrows. When I realize what he is referring to, I smile, shaking my head. “The actual healing? Not for me.”
“I can tell that it drains you,” Cygnus says. “I wasn’t sure how much or what it felt like.”
“I’ve always visualized it like a transfer of energy. I imagine if I were running out of blood and you had some way to give me a little of yours, it might feel like someone was taking your energy and putting it into me. That’s what it feels like.”
“How much energy is there?”
“What do you mean?”
“How deep does the well go?” he asks.
I consider the question, thinking of how I felt after healing Finn and repairing Cygnus’s sight.
“I’m not sure. There haven’t been many situations where I’ve tested the limits.
The skakabri brought me all the way to the edge, and it was terrifying.
Usually, I use my Talent rarely. Typically smaller stuff. ”
Cygnus nods thoughtfully. “Did your mother teach you how to use it?”
I shake my head. “She doesn’t have a bloodborne Talent.”
“Really?” He looks surprised. “Then how did you learn?”
“I didn’t have a choice.” I shrug, flexing my hands. “The Talent manifested when I was very young. It’s one of the first things I remember. I thought I was dying.”
“A little dramatic, perhaps?”
“You wouldn’t say so if you’d been able to feel it.” I smile tightly. “When it builds under my skin, it feels like fire. Like I’m burning alive. The first time it happened I was only a little kid. And then I started to be able to see it—the life energy, I mean.”
“I don’t understand,” Cygnus murmurs.
I sigh. This has always been one of the hardest parts of my Talent to accept: the fact that no one will ever be able to understand it.
“When you or I look at the world around us, we can perceive it all with our physical senses—touch, smell, et cetera. I see more. Every living thing: every bug, every blade of grass…it has a certain energy.”
“Like an aura?”
“More like interwoven threads.” I struggle to convey what I mean. “Flesh looks to me like thousands of glowing threads in a tapestry. When I’m healing people, it’s like I can reach out and tug the threads.”
Cygnus is quiet for a while. “After I learned that I was half Elf, I wished desperately that I’d been born with magic. I wanted something I could fight back with. I saw what Rodrick was doing, and…selfishly, I think…I wanted to be able to stop him.”
“A bloodborne Talent is not a blessing,” I say, sharper than I intended. “Not in this world. Trust me, it’s more like a curse.”
Cygnus frowns. “You can save someone’s life with a thought. I wouldn’t call that a curse.”
I sigh, debating whether or not to elaborate.
“I can’t always control it,” I finally admit. “Like when I was a little girl, sometimes I’d be holding a bird, or petting a lamb, or something, and I wouldn’t mean to, but…” I splay my hands.
I expect Cygnus to show some disgust or horror, but he looks utterly calm.
Emboldened, I continue. The whole painful truth starts to spill out of me.
“When I was twelve, Mother and I met this woman in the woods while she was having a baby. There was something wrong with the delivery and she needed help. But Mother was sick with a fever and weak, and the labor just went on and on, for hours….”
I squeeze my eyes shut, blocking out the images. “Mother became so desperate that she asked me to help. I tried to use my Talent, even though I was terrified….”
I hang my head, the memory swallowing me whole.
Suddenly, I’m twelve years old again, with every tactile detail as vivid as the moment I lived it.
I can taste the tears streaming down my cheeks.
I can hear Mother’s hoarse voice, commanding me to make the incision.
I can feel the warmth seeping over my fingers.
Worst of all, I’m inhabited again by the human woman’s pain, her physical and emotional agony as the child is drawn out of her, already lifeless.
And I can never forget the dying woman’s last word—the hatred as she screams at me.
Monster.
“I killed them both,” I admit in a soft voice. “I should have been able to save them. But I was too scared and sloppy, and I lost control.” I swipe the tears away, turning so Cygnus doesn’t see the display of my shame.
Softly, Cygnus says, “You were a child. Children make mistakes. You can’t blame yourself.”
He doesn’t understand.
“My Talent isn’t like other Elves’ Talents,” I explain. “There’s something wrong with it. There’s something wrong with me.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“No! That’s just a fact! My mother’s been alive for over three hundred years, and she’s never encountered magic that behaves like mine. It’s not supposed to hurt. It’s not supposed to feel like my skin is on fire if I get too excited or scared or sad.…I’m a monster.”
“Listen to me.” Cygnus grabs my shoulders. “Your magic is a gift, Lyria. It’s one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen. There’s nothing wrong with you. You’re not a monster.”
“How would you know?” I laugh bitterly.
“Because I watch you!” he snaps. “I’ve seen how you treat people. What you did for Finn, and for Daisy, and that fox…I’ve seen you risk your life to help perfect strangers. Hell, you did it for me! You can’t measure yourself by one mistake. You’re better than that.”
His words leave me speechless.
“You are a good person, Lyria,” Cygnus says again finally, seeming uncomfortable with my silence. “Whether because of your Talent or in spite of it, I don’t know. But you’re no monster, all right?”
I look away, heat pooling in my cheeks and stomach and swelling through my chest.
“Thank you,” I whisper.
“No need to thank me for facts,” Cygnus grumbles. He throws me my pack. “Now, let’s get on with it, shall we? I don’t want to keep waiting around for something else that wants to kill us.”
And just like that, the moment is gone.
Cygnus and I reexamine our inventory of supplies and pack up. After lighting a fresh pair of torches, we withdraw another spool of thread and set out again.
Slowly, methodically, we push through another section of the tunnels.
We shuffle along in silence, following turns and retreating at dead ends.
Gradually, the air turns colder, and eventually the tunnel opens up again.
We step into another massive cavern, almost identical to the one where the blood chalice was waiting.
There’s another pedestal, with another set of runes inscribed on its cylindrical base.
However, there’s no chalice this time—just a small, circular groove in the stone.
I hold out my torch and sit cross-legged while I translate. Cygnus looks on, characteristically pensive.
“Here. I’ve got it,” I say when I finish. Cygnus moves close to me to peek over my shoulder as I read aloud.
“‘One of three, and one of one, I glitter as the stars. Let all the pain be overcome by my eternal march. I am the seed of Rashielle, unyielding as the clock. I carry life within my sight, on this unshifting dock.’”
Cygnus slumps when I finish. “Great. Another riddle.”
I stand up, dusting dirt off my skirts.
“What are you doing?” Cygnus asks.
“We’re not solving this here,” I say. “Not tonight.”
“Why?”
I raise a brow at him. “Do you have any bright ideas?”
“Not necessarily.”
“Right,” I say. “We go back, and we mull it over like we did the other time.”
The last thing I feel like doing is the painful journey out of the caverns and back to the palace, but I don’t see any other options.
“No,” Cygnus argues. “We’ve got a supply of food and water. We should stay longer and try to work it out here.”
“The last riddle took us weeks!” I protest. “For all we know, more monsters are going to drop out of the ceiling at any moment. We’re not going to solve this here! We should get out while we still can, and regroup, like before.”
“But we’ll lose all our progress,” Cygnus insists.
I roll my eyes. “So we’ll come back! But we can’t just stay down here indefinitely. People will notice that we’re missing.”
“Solving the riddle is the most important thing we could be doing.” Cygnus’s eyes flash, growing accusatory. “This is about Finn, isn’t it?”
My face flames, and I snap, “No, it’s not!”
Is this really another dig at my competence? Another shaming accusation?
“Sure.”
I narrow my eyes. “If you’ve got a problem with me, spit it out.”
“I just thought you’d feel a little more urgency given that it is your people in danger!” he snaps. “But no, you’ve got to get back to your boyfriend.”
I shake my head fiercely. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t I? Can you honestly tell me he’s not the reason you’re at the palace?”
“You have no right to question my motivations!”
“Even when you’re in bed with the enemy?”
My cheeks flush and my fists clench at my sides.
I don’t know what I am more angry about, his presumption or the fact that he is right.
Not about the bedding, not the way he intends.
But despite all our stolen time together, Finn is still the leader of the Frumentari.
He would still hunt me if he knew the truth.
And yet, Cygnus wasn’t there in the cottage.
He doesn’t understand the way seeing Finn for the first time made something permanently shift in my chest. Cygnus doesn’t know what it is like to be in love.
And I won’t tolerate his judgment. Not now.
“Who I’m bedding is none of your business!
And you can sit on your high horse and judge me, or be jealous, or whatever, but you’re the one who chose to isolate yourself!
You’re the reason you’re alone!” I pause, fuming, but I’m not done.
“This is about staying alive, for me. As you so kindly pointed out, I’m only safe at this castle as long as I have Finn’s fleeting attention.
And unlike you, I don’t have a lifetime of learning how to blend in! ”
His nostrils flare as I continue to rant.
“So I’m choosing what’s going to keep me alive,” I say, “and right now, it’s getting back to the palace before anyone starts asking questions. Since—in case you haven’t noticed—I’m not very popular.”
We appraise each other for a long moment.
Two dueling forces of will in the darkness.
I can sense Cygnus scanning me for weakness, evaluating me the way he would any challenging case in his hospital.
I hate the calculated intelligence that’s working behind his eyes.
He’s trying to predict my next move. I won’t let him.
Cygnus grinds out, “I’m not questioning your decisions.”
“Just judging them. Much better.”
“You can do whatever you want with Finn,” Cygnus snarls. “I don’t care. All I’m interested in is whether you’re committed to seeing this through.”
“I am!” I take a deep breath, glaring at him. “If you want to stay here and wait for a monster to eat you, be my guest. That’s your prerogative. But I’m going back to the castle.” I snatch up my things, shoving them into my pack.
“Fine,” Cygnus says, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “We can come back at your leisure. No rush. It’s not like there’s a war going on.”
“Good. And when we finish these damn gates, you don’t ever have to see me again. Happy?”
I turn my back on him and stomp off into the darkness.