Chapter 28
y nightfall, we’re on our way.
I know the reason for the heavy silence that sinks over us as we work our way back toward the gates. This expedition isn’t like the others. I’m not eager and excited. It’s duty that keeps me putting one foot in front of the other.
One last task. One last chance to prove myself before I go home.
Cygnus seems thoroughly displeased with me. His expression turned dark when I showed him the ring. I didn’t tell him the whole story of how I got it, but he seemed to put together the pieces on his own. He hasn’t mentioned it, and I’m wondering if he ever will, when he abruptly cuts the silence.
“Do you love him?”
“What?”
“That would make this a lot easier for me. If you could tell me that you do.”
“Yes. I love him.” I blink back at Cygnus, trying to understand his perplexing expression. “Why do you care? What’s it to you?”
“Just—”Cygnus breaks off. “Never mind.”
I cover the ring, folding my arms. “I’m not marrying him. Not that it’s any of your business. I’m finishing this, and then I’m getting out.”
“Where will you go?” Cygnus asks.
“Home.”
“The Ironwoods?”
I try to picture a home, my mother waiting for me in our tiny little cottage. But after all I have been through, the image feels far less like a home than it once did. “I’ll figure something out.”
“What about the ring?”
I glance down at it. “I haven’t decided.”
Truth is, I’m trying very hard not to think about it at all.
It takes several hours of solemn trekking to get back to the room with the pedestal. When we finally arrive, I hand over the ring to Cygnus.
“You don’t want to do the honors?” he asks.
“I did the blood,” I answer. “This one’s all you.”
Cygnus approaches the stone table and carefully lays the ring in the divot. Then he steps back and widens his stance, waiting. I do the same.
Nothing happens for a moment, and I wonder if I somehow misinterpreted the clue. But then the floor begins to shake, and the cave rumbles around us as the great stone doors part.
Light floods my vision.
I yelp, shading my eyes, as the entrance widens and the light pours out over us. When the rumbling stops, I remove my hand, blinking frantically to adjust my vision. Then the confusion sets in, as I cannot make sense of what I see.
We appear to be standing in the midst of a wasteland.
The ground beneath us is white and gray, as is the sky that yawns above us, defying logic.
There are no clouds, but no sun, either.
The immense light seems to radiate from nothing at all; it is a part of this space with no clear origin, like the air and earth.
Cygnus and I walk tentatively forward, and the ground crunches beneath my feet.
It cracks and peels in huge flakes, like the riverbeds in the Ironwoods at the end of a long, dry summer.
Ahead lies a lake. Beyond it, a ridge of mountains, the same pale bluish gray.
And faintly outlined against the water, so still that I nearly miss it, a figure stands on the lake.
“What do you think it is?” Cygnus asks quietly. “Another statue?”
“I have no idea.”
We exchange glances. There is nothing else to say. It is clear which direction we need to move.
Forward.
He takes the lead, and I follow trepidatiously. I grip my father’s dagger, savoring the warmth of the metal. My fingers trace the rose on its handle, the ridges that are as familiar to me as the calluses on my own hands.
As we approach the lake, the figure on the water stands still. Eerily so. Cygnus and I come to the water’s edge, and I hesitate. I still can’t make out a face, only dark robes, limp hair, and a slumped, clouded countenance.
“What now?” I ask.
Cygnus offers, “Swim, I guess?”
I try to stick a toe into the water. Only it isn’t water at all—or at least, it doesn’t have the appropriate properties—because my foot doesn’t break through the surface. It hits something solid instead. Confused, I try again and meet the same result.
Beside me, Cygnus has a similar experience. He turns to me, puzzled, and suggests, “I think…I think we’re supposed to walk on it.”
Ominous energy hangs over this place. When I gaze down into the water, I don’t see my reflection; the water glows from within, swirling in the same way the Everwillow portal did, the same way I imagine my magic swirls in me now.
I look back toward the figure, who still hasn’t moved. Feeling deeply apprehensive, I counter with: “What if it’s a trap?”
“Hasn’t this whole thing been a trap?” he grunts.
“Fair enough.”
I follow Cygnus a dozen or so paces onto the water.
As we approach the figure, their features gradually come into view until I am certain the person I am looking at is female—and she is not made of stone.
She is very real. Hair drapes in oily sheets around a haggard face.
She is Elven; her ears are prominent, sticking out from the strands of hair that cling to her like seaweed.
She wears dark robes and is pale, deathly pale, her pallor more resembling that of a corpse than a living being.
She stands about my height, so thin she looks skeletal. Her green eyes are deathlessly cruel.
Cygnus’s voice cracks. “Lyria, I think that’s…”
“Me.”
She’s a daemonic version of myself. Not older, per se, but unleashed, unbridled. Someone I might have become without my mother’s guidance. A physical manifestation of the monster within.
Cygnus looks toward me in utter confusion. “No, I was going to say me.”
I blink, looking back at the figure. She is unchanged, watching us with those cold, austere eyes that seem to look out of a cadaver into the world of the living.
“I think we’re seeing what the spell wants us to see, Cygnus.”
This is powerful magic. Ancient spellcraft. I stand trembling as I behold this twisted version of myself, both knowing and not knowing that she’s an illusion. I see what the magic wants me to see. The spellcraft wants me to fear myself. It wants me to doubt.
I can’t let it win.
Before I can gather my senses, the daemon Lyria comes alive, startling me. She gestures for me to follow her and then begins walking toward the mountains. Her robes trail over the water.
“We’re being told to follow,” offers Cygnus.
I take a long breath. Everything in me wants to turn around, but today I’m choosing courage.
“Then by all means.” I step ahead.
The figure leads us over the lake for what feels like ten or twenty minutes, until we spot something looming in the distance. Two gates. Or archways, really. They are carved from gray marble, perhaps the same stone that forms the jagged mountain peaks in front of us.
The nightmare version of myself stops when she is between them, then turns around slowly. She holds out her hands, palms upward, indicating both directions.
“Which one?” Cygnus grunts.
“Right?”
“Everybody probably chooses right.”
I could pummel him. “Left, then?”
We approach the left archway, but the figure steps into our path, shaking her head. Again, she holds out two hands—in opposite directions.
“I think she—or they—want us to split up,” I murmur.
“I think you’re right,” says Cygnus.
We glance at each other. I can read the reluctance in his eyes, mirroring mine.
“This might be the end,” he admits.
I nod. I can feel it, too. We’ve come to the end of the line.
The final gate.
I look at Cygnus, and an odd weight presses down on my throat. I’m not sure I can untangle all the complex feelings I have toward him right now—all the many varied things I’ve felt toward him since we met. I don’t know what the future holds, but I’m grateful to have known him.
I step toward the gateway on the right. Words scroll up and over the crumbling ruins, and I translate at record speed:
“‘I enter at the breaking point, my price revealed within; some truths are only found in time, seen solely at the end.’”
As I approach, I see that the entry point shimmers with iridescent mist. Distorted rainbows fracture against the swirls as oil spills over the murky water.
I reach out to touch the mist. It isn’t solid like the lake water, but it is freezing cold.
I look sidelong at Cygnus. He watches me. So does the bone-chilling figure.
Old energy hangs over this place, an odd tension in the atmosphere that seems to harmonize with my Talent, like the echo of an old song. If something is to be found in here, something needs to be yielded as well.
“Here goes nothing,” I say, sounding much braver than I feel. Then I step into the mist.
The lake is gone.
The light is gone.
The first step into the void brings a plunging darkness, like plummeting into ice water.
The next step brings me to solid ground—stone.
Darkness and warmth spread out around me, vague and indiscernible, like waking up from a dream.
Then, all at once, my surroundings snap into focus, and I know precisely where I am.
Terror stabs through my heart. I’m back in the Great Hall. On the dais, where the queen was sitting right before they took Fergustan’s head.
Seated on the throne is King Rodrick.
I can place him without knowing him. The cruelty on his face is unmistakable.
I’ve never seen a person like this—someone who wears an evil aura around them like a cloak.
There’s no mercy in those darting eyes, no paternal love.
He’s looking down at Finn, who looks different since I saw him last. He is wearing the same outfit I found him in after fighting the Moragorion.
The one I repaired by firelight with my mother’s sewing kit.
He wears his sword on his hip, and he still has the travel pack I gave him slung over a shoulder.
It swings as he argues animatedly with his father.
I stand still, waiting for Finn to take notice of me just a hairbreadth away from his father’s throne. But he is oblivious, almost shouting in his tirade. It appears I am only an observer in this world.