Chapter 6 #2
“Iriset,” he commands quietly. “Breathe.” He pries her hand away from her ribs and sets it over his chest to demonstrate.
She struggles, shaky for three rounds. He can see flecks of topaz and smoky quartz in her eyes and he remembers doing this twice with her: once in the Color Can Be Loud Garden, once in Singix’s private chambers when he thought Iriset was dead. Lyric lets go.
Hugging herself, Iriset says, “I remember the Moon-Eater’s Temple, the numen—where is it? What happened? Where are we? Why do the forces feel so wrong?”
Lyric doesn’t answer that question, because he doesn’t know. Though he feels it, too. “We’re in the Moon-Eater’s fortress,” he says.
Iriset screws her face up.
He nudges her toward the balcony and follows her as she carefully steps out.
Her eyes are drawn to the nearest tower with its eye-searing orange flowering vines, the ones that grow in tangles.
And he watches her follow the course of three birds that fly more like butterflies, drifting on a current of breeze.
A water feature shoots a perfect arc of water and she startles.
Then with a little laugh she grasps the railing and leans out, over the expansive rock and water gardens and undulating trees that are green and blue like the ocean is said to be.
Lyric reaches over and gently puts his first two fingers under her chin, tilting it up and south toward the hazy crescent moon that is not where it’s supposed to be. Tagging along behind the sun.
He feels the moment she sees it. She rocks back against him, fingers grasping back at his hips as her heel steps on his toe.
“Oh red moon,” she murmurs.
“Wrong moon,” he says, meaning it to be distant but it snaps out with a sharp edge of contained fury.
Iriset shakes her head, his anger flowing around her as if it never existed. She’s in her own head, and Lyric recognizes that expression: the calculations she’s making, the random pieces of information she draws together to create an accurate pattern. “The moon doesn’t move,” she finally says.
“Now it does.”
“Now,” she repeats, staring at that moon. Lyric’s gaze follows. He still catches himself staring at the moon more often than not.
“You mean ‘when,’” she says. “The moon moved before the Holy Syr unraveled the Moon-Eater, you told me that.” She turns around to look at him, open and verging on delight.
“And you said we’re in the Moon-Eater’s fortress.
We’re centuries ago?” Iriset laughs, high and uncertain. “That’s what happened?”
“The numen said you did it.”
Stunned, Iriset pulls her head back, her eyes flicking side to side as she thinks. “That isn’t what I was trying to do.”
“What were you trying to do?” Lyric demands.
“Just free it. The Moon-Eater,” she murmurs.
“It was trapped, for all that time, not unraveled, Lyric, or maybe yes unraveled but not gone, not dead. It was trapped under the palace, and its life force, its power, that’s what held the empire together.
” Iriset grabs at his collar, making a fist in the tunic material.
Tilting her head, she meets his gaze again, and there is such wonder and thrill in those eyes.
“The Holy Syr bound him to the Holy Design,” she says urgently. “He is the fuel, and Amaranth is the spark that reawakens him every day to keep the design from entropy! The moon…” Iriset grins. “I have no idea! I don’t know!” Her laughter is beautiful and Lyric tries to hate it.
She keeps going: “But it must be part of the… the stability maybe, or whatever great force holds the moon in place is the…” Her eyes narrow again, and they drift to stare at his shoulder—through it really.
“Tension? If the moon is supposed to move, probably like the motions of other celestial bodies, then to stop it would require incredible power, and would cause so much chaos, so much… It would reconfigure the intricate design of the entire world. It would have to.”
Iriset bites her bottom lip. This is not Lyric’s wife.
It sinks into his bones as he stares at her.
It’s Silk, this wild, brilliant, fearless apostate who tucked herself inside his wife, his lover, his friend—but it was always a mask.
His wife is gone. She never truly existed.
The very idea is so hollow, so true, Lyric puts it away.
“How do we get back?” Lyric asks. It isn’t only time he’s talking about.
She shrugs, gaze wandering. “Why would we go back?”
Oh. Oh.
Everything in his life has taught him how to hide the impact of her casual volley.
“It’s… home,” he says.
And Iriset laughs, surprised and surprisingly mean. “I don’t have a home, Your Glory. You killed my entire family.”
Lyric sees his mother sprawled on the study floor, painted petals smearing on her cheek.
He sees blood on Iriset’s face, hears the sucking sound of his force-blade leaving the chest of the man he stabbed.
He backs away from Iriset, goes inside where he can pretend the moon hangs properly in its vertex height.
“Besides,” Iriset continues blithely, following him. “The Moon-Eater’s fortress must have a Moon-Eater, right? This is the Apostate Age? Why would I want to be anywhere else?”
Lyric nods. If he opens his mouth he might let out whatever is slouching its way up this throat. It’s a good question: Why would an apostate leave the Apostate Age?
At the foot of the bed, he stops. He doesn’t know what to do in here, with Iriset at his back, still talking. He should get her food, more water. Show her the bathroom and find Peace and Saff. Make a plan, without her apparently. He shouldn’t be disappointed.
“Lyric,” she snaps, like she’s been saying his name. A finger jabs the back of his ribs. “When is it?”
He turns his head slightly, so he can’t quite see her around the curl of his hair, but it reads like he’s listening. “Before the Moon-Eater is… imprisoned.”
“Right, obviously.” She throws up her hands as she paces, but winces and cups her left hand over the slight bulge of the array cap under her shift. “But the Apostate Age was, like, six hundred years long, or something! That’s a huge period. When are we?”
“I don’t know.”
“Ha?” She bugs her eyes, incredulous. “You’ve been here two days and haven’t collected any data points?”
I wouldn’t leave you alone. Lyric didn’t care exactly when they were yet, because it wasn’t them yet. This we she keeps saying.
“I really need to pee,” Iriset mutters from the inner wall, feeling it up with both hands, fingers skittering like spider legs.
“And I’m starving. I could eat a cloud whale.
” Iriset glances mischievously over her shoulder at him.
“Have you seen one? Are they real or only an apocryphal story? There was a skeleton of one in your forbidden library.”
Here she is: Iriset, the real Iriset. Nothing stops her. They’re in the past. The moon moves in a changing course across the sky. She accepts it. Just takes it in and moves with it. Repatterns her expectations. No wonder she thrived in every role she ever fell into.
Unable to remain still, Lyric strides to her side and hits the panel to cause the door to rain open.
Iriset sucks in an impressed breath.
“I’ll find out when exactly we are,” Lyric says, standing so close he can feel the ecstatic pinging off her. Not Singix’s enchanting flow. She even faked her inner design. “But we have to go back.”
Lyric turns and nearly barges into Eliri the Adept Hand. He stares expectantly until he realizes she won’t cover her eyes or acknowledge his position—he has none here, and there are no mirané traditions. He blinks and moves aside. “Eliri, Iriset is awake.”
Eliri’s crystalline eyes widen and she looks past him. Lyric heads out the door, hearing Iriset squawk, “Are those quartz claws? Styli built into your bones?”
It hurts, too, that he knew she’d love Eliri’s claws. He moves faster down the corridor, listening to Iriset’s fading voice, though Eliri won’t understand mirané. But Iriset is resourceful and cunning. She’ll figure it out.