Chapter 15
FIFTEEN
Aleksander
The next morning, I rose before the sun, startled awake by the sensation of something crawling over my skin.
No—not over it.
Inside of it.
A cold sweat washed over me as I sat up. The room spun. I closed my eyes until faint movement to my right made me open them again, reminding me I wasn’t alone.
I breathed out a soft sigh, taking in the sight of Nova curled under the blankets next to me.
Memories of last night—of staying up until an ungodly hour talking of nothing and everything—flooded my mind, calming it.
Watching her body rise and fall with peaceful breaths brought me even further back to my senses, stopping the room’s spinning, helping me remember why I was here and where I was going.
I wasn’t sure when it had happened, but my internal compass didn’t point north, any longer; it pointed to her.
Quietly, I slipped out of bed and went to the wash room. After splashing handfuls of freezing cold water on my face, my gaze ended up transfixed on the ornate mirror above the sink. After weeks spent in Lorien’s clutches, the reflection looking back at me still seemed like a stranger.
I stared at it for a moment, half-expecting to see movement underneath my skin; the crawling sensation hadn’t lessened.
But no matter how long I stared, my reflection didn’t change. My skin didn’t split apart, revealing some heinous beast underneath, trying to make itself known…
I was merely myself again.
For now, at least.
Walking back into Nova’s room, my eyes automatically drifted to Grimnor.
It was leaning against the far wall, reflecting none of the rising sunlight that was glinting off so many other things around it.
It always seemed to absorb light, instead.
I could sense Lorien’s presence hovering within the velvety dark blade—a brand of magic I feared I would never be able to not recognize, however faint it was now.
That wasn’t what had woken me up, though.
The crawling in my skin was different. It didn’t feel like something separate from me, trying to gain control. It felt more like something…waking within me. Like an old wound I’d aggravated somehow.
Movement seemed to help settle it, so I dressed and headed for the armory and training grounds on the opposite side of the palace.
As I made my way into the space, helping myself to one of the swords hanging in the armory, I heard voices coming from a meeting room along the grounds’ edge.
A tense conversation, from the sound of it.
I recognized the voice of Nova’s brother, among others, but I paid them little mind, turning my attention instead to the pile of practice dummies leaning against a nearby partition.
I arranged a small army of opponents and went to work.
The next hour passed in a blur.
The meeting continued to rumble in the background, raised voices occasionally distracting me from my practice.
Eventually, the loudest exclamations thus far were accompanied by several people storming from the private room and angrily making their way back toward the main palace.
I drew closer to the scene, curiosity getting the better of me.
Moments later, three more people exited the room—Lord Renvar, flanked by two guards. Bastian followed them out but paused in the doorway, his mouth set in a hard line and his body tense as he watched them go.
Renvar threw a wary glare in my direction but walked by me without saying a word.
A smart choice.
Bastian didn’t move until long after they’d disappeared, at which point he silently made his way over to the battalion of dummies I’d been working against. He unsheathed the short sword at his belt and twisted it back and forth with methodical, balanced precision before launching into a rush of powerful swings and strikes.
I considered calling it quits and leaving him to practice alone, that is until he stopped me with a pointed glance—right after cleanly slicing the head from one of the dummies. It bounced once against the dusty ground before rolling to a stop at his feet.
“There are rumors that you attacked Lord Renvar the other night,” Bastian said.
“Attacked is a strong word.”
He lowered his sword, studying me.
I tensed but said nothing else; if he was hoping for an apology for what I’d done, he wasn’t going to get it.
Because I wasn’t sorry.
If anything, I wished I’d done more than just frightening the bastard.
The regent knelt to pick up the decapitated head, calmly and precisely balancing it back on the figure’s body. I got the impression that he spent a lot of time in these grounds, relieving these practice mannequins of their heads.
Rolling some of the tension from his shoulders, he said, “He was overdue for a good humbling. So, thank you.”
I could hardly contain my surprise at his unconcerned tone.
“…Happy to help,” I said.
Light was starting to break through the hazy canopy of clouds above us, brighter than I’d ever seen it over this palace. It still wasn’t a morning like the ones I remembered in Soltaris, but after so much time spent down here in the dark, it seemed almost like a normal sunrise.
There were swaths of black marring the sky far in the distance, though—places where the awakening sun clearly didn’t reach.
“Renvar is growing impatient,” Bastian said, “and he’s not the only one.
With every ounce of magic that rains down from Nerithys, they only want more.
” He shielded his eyes from the breaking light, focusing on the farthest patch of brightness we could see.
“They don’t understand Nova’s power. Or its limits.
They don’t want to study the history, the nuances of Shadow and Light, how they intersect, or the warning signs within these erratic ebbs and flows of magic—all the things I’m desperately trying to make sense of.
They want easy answers. But nothing about this is easy. Our world isn’t as it once was.”
I settled on the steps in front of the meeting room, laying my borrowed sword down beside me.
“Meanwhile, my advisors want to focus on a coronation,” Bastian continued.
“Crowning Nova to further secure Rivenholt, at the very least. All of our potential allies are counting on her to carry on the tradition of the first-born taking the throne without question.” He sighed.
“But now she also has the matter of Lorien’s curse to deal with, on top of everything else. ”
I found myself understanding his exact point, even though he never outright said it—because I felt the same thing.
There was so much he couldn’t carry for her, even if he wanted to.
Quietly, he said, “I’ve made the mistake of asking too much of her in the past.”
I thought of how she’d fought her way into the Kingdom of Midna, alone, and forced Lorien’s hand.
Of how she’d walked willingly into death at the start of all this.
Of everything we’d talked of last night before going to sleep: her kingdom here in the Below; the mess that remained of the middle realm; the looming shell of Rose Point above, with all of its ghosts—her mother among them.
All the things she was desperate to fix.
I said, “She asks too much of herself, too. It runs in your family, apparently.”
Bastian let out a humorless chuckle.
“She isn’t fragile,” I reminded him.
“No. But strong things break, too.” He was silent for a moment.
“All these wars…” he eventually muttered, raking a hand through his hair.
“I hate the idea of sending her off to face any of them without going alongside her. But it can’t be helped, can it?
I’ll have to continue to hold the line down here.
You all will have to return to the Above.
And maybe we’ll manage to balance it all before the end. ”
I nodded in agreement with this plan, even though he seemed to be holding a private council, trying to convince himself rather than me.
He shifted his attention to his sword again, swiping and slicing through the air with heavy but smooth motions. The blade’s handle caught a piece of sunlight, and I noticed a familiar symbol in the center—a circle divided diagonally by a vine-wrapped sword.
The mark of the Void Order.
Noticing me staring at it, Bastian said, “Another war I’m trying to figure out.
” He held the weapon up for me to inspect.
“This is one of the many relics Nova and Thalia have brought back from the middle realm over these past few weeks. I’m noticing, now, just how many things from that realm carry this symbol, even though it’s often much smaller and less noticeable than this.
I think that Order may have been more involved in the Vaeloran Cycle, and all its workings and weavings, than we previously guessed. ”
For some reason, whenever I looked at the symbol, I was struck with a wave of unease. Bastian didn’t seem to want to meet my eyes all of a sudden, either, which did nothing to settle the anxious churning in my gut.
Was there something he wasn’t telling me?
Before I could venture a guess as to what it might be, he cleared his throat and said, “Answer a question for me.”
“What is it?”
He glanced my way, but still didn’t quite meet my eyes.
“Nova claims you are back in control of your own body, your own magic. And yet, my servants who witnessed the magic you used against Lord Renvar seemed terrified when they reported it to me. It apparently lingered in that room long after you’d left, so powerful that most of them refused to even go inside for a closer look.
” He inhaled deeply. “So, before I send you off on this quest with my sister, I’m forced to ask: How much of our enemy still lingers within you? ”
I stared at the symbol on his sword for a long time.
“I’m not sure,” I replied, honestly.
“Do you still feel him?”
“I feel…different. Not like him, though.”
“But do you feel like yourself?”
The question sank like a stone into the pit of my stomach. I didn’t know how to answer it, and Bastian didn’t seem surprised by my silence.