Chapter 24
TWENTY-FOUR
Nova
Iwoke up alone, and for a moment I panicked, thinking of the last time Aleks had left me alone in the middle of the night, right before we’d clashed with the Void Order.
It proved to be unnecessary anxiety, this time; he stepped through the balcony door only a moment later, running a hand through his sleep-mussed hair. Despite the chilly morning, he wore only what he’d fallen asleep in: a pair of loose trousers slung low on his hips.
I allowed myself to exhale. Tried to let the tension drain from my shoulders. But my eyes were drawn to the scars on his chest, shining in the morning light. Scars that made me think of his early life in Elarith.
A life I now had to admit I knew entirely too little about.
I only knew he’d suffered as a child. That there were scars on his back, too—violent marks that always filled me with sorrow whenever I ran my fingers over them.
What he’d actually endured, though, and for what real purpose…
I couldn’t say. Which made it hard to outright deny the things Orin had told me.
But gods, I wanted to deny them.
Judging by the dark circles under his eyes, Aleks hadn’t slept much, if at all. I offered him a sleepy smile. He didn’t return it. Instead, he stayed by the glass door, staring out at the pale dawn.
“…Is something wrong?”
He started to shake his head but then hesitated, picking up his discarded shirt from the nearby chair, turning his back to me. “Your brother stopped by earlier. He wanted to speak with you.”
“What about?”
“I don’t know. He seemed to forget when I asked if there was a message I could pass along.” He kept his back to me, but I saw his grip on the shirt tighten.
I fumbled for words. For an explanation. For something, anything, that would loosen the tense grip of uncertainty closing around us. “…He’s having a hard time trusting anyone right now.”
“Yes. There seems to be a lot of paranoia going around.”
My chest tightened at the edge in his voice.
The silence seemed to stretch for an uncomfortable eternity before he spoke again. “And what about you?” he asked, pulling his shirt on and finally turning to face me. “Do you still trust me?”
“Yes,” I said immediately. “Of course I do.”
It wasn’t a lie.
But it still felt like one.
How could I explain that, though? How could I tell him that I was irrevocably in love with him, that I trusted him more than I trusted myself.
..and yet I was also afraid. Afraid of what he was becoming—or maybe what he’d always been.
Terrified that every step I took to put the world back together was unraveling him. Unraveling us.
He looked to the door, and panic flared in my chest again. I was relieved when he sat down beside me instead of leaving, even though he didn’t speak right away.
I reached for his hand. “I trust you,” I insisted.
I’m not sure which of us I was trying to convince more.
He pulled his hand back slightly. “And yet you’re clearly keeping something from me.”
I started to my feet, but he caught my wrist and held me in place. His grip was strong enough to hurt.
“Nova.” He squeezed even tighter. “You know something about what’s happening to my magic.”
Shadows rose instinctively around my free hand—a reflexive response to being cornered.
Then it happened: A thread of his magic reached out to meet mine like it had so many times before.
Only it had…changed. It felt wrong. It looked wrong.
It twisted itself into my shadows and began to pull them apart and then toward him, reducing them to a single point of twilight-hued energy before they vanished entirely.
It was the same thing that had happened during our battle with the Order.
I hadn’t imagined it then.
I wasn’t imagining it now.
And there was something so much more horrifying about it happening here, in the quiet of my room, rather than in the chaos of battle. Something more deliberate. Undeniable.
Aleks released my arm and stood up abruptly, backing away from me.
I stared at the space where my shadows had been, now just empty air.
He shook his head, a hint of panic in his eyes, as he quietly said, “Tell me what you know.”
I wanted to. But gods, I couldn’t. I couldn’t tell him about the things Orin had told me, or the supporting evidence I’d found alongside my brother and Eamon over the past few days. If I did, I was afraid he’d leave. He’d want to protect me. He’d be gone before I could stop him.
My lungs ached. My throat burned as if alcohol had been poured down it, reminding me of those dark weeks when we’d been separated.
I couldn’t lose him again.
I couldn’t.
“It…it’s not that I’m keeping things,” I said. “It’s just a lot has happened these past few days. There’s a lot of information I’m still trying to make sense of, and I just…”
He waited for me to finish.
I didn’t.
Because I didn’t know what else to say.
He moved toward the door.
“Aleks, please wait—”
“When you’re ready to talk about this openly and honestly, come find me.” He paused in the doorway, lifting his face toward the ceiling, one hand bracing against the frame. He looked like he didn’t want to leave.
He still did.
Slowly, I sank onto the bed, pressing my palms against my eyes, trying to stave off both tears and an impending headache.
Phantom slipped in from the balcony, trotting to my side and nudging his cold nose against my arm until I lifted my head and scratched behind his ears.
He licked my hand—a rare display of open affection from him. Then he circled the space where my shadows had been obliterated, vigorously sniffing the air and whining as he did.
(His magic smells different.)
More evidence I couldn’t ignore.
“What…what does it smell like?”
Phantom tilted his head, considering. (Cold. Metallic. Like blood.)
I drew in a shuddering, uneven breath.
I had to go talk to Aleks. I had to fix this before it had time to fester into a wound we couldn’t heal.
But as soon as I stood, my plans were derailed by a knock at the door. I opened it to find Eamon standing there, practically vibrating with nervous energy. I knew that look in his eyes—he’d discovered something.
Breathlessly, he said, “We know where the second shard is.”
Less than an hour later, I was clean, dressed, and standing in one of the palace’s smaller sitting rooms.
My argument with Aleks had been shoved to the background out of necessity, though it still hovered at the edges of my mind like a bruise I kept painfully bumping against.
We were waiting on my brother to finish with another meeting before we could begin.
Only Thalia, Phantom, and I were in the small room where Eamon had already piled his stacks upon stacks of research materials across every available surface.
I tried my best to browse through the nearest pile, to prepare for what was coming, but the words and images only blurred together.
“Your focus seems to be elsewhere,” Thalia commented from her seat by the door.
I picked up a tattered scroll, eyes scanning it without really seeing it. “It’s been a difficult morning.”
“Aleks?” she guessed.
I tilted my head toward her.
She shrugged. “Aveline saw him leaving your room in a rush this morning. She asked me if I knew anything—if everything was all right. She’s concerned about you.” A pause. “We’re all concerned about you.”
Before I could find the words to try and alleviate any of that concern, Bastian and Eamon entered the room and locked the door behind them.
Again, I tried to focus on the task at hand.
But all I could think about was the last time we’d gathered to make plans like this, before our last expedition to the Above. Aleks had been with me, then. He should have been with me now.
I hadn’t been able to find him on my way to this meeting, though.
And part of me—a part that felt traitorous and wrong—wondered if that was for the best.
“Let’s be quick,” Bastian said, taking a seat at the head of the polished, ornately carved table that took up most of the room.
Eamon needed no more encouragement than this. He plucked three large books and a leather portfolio from his stacks, moving as if he’d spent the past hour rehearsing this presentation. Knowing him, there was a good chance he had.
“Here is our target,” he said, picking up the tome bound in dark cloth and flipping to a page he’d marked with a scrap of parchment. “A place known as Memoria Resonare. Or, more commonly, the Chamber of Echoes.”
The yellowed page showed an illustration of a chamber filled with row after row of tall stone slabs.
They looked like gravestones, in a way—except that more than just names and epitaphs were etched across their faces; every inch of them seemed to be covered in carved words.
He flipped to the next page, which showed several more rooms with walls that were equally carved up, one of which had a pool of water in the center of it.
“I know that place,” I said, surprising myself.
The others turned to look at me.
“I saw that pool in the vision the sentier gave me. And Lorien also mentioned the chamber to Calista in the last vision I saw, when I was holding the shard of his cursed soul.” I concentrated, trying to recall his exact words.
“You’ve committed your sins and vows to the Chamber of Echoes… that’s what he said to her, I think.”
“…Interesting.” Eamon’s eyes lit up with scholarly excitement.
“And what he said aligns with what I’ve discovered in these texts.
” He tapped the open book. “Every Vaelora once carved their truths into the walls of this chamber. Confessions, fears, regrets, all the darkest parts of themselves—things they had to acknowledge and let go of before ascending to their full power.”
“Like a purging ritual?” Thalia asked.
“Exactly.”
“Mind carved into one realm…” I thought aloud. “That’s the line from the curse we’ve been trying to decipher. This must be what it was referring to.”
“It all fits,” Bastian agreed.
“So, where is this place?” Thalia asked.
Eamon consulted his notes, his eyes darting over piles of materials, calculating.
“Most texts I’ve been referencing seem to agree that it’s located underneath the temple where the Vaelora once spoke their vows and received the blessings of kings and queens.
And that temple is at the absolute center of the realms—built where the gods first granted the Vaelora their power, according to legend. ”
“In Nerithys, then?” my brother asked.
Eamon nodded. “In the Kingdom of Midna, to be precise, but outside the royal city proper. In a neighboring village known as Vestral.”
Concern flickered across Bastian’s face. “We haven’t been able to explore beyond the royal city’s ruins. There’s a chance this other village and its temple don’t even exist anymore, like so much of the middle realm.”
“It’s divine-touched architecture.” Eamon spoke with his usual certainty, even as a frown threatened to drag down the corners of his lips. “If anything is still standing among the rubble and decay, it will be that temple.”
“But if it’s a sacred site meant only for Vaelora, does that mean we won’t be able to enter?” Thalia glanced between Eamon and me. “That Nova will have to face whatever is inside the chamber on her own?”
Eamon didn’t seem to have an answer for this.
My gaze fell to the empty chair beside me, where Aleks should have been sitting. The growing distance between us felt like a physical thing, suddenly, its weight heavier than any crown or other duty I was trying to balance underneath.
And I had a bad feeling that whatever we found in this Chamber of Echoes was only going to make it worse.
Maybe that was why I so desperately wanted to pretend nothing had changed; that we would face this trial together like all the others we’d faced. I wasn’t alone. He was still with me, even if things between us were strained.
So I said, “Aleks might be able to enter as well.”
My brother bowed his head slightly, massaging the space between his eyes.
Thalia folded her arms across her chest, a deep, uncertain frown overtaking her features.
Eamon gave no outward sign of either approval or dismissal.
As usual, he offered the most even, measured reply.
“He is the closest embodiment of a Light Vaelora we have. Even given his…ah…complications that we’ve been discussing, he’s still clearly connected to Lorien’s power in some way or another.
He still might be able to open passages and bypass wards, as he’s done in the past—as he did in the Midna Palace, for example. It would be worth a try.”
Assuming he’s still able to summon pure Light magic.
I didn’t say it out loud. But my mind was full of images from this morning, of his wrong-looking magic consuming my shadows. What if that happened again? What if something even worse happened?
The thought was terrifying.
The thought of going into that chamber alone was infinitely worse, though.
“I’ll speak with him about joining us,” I said quietly.
No one seemed overly enthusiastic about this plan, but no one could muster up any clear objections, either. So it was decided: we would leave that very evening for the middle realm.
I didn’t linger after this decision was made. I wanted—needed—an afternoon alone to prepare for what lay ahead.
But though I tried to slip away unnoticed, my brother caught up to me at the end of the hallway.
“Nova.”
I stopped but didn’t look his way, my gaze instead fixing on a portrait of Calista hanging to my right. The artist had depicted her with a stern, almost cold expression—so much different from the fiery, youthful version of her that I’d witnessed in Lorien’s memory.
Bastian cleared his throat. “I know things are difficult between you and Aleks at the moment.”
I glanced over my shoulder. “And?”
He met my eyes, unflinching. “And I’m just…I’m sorry.”
He said it like he was apologizing for a death. As if Aleks was already gone, and I was the only one who hadn’t admitted it yet.
Denial surged through my veins, hot and fierce. I turned to face him more fully, my head lifted high. “There’s nothing to be sorry about. He and I have weathered worse storms.”
We are not a tragedy.
“We’ll survive this storm, too.”
Bastian held my gaze for a long moment. “Yes.” He nodded slowly. “You will.”
It didn’t escape my notice how he had emphasized me and not Aleks. His typical, overprotective brother behavior, but it stung nonetheless.
“We both will,” I told him, firmly. But the words felt heavy on my tongue, weighted down with a fear I couldn’t seem to shake off.
I turned and walked away before Bastian could see the cracks forming in my armor.