Chapter 26
TWENTY-SIX
Nova
Aleks picked up the dagger before I could disagree, making his way to a stretch of blank wall that the woman indicated.
Speak, said the floating voice.
After a pause, he spoke—only to have his voice swept into the current of whispers once more rising around us.
But then I noticed faint words appearing on the wall before him.
With trancelike movements, Aleks lifted the knife and began to carve, following the lines and curves of the ghostly letters. The blade cut into the surface as if it was made of clay rather than stone.
I held my breath as I stepped closer, reading what eventually blazed clear and bright before us.
I’m afraid of what I’m becoming.
The blindfolded woman followed his every movement. As he finished carving the last letter, her lips twisted—a frightening smile. Then came that voice that floated high above all the other whispers: Deeper.
Aleks spoke again, but this time, as his words flickered onto the wall, he clenched the dagger to his chest, fighting the urge to carve his second truth into permanence.
His breathing grew labored. His balance swayed as he tried to turn away only to freeze mid-step, as if bound by an invisible chain.
Every attempt to move away from the wall ended the same way.
The dagger shook in his hand, its tip tilting dangerously close to his chest; I worried he might carve straight into his heart in an attempt to free himself.
Thalia’s somber warning rushed to the front of my mind—
People have gone mad trying to resist it.
“You don’t have to do this,” I said, hurriedly moving closer to him. “We can turn around. We can find another way to get what we need.”
The woman in white looked at me. Even though I couldn’t see her eyes, I felt as if her gaze was spearing me straight through.
Aleks placed a hand on my arm, stepping between me and the woman as if to protect me, even as he continued to struggle against the compulsions tearing through him.
“Aleks, I…”
He stilled at the sound of my wavering voice. “I’m fine.”
Concern continued to gnaw at my insides, but I didn’t try to stop him as he stepped forward, his movements slow but turning steady once more as he reached toward the wall.
More words appeared, each letter like a drop of blood forcibly squeezed from his veins:
I had a dream. A vision where I hurt her. I hurt all of them. The dead were too many to count.
I watched his hand moving over the confession. The way the knife trembled in his hold, his knuckles white with the force of his grip.
Softly, I said, “It’s not true, Aleks. The future is impossible to predict with certainty, you know that. This is all just your fear talking.”
But he didn’t seem to hear me.
He just kept carving, oblivious to the horrified expression overtaking my face as he dug deeper and more violently into the wall.
Dead. So many dead. She isn’t safe. I can’t keep her safe. I have to leave her.
The sense of dread radiating from him was suffocating. He clenched the knife tighter still. His tracings of the glowing letters grew messier and messier, but he kept going with terrible determination.
He carved every last word.
When he’d finished, the blindfolded woman gave a slight bow of her head. Smiled again. The voice seemed to come directly from her, and only her, this time—though it still shook my entire body as if rushing in from everywhere, all at once: Truth spoken. Truth accepted.
The words Aleks had carved flashed like fire before fading to a dull glow. He dropped to one knee, gasping for breath.
Then the woman turned to me.
Another dagger had appeared in her hand, this one darker than the one Aleks had used—black crystal that seemed to drink in the light around it, much like Grimnor did.
I took it but shook my head. “This is manipulation. Just because you forced him to voice his fears doesn’t make them his truths.”
The woman canted her head. Why do you fear the truth so loudly, Daughter of Shadow?
“I don’t,” I snapped.
But it was a lie.
And the chamber knew it was a lie, and it seemed to be punishing me for telling it; the pressure in the air doubled, tripled, making it hard to breathe.
The dagger in my hand grew hot.
Compulsion seized me; my lips were moving before I could stop them.
The knife seemed to lift of its own accord, guiding my hand to a blank section of wall. Words flashed upon it before I could turn away.
I was cutting into the stone an instant later.
I KNOW WHAT HE IS.
Deeper, said the blindfolded woman.
My body shook with resistance, but the words kept appearing, and my hand kept carving against my will.
A MONSTER—
The knife slipped from my shaking grasp. I caught it awkwardly, the blade slicing across my palm. I didn’t think to drop it, didn’t think to pull away. I just kept carving, even as the edge of it dug into my skin, filling my palm with blood.
A MONSTER THEY CREATED TO DESTROY—
It felt like my chest was caving in. My body locked up, fighting the final word. The knife clattered to the ground. I couldn’t carve the last word.
I wouldn’t.
I felt the woman watching me. The whispers rose to a deafening crescendo. The walls seemed to shift and writhe, the carvings moving like living things.
TRUTH.
The command slammed into me like a physical blow.
“…Me,” I gasped the word out, and the chamber snatched it up like a dragon seizing prey. It was blazing on the wall in the next breath, completing the sentence I’d so desperately tried to leave unfinished.
A MONSTER THEY CREATED TO DESTROY ME.
I didn’t pick up the dagger. Didn’t carve the last word. I just stared at it, my vision blurring with tears I refused to shed.
Aleks rose unsteadily to his feet, his gaze fixing on the wall as well.
I opened my mouth to lie, to offer false comfort. But I couldn’t manage it, of course—the chamber wouldn’t allow it. I stopped myself from even trying.
“I…I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I should have told you before now. I just…”
The words hung between us, heavy with all the things I couldn’t say, all the truths still locked inside me, waiting for their turn to be carved into stone.
Aleks didn’t reply. Didn’t look at me. The blindfolded woman glided around us with ghostlike movements, bending gracefully to pick up the daggers we’d used. She inspected them, as well as the things we’d carved, for several moments. Then she turned back to us.
Her eyes were still hidden. Her mouth remained perfectly emotionless. Yet I could sense the expectation in her tilted head, her patient stillness.
She said, Nothing breaks, nor binds, so completely as the truth.
I leaned against the wall, unsure of how to reply.
Aleks paced the room, studying my carved words, occasionally trailing his fingers along them.
It could have been minutes that passed. Hours. An entire day. I don’t know how long it took before I couldn’t stand the silence any longer. I turned to the woman, desperate for guidance, for some sign of what came next.
She only repeated, Nothing breaks, nor binds, so completely as the truth.
The only response I felt this time was anger. Anger at her, at this place, at the way things were and how impossible everything seemed. I sank back against the wall and closed my eyes tightly, my entire body trembling.
But anger soon brought clarity with it, as if that fury had burned a path through my fear and uncertainty to reveal the revelation I’d been hoping for.
Nothing breaks, nor binds, so completely as the truth.
Broken or bound. Maybe this was the true test—how would Aleks and I leave this place? We had walked side by side into the darkness, over and over, but could we walk in the light together, too? Even when that light revealed ugly things? Frightening things?
So many things were trying to break us.
The last words Aleks had carved flared like a warning sign on the wall across from me, making my heart race.
I have to leave her.
“Nova.”
I flinched at his voice, afraid of what he was going to say next. It was the Hollow Grove all over again—I was in the middle of a nightmare, and I knew it, but I still didn’t want to move into whatever future awaited me; there was something oddly comforting about familiar terrors.
But I hadn’t stayed in that forest.
And I couldn’t stay in this chamber, either.
So I pushed away from the wall and met Aleks in the center of the room. My heart pounded. My palms were slick with sweat. The whispers rose eagerly with my footsteps, as if in anticipation, while a hundred painful truths burned brighter and brighter on the walls all around us.
Aleks ignored all the noise and all the flashing, fiery words as I approached him. His gaze fixed on mine, unwavering as he said, “There’s one more truth you should know before we leave this place.”
I held my breath.
“I love you,” he said.
The suffocating pressure in the air seemed to lessen—enough that faint threads of golden light soon lifted from his arms. My shadows rose in answer, thin ribbons that intertwined with his magic.
He watched them dance together for a moment before settling his gaze back on mine. “I love you,” he repeated. “No matter how the light and shadows shift.”
I reached my hand toward his. He took it without hesitation, his warm grasp closing over the dried blood covering my palm.
“I love you, too,” I replied, my voice soft yet certain, the declaration somehow not swallowed up even as the ghostly voices continued to storm around us.
It was not a revelation, but it still felt like a confession as much as anything I’d said thus far—the deepest, most desperate truth I was clinging to.
I’m not sure if I actually said it out loud, if the words were swept away by the whispers, or if they appeared on the walls as bright and bold as all our other confessions…
I didn’t care.
I didn’t need to carve this truth into stone. Because it was already carved into my very being, deeper than any blade could cut.
I loved him, and I wouldn’t let him go.
No matter how the light and shadows shift.
The storm around us slowly calmed as Aleks and I turned to face the blindfolded woman, our magic fading but our fingers still laced together.
The woman held up the first dagger.
Truth spoken.
The black dagger followed, clasped in her other hand.
Truth accepted.
She held the blades up as if comparing their weight, balancing them on a scale.
An eerie sound funneled toward us, like wind howling through a narrow mountain pass, and a door I hadn’t noticed before slid open on the opposite side of the room, revealing a smaller inner sanctum.
There were words carved on its walls, too, but they seemed to be vows, not confessions.
In the very center of the room stood a large, deep basin of stone. My heart skipped several beats as I realized it was the very same one I’d seen in my vision from the sentier—except it was drained of the turquoise water that had once filled it.
Cautiously, we approached it.
And there, resting at the bottom, was the piece of soul we’d come to collect.