Chapter 37
THIRTY-SEVEN
Nova
We traveled on foot toward the woods that lay just beyond the northern edge of Tarnath.
My brother, Thalia, and Phantom walked alongside me. Severin had insisted on a more intimate meeting, so we’d kept our numbers low; Eamon had stayed behind, as had Zayn—after finally admitting that his injury would make him more of a liability than an asset.
We’d brought several of our most skilled soldiers to round out our party, though, and we also had others who would be waiting not too far in the distance, should we signal for more help; I didn’t trust Severin to keep to the agreed-upon terms. Voss waited with this second regiment, positioned where he could keep one eye on the city and one eye on whatever was happening in our direction.
Lorien walked at the very back of our group, his hood drawn up to hide his face.
We’d agreed he would stay out of sight until the last possible moment, doing all he could to cloak his power—the Order couldn’t know he had returned with me.
Not until I was ready to reveal him. Not until we were both ready to unleash our final attempt to undo them.
The last time I’d walked this path, it had been daytime.
It seemed like an entirely different landscape as I passed through it now—a much more lively one.
Glowing insects buzzed between the trees.
Creatures scurried in the brush, tempting Phantom more than once.
And perhaps it was the proximity of Calista’s grave and the echo of her magic, or maybe just my imagination, but the shadows seemed to be as alive as everything else, twisting and turning in a spellbinding dance.
Welcoming me in, almost.
Strange flowers bloomed along the forest floor, their color like translucent starlight, the petals neither fully solid nor fully spectral. They swayed without wind, their movement hypnotic, their soft radiance lining a path that led deeper into the woods.
As we started down this path, Phantom pressed close to my side, his ears flat against his skull. (This place still smells like death. But it’s teeming with life, too. I don’t like it.)
I gave him a comforting pat on the head.
It made my senses uneasy as well—the way death and life intertwined so strangely here.
I would have sworn I occasionally glimpsed the blood that I knew had once coated the ground, yet the wards Calista had created were also at their strongest here, a reminder that life and death were forever bound in this world.
As the first glimpse of her grave came into view, I drew to a stop.
“I need to handle this next step on my own,” I reminded the others.
My brother looked hesitant to leave my side, even though this was part of the plan we’d all decided on.
I would go first, because there were things my magic and I needed to do.
Answers I needed to divine from the sacred ground.
He and the others would keep watch while I gathered these last pieces of the puzzle I was putting together and prepared myself for what came next.
Thalia put a hand on Bastian’s shoulder. “You know the plan. Let’s not stray from it.” She gave me a meaningful look, and two taps on her heart, before turning away. Phantom huffed in reluctant agreement before bounding after her.
Bastian lingered a moment longer. “Be wary,” he said quietly. “And listen for our warning signal.”
“I will.”
He turned back and began giving orders for our company to spread out and take their defensive positions.
I walked the last stretch of the path alone, and with each step, the world became quieter.
Calista’s gravesite sat in the heart of a depression in the earth, as if the land itself had bowed in reverence—or recoiled in horror—from what had happened here.
The trees that ringed the clearing around it were curved in unnatural shapes, their trunks smooth and black.
Almost like twisting shadows that had petrified over the years.
As for the memorial itself…it seemed smaller than I’d remembered.
Less imposing. Just a circle of dark rocks, its widest point barely twenty feet across.
The ground within this circle was covered in a carpet of black moss that released tiny puffs of luminescent spores when I stepped onto it, making the air around me sparkle with ghostly light.
In the center, a grave marker rose almost haphazardly from the moss—white stone, rough-cut, unadorned except for a single dark symbol carved deep into its face.
The mark of the Shadow Vaelora.
A myriad of feelings washed over me as I stared at that mark—grief, reverence, doubt, determination. All the many things I’d lived through since realizing my part in the ancient cycle of magic.
Focus, I told myself. You came here for a reason.
I knelt before the grave marker, placing both hands on the cold stone. Closing my eyes, I called on my shadows to reach once more into the past.
I had mastered this over these last months, if nothing else; even with my unsettled feelings, it was easy to concentrate on letting darkness seep into the stone and the ground around it, coaxing those whispers of the past up to the surface.
I pictured Calista’s face as I did, making sure to think specifically about what I needed to see.
Please, I thought. I need to understand. I need to know if I’m right about what you did.
Resistance came—as if her spirit was testing me—but I quickly pushed through it.
The world shifted.
I wasn’t in my body anymore. I was watching from a different perspective, seeing through eyes that weren’t my own.
Calista’s eyes.
She was kneeling in this very spot, her hands pressed against the ground, blood seeping between her fingers from wounds I couldn’t see. The forest around her was on fire—not with normal flames, but with Light magic turned wild and destructive…
Lorien’s power, tearing through everything in his grief-fueled rage.
I don’t have much time, she thought, her consciousness bleeding into mine. I have to finish this. I have to make sure the pieces go where they need to go.
Her magic was pulsing outward, creating that dome of protection that surrounded the palace and the royal city. But at the same time, another tangle of magic was rising inside of her, another complicated spell blooming into existence.
Mind to the place where knowledge sleeps. Body to the place where gods forget. Heart...
She hesitated, her hands moving to her own chest.
I felt her magic gathering there. Shadows responding to her call.
They reached out from her body like dark appendages, beckoning toward the sky.
And then I saw it: The last piece of Lorien’s shattered soul.
The piece the sentier hadn’t revealed to me.
It fell as the others had—streaking down like a falling star—and landed directly in front of Calista.
She picked it up with trembling fingers and clasped it to her chest. It gave off one last powerful burst of light before she covered it completely with her hands, pressing it more tightly against her. When she pulled her hands away and looked down, the shard was gone.
Blood stained her tunic. I wasn’t sure if it had been there before, but now fresh pain radiated through her body, through our shared consciousness. Her heart pounded frantically fast and loud for a few seconds, and then…
Nothing.
The vision fractured as she took her last breath.
I gasped, pulling back from the stone so hard I nearly lost my balance. My own heart was pounding, my hands shaking as I realized…my theory had been correct.
I took a deep breath, willing steadiness back into my body with concentrated effort.
“I thought you might like this back,” came a voice from behind me, casually cold and devastatingly familiar.
I twisted around to find Aleks watching me. He was alone, as far as I could see—but he also held Grimnor; he must have taken it from the battlefield after I’d dropped it.
I leapt to my feet. “How…how did you…”
“Get past your allies?” His eyes gleamed with dark amusement. “You underestimate me, Chaos.” He glanced over his shoulder, toward the rising sounds of a skirmish. Muffled by the magic of this place, but obvious just the same. “They’ll be busy for a moment, at least.”
I tried not to let my panic show. “My sword,” I said, evenly. “Hand it over.”
“Like he did, you mean?” He sauntered forward with easy, predatory grace. “When the two of you moved against me back in the palace vault?”
“Together…” I kept my voice steady, trying not to think about those frightening moments when I’d brought Lorien back to life. “Is that what they told you? That Lorien and I conspired against you?”
“No one needed to tell me anything. The Vaelora bond is well documented.”
“You know it’s more complicated than that,” I breathed. “Even if they’ve twisted your perception of it.”
He said nothing, just watched me for a moment, his golden eyes like a wolf’s in the dark.
I swallowed hard. “Give me back my sword, Aleks.”
He looked the blade up and down, as if considering, then shook his head. “Why don’t you summon your ally to help you get it back, as you did before?”
“Lorien and I are not allies. Our destiny may have been written by the gods, but I’m not walking that path willingly. I’m not like Calista.”
“Really?” He took a step closer to me. Then another, and another, until we were nearly face-to-face. He could have reached out and touched me, and for a moment I thought he might.
Hoped he might.
My body couldn’t tell the difference between this Aleks and the one that had memorized every inch of my skin; all those inches craved his touch. His reassuring closeness. His warmth.
“I find that statement odd,” he said quietly, “considering how you practically reek of him.”
I went still.