Chapter 13 How the Dead Do
How the Dead Do
Lucian
T
here’s a sharp knock at my door, and I tuck the journal beneath my pillow. Despite my efforts to resist, I’ve read it every day—noon and night—since I first picked it up.
When the journal is hidden, I open the door. Wendy is on the other side.
“Are you busy?” she asks.
I think only of the journal when I answer, “What’s happened?”
“Come,” she whispers, turning and walking in the direction of her suite. I follow.
To my luck, Calista is in the common area. I’ve done a fair job avoiding her. There must be many things she wants to say to me, and none I want to hear.
I walk past her. The only thing that could brew here is a fight.
“You claim not to care about power,” she mutters from behind me, “but you’ve never lived a day without it. You don’t know what will become of you.”
She must have been thinking this over since our last conversation.
I look to Wendy, who slips into her room, leaving the door slightly ajar. As I try to follow, Calista grabs my bicep, her nails digging into my skin, stopping me from leaving.
“I’m a princess in a kingdom where girls are shunned,” she says. “I learned my way around—I found the steps my shoes fit without leaving a mark. I thought”—her voice trembles—“at last, those days would be over. You stole that from me.”
I sigh, unsure what Calista wants. She wasn’t eager to marry me either; she loves Lilac. I suppose she wanted everything—Lilac and the throne—and now she will get nothing.
I look down. “I know what I did—”
“I don’t think you do,” Calista cuts me off. “Were you aware that uprisings began on Folkara the first time you favored the Nepenthes?”
She says it with such vitriol—favored the Nepenthes, as if my decency was a declaration of depravity. If I had even a fraction of the control she thinks I have, Azaire would still be alive.
Calista continues, “They had shifted to the septics and middle class by the time you renounced the throne.”
“Then there should be nothing to be upset about now,” I mutter.
“You don’t get it!” Her voice rises with each word. “It may have begun with you, but it didn’t end there. You’re handing Lilac a broken throne when we could have had a powerful one.”
The words hit harder than I want to admit. Another mess I’ve made. Another consequence I didn’t see coming. I once thought I would do anything to keep Lilac from this fate—yet now I am the handler of it.
The uprisings and Lilac’s future are consequences of my actions. Yet even so, this started long before me. How was I supposed to know my words would tip such a delicate balance?
“I didn’t march onto Nepthara and declare war fifty years ago,” I say, taking a step forward.
“I never forced them into submission, nor did I militarize the Nepenthes and station keepers on Folkara to oppress both peoples. I never worked my people to the bone and raged when they asked for fairness. And neither did you, Calista. These people—these uprisings—they’re probably right! ”
Calista scoffs, crossing her arms. “You honestly believe it’s right to tear our universe apart?
To dismantle a well-oiled machine?” She steps back, pressing a finger to her lips.
“Do you understand how facile it is to condemn from the outside? Tell me this: what is right? What systems would you institute if we were to unmake what we have? Because, mark my words, all that will follow is anarchy—not utopia.”
And Lilac will get the throne I’ve shattered.
With a sigh and a shrug, I answer, “I don’t know what’s right.”
“Make that distinction before you declare what is wrong.” Calista turns away from me, walking to her room and leaving me with the echo of her words.
If Azaire were here, he would know what to say—the best way to secure peace. But he’s not. That’s why I’m going to such extreme measures.
Could Calista be right? Have my proclamations caused the Nepenthes more harm than good? Am I at fault for what the universe is suffering now? I get it. Responsibility is supposed to come before power. Yet, what good is responsibility when it can’t save anyone?
The door to Wendy’s room is slightly ajar. Calista’s voice rings in my head as I step forward—power, responsibility, the universe tearing apart. And now Wendy wants something from me as well.
She’s waiting for me when I enter her room, head down. I expected a moment to breathe, but Wendy is clutching a leather-bound book beneath her arm, its seams ripped.
“Are you all right?” she asks.
The truth is, I’m not. I am at fault for handing Lilac a broken throne, but I fear I may have done something worse. I’m in no state for another conversation, yet Wendy’s eyes are rimmed red, fixed on the ruined book under her arm.
“What is that?” I ask.
Wendy takes a deep breath, setting down the book and picking up a knife.
I take a step back, my eyes fixed on the blade in her hand.
“I died,” she says, raising her wrist.
I extend my hand in her direction. “Wendy, put the knife down.”
“I already know what will happen. I need you to see.”
She offers me the knife, and I take it from her. She asked me this before, though I never understood what she wanted me to see. The one time I tried to comply with her demands, she lost her mind and all but jumped into the fracture in the world.
“This didn’t go well last time,” I warn her.
“Trust me.” She searches for my gaze.
I set the blade on the dresser, next to the book. “This is lunacy.”
“I died,” she says again. “But I came back. You know what this means, don’t you?”
Azaire. Before I can think more of it, the knife is back in my hand, clutched tight. If it’s for Azaire, I’ll do anything. Wendy stretches her wrist to me again, as if she knows this.
I press the blade to her skin, and it parts, though there’s no blood beneath. It’s like cutting into clay.
As soon as I retract the blade, her skin stitches back together, like a wound in reverse.
“That book”—Wendy gestures to the dresser—“mentions people coming back from the dead.” Her voice trembles. “And how, when that happens, their powers invert.”
I scoop the tome into my hands, knowing there’s only one place Wendy could find a book about archaic magic—somewhere the books have been glamoured my entire life.
“What did you tell Cynthia?” I ask, my hands in fists at my sides.
“I told her about Icarthus and the possession.” Her voice rises, eyes opening wider as she watches me. “I thought she could help me understand what’s happening.”
“Why would you tell her?” My words are heavy, gravity forcing them out.
“She asked.”
It’s no surprise. There isn’t a corner of the universe Cynthia won’t stick her nose in.
“All right.” I stifle another sigh. “What is this about powers reversing?”
Wendy frowns. “They invert. You can read it yourself, but the headmistress wants me to return the book once I’ve convinced you.”
“Convince me of what?”
“My power was life,” Wendy whispers. “Inverted… it’s death.”
“Convince me of what, Wendy?”
Her eyes brighten, a hint of desperation dancing in them, disguised as hope. “To bring Azaire back.”
It’s as if those words have the power to stop time. I stand straight, waiting for her to elaborate.
It doesn’t seem right. It would go against every universal law.
“Wendy…”
“Someone did it to me. Now I can do it to him. It could be Zola’s way—or Sulva’s way—of bringing him back.”
I step away, dragging a hand across my face. I try to close my eyes and summon a vision, to see with certainty if this is a path we should embark on. Nothing appears behind my closed lids, perhaps because you cannot see the future of the dearly departed.
“What about his soul?” I ask, already thinking of the semantics. We couldn’t bring back his body without it—could we?
“Maybe it didn’t die.”
Neither of us can afford this hope. It is the opposite of grief, the opposite of healing. Yet I can’t deny how alluring the thought of seeing Azaire again is. His mere existence is the best thought I’ve had since his death.
Though if Cynthia wants this, it’s for one thing. I don’t know how the Arcanes could be related to Azaire or what kind of scheme she might be planning.
“Why do you need to convince me?” I ask carefully, only poking at the idea, not jumping in.
“The first person to come back to life was Eira.”
The first Lyrian of Sulva’s bloodline. Though, if Wendy thinks she just needs a Lyrian, she’s spoiled for choice.
“You have Cynthia,” I say. The headmistress has always been far more powerful than me—it’s how she got her job raising the elite.
“Amun brought her back.”
That’s not how the story goes. Amun didn’t drag Eira back—he followed her into death.
Slowly, Wendy finishes, speaking as though she doesn’t want to say the words, “With the Soul Ruby.”
My jaw clenches, tightness reaching my temples. If the Soul Ruby is involved, there’s one reason she’d be asking me instead of Cynthia. Icarthus.
Wendy opens the tome and flips to a specific page.
Nothing is written in the common tongue, which is an easy assumption to make; very few of Cynthia’s tomes have been translated.
However, there is a drawing: a large stone, shaded as if it’s shining.
Next to it, the silhouette of a person, traced repeatedly—each new line nestled within the last. A soul and a ruby, perhaps.
As gently as I can manage, I surmise, “You told Cynthia everything Icarthus said about me.”
“Yes,” Wendy whispers. “You have the best chance of using the Soul Ruby’s full powers.”
Because the Soul Ruby was used to forge me, Icarthus had said.
The Arcanes needed me to have a specific power, to acquire…
something. That blank in my mind itches again.
I try to reach for it, clawing at the edges of my brain until there’s nothing left to claw at.
All I remember is that the Arcanes used the Soul Ruby to power me before I even left my mother’s womb.
“There’s no telling what Icarthus said was true,” I remind Wendy, my gaze locked on the ancient letters and glyphs.
“If it was, you’ll be anchored to the Soul Ruby, somehow.”
I flip the page, sighing.
Wendy’s voice tightens as she says, “This is Azaire, Lucian.”
“And you promised me discretion.” I slam the book closed.
I have no idea where I stand with Cynthia—how I feel about her maneuvering, her use of me, her discarding my grief for Azaire—and now, she’s using Wendy. More unsettling, she knows I was made on the Arcanes’ behalf. Does that make me half her enemy—or entirely?
Wendy hands me a piece of paper. “That’s my translation.”
I match the words to the glyphs—the drawings of roses and large trees with leaves of fire.
“We have a shot,” Wendy says as I read. “But only if we do this together.”
There’s no explanation of what Amun did or how he commanded the Soul Ruby, only that he brought Eira back beneath the Pyre Tree in Iris. It defies every legend; they state that after Eira died, Amun ended his life to follow her to the place of the dead—wherever that is.
“Azaire’s body,” I say, growing impatient. “It’s a tree.”
“He’s in the roots.”
His body—but not his soul. This is a terrible idea with possibly treacherous consequences, and yet… seeing Azaire again.
It could be apologizing. It could be salvation. Wendy could be right; he died before his time, and this is the gods’ way of righting my wrong. This option could very well be on my plate because it’s meant to happen.
I try to tell myself this is wrong, selfish—that death is a boundary for a reason. But grief is louder than wisdom. I have to try. For Azaire. For what I did. For the turmoil in the universe I’ve caused.
“How much have you translated?” I ask.
“Three pages.”
Of hundreds.
“You better get started with the rest.” Each word swells in my chest, my heart expanding beyond any possible size. “Because we’re going to get him back.”