Chapter 6
LYRA
The first morning, Coren and I rode east beneath a sky the color of old bruises, and Edenlo disappeared behind us before the sun had fully cleared the hills.
I knew the exact moment it happened. One breath, the village was still there behind my shoulder, hidden mostly by distance but not entirely gone.
The next, the road curved between two barren ridges and swallowed it.
I didn’t look back. Ferin had told me not to, and I had promised myself I wouldn’t before I climbed onto the mare Coren had brought for me.
Looking back wouldn’t bring Maia out of the ground.
It wouldn’t put Irelia beside me or rebuild Nara’s bakery or make Tomas look at me the way he had before silver-blue light tore out of my body and made me a stranger to the people who had always known me.
Looking back would only show me a road I wasn’t taking.
Maia’s cloak hung heavily from my shoulders.
I had packed clothing, bread, what little coin remained in the cottage, and the few things I couldn’t bear to leave behind, but the pieces that mattered were on me.
Irelia’s sun charm rested beneath the cloak against my chest. My moon charm remained around my wrist. Ferin’s little driftwood star sat inside my palm until its edges left marks in my skin.
Every few miles, I touched one of them without realizing I was doing it, counting the dead through objects because counting them by name hurt too much.
Coren rode several lengths ahead of me. He had barely spoken since we left.
There had been no explanation of where we would sleep or how long the journey would take, only the expectation that I follow.
He rode like someone who had traveled this road enough times to stop seeing it, his dark cloak shifting behind him while the land stretched emptier around us.
The farther east we went, the less familiar everything became.
Edenlo’s wooded hills gave way to scrub and exposed stone.
Trees thinned until the ones that remained grew twisted by wind, their branches reaching sideways rather than toward the sky.
By midday there were no cottages. By afternoon there were no fields.
Only a narrow road cut through a country scraped bare of anything gentle.
My thighs burned. My ribs ached beneath the place where the rune had appeared.
It hadn’t glowed again since Edenlo, but I could feel it beneath my clothes, a faint warmth that came and went without warning.
Every time it did, I remembered the faces in the square.
The way Tomas had stared. The way Fenric had stepped away.
The whispers spreading faster than smoke.
I remembered Irelia’s cold forehead beneath my lips and Maia’s final breath beneath my hands, and suddenly I hated the mark enough that I wanted to dig my nails beneath my skin and tear it out.
We stopped only when darkness made the road difficult to see.
Coren chose the remains of an old stone structure tucked against the base of a ridge, three walls and half a roof surrounding a floor overtaken by dead grass.
He tended the horses before building a small fire without asking for my help.
I sat against the wall and watched him because I didn’t know what else to do.
The silence wasn’t comfortable, but neither was speaking.
Everything I wanted to ask him seemed too large for the small circle of firelight between us.
Coren tossed me a cloth bundle. “Eat.”
I caught it against my chest. Bread and dried meat. I stared at both before forcing myself to take a bite. Hunger had become distant since the attack, an inconvenience my body kept insisting upon while the rest of me wanted nothing. “How long until we reach the Veil?”
“Two more days.”
“And after that?”
“The Sanctum.”
“I know the Sanctum is after it. How long?”
“Another day if the roads hold.”
I looked down at the bread. “You could have said that the first time.”
Coren glanced at me across the fire but didn’t answer.
He had the sort of face that made silence feel intentional.
A thin scar cut through one dark brow and disappeared toward his temple, pale against weathered skin.
I couldn’t decide how old he was. Older than me by enough that guessing felt pointless, younger than Maia had been.
His hair was tied at the nape of his neck, and the silver emblem fastening his cloak caught the fire whenever he moved.
The same emblem I’d seen when he entered Edenlo.
Four symbols encircling a sharp eight-pointed star.
I had spent most of my life believing the Arcane Sanctum belonged to the same category as distant kingdoms and ancient wars: real, but too far away to matter.
Now one of its emissaries was sitting across from me.
“How did you know?” I asked.
His gaze lifted. “That it happened. My magic.” I touched my ribs. “You arrived days after the attack. No one from Edenlo sent for you.”
“The Sanctum doesn’t need someone to send for us.”
I waited. “That isn’t an answer.”
“The wards felt you.”
I frowned. “The wards are at the Sanctum.”
“Some are.”
The fire cracked between us. “And the others?”
“Older.”
“Where?”
“Everywhere that matters.”
I stared at him. “That’s incredibly unhelpful.”
“It’s enough.”
Apparently Coren had decided exactly how much of the world I was permitted to understand at any given moment. I pulled Maia’s cloak tighter around me and watched sparks disappear into the dark. “So every time someone gets magic, your walls somehow know.”
“The manifestation wards know.”
“And then you come collect us.”
“Someone does.”
“Like livestock.”
Not a muscle in his face moved. “Livestock generally requires less paperwork.”
A laugh almost escaped me. It died before becoming sound. I hated that my body had even remembered how. I looked away.
Coren fed another piece of wood into the fire.
“Manifestation occurs between eighteen and twenty-one for nearly every wielder. Sometimes gently. Sometimes not. The wards register the elemental signature, approximate location, and strength of the initial release. An emissary is assigned. We retrieve the wielder and bring them to the Sanctum.”
“Whether they want to go or not.”
“Usually.”
I looked back at him. “Usually?”
“Most people east of the Veil spend their childhood waiting for manifestation. Families prepare for it. Some celebrate it.”
The thought was so absurd I almost couldn’t understand him. “Celebrate?”
“Yes.”
People had watched me save their lives and decided I was responsible for the reason they needed saving. Somewhere beyond the Veil, mothers apparently celebrated when their children’s skin began glowing. I rubbed my thumb over the wooden star in my palm. “What did the wards say about me?”
Coren’s expression shifted so slightly I might have imagined it. “Light.”
I waited. “That’s it?”
“No.”
My fingers tightened around the pendant. “What else?”
“Strength.”
“How strong?”
His eyes held mine across the fire. “Strong enough that no one had to search very hard for Edenlo.”
Cold slid beneath Maia’s cloak despite the heat. I thought of the square turning silver-blue. The wraith above Irelia disintegrating. Every shadow vanishing beneath a light that had come from inside me. “Is that bad?”
“Uncontrolled power generally is.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“No.” Coren leaned back against the stone. “It isn’t necessarily bad.”
“Then why did everyone look at me like that?”
“Everyone where?”
“At home.”
“People fear what they don’t understand.”
“They weren’t afraid of the wraiths after I killed them. They were afraid of me.”
“They understood the wraiths.” I stared at him.
“Monsters are simple,” Coren said. “You weren’t.”
The words stayed with me long after he closed his eyes and the fire burned low.
I slept badly. When dreams came, Maia was standing at the edge of the forest beneath a sky crowded with stars.
She was younger than I had ever known her, although I couldn’t see her face.
A cry came from between the trees. She walked toward it.
I tried to follow, but the ground stretched farther with every step.
Then the stars began going out. One by one.
Faster and faster until the sky became completely black.
The blackness moved.
I woke with my hand clamped over my mouth and my rune burning beneath my ribs.
Coren was already awake. He sat several feet away sharpening a narrow blade with slow, even strokes. I pressed my palm against my side until the heat faded. “Do manifestations cause nightmares?”
“No.”
“Wonderful.”
He slid the blade back into its sheath. “We’re leaving.”
The second day was colder. We rode through what Coren called the Barren Belt, though I couldn’t imagine anyone needing to name it.
The land announced what it was. Gray ridges rolled toward the horizon beneath dead grass and thorn.
We passed the remains of watchtowers whose roofs had collapsed centuries ago and stones carved with symbols erosion had nearly erased.
Once, we crossed a riverbed wide enough that I couldn’t imagine it dry.
White stones covered the bottom where water must once have run, smooth and pale as bone.
I looked toward the distant eastern horizon. Nothing marked the Veil from here. “Why is there no magic in the Hollowlands?”
Coren didn’t turn. “There is.”
I frowned. “I’ve lived there nineteen years.”
“And?”
“I’ve never seen anyone wield.”
“That doesn’t mean there is no magic.”
I urged my mare faster until I rode closer beside him. “Then where is it?”
“Buried. Faded. Forgotten. Depends where you stand.”
“That’s not possible.”
“You’re riding toward the Arcane Sanctum because you filled an unmarked village with enough Light to trip wards older than every kingdom currently standing, and you’re telling me what’s possible?”
I shut my mouth.
We rode another mile before I tried again. “What happens when we get there?”
“You will assessed.”