Chapter 30 #4
He lunged toward her. The moment his Shadow touched the wall, the ward exploded. Black and silver crashed together. Kieran flew backward. Emrin screamed. The stone climbed her wrist. Not over it. Around it. The wall was swallowing her hand.
“Emrin!”
I grabbed her around the waist and pulled. She didn’t move.
“Stop!” she gasped. “It’s tightening.”
I released her instantly. Kieran shoved himself upright. Blood ran from his mouth. His Shadow flickered around his fingers.
“Can you break it?”
“Not without taking her hand with it.”
Emrin’s breathing turned shallow. The stone had reached the heel of her palm. Vareena lifted Light.
“No,” Kieran snapped. “The ward is Light-fed.”
“What do we do?”
“I’m thinking.”
“Think faster.”
The stone moved another fraction. Emrin made a strangled sound. I reached for Shadow. It came hard. Darkness flooded my hand and crawled over my wrist before I could temper it. Kieran saw. His gaze snapped to mine.
“Lyra—”
Too late. I slammed my palm against the silver ward line.
Shadow spread. The silver light recoiled violently.
The wall shuddered. Emrin’s hand came free.
Vareena caught her as she stumbled backward.
Silence. The Shadow remained wrapped around my fingers.
I didn’t move. Didn’t breathe. I knew exactly where Emrin was without looking.
Knew exactly what she was seeing. The thing I had hidden since the moment it first crawled out of me.
Darkness. Mine. Slowly, I turned. Emrin stood against Vareena, cradling her hand to her chest. Her green eyes were fixed on mine.
No. On the Shadow. Everything inside me went cold.
Kieran stepped nearer. Not between us. Beside me.
I could feel him there. I hated that I needed it. Emrin straightened.
“Is that what you’ve been hiding?” There was no disgust in her voice. No accusation either.
“Yes.” The word barely made it out. Emrin stared at the darkness curling around my fingers.The Shadow trembled and I closed my fist. It disappeared.
Emrin looked at the empty space around my hand. Then at me. “How long have you wielded it?”
“A few weeks.”
“Did Vareena know?”
I nodded. Her gaze shifted to Kieran before she pushed away from Vareena and came toward me. I had to fight the instinct to retreat. Emrin stopped in front of me.
“And your Light still works.”
“Yes.”
She nodded once. Not because she understood. Because she was putting the pieces somewhere she could examine later. “Okay.”
I stared at her. “Okay?”
“That is what I said.”
“Emrin.”
“What do you want me to do, Lyra?”
“I don’t know.”
She was quiet for a beat. “Neither do I.”
The honesty of it struck harder than reassurance would have. She looked at my hand again. “You saved mine.”
“You would have done the same.”
“Yes.”
Simple. Certain. Then she took my Shadow hand between both of hers. No hesitation. Warm skin against mine. My throat tightened. Emrin squeezed once.
“We’re discussing why you thought you had to hide this from me later.”
I looked down at our hands. “Fair.”
“And the legendary book.”
“Less fair.”
“Very fair.”
The wall behind us opened. All four of us turned. Where Emrin’s Earth magic and my Shadow had broken the ward, the sealed stone had pulled apart just enough to reveal a narrow passage descending into darkness. No one spoke. Then Emrin released my hand.
“This is for your mother?”
I looked at the opening. “Yes.”
“Then let’s find her.”
The passage descended farther than it should have. That was the first thing Emrin noticed. By the second landing, she had begun counting beneath her breath. At the fourth, she stopped.
“What?”
She looked upward. “We should be below the mountain.”
Vareena stared at her. “That’s impossible.”
“I know.”
Kieran kept moving. Emrin caught his shoulder.
“No. You don’t understand.”
He turned. “I understand.”
“If these stairs continued at this angle from where we entered, we passed the Sanctum foundation two levels ago.”
I looked down. More stairs vanished into darkness. “Then where are we?”
No one answered. A whisper moved up the stairwell. Too faint to make out. Human enough that my skin prickled. Kieran drew Shadow around his hand.
“Stay close.”
We did. The stairs finally ended at an arched doorway.
Beyond it waited a room unlike any archive I had ever seen.
No shelves. No books. Hundreds of narrow stone drawers covered the walls.
They rose so high my Light could not find the top.
Each one carried a name. A date. A division.
Some glowed faintly. Others had gone dark.
Vareena stepped inside. Her face changed.
“These are candidate records.”
My pulse stumbled. “All of them?”
“Old ones.”
She moved toward the eastern wall. “The divisions are grouped.”
Emrin pointed. “Aurora.”
A sunburst had been carved above one enormous section.
Light wielders. I crossed the chamber before anyone could stop me.
Names. Hundreds. Thousands. People who had walked these halls decades before us.
People who had stood in the Crucible. Slept in the Luminari Halls.
Complained about instructors. Fallen in love.
Gone home. Died. Lived. Somewhere among them—my mother.
I stopped. Not the idea of a mother. I had lived my entire life with that absence.
But here, suddenly, she had shape. She had once been young.
A candidate. Someone who had carried books through the same halls I walked now.
Maybe she had hated morning training. Maybe she had had a favorite table in the dining hall.
Maybe she had stood beneath the Solstice lights.
For the first time, she felt less like a hole in my life and more like a person who had existed before me.
Kieran came to stand beside me. He didn’t touch me. His shoulder almost brushed mine.
“How far back?”
I cleared my throat. “I’m twenty.”
“So start twenty-one years ago and work backward.”
Vareena joined us. We searched. Twenty-one years.
Nothing. Twenty-two. More names than I could count.
Vareena pulled records while Kieran read the older script where it had faded beyond my understanding.
Emrin moved along the wall with her fingertips grazing the stone, feeling for compartments that had been disturbed.
The deeper we went, the quieter the chamber became.
No jokes. No arguing. Only names. Then Emrin stopped.
“Here.”
She stood several yards away with her palm pressed against one drawer.
“What?”
“This one was removed.”
I hurried toward her. “It’s right there.”
“The drawer is.” She crouched and ran her fingers around the edge. “The stone around it isn’t original.”
Kieran came beside her. “Replaced?”
“Yes.”
Vareena checked the date carved beneath it. She read it twice. “Twenty-two years ago.”
My heartbeat changed. Aurora Circle. Elyndor. Twenty-two years ago. I reached for the drawer. Kieran’s hand closed over mine. “Whatever is inside, we don’t know what it means yet.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
I pulled my hand free. “No.”
At least that was honest. I opened it. The drawer slid out smoothly. One record lay inside. Only one. Vareena reached for it, then stopped before touching.
“What?”
She pointed. My Light caught the parchment.
Sections were missing. At first, I thought age had destroyed them.
Then I looked closer. No. The parchment remained intact.
The writing did not. Lines had been removed so precisely that pale scars remained where ink should have been.
At the top of the page was a blank space.
Not an empty line. An absence. A name had once been there.
Someone had taken it out. Vareena lifted the record.
“Female. Seventeen at admission.” She read lower. “Elyndor.”
My palms went cold. “Affinity?”
Her eyes moved. “Light.”
No one spoke.
“What else?”
“Advanced Aurora placement after first assessment. Exceptional control. Recommended for private instruction.”
“Name?”
Vareena looked at the blank section. “Gone.”
“Family?”
Another pause. “Gone.”
“Home?”
“Gone.”
Kieran took the page. His eyes hardened as he examined it. “This wasn’t damaged.”
“I know.”
“No.” He angled it toward my Light. “Look.”
The parchment where the identifying information had once been was translucent. Not scraped. Not burned. Changed. Magic. My stomach dropped.
“Someone erased her.”
Emrin looked at the surrounding drawer. “More than that.”
She pressed two fingers inside the compartment. “This whole section was taken out of the wall and replaced.”
“Why?”
“No idea.”
Kieran’s jaw had gone tight.
“What?”
He was staring at the record.
“Kieran.”
“This kind of erasure is expensive.”
“Expensive?”
“Magically. You can destroy a record easily. Burn it. Tear it apart.” His thumb moved beside the blank name. “This preserves everything except what someone chose to remove.”
Vareena went pale. “So whoever did this wanted the record to remain.”
“Yes.”
I looked at the page. That was worse. “Then why leave any of it?”
Kieran met my eyes. “Because they weren’t trying to erase what she did here.” His gaze dropped to the empty place where her name had been. “Only who she was.”
The chamber seemed colder. I reached for the parchment. The moment my fingers touched it, the rune beneath my left ribs flared. I gasped. Kieran caught my elbow.
“What happened?”
I pressed my hand against my side. The starlight rune burned beneath my shirt. Not painfully. Recognition. The word came without reason. But I knew it.
“Lyra?”
“My rune.”
His face changed. Vareena stepped closer.
“Which one?”
“The stars.”
Emrin stared between us. “You have another rune?”
I almost laughed. “We’re going to need a very long conversation.”
“Apparently.”