Chapter 42
forty-two
Afear of failure latched onto my every thought in the coming days.
I mused on my limited options every hour, floating through the palace halls like a ghost, unable to stay anywhere for more than a few minutes.
The minutes ticked away, and I fell into time’s trap.
The ice storm never ceased, apparent from a brief look through the ice-encrusted panes.
So I mused, thought, and hummed, racking the deepest parts of my recesses and searching for an answer. But all the while. Aelen’s words twisted within me.
You cannot kill a god, you can merely bind him.
What did that mean? How could I bind him?
But all roads of thought led me to seek Aelen wherever he wandered and request his help. I walked the long halls until I found him handing out food with whispered words to his I’phri. Once he noticed my presence, he finished with a quick pat on their shoulder before rising to face me.
I shifted listlessly. “We need to talk.”
He followed me through the halls while gloom hung around him like the darting shadows. He only turned to me once we reached the quiet section of the upper stairs, where we were alone.
“What was it you needed?” he asked, rapping a finger on the banister. With his shoulders squared and head held so high, you’d never guess he was on edge.
“It’s about…” I trailed off and stopped myself from saying your father. I decided instead to whisper the accursed name. “Ovatar.”
He visibly cringed and rocked on the heel of his boots. “Why do you speak his name? What of him?”
“You mentioned long ago he can’t be killed. But what if we bound him? You could come with me, and we could do it together!”
“I can’t leave Eltide, you know as much,” he snapped. “I can hardly move out of the palace, let alone travel to your kingdom.”
“But what if I were able to get you across the river? Would you help me then?” I broke into an awful sweat. I had no plans for how I could get him across, beyond knowing I must. But he swore to me, after leaving me to fend for myself in Ilyatria he would come if I called.
This would be a call.
People below were beginning to stir from our conversation, so he went to the banister and curled his fingers around it so violently I thought it might snap. “No.”
I shivered. “No? You’d just abandon your people?”
Coward ran across the tip of my tongue, vile as venom.
He bristled and straightened. “Don’t you dare.” He closed the distance between us, his powerful figure looming over me while the impetus thrummed in his iris. “I have given everything for my people. I faced him once before, in a poor and failed attempt to bind him. Do you know what he did to me?”
“No, but—”
His fingers gripped my cheeks, digging in like brutal bones. “I can remember little from that day, but what I do is blood. Slaughter. Pain. I recall very well him mocking me.” His grip tightened. “Then before he left, he tore away my memories as if they were nothing but a blanket.”
It couldn’t be. “He took your memories?”
He released me. “Took is such a pitiful excuse for an expression. Stole is far closer to the truth. That agonizing pain will be branded into my memory until my last breath. That is why I refuse to face him again.”
“You swore to me you’d never leave me alone if I called. But if you’re too afraid, then fine. Don’t. I’ll do it by myself!”
His shoulder rose in anger, and I caught a glimpse of something in his face—fear.
“You will not! You couldn’t if you tried.
I am the progeny of a god, and still couldn’t bind him.
You need other people—I recall that much.
But whoever they were, they must have perished.
Their memory is long gone, along with any hope of success. ”
I joined him at the banister. “You must be able to remember something about it.” Anything that could help us, anything that could help me.
“Why would you need to know? You will not face him, and neither will I.”
“I’m tired of you doubting me!” I shot. “I’m not a coward like you, I won’t give up!”
“Then let me spell it out for you. On his way out, he stole whatever method I had, but drilled it in that I would forget what was lost, forget who was lost. I knew their names, their stories. I’d spent my time under his tyranny learning everything of our people, so when he slaughtered them, consumed them, I carried them with me, and he took that.
” His tone shook with rage. “Even without memories, my power was too much for him, so he left, but not without laying a blight on me I could not overcome. He could not cull, so he cursed.”
“Aelen—” I began, but he turned from me. In one quick movement, the shadows spread across the banister and tore it in two. They darted across the walls, seething angrily, and bending metal in their wake, the groan echoing across the hall. But he merely stared at the ground. “Aelen,” I tried again.
“Don’t. You accuse me of cowardice.” He inhaled a breath and still refused to look at me. “In time, I found some of what he stole out of sheer pain, but some of it is lost, gone forever to time immortal. Those people will never return.”
I tried once more. Please Aelen. “We could stop this. Stop him together, to save the rest of the I’phri. Please.”
“No. I will not allow you to sacrifice yourself for nothing.” He paused, and in the brief quiet, the sound of metal bending and cracking was deafening. “Without you, I have nothing.”
He finally glanced at me, long enough to see my pursed lips and nonexistent response, before giving me a slight bow.
“That’s enough of that.” And he left, descending the stairs with the shadows continuing to sew chaos and destruction in his wake.
They followed him down the hall and left me driving my nails into my palm.
Once he left, I turned and let the silent tears run down my cheeks. I slipped into the adjoining room and shivered at the glass and broken light they cast.
I bolted through the mirrors while the broken glass tinkled to the ground.
The shards covered everything, with some still hanging on like broken cobwebs to the ancient parchment backing.
They covered every wall, and I fled until one partially intact mirror at the end of the hall stopped me in my tracks. I glanced at myself for far too long.
My eyes were—wrong. Different. I stepped closer, paying no mind to the dark circles below them. I gaped at my iris—my sapphire iris. Where was my familiar brown? The brown of my mother, and Deldren. My last memory of my family, replaced with magic and Aelen.
I gazed at my reflection, but stared at him. The tears fell faster, and rage shot through my chest, bubbling up.
I slammed my fist into the mirror with every ounce of anger. My hand dripped with crimson, weeping fast, but I didn’t feel the pain; I only watched as the shattered glass fell to the floor.
The impact must have stabbed part of the mirror through the parchment, for there was a tiny hole with bright paint beneath.
Without thinking, I tore it further, revealing an intricately painted mural.
The deepest navy blended into indigo, flecked with ivory spots—that almost twinkled.
A tapestry of stars with the constellations connected with swirling azure lines.
They weren’t pictures, though. Not animals like I used to connect in the skies at night, or famous stories—they were almost archaic, like runes.
But when I stepped back to observe, it flooded to the surface. Not runes. Not constellations. Ancient writing. But in a language I couldn’t read.
My lips shook as I reached out a hand and sent up a prayer to the Starsingers, if they’d listen. “Read,” I commanded the churning, angry lumen inside. It poured from my fingers excitedly, running across the aged lines, lighting them up, and bending them until they became script I was familiar with.
But I could only read a small section of it.
Dancing through the frozen skies
Will abide
Not just words, a song. Some melody. What did it mean?
From the deadened blasphemy you command
Fallen Star
This will be your last stand
My mouth went dry, and I quickly covered the wall back up, tucking the parchment as best I could. My skin beaded, and my slick palms dripped through the paper.
A song of binding. The song of binding. My hands became frenzied, tearing at the paper.
I must have spent an eternity ripping it to shreds. The parchment had come freely, but the more I tugged, the more my heart had sunk.
I stepped back and admired the shredded wall. Jagged claw marks marred the bottom of the wall, tearing away at least half the song. They lashed across the paint, frantic and mismatched.
But raked into the bottom was a word. One written in the ancient language I could read.
A single word that tore me in two.
Monster.
I pressed my palm to it and blinked away tears. Ovatar cursed him, and in his pain, he came in here and slashed the walls. Shredded the song. And carved his pain into it.
Then he built mirrors, so he’d never have to look at it again—or show himself.
I memorized the remaining stanzas as much as I could, but I only had half a song. Not enough to bind. My only hope would be to convince Aelen to see if he could remember the remainder. Yet hopelessness swirled inside. Should he somehow recall, I’d still have to convince him to help me bind him.
A single soul cannot bind a god.
A conversation with him was inevitable.
But instead of initiating it, I went to one of the long, arched windows, and stared at the terrible, deathly white. Getting to the stables would be now near impossible, and in a matter of days, maybe a week, we’d be snowed in.
The minutes ticked by. Each one brought us closer to doom.
I wasn’t brave enough to seek him out then. But after a few hours of pacing until my heels were bloody, I knew I had to. I couldn’t keep wasting away the minutes, not when people back in Ilyatria were dying, and everyone here would soon be dead.
I steeled myself, looked to the back of my hand, where my pact lay somewhere beneath the skin, and called to him. It was soft, almost a whisper, but leaden with pain.
“Aelen.”
I begged him not to answer.
The still shadows whirred to life, swaying across the corners of the dim hall. I left it and retreated to his void-like room so I didn’t have to look at them while I waited.
He didn’t disappoint, with the clicking of his boots arriving in only a few minutes. They paused outside the room, where he rapped the wooden door.
“You don’t have to announce your presence. I knew you were there.”
“You fled from my shadows. I thought you might need a warning.” I hated the comfort that dripped from him. He was trying to be nice, despite the note we ended on. Couldn’t he be rude? That would make this ten times easier.
He let out a knowing puff, some sigh across the room. And then, the constellations across the walls and ceiling lit, bathing us in ghastly light.
“Why would you do that?”
“You hate the dark,” he said, repeating my tone back to me.
My heart sank like a stone in the river. I was just as weighted and wouldn’t claw back up to the surface again. “I believe I know how you bound Ovatar before.”
“And how do you know that?”
I bit the inside of my cheek until my mouth filled with metallic but kept myself stone-faced. “I just know it, like it’s a part of me,” I lied. I couldn’t show him the wall. I couldn’t force that pain upon him again.
But to my dismay, he smiled, breaking the scowl. “It must be the lumen I’ve given you. Enjoy it.”
“I think it’s an elegy,” I continued. “Like a song. I think you tried to bind him with a song, but I can only remember half of it.”
“I’m unsurprised. I can remember none of it myself. Consider yourself lucky you remember half,” he replied, and ran a finger through the stars, letting them bob like dying tadpoles. “Since the others in attendance were slain.”
I cringed, a hollow knock against my soul.
“You can’t remember any of it?”
“I can barely remember anything,” he snapped. “In time, I found certain things that were bound to my soul. Certain wounds carve themselves into your being, but beyond that… nothing.”
A wave of despair rolled across me like a lightless sea. He couldn’t recall the other half. I could interrogate him, but doubted that would bring further answers. Even with only a partial song, I’d still need his aid. He’d said I’d need other people.
I shuffled my feet, and it caught his attention at once. “Aelen, I need to ask you something, and I need you to be honest.”
“I’d ask if I was ever anything but honest with you, but we both know the answer. I promise veracity.”
I wanted to hide. To run beneath the bed and never speak these words. But I pressed on and kept my chin held high. I wouldn’t give in to the fear.
“If I could find a way to bind Ovatar. The same method you used before, would you face him?”
“No. And neither will you. It’s too dangerous, he’s gone too far. I failed once. I won’t let you suffer the way I did.”
“But their lives are at stake!”
He glowered. “I’m aware. But the risk is too great.
When I die, when you die, when all of my people die, including your own, you will pass back to the Starsingers.
They may recreate you, or may not, but you will be in their land of dark and light, in their realm.
If Ovatar consumes you, you will never reach them. I would never see you again.”
“But—”
He held up a palm to quiet me. “The same goes for my people. The fear isn’t death, it’s eternal death. A shattering and silencing of the soul.” His volume grew louder with every word until he screamed the last one.
I went into myself and stared at my shoes and the wounds I knew lay inside. I focused on that pain so that I might not cry.
“I will not face him again, and neither will you.”
He wouldn’t. That left me at square one. And I couldn’t do this without him. He’d said as much. I racked my brain but came up with no answers.
“Enough about that,” he said. “We must begin preparations. The snow is only deepening, along with his blight on this world. You must go.”
And with that, he swept from the room with his robes trailing behind him, and my stomach knotting in his absence.