Chapter 12
Twelve
Seven days passed.
I was appointed a guard—one of the Vestals, who escorted me to and from practice in silence—and a Warden stood outside the room I now shared with Verena, the door locked each night. Sometimes when I woke, I could hear him pacing, back and forth, back and forth.
I thought of Airen. The Hollow King. I could not slip away, could not speak his name and let the walls shift open around me.
At times it felt like an impossible dream, as though I’d made it up.
I lay still at night, listening to Verena breathe, and yearned—to return to that discarded kingdom of dead roses and candlelight and shadow.
To the music that made something in me shift and breathe with it.
Why did I desire to go back, when in my marrow I knew it was ill-fated?
I longed for it anyway. And if I were honest with myself, it was his presence that drew me back, despite every inclination to flee.
I wasn’t sure what to call it, but I’d never felt like this before, as though I were being driven by something relentless.
Two weeks remained before the full moon, and each time I danced, my weakness grew harder to hide.
My insides burned, my throat was tight, and breathing was painful.
It took everything I had to keep the cough from breaking me in half.
I chose a shy young woman named Chi as my protégée and started teaching her the steps.
She was a quick learner, but even when she danced, I feared for her life. I feared the truth.
I needed answers. To return to the Hall of Records or find a secret, something that had been hidden from me.
Verena’s reminder to open my eyes stayed with me, and my thoughts shifted to Rift Mother.
She’d led the Sacred Palace for over thirty years.
Perhaps she knew more than she’d let on, or at least there were records in her chambers. Unless they’d been cleared out.
As much as I wanted to find a way back to Airen, I needed to get rid of the Warden and the Vestal who guarded me and learn what Rift Mother might have hidden.
She sat on the council too. Was it possible she held some political knowledge that had led to her death?
It might be that what had happened had nothing to do with the dancers.
Except for the fact that another Vestal was dead, pointing to the fact that something was haunting the Sacred Palace. Demons?
On the morning of the seventh day, the energy of the palace shifted. Whispers danced. Shadows shivered. Bare feet moved quickly down the corridors, and skirts rustled like wind through a field. A visitor was coming to the city, one who would grace the Sacred Palace with her presence.
Sacred Mother.
She had ascended past every height we knew. Not a Rift Mother but something older, something closer to a queen, a woman said to wield the magic of the rift without needing the dance. The message had reached her, and she’d come out of the mountain heights to help us with our troubles.
Dancers gathered at the overlook, craning to see the procession wind through the streets.
Banners, incense burning, a palanquin curtained in white.
Unease filled me, and my body went cold, like a window opened somewhere within.
I pressed my hand over my heart, willing myself to believe it was the mountain air.
I hovered at the back of the group, a sour taste in my mouth, until I realized something simple. I was alone, with no Warden at my back, no Vestal with eyes on me. Everyone was too busy watching the arrival of Sacred Mother to take note.
My feet were moving before my mind caught up, fingers trailing along the stones, climbing the spiral staircase to the hall where the Rift Mother’s chambers were kept.
It was its own floor, a room tucked onto a ledge, its window overlooking the whole city.
The most elegant chamber in the palace. Dancers were forbidden to climb the stairs, forbidden to visit.
If the vote had gone forward—I had no hope of that now—the chambers would have been mine.
But I’d never let myself imagine a future without dancing.
Instructing held no joy for me, for the joy was in the dance itself, the being one with it, the magic soaring through the movements.
Stopping would be like losing a limb. But unless I learned who was killing us, the choice would not be mine to make.
At the door, I paused, palm flat against the wood. Was I truly going to do this? Violate the sanctity of her rooms? And what did I hope to find on the other side? I gathered my failing courage and turned the knob. Unlocked. A small mercy.
The cry left my lips before I could stop it, and I pressed both hands over my mouth, hoping the rich carpets muted the echo.
The room was in shambles. Rift Mother never would have left it like this.
The bedding lay torn from the bed, the mattress slashed, feathers still drifting loose.
The wardrobe stood emptied, clothes strewn, and deep gashes scarred the wood as though something were looking for a hollow opening, a secret door.
The curtains were the only normalcy, billowing in the gentle wind, the window open, glass shattered.
Who had done this? The one who killed her? And if so—what had they been hunting, and had they found it?
I knew I should report it, all the while knowing the finger would be pointed back at me. Quickly I stepped inside, leaving the door ajar, and started searching, unsure of what I, myself, was hunting. There were no papers, no records here, and all the likely places had already been searched.
I moved into the adjoining washroom, skin crawling as though a hunter was in the room with me.
Here, everything sat neatly, clean and untouched.
A basket with towels perched by the tub.
Sinking to my knees, I unfolded each one, my hands trembling from fear, from guilt, listening for footsteps that hadn’t come yet.
The basket held towels and nothing more. I sat back on my heels, my mind working. Nothing was here. I began to wonder if anything had ever been here. It was all a futile hope to find something.
When I stood, I trod on the hem of my skirt and stumbled, the cloth tearing. As I bent to inspect the damage, my fingers brushed a ledge of stone, and something gave with a soft, grating sound.
A stone beside the tub had shifted it, and underneath it lay a small dark square.
My heart pounded as I dropped to my knees. Inside was a box. Gingerly, I lifted it out and found a scroll inside. My hands shook as I held it. Was this what the room had been torn apart for?
Undoing the clasp, I opened it and found myself staring at a list of names.
No. More than names. A family tree. Lines drawn from one to the next, generation to generation, an anthology of women: daughter, sister, cousin, niece inked beside each. I opened the scroll wider, scanning through dozens and dozens of names.
The closer I got to the bottom, the more I recognized the names. Lead Dancers. All of them. And according to the scroll, they were all related. One family line.
By the time I got to the bottom, my hands were shaking so hard I could barely read my own name. Gazelle. Daughter of Shandell.
Then I went still, my fingers tracing the lines back up. My mother’s name was there, on its own. There were another dozen women between us, yet she had been one. Long ago.
My breath caught as understanding came. But she hadn’t given her soul to the rift.
She hadn’t died from the dance. Instead, she’d left, married, had a family.
Why was she allowed to leave? I traced the name that came after hers.
A cousin took her place. So then my mother might have known Rift Mother, who’d come to save me, and train me for the dance almost as though it were fate.
I felt breathless with discovery and dizzy from everything that hadn’t been explained. This brought me no answers, only more questions.
Replacing the box, I slid the stone home until it clicked into place. But the scroll, I kept tucked inside my clothes, pressed against my chest. There was only one person I wanted to talk to right now, and I didn’t know why, but I was certain he would give me the truth.
Descending the steps felt terrible, closing her door and carrying her secret away.
I reminded myself that I was looking for the person who killed her, now that I was no longer a suspect.
Yet my actions told a different story as I walked quickly and quietly, down, down, and down again toward the prison cells.
I could not walk out the door, nor cross the courtyard, descending the stairs to the amphitheater and on into the catacombs.
I had to do it this way, to keep my secret, to remain unseen.
A thought came to me as I descended into darkness. That it was unusually cruel of them to take me to the unused prison cells, as though I were a terrible criminal. They could have simply held me in a locked room instead of shaming me.
I came to a standstill and whispered, “Hollow King. Hollow King. Open the way.”
The walls seemed to close in around me before they shuddered, and a passage opened, breathing out old florals, dead roses, and incense. I had no light, so I put one hand on the wall and tentatively put one foot in front of the other, following the yawning stone into the depths.
Slowly the light grew brighter, not daylight but a pale glow, tinted blue.
I blinked as I came out of the passage, not into a hall or chamber, but this time into a lagoon.
A shimmering pool of blackness sat wide and still, deep beneath the mountain.
The water rippled as I approached, as though it had been waiting for me.