Chapter Forty-Four Abel
Life is, for mortals, borrowed time. Just as the flowers sprout and wither, so to stardust you must return. Be at peace, upon final breaths, for even under these violent skies, you have lived well, and as designed.
—The First Eulogy
Translated from The Tale of Stars (L’Histoire des étoiles), Part III: The Age of Mortality
Chapter Forty-Four
Abel
Marshal Payen emerges from the cave. As she approaches, Claire’s unconscious form in my arms doesn’t faze her.
Her brown skin looks ashen, the lines around her eyes strained beyond her age.
She grips my good shoulder, her usual stonelike demeanor crumbling, as if I’m the savior she can’t wait to see.
“Go,” she orders, pointing to the cave. “Take Claire and go inside.”
“What’s in there?” I ask, alarmed by her panic.
“Just go, slayer!” She shoves me toward the darkness. “He only wants the two of you.”
I press my forehead to Claire’s, whisper a last-ditch prayer, then carry her into the cavern. My meager lantern casts light no more than ten feet in front of me. Stalagmites and stalactites welcome me like dragon’s teeth. Lucy, ever faithful, keeps close to us—until her hackles rise and she growls.
“Calm, little one. I am not your enemy,” intones a deep voice. The echo ricochets off the cavern’s interior in such a disorienting way, I can’t tell where it originates. “Nor am I yours, Abel Estellio.”
“Who are you?” I demand. Pain spikes through my shoulder as I tense. The sudden movement makes Claire’s head roll away from my shoulder. “Where are you?”
Something heavy and metallic rattles. Chains. The sound is ingrained in my memory from the days I kept Micah contained.
“I am in a prison, of sorts,” the voice says. “As you will see. Come closer.”
With a swallow, I step forward until the lamplight catches the first chain. A second chain. Then the light catches the shape of a humanlike figure, locked inside a narrow cell and all four limbs tethered to the rock. Everything is made of moonmetal.
That’s not what compels me to hold my breath. It’s the ethereal appearance of the man trapped inside.
He looks to be a young adult, but I can’t pinpoint his age.
There’s something timeless about his skin.
It reflects faintly silver, like moonlight.
A sheetlike garment drapes his figure, secured around the middle with a frayed rope, and leaves his arms and feet bare.
Sleek black hair falls past his shoulders.
Examining his eyes, I stop short. They aren’t natural—no irises, no whites.
They’re filled completely black, but pinpricks of light shine from them, mirrors to a clear night sky.
As if his eyes are windows to the celestial realm. Eyes meant to see far, far beyond me.
“Diu help us,” I whisper.
“You will help me,” he corrects, and bows his head in greeting. “I have been waiting nearly two millenniums for this moment.”
He says it in a bored tone, as if two millenniums is no time at all.
I lay Claire gently on the ground and stay kneeling at her side. Lucy rests protectively on her stomach. “Who are you? And how do you know my name?”
“You already know who I am.” The chains rattle as he gestures gracefully to Claire, then me. “I have been watching the world—and you both—through the eyes of my owls.”
“Noctu,” I breathe.
Impossible. Yet here he is, clearly inhuman, right in front of me.
“You never Ascended to the celestial realm,” I say. “Diu left you here?”
“Not by choice. He did not imprison me.”
“So the Gods’ War…”
“Pure fiction.” Noctu examines the moonmetal shackles claiming his wrists as if mildly inconvenienced. “Though your understanding of the Dark Days is fairly accurate.”
I squeeze Claire’s hand, bracing myself. Correcting the history of Florent is secondary to the real reason we came here.
“Is there a cure for the dragon curse?” I ask.
“No. Her fate is sealed.”
No cure.
No hope.
Simple as that.
All the resentment I developed toward the War-Torn Gods throughout my journey heats my face.
The pain of every loss that Claire, Lyle, and I have shouldered to make it to this summit boils under my skin to the point of full-body trembles.
The deaths—my parents, Micah, Madame Afi—can’t be for nothing.
My research can’t be for nothing.
“You and Diu made us,” I say. “There must be something you can do.” I refuse to believe that fawna wasn’t a sign of good luck.
“You humans like to pretend we are responsible for your every fortune and misfortune. We are creators. Celestial sculptors, if you will. Gods by your definition, perhaps, but not omnipotent.”
“You have magic.”
“Not at this moment.”
I waver. “So you’re not—”
“Cursing humans to destroy the mortal realm?” He blinks slowly. “No. I am not.”
“Then how do they have your magic?”
“They take it by force.” He gestures to the stone floor at his feet. “It is as you see.”
I approach the cell bars and hold my lantern to expose more of the ground.
Several rivulets are carved into the cavern floor, too deliberate to be erosion.
They run between the cell’s bars and combine to form a long dip in the ground at my feet, like a trough, the source of which begins near Noctu’s seat.
“Eau de vie,” Noctu says. “That is the name my fanatics have given to my blood.”
Eau de vie. Water of life. The words that I trusted my gut to follow, that I convinced Claire to place all her hopes on.
“Eau de vie”—I drop to my knees—“is your blood.”
“During the Dark Days, it was common knowledge that magic lives in the blood.” Noctu’s chains rattle as he settles back against the stone. “Now my worshippers harvest mine to drink. They skewer me through the bars with their weapons once per month.”
“What do they gain from your blood? Just healing powers and an animal form?”
“Immortality.”
Cold sweat drips down my back. “Immortality?”
“Yes. But without Diu’s blood to complete it, their immortality is as much a sickness as it is a boon. It requires maintenance, or their bodies will revert to their true age. For them, that means death.”
The cultist Marshal Bard arrested looked horribly sick with that pallid, veiny skin.
He begged for eau de vie as if his life depended on it.
But he wasn’t sick, exactly. That was accelerated aging.
He needed his next dose of Noctu’s blood to keep his body in stasis.
That’s proof enough that he’d lived beyond a mortal lifespan.
Plus the way he spoke the Old Tongue, like it was his default language…
The absurdity of it makes me hesitate, but I have to ask—just to confirm I’m not the madman most of Florent thinks I am.
“Are your ‘fanatics’ the original Immortals?”
“The very same.”
I reel. Ever since Ravinfort, we’ve been up against Florent’s very first sinners. Evil, greedy criminals who committed such terrible violence that the Gods ripped magic from their blood and cut their lives short. I really am lucky just to have survived this long.
“What if Claire drank your blood?” I ask, clinging to that luck. “I’m sorry, I know it’s a lot to ask. But she’s still within her normal lifespan, and it’s better for her to turn into a harmless owl than a dragon.”
“I cannot remove Diu’s magic. It is beyond my domain.”
“If she could just try it—”
“If she drinks my blood, she will become immortal,” he replies, “but doomed to suffer forever from two curses, not one. Even your weapons would not be enough to give her a mercy killing.”
Owl during the full moon. Dragon on Ignition Day. Fated to lose even more control of her body, and wake up in strange locations with no help or resources. She’d suffer at the hands of generations of people who loathe her existence, forever deprived of a normal life.
“Still, it’s your blood. Your magic. You define what it can do,” I say, racking my brain. “You made those cultists—Immortals—reliant on it. You made their owl form harmless, didn’t you?”
“No. I did not choose the way my magic manifested.”
“It mirrors the dragon curse.” I gesture to Claire. “How does that happen if it wasn’t deliberate?”
“Call it a side effect of their stealing my power. Creation magic has a way of counterbalancing itself.”
“Yet I’m supposed to believe you’re powerless. How can that be?”
“To understand my magic, you must first understand how realms like yours originate,” he explains. “The process begins in the celestial realm—an endless void filled with the floating remains of dead moons and suns. Fire and fumes. Ice and ore. These are the basic building blocks of creation.”
A near-direct quote from the scripture. “The Tale of Stars was honest about that, at least.”
“The strongest lies embrace the truth,” he confirms, “but the limitless creation described in your text exists only in the celestial realm. That is where the materials are purest, most powerful, and brimming with endless magical potential.” He gestures as if holding an invisible orb.
“However, once we forge an individual realm, we must walk its surface to give it detail. The more complex the realm grows, the more the materials mix together, and the more our individual control over creation narrows. Over time, Diu and I become subject to its limitations. If we are not careful, we could invent our own prison.”
“You did invent your own prison.” I lift the lantern higher, casting shadows of his cell bars onto the cave walls. “The Immortals captured you.”
“They did.”
“What went wrong?”
“We introduced humans into existence too early.” His chains rattle as he shifts. “Worse was our mistake of sharing our capacity for creation magic. We did not recognize the threat they posed until they took up arms against us.”
“The Dark Days,” I conclude.
“Yes. However, their ambitions were not limited to this realm. They wanted to usurp control of the celestial realm. They believed themselves superior to Diu and me—and they were, in a way. We had taught them how to wield both domains at once.”
I shudder. “That sounds like an unnecessary risk.”