Chapter 23
By dinnertime, Audra was too exhausted to taste her food—she ate it because she needed to, forcing down each bite. Callum, Wilder, Lottie, and Cersha shared stories of their day, comparing opinions on the scholars, but she felt far removed from everything, as though this were all a dream.
Audra found she couldn’t focus on anything—not even the saffron rice, cucumber salad, and spiced lamb remaining on her plate. She excused herself with a mumbled apology and walked as though in a reverie until she stumbled up the spiraled iron stairs leading to the Arcane Guild’s residence hall.
With dinner in full swing, she found herself, for the first time, alone in the hall.
It was swathed in shadows that dripped from the ceilings and cobwebbed corners, stretching across the worn, ancient floor in inky puddles.
The silence pressed in on her, and she missed the familiar hustle and bustle of Fernwell Inn as a sharp, physical ache—even in the quiet season, there was always someone out and about on every floor of the inn.
Audra was rarely alone, unless she was perched on her roof, watching the ships go out to sea.
She stepped up to the long, wax-stained table and slipped the leather satchel off her aching shoulder.
It was so heavy that it landed with a thud, the sound jarring in the quiet hall.
She lit a few of the tapered candles with the matches left in the center of the table.
Inside the satchel were a stack of books she’d checked out from the library—initiates had gotten to many of the volumes the librarian had suggested before Audra, but she was able to secure a few before dropping into a chair with a sigh.
Hopefully, they would be enough to complete her long list of assignments.
She unclasped the brass buckles and pulled out her quill and inkpot, a bound notebook, the borrowed tomes, scrolls, and a map of the Veridian continent—the librarian had checked it out to her for the semester.
The fire crackled as she set to work, starting with the paper on the cycle of seasons.
She was expected to define the tiers of each season, the average length of each cycle, and all prominent historic events during each season during the last five cycles, including listing each Heir that brought upon Fresh Spring.
Audra cracked open The Life and Rebirth of Our Heirs, the largest of the borrowed tomes, thumbing through the aged pages, past portraits of every Heir dating back tens of thousands of years, before landing on the most recent, Solasta Jemora. Audra ran an ink-stained finger over her portrait.
She’d been painted by a master, every detail in her expression clear for the viewer to see, captured forever in strokes of black and gray.
The Heir was a slight thing, her expression naive, innocent, hopeful.
The painter had chosen to pose Solasta Jemora so that her back was to the viewer, her face turned toward the front, her dark skin bathed in streaks of light glowing from a window beside her, illuminating her face; the glow almost seemed to glitter across her cheekbones, the supple curve of her jaw.
It gave her a divinity that Audra wondered if she had possessed in real life.
Was the Heir closer to a god than a mortal being?
Or was this just how they wanted her portrayed?
What had happened between this Heir’s birth and the next, that this Heir had been born in the wrong realm?
She’d learned today that every prophecy bearer had been born in Zenaida since the beginning of memory.
There was a village in the south of Zenaida that boasted the most Prophecy Heirs born. Seventeen in recorded history.
It was how Zenaida had expanded from shore to shore, until this one kingdom spanned the entire width of the continent, why even the surrounding sovereign nations paid tithes, shared resources …
because without Zenaida, the earth would be doomed to a perpetual winter, and eventually magic would fade forever, crops would fail, society would be thrust into another dark age.
What, then, had gone wrong?
According to Scholar Haile’s lesson that morning, it was unprecedented …
not only the Prophecy Heir being born on the wrong continent, in the wrong realm, but a half-breed at that—that’s what Scholar Haile had said, “half-breed,” as though the initiates filling her classroom were halved: half worthy …
half of a whole … missing something vital, essential.
Well, if the seers were to be believed, it would be a “half-breed” that saved them all.
Audra refused to believe this, writing in the margins of her notebook: I am not half of anything; I am wholly me.
She read a passage, a firsthand account by a priestess of the Chorus of Echoes.
Solasta Jemora, named on the 12th day of Desolate Winter 14045, to Iss and Jelaney Jemora in Tirae Village, was brought to the temple on the 15th day of Desolate Winter 14045 by myself, Echo Priestess Ahmya Autumnborn.
Iss and Jelaney Jemora were given half of Solasta’s dowry of [ink stain].
This priestess records with a happy and thankful heart that Solasta was a sweet and well-tempered child.
She rarely threw fits or muddied the floors of the nursery hall.
The Heir’s power swelled early, at just six years old.
She was trained in the [ink stain] arts by the Priestesses and excelled quickly.
By age twelve, the Heir’s grasp upon her [ink stain] magic was immeasurable, and she frequently [ink stain] …
Audra rubbed at the black ink stains on the parchment, but she realized quickly they were not stains, for the marks were too straight, so as not to bleed into the line above or below.
This segment was purposefully redacted …
This was, after all, a copy of a copy of a copy …
She wondered if the original was housed in Holyvere’s library.
Annoyed, she continued reading.
The incras that Solasta created for Zenaida citizens’ use were: [list filled with ink stains].
Solasta brought forth spring at sunrise on her fifteenth nameday.
A statue was erected on the following anniversary, the 12th day of Fresh Spring 14060, in her honor, and her family was rewarded the remainder of Solasta’s dowry.
That was everything on Solasta Jemora, the last savior of the world, and the reason millions of beings had known the joys of spring and summer and autumn instead of this perpetual, unbearable winter.
As Audra lifted the page to turn to the previous Heir, who would have been born roughly five hundred years before Solasta, a chill swept through the room, stirring the dust motes into a dance.
A shiver ran down Audra’s spine, not from the cold, but from a strange sensation, a tingling in her fingertips.
She paused, the page in mid-turn, the hair raising on the nape of her neck.
She felt as though someone was watching her again.
Her breath caught in her throat as a whisper, soft as a sigh, brushed against her ear.
“Audra,” it murmured, the voice hollow as though it were an echo of an echo.
Audra’s heart dropped to the floor as she looked around, expecting to see a student who’d snuck in without her noticing, but there was no one.
She was alone.
The chill passed over her again, goose bumps rose on her arms. The room felt as though someone had opened the window to let in the chill of a dreadful Desolate Winter night.
She crossed to the windows and checked …
But no, every window in the residence hall was shut tight, locks flipped to the latched position.
She sat down again, picking up the page, ready to resume, when the fire in the hearth extinguished with a whoosh. Audra stilled, the tremble in her thumb and finger where she pinched the page the only movement she made.
“Audra,” the voice whispered, this time in her other ear.
Audra whipped around.
“Who’s there?” This must be a jest of some kind. Had someone discovered an incra for casting one’s voice far away? Audra’s frown deepened. Was someone already casting incras?
She’d wanted to be the first.
Audra closed her eyes, telling herself that this was just a hoax.
A mean-spirited trick. But as she focused on the darkness, the backs of her eyelids, a vision flashed before her; she glimpsed a dark chamber swathed in sweltering, pulsing shadows, a hand stretching out from the gloom, dark skin crisscrossed with pale scars, each finger adorned with rings of pounded gold stippled with sapphires and rubies that glinted in an otherworldly, spectral glow.
The hand reached for her, fast as a whip, straight for her throat.
With a shout, Audra’s eyes flew open, and she scrambled backward, toppling out of the chair, landing hard on her tailbone.
She grunted in pain, pressing her palms into the dusty floor as she craned her neck this way and that, searching the residence hall for the owner of the disembodied hand with the rings.
Her eyes danced, flitting from corner to ceiling, to the hearth and back.
Taking in the swelling shadows, the cobwebs hanging from the chandelier, the too-detailed faces of the gargoyles above the mantel.
The gargoyles seemed to shift and swirl until they were precise facsimiles of the not-Wilder demon from combat class, the painted red smear of a smile stretching to infinity, the too-sharp, glistening teeth.
Gone was the stone of the gargoyles; it was replaced by scales and stretched skin and blinking yellow eyes.
Audra leapt to her feet, stepped around the overturned chair, slammed the book closed, hurriedly jammed her materials into her satchel.
Heaving the level tote over her shoulder, she fled the room, pounding down the iron stairs, ignoring the heady feeling of the winding winding winding spiral.
She focused on the bright lights and cacophony waiting on the ground floor.
She would finish her assignments in the dining hall.
Audra didn’t return to the residence hall until hours later, when it had filled with Arcane initiates studying, lounging, playing strategic games, perched on ladders browsing the bookshelves, and Wilder stood, tall, strong, and foreboding beside her.
She took a moment, pausing at the door. The fire was roaring, the shadows seemed like regular shadows, and the gargoyles were harmless statues once more.
Still, her footsteps were hurried as she rushed up the stairs to the dorms, the racing trip trip trip of her heart not settling until she was in their room with the door latched.