Chapter 1 #2
Besides, at least they got a choice. They seek Lunaris. Choose to live here. We never did. We were children when we arrived alongside twenty-three other orphans, all under sixteen. Too young to have manifested our gifts. Too young to understand what we were giving up.
Jordi refuses to acknowledge any of it. Refuses to accept that we had no say in the matter. It's almost as maddening as him refusing to leave with me when I begged him to. Almost as bad as him standing here, showing me all the things we can't change about this place.
The way I see it, things could be worse. We could be residents of the town below, where the Council rules supreme. At least the Sages give us choices. The freedom to learn, speak our minds, hone our gifts. The Council forbids all of that, and then some.
I look at the map the Sages commissioned Jordi to draw, which shows the continent above as it appeared three hundred years ago.
It's impossible to draw anything accurately without a current reference, and even the merchants from neighboring islands can't get past the Shroud to the kingdoms above.
But at least the continent is there. At least someone acknowledges it exists.
The older map bears a small flame where the Temple of Ignata once stood.
A monument to the goddess we're taught to revere. The one who lit the Undying Flames in every kingdom and appointed Sages to guard her ancient secrets. Most of the Veritas maps still honor that ground, but it’s missing from the map Jordi recently finished.
The biggest difference isn’t the missing flame, though. It’s the Shroud. On the older map, it looks more like a shadow. Less like a wound and more like a fading scar.
And cutting through the darkness … a path linking Lunaris to the land above. My heart climbs into my throat when I check the date in the corner. Circa 280 A.S. Twenty years ago. My eyes snap to Jordi's.
“What does this mean?” I whisper.
“Notice there’s no mark where the temple once was.” He points at the empty area in the forest and pulls out the map commissioned a few years ago. “This one has it.”
He lays out more maps. One after another in quick succession. The flame appears and disappears across the years like a guttering candle. Finally, he sets his recent map beside the twenty-year-old one.
“There’s nothing there,” I say. “And as the Sages graciously pointed out when they extended my apprenticeship and granted you the title of Official Mapmaker for the Veritas Order, the temple was there until the Council demanded it be torn down, as per the Veritas Treaty.”
Jordi scowls. “You know Freida and Anala had nothing to do with your apprenticeship being extended two years. That was all Mother, and I will never understand why you continue to roll over and take her lashings instead of fighting back.”
I scoff. If he knew the extent of my defiance, he'd be proud rather than annoyed. But it's best he doesn't. Mother's ire is a hurricane. I'd rather shove the people I love into its eye than let them be torn apart by its winds.
Two years. That's what she promised. Even she can't go back on her word. Not when I made her repeat it in front of the other Sages.
“It doesn’t matter. My two years will be up at the end of the Moon Festival.”
“I know, but you could speak to Anala and Freida—”
“No.” The word cuts through the air. “Last time I tried that, I ended up teaching alchemy to first years. I just need to keep my head down until the Moon Festival is over.” My gaze drifts back to the map. To the Shroud. To the path that shouldn’t exist. “No matter how curious I am about this.”
“What about the Undying Flame? Do you really think they moved it?”
I shoot him a bewildered look. “You’ve sat in front of that Flame enough times. You know it’s there.”
He slams his hands on the table. The raven and I both jolt. “You’ve sat in front of it! I've sat beside you, sick to my stomach, praying you heal quickly because they demand too much of your emotive gifts.”
The words hit like a fist to the chest. I swallow hard. “At least we know we have gifts. The Council’s residents wear their amulets day and night. They don’t even know what they’re capable of.”
He scoffs. “Most of our gifts.”
My spine stiffens.
“The year we arrived was a Reckoning year. I think that’s why the temple isn’t marked on it,” he says suddenly.
The mention of the Reckoning gives me pause. I frown as I study the map again. It occurs every ten years and is the only time the curse on the kingdom of Tenebris can be lifted. It should be important.
Instead, our texts gloss over it like an afterthought.
Maybe it’s because the Reckoning is marked by the blood moon, and in Lunaris, the sky belongs to the clouds.
We get eight hours of sun before the darkness rolls in.
We've never seen the stars, and the moon is little more than a rumor, glimpsed through brief tears in the gray.
The only acknowledgment of the Reckoning comes at the Veritas Ceremony on the first night of the Moon Festival. But the festival is annual. It just happens to coincide with when the blood moon supposedly rises.
“Are you saying this is a Reckoning year?”
“Yes.”
I point at the lighter Shroud on the twenty-year-old map. “And this was one too.”
“The Shroud shifts. I've read texts about it. Old ones, buried in the restricted stacks.”
I flip through the maps beneath. “Where's the one from ten years ago?”
“Gone. Forty years ago, too.” His jaw tightens. “They're hiding something. Either the Reckoning itself, or they don't want us near the Shroud right now. Probably both.”
“They have scholars who study the Shroud.”
“From afar. And they're forbidden from going near it in the months before the Moon Festival.” He taps the map. “During the Reckoning, the trees within the Shroud move. That's how the pathway forms.”
“Wouldn't we have felt it? The ground would tremble.”
His lips twist. “That's what Naima said.”
I huff a laugh. “Goddess strike me, Jor.”
“The laborers have seen strange lights in the sky.”
“What kind of lights?”
“I don't know. I haven't—”
The door crashes open. The raven croaks. Two students barrel in, still wearing their maroon houndstooth skirts and white knee-highs, hands pressed to heaving chests. Soot streaks their faces. Twin expressions of horror.
I glance from Mara to her quiet friend with the blue hair. “What happened?”
“The Shroud,” Mara gasps. “The guards … come quickly!”
I grab my healing kit. Jordi shoves the maps into the bottom drawer where I keep my things.
We run.