Chapter 4
Chapter Four
Igasp awake. My arms swing wildly, expecting water, but my feet are on solid ground. Dim orange lights flicker in the darkness. It takes a moment to realize where I am.
Or where I think I am. The cavernous tunnels beneath Lunaris. I haven't been down here in years, but the scent of burning eucalyptus is unmistakable. The Veritas torch binders use it.
I turn and stumble back when I find myself in front of a massive archway. I reach for the torch resting beside the column. I summon my fire, light it, and raise it to the stone. Ravens are etched into the columns.
Above, a massive raven head crowns the entrance. But the stone is colorless, so I can't tell whose temple this is. Mortiana's ravens are black. Sulara's are white.
Either way, one of them answered. Pulse roaring, I step inside the chamber and freeze. A pit sits at the center. Identical to the Undying Flame in the Temple of Veritas.
Jordi's words flash through my mind: Do you really believe they moved the Undying Flame from its original location? My heart pounds harder. He's been trying to tell me something. Could he have found the lost temple?
I shake my head. None of this makes sense. I was just outside the Noxbridge Library. Jordi was dying in my arms.
I have no choice but to approach the pit. Each step echoes in the vast chamber. Inside, I find pieces of chipped stone, ancient and crumbling. Beneath them, the faint pulse of an ember. Waiting.
I move to drop the torch inside. My hand trembles and stops right above it. The Undying Flame is never supposed to be re-lit by mortal hands. The texts are clear on this.
But nothing about this moment is right. Nothing about any of this is real. I've already shattered a dozen laws tonight. What's one more? I have to save Jordi.
I toss the torch.
A column of flame surges toward the vaulted ceiling, so bright it sears my vision.
I lift a hand to shield my face and stumble back, trip, and hit the stone hard.
From my elbows, I watch the Flame climb and writhe, casting wild shadows across the ancient walls.
Then it settles. Contracts. Expands again. As if it's breathing. As if it's alive.
“Your name,” it hisses.
My blood turns to ice. “Ada.”
“Full name.”
I try to push myself up. My hands tremble, slipping against the stone. I make it to my knees and wipe the sweat from my forehead, staring up at the Flame.
“Your. Name.” It roars the words, impatient flames licking the vaulted ceiling.
“Ada Temperance Acevedo.”
The Flame contracts. Settles. When it speaks again, its voice is almost soft.
“State your bargain.”
Heart rattling, I sink back on my heels. The Flame towers above me, ancient and patient, and I have never felt so small.
I have no idea what I'm supposed to say. I've never made a bargain in my life. The Veritas Order forbids them. Stories of those who bargained with gods and lost everything are whispered like warnings in the dark.
“Your bargain,” the Flame repeats. The words slither through the chamber.
“I want to …” My voice breaks. I swallow and try again. “I need to save my brother. I'll do anything. Please.”
The Flame swells. Contracts. A sound escapes it, low and rumbling. Almost like laughter.
“That is a foolish way to make a bargain with a god.”
Cold dread pools in my stomach as the weight of my words settles over me. I'll do anything. I've just handed this creature a blade and bared my throat. But it doesn't matter.
There is no sacrifice too great. No cost too high. Not for Jordi. Desperation is its own kind of madness. And I am drowning in it.
The Flame sways, slow and hypnotic. Its heat caresses my skin like a warning.
“Such gifts in one vessel.” The voice curls through the chamber, ancient and knowing. “Empathy. Serephony. Flame-summoner.”
A pause. The fire crackles. Waits.
“And the one you've buried so deep you've almost forgotten it exists.”
My blood goes cold. The air in my lungs thins.
“The Sages taught you to lock it away.” The Flame flickers, and I swear I feel it looking at me. Into me. Through me. “But you cannot bury what you are, child. You cannot outrun your own blood.”
It stills. The silence that follows presses against my ears like a hand over my mouth.
“Interesting.” The word is barely a whisper now, soft as ash. “What are these Sages playing at, I wonder.”
Something in its tone makes my skin crawl. As if it knows things about me that I don't. As if it's been waiting for me to stumble into this chamber all along.
“I don’t—”
“Has your brother told you what he's done?”
The question lands like a stone in still water. I clasp my hands tighter. Shake my head.
“Speak, child,” it roars.
I flinch. “No.”
The Flame sways again, slow and entrancing. I feel myself leaning toward it without meaning to. Toward the warmth. The light. The answers it's dangling just out of reach.
“Would you like to know before you make this bargain?”
I force myself to look away. “It wouldn't make a difference.”
The Flame flares. Shadows twist along the walls, reshaping themselves until an image bleeds across the stone. Flickering. Alive.
My breath hitches. Jordi. He walks down a hill shrouded in mist, his figure small against the darkness. He passes through an archway like the one outside this chamber.
Ancient. Waiting. He steps inside and moves toward a light that pulses like a heartbeat. The cave looks like one near the cliffs, but wrong somehow. Older. Sacred.
A beam of pale light pours from above, illuminating something floating over a stone platform.
A blade. Long and slender. Hovering in the air as if held by invisible hands.
Like an offering. I rise on my knees to get a better look.
It looks like the ceremonial swords the Veritas blacksmiths forge for the Moon Festival.
Like a—
No.
Oh gods, no.
A god scepter.
Each god has one. A scepter forged from one of their bones. Some accounts claim they’re swords. Others say they’re keys to doors no mortal should open.
But every story agrees on one thing: the scepters choose their wielders. And the unworthy are cursed. Destroyed. Unmade. Not right away, but over time. I hold my breath as Jordi's hand stretches toward the light. The image shatters into smoke.
My eyes snap back to the Flame. It watches me. Waits. A predator savoring the moment before the kill.
“Would you still bargain for his life?” The fire crackles, sparks drifting upward like dying stars. “If you knew your brother was deemed unworthy? If you knew his blood was already turning black with the curse?”
The words carve through me. I think of the poison spreading through his veins. The black lines I watched spider across his skin. Was that the arrow, or something older? Something he did to himself in that cave?
It doesn't matter.
“Yes.”
“Even if it means you'll be indebted to me? Even if the price is more than you can fathom?”
I don't hesitate. “Yes.”
The Flame stills. The chamber falls so silent I can hear my own heartbeat, wild and desperate, echoing off the ancient stone.
“Why?”
The question cracks something open inside me. All the years of pushing him away. All the secrets and silence and distance I built between us because I thought it would protect him. And now he's dying in my arms and none of it mattered. None of it kept him safe.
My throat closes. My eyes burn. When I finally speak, the words come out shattered. “He's all I have.”
“Not all,” the Flame murmurs.
Soft. Almost tender. The gentleness is worse than the roaring. I wonder if it’s referring to the Sages, my friends, or both.
“He's the only one who matters.” A tear slips down my cheek as I say the words. “Please. I'll give you anything. Just save him.”
The Flame swells. Once. Twice. As if breathing me in. As if tasting the desperation on my skin.
“The bargain is struck.”
The words echo through the chamber, through my bones, through the hollow place in my chest where my heart used to be. For one fleeting moment, relief crashes over me. Jordi will live. Whatever this costs, whatever I've promised, he will live.
But the Flame isn't finished.
“I do not heal, child.” Its voice drops to something low and ancient. Something that has watched civilizations rise and crumble to dust. “I take. That is my nature. That is all I have ever been.”
The fire flickers. Shadows claw up the walls.
“You must seal this yourself.”
“I … but I don't know how—”
“You do.” The words coil around me like a serpent, soft and suffocating. “You've always known. You simply chose to forget. Chose to bury the truth so deep you convinced yourself it wasn't there.”
The Flame sways. I sway with it. I can't look away. Can't move. Can't breathe. The heat wraps around me like arms pulling me under.
“Return to him. Use what you've buried. Show me you're worthy of the debt you now carry.”
“What do you—”
“My warrior will arrive soon.” A pause. The flames dance, almost playful. Almost cruel. “To collect.”
My eyelids grow heavy. The chamber blurs at the edges. I fight it, but the warmth is spreading through my limbs like honey, like poison, dragging me down into something soft and dark.
It doesn't matter. Jordi is safe. I saved him. I—
“You will save your brother.” The voice is distant now. A whisper from the bottom of a well. “I never said he was safe.”
I try to speak. Try to scream. My lips part but nothing comes out. I am frozen. Trapped in my own body as the darkness creeps in from the edges of my vision.
“Safety is an illusion, child.” A hiss. A caress. A curse. “You, of all people, should know that by now.”
I reach for the Flame. For answers. For anything. And the darkness rushes in and swallows me whole.
I gasp awake.
Cobblestones beneath my knees. Fog pressing in from all sides. My hands are still pressed against Jordi's wound. His blood is warm, bubbling beneath my palms.
His chest isn't moving. No. No, no, no. We made a bargain. I gave everything. I—
You've always known. You simply chose to forget. Use what you've buried.
The Flame's voice echoes through me like a command. Like a key turning in a lock. I squeeze my eyes shut. Take a breath. And stop fighting.
I reach for the gift I've kept locked away my entire life. The one the Sages forbade me from using. The one that guarantees my death in all eight kingdoms. I picture the box I've kept it in.
Rusted. Forgotten. Buried in a box in the darkest corner of my mind, my chest, deep in my gut where no one would ever find it. Where I convinced myself even I couldn't reach it.
Heat slams into me as I tear the box open. Not the familiar warmth of my fire gift. This is different. Deeper. Older. Like something that has been sleeping inside me since before I was born, waiting for this moment. Waiting to be set free.
Like before, when I begged the goddess for help. But this time, I don't fight it. I let it consume me. Flames lick through my chest. Spread through my arms. Down to my fingertips. Up my throat. And finally, into my eyes.
They burn as if I'm staring directly into the sun. The world turns white and gold and blinding, and I can't tell if I'm screaming or if the sound is coming from somewhere else entirely. Beneath my fingers, I feel everything. The poison spreading through Jordi's veins.
His heart stuttering, slowing, giving up. The darkness traveling through his blood, claiming him inch by inch. And I pull. I pull, and pull, and pull. The poison resists, clings to his veins like it belongs there, like it wants him. I pull harder.
My eyes burn brighter. The heat roars through me, a wildfire tearing through me. Through the whooshing in my ears, I hear myself screaming. But I don't stop. I can't. I keep pulling until something shifts.
Jordi's chest heaves. Once. Twice. He coughs, a wet, ragged sound that might be the most beautiful thing I've ever heard.
My eyes fly open. I blink rapidly, the world swimming back into focus. The black veins are fading from his skin, retreating like shadows from the dawn. He's breathing. He's alive.
My entire body is trembling. I feel hollow. Empty. I look down at my hands and shake harder when I see that I’m covered in black, from the tips of my fingers up to my elbows. It’s the last thing I see before my world tilts sideways and everything goes dark.
Like everyone else on this island, I have no memories of the five years of life before I arrived here.
I’ve searched for them. Clawed at the edges of my mind, desperate for even a glimpse of before.
But the furthest I ever go is waking up at the Veritas Estate, turning my head, and finding Naima and Margot asleep in their beds beside me.
But this time, something is different.
This time, I remember.
I remember opening my eyes to three faces hovering above me. The Sages. Their expressions tight with something I didn't understand then. Something I'm not sure I understand now.
“Are you sure this is them?” Mother's voice. Sharp. Urgent.
“I'm positive,” Anala the All-Seeing responds calmly.
“How could she have survived this wound?” Mother asks. Beneath the sharpness, I see something else. Something that might have been fear.
“How could any of these children have survived the Shroud on their own?” Freida the Hunter asks.
A pause.
“Who says they did?” Anala replies.
“What are you saying?” Mother hisses.
Anala leans closer. Her fingers brush my chest as she speaks in a language I don't recognize. Ancient. Guttural. The words scrape against my ears like stone against stone.
Mother gasps. “How is that possible?”
“The Reckoning,” Anala says simply. Her eyes meet mine, and I swear she knows I'm listening — knows I'll remember this somehow. "They were chosen. Sent for the Reckoning."
My eyes fly open.
I'm lying in a hammock. The familiar sway of it. The familiar scent of herbs and smoke and something faintly sweet.
The healing chamber. I'm back at the Temple of Veritas.
My body feels heavy. Wrong. Like it belongs to someone else. I turn my head slowly, and my gaze lands on the Undying Flame at the center of the room. It flickers. Dances. And for a moment, just a moment, I swear it's watching me.
Safety is an illusion.
The words drift through my mind like smoke.
As my eyes grow heavy again, as the darkness pulls me back under, I can't help but wonder who the Sages have been idolizing this whole time.
And what, exactly, did they raise us to become?