Chapter Twenty-Four
It finally happened, as I feared it would.
Summer has not come this year. A spring so late it barely deserves the name has given way to crisp autumn.
If Theron had not brought heartier crops from his homeland, we might not have enough to eat this winter.
The children only remember the snow and ice, but my bones ache with the cold.
I sometimes feel I have outlived my time.
The lost journal of High Priestess Tona
Gwynira’s palace was in ruins.
With nowhere else to go, they gathered in a warehouse on the stone docks near the site of the former palace. Amongst the wooden crates and packed sacks of tundra cotton, they licked their wounds.
Numbered along with the countless bruises were only mild injuries—scrapes and shallow lacerations.
Einar had sustained a few deeper cuts when the Void hammer exploded, and they were proving dreadfully slow to heal.
Isa’s shoulder had been dislocated, and Gwynira had bound it after setting it back in place.
Arktikos bore not a single scratch. Inga had taken them all.
She sat on a tightly tied bale of cotton, a rough-spun blanket around her shoulders.
Her hair was mussed, and thin, silvered scars tracked over her skin, remnants of her desperate—and ultimately successful—bid to save Arktikos’s life.
She looked worse than Aleksi could remember without casting his memory back to that first brutal fight, when Sorin and Ash had beaten one another so badly that their bodies slamming into the earth had created the Lover’s Lakes.
Everyone thought, since Aleksi’s villa sat on their shores, that the lakes were so named in his honor. But he had chosen the name in honor of Inga. Without the love she showed in risking herself to save Ash, the dreadful hollows left in the earth would have remained filled only with blood.
She held a half-eaten meat pie, her third in roughly as many minutes. Aleksi knew from experience that she would go through half a dozen more before slowing down. Inga always needed to eat like this after such a feat. It was the only way her body could heal itself.
There, they sat or stood, still dazed from the attack. Someone had to break the bewildered silence, so Aleksi stepped to the middle of the room. “So. Sorin is of the Void now.”
Isa shook her head in helpless confusion. “But how?”
“It makes sense.” Naia leaned heavily against the back wall. One of her sleeves had nearly been ripped away from the rest of her dress. Aleksi stared at the frayed edges of the tear.
It was easier than looking at the deep, dark shadows that surrounded her eyes.
“He was once the Builder,” Aleksi agreed, still staring at Naia’s torn sleeve. “Before the Dream deserted him, he was powerful enough to sit on the High Court. He has always had a great affinity for magic.”
“And now he’s wreaked enough destruction to manifest again,” Naia said quietly.
Gwynira was not so subdued. She held both hands out to her sides, her soiled skirt swishing around her legs as she paced. “To the Void. He’s a hundred times more dangerous to a Dreamer now.” She stopped suddenly. “We have to call the High Court. We need Zanya.”
“Maybe so,” Aleksi allowed. It was possible that Zanya could separate Sorin from the Void with a single touch. Possible . . . but by no means certain. “But you saw her. She’s already exhausted by events on the mainland. She’s in no fit state for a battle like this.”
“She’ll have to be,” Gwynira countered.
“If we call her here, and she—” Naia could not finish the sentence. “It would be because of us. Could you live with that?”
“It would be because of Sorin,” Gwynira argued. “Not us.”
Einar had not said a word since leaving the palace ruins. He stood by a window, one paned with glass instead of ice. The glass had cracked, and tiny fissures spiderwebbed their way across the panes.
“You’ve been quiet, Einar.” Aleksi took a step toward him. “What do you think?”
It took him several moments to speak. When he finally did, his words were careful. Measured. “I think . . . that if Zanya comes here, Princess Sachielle will come with her.”
“Good!” Gwynira released a relieved breath. “Yes. Outside of Zanya, there is no one who could harm Sorin more than Creation. The Dream.”
And no one who could be harmed more by him. “That is true,” Aleksi said slowly. “But he hates her, Gwynira. More than anything in this world. More than he wants to live.”
“I . . .” She faltered. She, of all people, knew how single-minded and determined her cursed creator could be.
She could not counter the truth.
Another hush fell over the group. This time, it was Naia who broke it, with a quiet, implacable declaration. “We will not call the High Court. We will fight Sorin ourselves.”
Gwynira laughed helplessly. “I mean no disrespect to you, goddess.” Her voice was trembling as badly as her hands. “But we cannot face him without help.”
“We must.”
Einar closed his eyes.
“Is that your decision to make?” Isa honestly sounded like she was asking. “For all of us?”
“Yes, it is,” Naia replied. “Because I know what happens when forces this massive clash. The High Court fought Sorin thousands of years ago, and I had to live with the consequences. Right up until the moment those consequences killed me.”
Aleksi resisted a flinch.
“This is our fight.” Naia’s voice echoed with the crashing of waves and the wind sighing through sheltered coves. “We will fight it. And if the worst should happen—if we should fail—then the world will have the rest of the High Court to stand between it and the Betrayer.”
Einar made a low sound of pure agony, as if he’d been run through with a blade.
He turned and slammed through the door, leaving it rebounding in the jamb.
The pain that lingered in his wake was different, deeper than fear.
The darkest blue that Aleksi had ever seen, shot through with blinding flashes of white.
Had he remembered? Or did Naia’s words simply scrape at wounds he had carried for thousands of years but did not yet understand?
Naia’s jaw clenched, but she did not cry. Not even when Aleksi pulled her into his arms.
“She’s right,” Inga rasped, her voice husky with pain and fatigue. “For all we know, Sorin wants us to lure the others here because he has some way of eliminating us at once. We cannot risk that.”
Gwynira rubbed her hands over her face. “Fine. We stand alone.”
“Not alone,” Arktikos rumbled. “We stand together.”
Dianthe would be furious. Ash might be, as well, though perhaps his fear for Sachi’s and Zanya’s safety would eclipse his anger. Ulric and Nyx would be confused, maybe a little hurt. Only Elevia would understand the brutal pragmatism that had driven the decision.
Aleksi only hoped that, after the dust settled, he was still around to bear the brunt of his friends’ admonitions.