Chapter Thirty-Four
The griffins enjoy our flight through the mountains a lot more than we do.
We avoid the pass we took when we came to Pyka six months ago, fearing that Selaran spies or assassins could see us and make their move. Instead, we venture south to approach Avaris from the west.
I lean back into Ronan while we fly, shivering in the cold air. To our left, Quinn rides behind Seth on Bitey. “I’ll have to keep my distance. Taran will never forgive me if something happens between us,” she had told me as we were getting ready.
“And Octavia?” I had asked. “Would she forgive you?”
Quinn grinned. “Oh, definitely.”
“So it’s not serious then?” I couldn’t help but be a little nosy. I’d seen them together since they returned, but the affection between them has been considerably less charged than between Taran and Seth.
Quinn looked off into the distance as if she wasn’t sure what to say. “It could have been, maybe, if things were different. But we’re on separate paths. Literally.” She shook her cane in my direction.
“I can’t imagine Octavia has an issue with that.”
“She doesn’t. But it was tough out there at sea. I don’t want to hold her back. And besides, my place is with Ronan in Faros, however long it takes us to get there. I couldn’t ask her to stay for me, and she wouldn’t ask me to come with her. So it is what it is until it isn’t.”
“And that doesn’t make you a little sad?” They seemed good for each other. It was nice to see Quinn have someone whose company she enjoys beyond the bedroom.
“Nothing lasts forever, Sylvie. Well, maybe you two, but not much else. Our arrangement doesn’t make me sad.
It makes me happy. It means I give her exactly what I’m willing to and nothing more.
I don’t know if I’ll ever be willing to give away all of myself again the way that you have. I admire you for it. It isn’t easy.”
“It wasn’t in the beginning. But now? It’s as easy as falling asleep. It’s as natural as breathing.” I had fought against it and struggled with it at first, but being with Ronan was the easiest and best part of my life.
Quinn had laughed then and suggested it was as natural as other, less wholesome things as well, and I couldn’t deny it.
We pass over the barren plains and the ruined city of Avaris, our griffins circling as we scan the landscape below for bandits or travelers before landing near the cave entrance from our shared dream.
The graveyard is almost unrecognizable, the gleaming white stones in the dream now covered in dust and sand, many of them broken or leaning. But the alcove looks exactly the same.
It’s the same place. We’re certain of it, although how we could possibly navigate to and recognize a location we’ve only seen in a dream, we couldn’t say.
Kira nips at Ronan as he helps me from her back, running into his shoulder with her head.
“She doesn’t want us to go in there,” says Ronan. Then he turns to speak with her, scratching her neck with both of his hands. “It’s where we’re meant to be. We’ll be alright. We’re not going alone.”
She doesn’t seem to believe him, following after him quickly as he tries to walk away. But then Bitey distracts her chasing after a skittering beetle, and he’s able to make his escape.
The torch, on the other hand, is delighted. It reflects Ronan’s magic once more, but now that I’ve sensed it without him, I can understand its own feelings better. To the extent that a torch can even have feelings.
Although maybe what I’m feeling isn’t the torch. Maybe it’s Vayla herself. Maybe this is her way of sharing her will with us.
Her will, if it is her will, is clear—into the cave. The torch reignites and flashes red once more as we withdraw it from the satchel I carry.
The sickle, as ever, is silent.
Waiting.
Quinn and Seth follow as we approach the cave entrance, Seth chattering incessantly about the unfairness of a prophecy involving our family but not Seth himself, his disbelief in Ronan’s involvement, and his speculation that maybe he has a part to play in all of this after all, since he’s here.
“I wish your part could be keeping quiet and guarding us like Taran asked you to,” I say as we enter the darkened passages, the red stone of the walls closing in like the mouth of some terrible beast.
“I didn’t come because he asked me,” he says, indignant.
Quinn giggles. “Is that what you told him last night?”
I shake my head at both of them. “We’re here,” I say. The torch flares in Ronan’s hand as we turn a corner into a huge, open chamber with a single door at the back. Everyone goes silent at the sight of the looming, stretching shadows on the walls as they coalesce into a pair of figures.
“Holy shit,” whispers Quinn. “What is that?”
“Who is that?” asks Seth.
The sickle stirs in my satchel of its own accord. It’s the magnetic effect I felt in the dream, something pulling it to the door.
The shadows echo the pull, their distorted, massive, human-like figures moving unmistakably in the direction of the door, even as the torch flares and tilts in that direction.
“It seems like it would be rude to turn down such a strong invitation,” says Quinn. “Hell, I feel compelled to go, and I’m not even part of this.”
“We’re all part of this,” I say, pulling the sickle from the satchel with some effort to keep it from flying away.
Ronan takes my hand as we walk through the chamber. The shadows dance on the walls, forming and unforming but always leading to the door. His feelings are unsettled as we approach, and so are mine. Whatever answers we’re seeking are just behind that doorway.
But there’s something unnerving about the way they want to be found.
The door sticks out against the roughly hewn back wall of the cavern, the large, rectangular structure clearly constructed by human hands.
Around the sides and over the lintel there are carvings in the stone: primarily the same strange text as is inscribed on the handles of the torch and the sickle, but also images on either side.
On the left, a pair of children at play.
On the right, a pair of adults lying in a tomb.
This tomb.
“Julia and Leander,” I say. The queen and king consort who were assassinated for shadowbound heresy.
They’re depicted here with the typical loving reverence displayed in the tombs of Selara’s rulers, but most of those are located in and around Faros, the capital.
If Julia and Leander were killed for heresy, their tomb hidden out here in Avaris, and the details of what they had done stricken from the records, why were they commemorated with so much affection?
Ronan shines the torch around the door, looking for an opening or a handle. “I suppose we just push?”
“There’s a gap there,” I say, pointing to a spot at around waist height between the two halves of the door. It’s difficult to see until Ronan shines the light of the torch directly at it, but it’s unmistakably a groove.
“Try wedging something in there,” says Quinn. “Here.” She hands Ronan her dagger.
“Not the dagger,” I say, stepping forward. “The sickle.”
I lift the sickle to the gap, and the shadows in the room swirl around us. The sight sends a chill up my spine.
“That isn’t creepy at all,” says Quinn, shuddering.
“Look,” says Seth. “The carvings.”
With the light reflecting from the torch onto the curved surface of the sickle, the shadows set the carvings into motion. The images of the couple shift and change: the child Julia leaning over a prone Leander. The adult Leander leaning over a prone Julia and then falling beside her.
Then the text changes as well. It distorts and bends in the light until it’s legible.
It’s Selaran script, carved in such a way to only be readable with the light and the sickle.
“Here lies Queen Julia I of House Alta and her King Leander the Shadow Knight. May their sacrifice never be forgotten,” says Ronan, reading the inscription on the lintel.
“Well, it wasn’t forgotten. It was erased,” says Seth. “But why?”
“Down there,” says Quinn, pointing to a carving in the door itself.
“Let none who value their lives enter here. This place is shielded by the Sacred Seven aspects. All who enter shall perish from the earth.”
My eyes meet Ronan’s as he finishes reading. “What do you think?”
Ronan shrugs. “All of the tombs say something like that. It’s just meant to warn off grave robbers. And judging by the complete lack of disturbance here, it worked.”
I shouldn’t be surprised that this is his reaction. He’s never been very superstitious.
But even with his nonchalance, I’m not completely convinced. “Maybe you two should stay behind,” I say to Quinn and Seth, raising my voice over their protests. “You can wait here and then enter if we need help.”
“Not a chance,” says Quinn. “I didn’t come this far for nothing.”
Even Seth, the king of self-preservation himself, isn’t deterred. “I’ve spent twenty years thinking of this mystery. If you don’t want to go, give me that sickle, sister. I’ll take that extraordinary power for myself.”
The torch flares menacingly, the shadows on the walls stretching into monstrous forms.
“Alright, alright,” says Seth. “I was kidding. Let them have the incredible destiny, fuck.”
The torch calms, its light practically purring, inviting me to step forward.
“Well, here goes nothing.” I wedge the sickle into the groove, and an image flashes into my mind: Ronan hovering over me on the altar, the sky red and filled with fire behind him.
It isn’t like the other visions. It’s over in a moment, but the feel of it—the feel of Ronan inside of me—lingers.
“Did you just…?”
“Yes,” says Ronan, his face flushed. “I saw it.”
“Saw what?” asks Seth.
“Nothing important.” The sickle stirs in my hand, the almost magnetic pull tilting it to the side. I turn it, and a latch clicks.
One side of the door snaps back half an inch, opening.
“We’re in,” says Quinn, pushing the cracked door with her cane.