Chapter Thirty-Eight
The final chamber is the largest of all.
We’re standing at the top of it on a ramp that winds around the room, leading down to a landing in the center.
This is the tomb. The landing surrounds a raised platform with a pair of large stone burial vaults encircled by braziers lit with the same bluish flame of the torch. There are no obvious traps between there and here, so we guess that the braziers themselves must relate to the light magic challenge.
Our footsteps echo as we walk down the ramp hand in hand, the torch in Ronan’s left hand and the sickle in my right, trying not to look at the sheer fall to the cavern floor that lurks off to either side of the ramp. I’ve never been afraid of heights, but this is a lot even for me.
“Extraordinary power,” I whisper to Ronan. I don’t know why I whisper when we’re the only ones here, but I have the strange sensation of being watched.
He nods. “We’re going to need it.”
He’s right. If Adria has truly found a way to suppress multiple types of magic, then we’re doomed without it.
We approach the dais slowly, walking around it to check for hidden obstacles. The braziers and pillars that surround the tombs are unmarked, their stone smoothly polished. The craftsmanship far exceeds the rest of the cavern.
The sickle stirs in my wrist, the point at the end of the curve indicating a set of steps on the right side.
The torch flares in the same direction, its flame flashing red.
“At least they agree with each other,” says Ronan, leading the way.
We climb the carved stairs, and the sound of our footsteps dampens. Though the steps are stone, the echoes fade, the sound muffled as though we were walking on a rug rather than a hard surface.
“Do you hear that?” I ask Ronan, but my voice doesn’t come out.
He turns to me, his mouth moving silently, his eyes panicked.
I try to take a step back, but the sickle pulls forward, nearly slipping from my grasp. I stumble up the final step, and the braziers and torch extinguish all at once, plunging the cave into darkness.
It’s the impenetrable darkness again, the magical kind that renders me as blind as anyone else.
I stumble forward, my hands finding the stone surface of one of the tombs.
There’s an inscription carved into it, and I’m sure we’ll need to read it at some point, but my first priority is finding Ronan again.
My magic is too weak for me to feel him. At least that’s what I tell myself, alarmed at the sudden loss of my awareness of him. “Ronan?” I call out, but there’s no sound at all. I strike the stone with my open palm, but though I feel the impact, there’s only silence.
I reach my hands out, slipping the sickle into my belt so I don’t accidentally run into him. I find the stone bowl of a brazier, still warm to the touch, then a column, and then the other coffin before finally touching something soft.
Hair.
I grasp at the figure with my hands, reaching for his, but something is wrong.
The hair is too long. The skin is too smooth.
This isn’t Ronan.
I recoil from the stranger, stumbling back into the tomb as a hand reaches out and grabs me, keeping me upright.
Their image appears in the darkness, faded in the way all images look to me in the darkest of my shadows but clear enough for me to make out.
It’s…no, it’s impossible. It can’t be.
It’s me.
It’s me as I am right now—burnt section of dark hair, Seth’s tunic, sickle in my belt. I don’t understand it. If this chamber is meant to relate to light magic, the image of myself must be an illusion, but this image has form. I felt it. It grabbed me; it pulled me.
Even when Ronan disguises himself, his illusions don’t have form. I can feel the truth of his body beneath whatever my eyes are seeing.
This isn’t just light magic. It’s shadow too. It’s the power of the tendrils of shadow combined with the trick of the light.
Which means it’s real.
Which means it can hurt me.
The illusory Sylvie smiles at my realization. She reaches for the sickle in her belt, and I mirror her and do the same.
If it’s a fight she wants—if it’s a fight this place requires—so be it. I’m ready to fight.
Gods, I hope Ronan isn’t facing the same thing. If he’s fighting himself in an area this small, there’s a chance we’ll impale each other by mistake.
I have no way of knowing what he’s facing, no way of communicating with him at all.
And I have no choice about what happens next. The illusory Sylvie makes that choice for me, raising the sickle to attack.
I’ve never fought with a sickle before. It’s not much longer than a dagger, meaning we’ll both need to come in closer to make an attack than I’d prefer. Like dagger fighting, I won’t be able to parry effectively with the blade. I’ll need to use my free hand to try and control her.
But it’s hard to talk myself into grabbing my own hand swinging a deadly weapon wildly in my direction. Instead of grabbing, I step back and out of the way. Other Sylvie stumbles forward, and I slash at her with my sickle, slicing through her tunic into her arm.
She doesn’t bleed.
Can she be hurt? Am I hurting myself by hurting her? I check my own arm and find it unharmed, my tunic undamaged. Maybe it’s not enough for me to just cut her. Maybe I need to kill her.
But can she even be killed? If whoever made this place wanted to keep people out of it, why allow the traps to be defeated at all?
Unless they intended this as a test of some kind. Something that only the shadowbound could defeat.
I don’t have time to think of an answer before she strikes again, this time cutting my arm with her hook before I jump out of the way. The slice stings, blood dripping from the wound as I turn to face her once more.
If she can hurt me but I can’t hurt her, I’m in trouble.
What is it about being shadowbound that could help here?
The shadow tendrils, I realize. I reach out with them, drawing on the sickle’s magic. I grasp the sickle in the other Sylvie’s hand and pull as hard as I can.
She laughs soundlessly, her grip on the other sickle iron-tight. She sends out tendrils of her own—dozens of them. Hundreds. They’re invisible after they leave her, binding me, wrapping around my arms and legs and body, twisting and turning around my throat, tightening their grip until I’m choking.
I can’t breathe. The shadows are suffocating me. They tighten on my chest as I reach for the ones around my neck, and then the shadows holding my wrists yank my arms back until I’m standing spreadeagled, the sickle falling from my grasp and soundlessly hitting the floor.
The other Sylvie smiles as she approaches, her large brown eyes menacing. The shadows emanating from her chest shift, tightening as she closes the space between us.
This is it. I’m defenseless here. I have no magic; I have no sickle or torch. No Ronan to pull from, and no idea if he’s even still alive to help. I can’t reach my dagger. I can’t do anything but stand here and wait for her to cut my throat.
And then I feel it. A spark within my chest. Magic, but not any magic that I’ve felt before. This isn’t my own magic, shadowy and secret, as dark as night. And it isn’t Ronan’s magic either, the light and heat of the sun. This is something different. Something else.
It feels like…starlight. It feels like light and darkness together, entwined. The separation between them gone, the power of light and darkness merged into one.
It’s just a spark, but even that feels immense.
Extraordinary.
I push out with it, and a pulse of blinding light chased by swirling darkness flows outward, a shockwave roaring across the room.
The other Sylvie’s shadows vanish. Her eyes go white as I reach for my sickle.
In the time it takes her to raise her own sickle, I strike, slicing through her throat.
She reaches for it, stumbling forward, and then the image changes.
It’s Ronan.
Gods. It’s Ronan, and I’ve just killed him.
He drops to his knees, and I reach out with the power once more, screaming soundlessly as I try to heal him, as I try to find his healing light in the room. Ronan, the torch, my power, the new power. Anything to save him.
I draw on it all—every drop of magic I can find. I pull it into me, feeling the energy grow and pulse, the magic as potent and timeless as the stars themselves.
And then I push it outwards into Ronan, healing him.
The image vanishes. I reach out for it, trying to find him once more, terrified that I’ve lost him, but it’s gone.
It wasn’t him.
The braziers burst into light, their daylight flames reaching for the roof of the cavern and then shrinking to fill their basins, flickering softly.
On the other side of the platform, an illusory Sylvie has Ronan pinned against the pillar with her shadows. She’s strangling him to death.
And he isn’t even fighting it. Gods, of course he isn’t. He’s going to let me kill him.
“Ronan! It isn’t me!” I shout, and though I hear my voice, it’s clear that he can’t. He’s still under whatever spell had me moments ago.
I race to him, thrusting the sickle up and through the heart of the other Sylvie. He cries out silently, reaching for her the moment her shadows drop and release him. This time, the illusion doesn’t become him. It simply vanishes, and the flames in the braziers turn red.
Ronan falls to his knees. “Sylvie!” he screams.
“I’m here,” I say, reaching for him. “I’m here. It wasn’t me.”
“Oh gods.” Ronan holds me to him as tightly as he ever has. “Oh gods, I thought you were dead. I watched you die.”
“I know,” I say, my arms shaking around him. “It did that to me too. I’m here, my love.” I sink down to my knees to hold him. “I’m here.”
“I feel—something is different. You feel different. We feel different.” Ronan strokes my hair and searches my face. “It’s really you?”
“It’s me.” But I understand his meaning. He feels different to me as well. It’s almost as though he feels like me. And himself. Both of us, together.
Like we’re one soul in two bodies.
There’s a scraping sound behind me. I turn to look as a hidden hatch opens between the tombs, revealing a staircase leading down.
The sickle and the torch urge us towards it, but for the first time, I truly don’t want to go. “What if we just leave?” I ask Ronan as he helps me to my feet. “I have some kind of new power now. I feel it in you too.” I don’t understand why, but I don’t want to know what’s down there.
“We have to know what all of this means. There’s an answer down there. I can feel it. Can’t you?”
I can, but it doesn’t feel like I expected. I don’t like the way I’m being pulled down there like there’s something at work here beyond our control. It doesn’t feel right.
It just feels inevitable.
“It’s going to be alright,” says Ronan. I can sense his calm using the new power we were just given despite our total lack of magical energy. It’s like the new power, the extraordinary power, doesn’t depend on us at all.
I’m reassured by Ronan’s lack of alarm. Maybe there are two sides to whatever is down there, and I’m just feeling the bad feelings. The doubt, the fear. And Ronan has the hope, the comfort.
We walk between the tombs. I read their inscriptions on the way down the steps: on the left lies Queen Julia I, the God-Queen of Selara, 298–361.
On the right lies King Leander, her King Consort, 297–361.
Though they were hounded by assassins all their lives, at least they lived a long time before they finally succeeded.
The chamber is small and empty except for a single pillar in the middle of the room. Its usage is clear: there’s a holder for the torch and a groove for the sickle below it.
“Together?” says Ronan as we approach it.
“Together,” I say, and I lower the sickle into the groove as Ronan drops the torch into the holder.
The room vanishes around us, and we’re outside above ground where the temple once stood. I’m lying on the altar, and Ronan is on top of me like before.
I can feel him inside of me as he takes me on the altar.
His shadows reach out and hold me down, and then I take control, rocking forward and pinning him down in return.
The sky is red and filled with fire and smoke as I lean back into it, lightning streaking across it as the ground rumbles beneath us.
I feel something building along with the release of my body, ancient and primal, swelling with god-like power, the power of the sun and moon and stars combined.
Then I’m back in the chamber, and the light from the torch is bouncing off the walls, unscrambling the words engraved there.
It’s the same message, written in Selaran script, repeated over and over again:
When light is dark and dark is light,
When sunless day claims starless night,
When Vahlo’s child joins Vayla’s blood,
The world shall end in fire and flood.