Chapter Forty-Three
Seth fires his flame at the other guard as they fling a bolt of fire of their own with near-equal precision. The guard’s bolt strikes Hypatia in the chest, failing to ignite her robe but punching a hole the size of a coin straight through her.
She staggers, but she doesn’t drop. They missed her heart.
Seth’s first bolt misses as well, going wide and impacting the door without a mark, but his second reaches its target, dropping the other guard to the ground with a thud.
“I’m out of practice,” he mutters.
“Hurry,” says Hypatia, rushing for the door. “We don’t have long.”
She places her medallion inside the gold symbol in the wood. It sinks back into the circle, and then a sharp, thin blade protrudes through the coin via the dot in the middle. Hypatia stabs her finger with the blade, and the door cracks open much like the doors in the tomb.
“Draw your swords, and don’t stop running no matter what you see.”
My heart pounds in my chest as I draw my sword. What the hell is waiting on the other side of this door?
The answer isn’t what I see. It’s what I hear.
The moment Fushi, the first of us who isn’t Hypatia, crosses the threshold, an alarm blares.
I’ve never heard a sound like it before.
It’s ear-splittingly loud, like a bell or a high-pitched scream that never fades.
I nearly drop my sword in an impulse to cover my ears, but Hypatia is already running through the first room—a large chamber filled with nothing more than ordinary desks and books, only a couple of them occupied at this late hour—and beelining for one of at least ten doorways on the back wall.
We haven’t even made it to the door before Adria’s blue-cloaked guards are in the chamber behind us. I drop my shadows around us, keeping the path ahead of us clear, and Seth turns to fire his magic, but the guards are dropping to the ground already.
“What did you do?” Fushi asks Hypatia.
“Reversed the seals. I couldn’t do anything about the alarm, but the seals are earth magic. My school. They weigh down the gold if it leaves in the hands of someone without the right medallion so it can’t be stolen.”
So the guard’s armor—chainmail trimmed in gold—has collapsed them under its weight, the seals on the door working in reverse and weighing down gold within these rooms instead.
A couple of the guards manage to fire some magic into us from the floor as we flee, but we make it through the door with only a couple of burn marks and one throwing knife embedded in my boot heel.
In the next hallway, Hypatia reaches for a belt concealed under her robe and pulls out a vial, downing it. “Movement elixir. Got to keep these old bones going. Here.” She hands us each one of three other vials. “Don’t drink that.”
“What is it?” I ask, not sure I want to know. I know we had planned on destroying the Guild’s elixirs ourselves, but it feels like we’ve become pawns in a much larger scheme.
“Toss one in there,” Hypatia says, throwing open a door. “You—light it up.” She gestures at Seth, and he tosses a flame into the room. “Not that close!”
Hypatia tackles Seth to the ground as the room explodes, sending shards of glass and elixirs flying. The explosions continue for several moments as more bottles are reached. I help Hypatia and Seth from the floor, his robe smoking and shrinking near his feet.
“You’re damn lucky. Keep back next time. There are a lot of rooms left.”
“Are those the magic-suppressing elixirs?” I venture to ask as Hypatia opens another lock with her medallion and her blood.
“Among other things. Nothing good, don’t worry.”
In the next room, we see huge vats boiling over great fires. A fire-born alchemist puts up a fight, but Seth quickly overpowers him. Fushi, I notice, never lifts a finger in our defense.
Seth notices too. “Do you intend to just let us die here?”
“My powers aren’t very useful in a place like this. I would’ve thought you of all people would understand, considering who your sister is.” Fushi lowers the shadows in the room, the fires dimming but not extinguishing.
Of course he’s a shadow-born.
“In here,” says Hypatia. “Three storerooms in a row.” We settle into a pattern—toss, burn, distribute more of the explosive elixir. Turn back and fight the unarmored guards that have managed to track us. Then she opens the next door, and on we go.
If I had thought I would have understood the process of gold alchemy after coming here, I was mistaken. All I manage to discern as we travel through the labs and storerooms is that the process is so complex and precise, it’s a miracle anyone ever worked it out at all.
“This is the last room up ahead. I’ll go in alone. You should get out while you still can.” Her face turns solemn, her focus fully resolved on what’s behind the door.
“What are you going to do?” I ask, something about her demeanor sending alarm bells into my mind, or maybe it’s just the never-ending noise of the Guild alarms driving me insane.
“I’m going to put an end to it all. What lies in that room is the last of the secrets. Guild Mistress access only. Your sister fought for freedom for Nithyria, or so she claimed. If it’s freedom she wants, it’s here. Behind this door.”
“What’s in there?” asks Fushi. And then I see the reason he helped us—he wants to know the secret. That’s the only reason he’s here. And once he finds out…
I look at Seth, hoping he’s reaching the same realization.
“Show us,” says Seth, pointing his sword at Hypatia.
Godsdammit, Seth. “What are you doing?” I ask him through gritted teeth.
“If she destroys whatever is in that room, Selara will starve. Unless you’re suddenly for the war in Brakkar.”
Fuck. He’s right. “Hypatia, please. I understand you’re angry, and I’m sure you have a good reason, but Selara needs the gold alchemy, at least right now. Is there any way we can convince you?”
She shakes her head sadly. “I’m sorry. You can’t enter without me, and I won’t let you stop me from doing what needs to be done.”
She reaches for a vial on her belt, but her hand is caught by Fushi. “It’s nothing personal, Hypatia. You were a good mentor to me.” He puts a hand around her throat and forces her to the door lock. “Open it.”
“Stop!” I yell, but Seth holds me back from Fushi. “Let me go!” I scream at Seth, but he holds onto me tightly.
“You know this is what needs to be done,” he mutters so that only I can hear him. “He’s not going to kill her until she isn’t any use to him. We can overpower him then.”
Hypatia, gasping for air, raises her shaking pendant to the lock. “No. I won’t. I won’t—” she chokes as Fushi forces her finger onto the blade, opening the door with her blood.
It’s dark as we step into the final chamber. “There’s a candle there,” I tell Seth, and he lights it so he can see.
The room is small, windowless, and nearly empty.
The candlestick sits on the sole desk, an ordinary book lying on its surface with a quill and ink nearby.
It’s a log of the days of the week in a compact table.
Each day is followed by an “X.” I flip through the pages and realize it goes back decades, every day marked all the way up to yesterday.
A fluttering sound comes from across the room. I turn to look at the only other thing in the space: a large, gilded cage. Inside it, sitting on a perch, is an eagle, its wings flapping and then stilling as it grooms its feathers.
No, it’s not an eagle, I realize as I approach. It’s roughly the same size, but its feathers are a deep red, the tips barred with gold, and there’s a plume at the back of its head that doesn’t look like any eagle I’ve ever seen. The bottom of the cage is filled with some kind of white powder.
“A phoenix,” says Fushi, eyeing it with predatory focus. “I suppose they weren’t all transformed into cypress trees then, after all.” He keeps Hypatia restrained, nudging her in the back. “Explain how it works if you want to live.”
She hesitates, but as he reaches for his blade, she slips her hand into the bottom of the cage, withdrawing some of the powder.
“This is the white tincture,” she says. “The end product of the phoenix cypress ash refinement. On its own, it’s highly valuable. It purifies lead into silver.”
“And the final stage?”
Hypatia gestures to her belt, allowing Fushi to retrieve an ornate knife with a mother-of-pearl handle. She opens the cage, making gentle cooing sounds at the bird. It nuzzles against her outstretched hand, reminding me of Kira.
It’s a beautiful thing. Wild and yet gentle, looking into its golden eyes fills me with a sadness I don’t understand.
Somewhere deep in my chest, my magic stirs. It doesn’t feel like my own shadows. It feels like the ancient power we awakened.
It feels like Ronan.
The part of him that exists in me responds to something in the phoenix, reaching for it. I know I ought to fight it; this could be connected to the prophecy somehow.
But I don’t want to fight it.
It feels like sunlight and the warmth of a summer day. It feels like a campfire at night in the woods. It feels like spring and renewal.
I let my magic reach out to it. It’s invisible, the thread that flows between us, but I can feel it. And so can the phoenix. It lifts its head, meeting my eyes—
And then Hypatia snatches the knife from Fushi and slices through its throat.
“What did you do?” I scream, rattling the cage as Fushi takes the knife back from her, holding it out to her in warning.
The phoenix panics, its wings flapping wildly, thrashing against the bars, but it’s too late.
Crimson blood pours out of it, staining the ash beneath a bright, vivid red.
Hypatia directs Fushi to wipe the blade into the ash pile, stirring the blood.
It spreads unnaturally, leaving none of the ash untouched.