Epilogue
LYRA
Seven months later
The dead were silent.
And sometimes, the silence became too much.
The whispers had plagued my mind for so long. Without them, my thoughts echoed too loudly. My fears and regrets raged with nowhere left to hide. And sometimes, I caught myself straining to hear them, almost wishing them to return to fill the hollow silence of my own mind.
At first, I thought it might only be temporary. So, I waited. And waited. For the familiar pressure to return, for the whispers to caress my mind, tightening like a bird of prey’s talons, slowly squeezing the life from its victim.
Yet days turned to months, seasons came and went, and still nothing.
They were gone.
Grey, however, wasn’t so easily convinced.
That’s how I found myself standing in a place that used death as architecture.
At the entrance of the empire of the dead.
An ossuary filled with nobles, important figures in history, and ordinary people.
Skulls, femurs, tibias, and an array of smaller bones lined the walls, taking us deeper beneath the bustling streets of Paris.
This was the farthest I’d ever been from Twisted Spires. Like my mom, I was shackled to the spirits and the church. She never escaped. Her whole life had unfolded within the city limits, but mine would not.
We lingered, falling behind the tour group. The guide’s voice echoed down the clammy corridor. The air was damp and heavy. Death lived here, and the silence that surrounded us was thick and suffocating, like early morning fog.
A moth fluttered down the labyrinth of death and came to rest upon a skull before me. Its wings splayed wide, and a pair of painted eyes stared back. Each slow beat made them blink, as if death itself was watching.
Suddenly, the moth took flight, gliding deeper into the corridor lined with bones. When we didn’t follow, it fluttered back, hovering inches from my face as if beckoning us forward, then floated low and unhurried down the tunnel.
“It’s an omen.” Grey’s eyes were glued to the moth. “I think it wants us to follow it.”
“What kind of omen is a moth?”
“Not a good one.” Grey sighed, but I followed anyway, needing to know if the magic was truly gone.
The tunnels were narrow and winding.
Our fingers laced together as I strained, waiting to hear the familiar whispers—the pleadings, the begging. For as long as I could remember, the dead had called to me.
Until now.
The moth circled once before settling atop the marker. Jagged words were carved into the stone.
Grey leaned closer, his voice low as he read the words aloud. “Here lie those the world forgot; their voices linger, unanswered.”
A shiver ran down my spine as the words rattled off the bones. The moth moved with delicate grace, slipping between the narrow cracks of bone.
I reached outward, instinctively, bracing for the familiar rush. Nothing answered. No whispers stirred. The silence was louder than any of their screams.
“Anything?” Grey asked softly.
“Nothing,” I whispered, my gaze following the moth as it vanished deeper into the bones.
“Are you sure?” he asked, staring into the empty eye sockets of a skull lining the wall, as if daring it to speak.
I listened again, but was met with only silence.
Relief flooded my system, but it was quickly replaced with guilt. Not for the magic I’d lost, but for the souls who might suffer because of it.
The dead no longer knew my name. The magic that bound me to them was gone.
No, not gone, but traded.
“You gave up what others spent eternity chasing.” Grey’s grip tightened around my hand.
“I gave it up for you.” I corrected. “Willingly. And I would do it over and over again.”
I would carry the weight of the souls I could no longer help for the rest of my life.
Still, I would make the same choice every time. To have Grey beside me, I would damn my soul.