Chapter 31
Chapter
Thirty-One
The day is creeping ever closer. I feel it in my bones. I pray to Solais and anyone else who may be listening that I’m strong enough to complete my task. I’ve known from the start where my path ended, but now that it’s here… Oh gods, I wish I had more time.
—From the journal of Violet Andrever
Iskimmed through my aunt’s handwriting, several lines jumping out at me.
A bond here and a bond there.
The bonds that hold the universe together are weakened on High Days, which means—
I snapped the book shut. This was how I got my answers. I needed to go now. And I needed Finn.
I found him in the kitchen, slumped over the wooden table with his head in his hands, a cup of something steaming next to him. He might be hungover but at least he was awake. I glanced at a clock—eight in the morning. If I was right about this, I had about sixteen hours left.
“Finn.” I roughly shook his shoulder.
He let out a groan. “Voda’s tits, Lexie.”
Wordlessly, I slid the letter in front of him, my hands shaking slightly. He glared up at me with bloodshot eyes but took it. As he read, his expression cleared and he sat up straight.
“Is this what I think it is?”
“If you think it’s a letter from my aunt, my godsmother, then yes. This is how I get my answers.”
He read it again, his brow furrowed. “I’m not sure I follow. There aren’t answers here.”
“But she has them.” I felt hopeful for the first time since I’d learned about the prophecy.
“I’ve read every book in the library. Gone over every fragment of knowledge.
Examined the Veil itself. And I’m no closer than I was when I first got here.
I haven’t found anything that gives any hint on how to fix the Veil and save Serentyn from the darkness.
But Violet knows something. She lived it. She has the answers.”
He stared at me like I was mad and spoke very slowly. “Lexie, she’s dead. Dead people don’t typically show up for a chat.”
I tapped the date on the letter. “She hasn’t always been dead.”
“Wait, are you saying what I think you’re saying?” Now he looked convinced I’d gone mad. “Lexie, you’re talking about going back in time.”
I shoved unkempt hair out of my face. I hadn’t had time to rebraid it in my mad dash this morning. “So?”
He set down his cup with deliberate care, all thoughts of his hangover forgotten. “You can’t time travel. It’s impossible.” He spoke like he was talking to an idiot. “So what in all the gods’ fevered daydreams makes you think you can?”
I pointed at a line in the letter. He pursed his lips as he read it again.
There are bonds that hold the universe together, barriers that cannot be broken.
Except I’ve never met a barrier I couldn’t break if I wanted it badly enough.
I think you might be the same. But for a little extra luck, the bonds that hold the universe together are weakened on High Days, which means that’s the best time to try.
“And just how are you going to accomplish this time travel?”
I paused. I hadn’t truly thought it through.
I just knew I could do it. “Well…” I drew the word out.
“I imagine it’s a bit like teleporting. Except through time instead of space.
” I tried to appear nonchalant about what I was proposing, but a chill ran down my spine as I wondered what terrible truth had driven Violet to burn herself out trying to hold back the darkness.
He rolled his eyes as he sat back heavily. “Say for argument’s sake that you do this and you do go back. How do you come home?”
“A bond here and a bond there,” I said softly.
Finn’s eyes narrowed as he worked through it. “She’s your godsmother. That does create a bond in the eyes of the gods.” He paused, understanding dawning. “A bond there, to anchor you to her time.”
A bond there. A connection between us two. Me and Violet. I had her journal. I carried her sword. And some of those dreams of Violet, I didn’t think they were mine. I knew many of the nightmares were, but some of them felt like viewing through the eyes of someone else.
“And here…” His expression shifted. “Here you have… all of us.”
I was counting on one bond in particular. Assuming I was right about it. But there was no time to dwell on that now.
“I have to go now.”
He massaged his head as if I was giving him a headache. “Why now?”
“It’s Blathaine. You read it. She says the barriers are thinnest on High Days. If I’m going to do this, it’s now.”
“The ball was last night,” Finn countered. Before I could answer he continued, “But it was last night so that we were celebrating at midnight when the equinox started.” He rubbed a hand over his eyes. “Let’s just think for a minute.”
“No, Finn. It has to be now.” I looked at the clock. Forty-five minutes had gone. “Now are you going to help me or not?”
“Voda’s tits, woman. Of course I’m going to help you,” he muttered. He pushed back from the table, the chair squeaking, and sighed heavily. “I even know where you should do it.”
We descended a steep staircase, the stone steps worn smooth by countless feet over the centuries, ending at a floor of hard-packed earth.
The walls transformed from the familiar gray stones of the castle to older, rough-hewn rock.
We wound our way through the bowels of the castle, deeper than I’d ever gone before.
The smell became musky, the air grew thick with an earthy scent of places untouched by the sun.
However, even as we descended, the passageways still felt more like hallways than tunnels or caverns with doors and paths branching off.
As though this had been an original part of the castle, lost to the centuries.
“You should do this as close to a power source as you can,” he explained.
“My father theorized that this was where the gods met to cast the Veil. Places where great power has been cast can take on remnants, imbue the very walls with magic, like soot from a fire. If anywhere has enough power, it’s here. ”
The musky smell deepened as we drew farther and farther into the earth. The walls grew damp with moisture. The space opened before us into an archway, behind which could only have been a temple, the ceiling soaring into shadows, supported by massive columns of natural stone.
My earth channel connected instantly to the walls around me, and I could feel the history soaked into the rock itself. Layer upon layer of memories pressed into these stones.
A trickle of water flowed through the center, its gentle murmur the only sound besides our breathing. The stream wound between smooth boulders, pooling in a natural basin. The water itself glowed, as if starlight had been dissolved into its depths.
Strangely, it grew warmer as we continued deeper, a gentle heat that radiated from the stone itself. The temple was lit by a strange light, not a harsh glare but something soft and alive. It emanated from the crystals embedded in the walls.
Finn was right—the air itself was buzzing with power.
All of my elemental channels hummed in harmony, responding to the residual magic of this place.
The sensation was intoxicating, overwhelming.
I think I could have done anything I wanted to here, using the latent magic in these stones to accomplish any goal.
Time to test that theory.
He turned to me, hands on my shoulders. “Are you sure about this?”
“I have to, Finn, if there’s a chance I can find answers.”
“And if something goes wrong?” he pressed.
I was quiet for a long moment. “Then you tell everyone the truth. That I died trying to save our home.”
“Lexie—”
“There is no backup plan, Finn. Either this works or it doesn’t. But I have to try.”
He closed his eyes and let out a heavy sigh. “I’ll stall for as long as I can, but everyone is going to be furious when they find out what you did.”
“Don’t tell Griff.” The words were out of my mouth before I could think better of it.
He was going to be so pissed at me. And I hadn’t even seen him this morning.
The weight of what I was about to attempt threatened to crush me.
Leaving him now, potentially for forever, when we hadn’t even given in to this thing between us, admitted what it was…
“Why?” Finn looked at me, puzzled.
I didn’t have a good explanation. “He won’t like that I put myself in danger… again,” I went with lamely.
“That’s putting it lightly.”
He stared at my face, memorizing it, and something shifted in his expression. Very slowly, as if giving me time to pull away, he moved his head toward mine.
I should have stepped back. Should have said something. Instead, I was frozen as his lips pressed gently, tenderly against mine.
It was soft. Sweet. Everything a first kiss should be.
And wrong.
Completely, utterly wrong.
Finn was wonderful and kind and had been by my side through everything these past six months, but every fiber of my being was screaming this wasn’t right. It wasn’t him I craved.
Disappointment that the wrong brother had kissed me flooded through me.
When he pulled back, hope and fear warred in his eyes. My heart broke for what I couldn’t give him.
“Good luck, Lexie,” he whispered.
With that, I stepped away from him. I couldn’t let myself think anymore.
Thinking would only give me reasons to stop.
The fear clenched my stomach like a fist, but I pushed it down and pulled up my soul channel, fixing my mind on where I wanted to go.
On the bond of godsmother and godschild.
The bond of aunt and niece. The bond of two women, two princesses, who shared the same desperate love for their homeland.
Just like teleporting, I flung myself into the ether, trusting my soul channel to direct me.
I fell.
Not down, but through.
Through time itself, through the spaces between moments.
I tumbled into nothing and kept falling.
The temple disappeared, replaced by a kaleidoscope of lights that streaked past like falling stars.
Some burned cold and white, while others pulsed with the warm gold I associated with the soul channel.
I focused on that channel, on Violet. I thought of nothing but her and followed the bond drawing us closer and closer together.
I fell faster, the lights dizzying in their speed.
Flashes, as if they were memories, passed through me—fragments of moments that hadn’t happened yet, or happened long ago.
Violet standing in the Great Hall, her face streaked with tears.
Griff falling to his knees, hands pressed to his chest in pain.
Valdris, dark, its stones blackened and crumbling.
Were these memories? Futures? Warnings?
I closed my eyes tight, but nothing changed. The images kept coming.
A crown, splitting into two. Finn’s face, twisted with anguish, light pouring out of him. Darkness oozing across the land, turning everything gray.
Something else moved in the chaos around me—a presence that felt familiar and wrong. Cold fingers brushed against my mind and haunting laughter rang in my ears that made my soul recoil.
I pulled the bond tighter around me like armor and fell faster, racing toward the past before the darkness could catch me.
I finally finished spinning and landed roughly in a crouch.
The first thing I noticed was pain—not from the traveling, although the all-too-familiar nausea twisted my stomach.
No, from the well inside me next to my channels, where that golden light resided; I felt echoes of pain. Screaming, searing pain.
The golden light receded, leaving just a trickle of its usual fullness. I squashed the rising panic, the fear of my return if that well was dry. I had come here, wherever here was, for answers. The rest of it was a problem for future Lexa.
If I had a future.
I raised my head, my eyes adjusting to the dim candlelight, and took in the canvas walls of a tent that appeared to be serving as a meeting room, before I felt the snick of a blade at my throat.
A woman with pinned-back black curls was standing over me.
I recognized the stubborn set of the jaw, the way she held her shoulders when preparing for a fight.
My eyes met hers. Turquoise—Andrever eyes.
And she was currently holding a blade to my throat.