Chapter 31
Everything is dark. I can’t remember where I am, only that I’m in danger. I need to run. I need to hide.
I drag my eyes open. I am in a large bed. Light filters through curtains, catching on sparkling crystals.
Everything is slow and thick, but I piece it together. Dark wood and jewel tones and bookshelves tell me I’m in Alaris’s room.
“Ly,” Alaris says, from nearby. “Can you hear me?”
I twist my head to him. I let out a shaky breath. He’s alive. The relief hits so hard my eyes sting. “You’re here.”
“I’m here,” he murmurs. “How do you feel?”
My ankle throbs dully from somewhere far away. “Just fine.”
“Your arm?”
I shift, and the inside of my arm pulls. I glance down. The skin is sealed in a red line that smells like lobellum.
The sight of it brings last night back in pieces. The shape on my balcony. Running through the trees with my ankle screaming. The clearing. The blade in his hand. Blood on my nightgown, hot and spreading. And then light and a voice that shook my bones: Alaris.
Who appeared after I spent the better part of the week in his basement fearing he was dead.
“You left,” I blurt.
His eyes widen. “Ly…”
“You left for the palace.” I can’t tell if the sedative is tripping my tongue, or loosening it. “You asked me to help you find a way in. And then you went there without hearing a single thing I had to say!”
“I know what you would have told me, Ly,” he says gently. “You would have told me not to go.”
“Because you shouldn’t have gone,” I say, voice hoarse. “Why would you try to test unbreakable wards? Why would you take that risk?”
“I would take any risk to figure out how to stop this,” he says simply.
Relief flips to anger, rearing up. “You could have waited one day. Or one hour,” I sputter. “I’m right here. You know who I am now. Use me!”
His lips part. We stare at each other.
“I really thought you were dead,” I whisper, my chest not fully free from the gripping grief of losing him, even though he’s right in front of me.
He pauses another moment, then clears his throat. “You’re right. I could have waited one more night. If we had tested the wards farther from the guards, maybe things would have gone differently.”
His words are a reminder that just because he’s back doesn’t mean he’s okay.
I force myself to focus on him, which takes more effort than it usually would. Fatigue rims his eyes, and his mouth is a grim line. Dirt and dried blood cover his cheeks and neck. His clothes are fresh, but he looks more ragged than I’ve ever seen him.
It takes the fight right out of me. “What happened at the palace?”
“Things didn’t go according to plan,” he says, his tone low and flat. “The gates worked through the outer wards, but the inner wards rebounded. Violently. Guards came before we recovered.” Shadows crackle to life across his palm, then fizzle out. He closes his fist. “My gates haven’t worked since.”
“And the others?” I whisper.
“I left one with an ally to recover.” For the first time, his eyes are flat and hollow. “The other three died inside.”
My arm is slow to respond to me, but I reach out and touch his white knuckles. He pauses, staring at the point of contact. The position tugs at my newly sealed cut, but I keep my fingers there.
“I burned their bodies,” he says softly. “And left no living witnesses from the palace.” That haunted look deepens. “But I got the answer.”
He slides back in the chair, his ringed hand pulling out of my reach. He watches me, chin low.
The fire pops in the silence.
Does he think I’ll blame him? That I’ll shrink back from failure and death? I won’t. If my father found any evidence people from Arastos were involved, we would all be in danger.
“You’re trying to save everyone from the power of the emperor, Alaris,” I say slowly. “You can’t do that and…save everyone.”
His throat moves once.
Guilt twists in my stomach. I may be adding lines on a map, but it’s his word that determines who lives and who dies.
“I’m just glad you’re back,” I say, letting one side of my mouth tick up, then fall. “How did you get here without the…?”
And then I remember that impossible sight. Wings unfurling, vast and smoking. Long inky hair. Eyes shining like stars.
I search for a trace of what I saw in the clearing. But there is only Alaris. I open my mouth to ask…
“Ly, I’ve waited patiently for you to wake up,” he cuts me off. “I’m the one who needs answers now. What happened last night?”
I close my lips, heart rate picking up. I told him my true name but kept my reasons for leaving the Citadel vague.
“You said you were in danger at the palace. But yesterday…” He shakes his head. His eyes are hard. “No more secrets, Ly. Tell me.”
He saved me. He saw what I saw. So I take a deep breath, and I tell him about the fear that woke me on my birthday.
About the dreams in Delvos. The prophecy I left behind when I fled Lord Norville with him in the night.
The relief I thought the voidstone would bring me.
How I’ve spent the last few months jumping at every shadow, knowing, somehow, that the masked man would arrive sooner or later.
He doesn’t interrupt. Doesn’t show the hint of doubt I’m looking for. His hands grip tighter on his knees with every word.
“It took him a while to find me,” I whisper. “But I knew he would. Eventually.”
I glance down at my pale, limp hands.
When I return my eyes to his face, Alaris is staring at nothing, his chin low. “So you’ve never seen this man before?”
I shake my head.
He refocuses on me. “Then how did you know he would come?”
“I have no idea,” I say honestly.
His gaze traces the sealed line on my arm. He drops his head. He is quiet so long I wonder if he is going to say anything at all.
“You told me you might need the shadowgates. Anytime. Day or night,” he says finally. “I promised you. But I was gone and you were attacked. You almost…”
A tremor moves through him.
It pulls me into the present. I’m alive. Alaris is alive. “But I didn’t. You got back just in time. I’m also…relieved.” The word surprises me as it leaves my mouth, but as soon as it does, I know it’s true. “I wasn’t sure if I was losing my mind.”
I was right to run. All those nights, I was right to be afraid.
I take a deep breath and let it out, sinking into the bed. The masked man has finally appeared before me in the flesh. Between terror and the satisfaction of certainty, I choose satisfaction in this moment. I would rather face reality than formless fears.
But under the relief, there is a needle in my heart. Even though I survived last night, I know he won’t stop.
“He’s still going to come for me,” I say softly. “He won’t stop until he kills me.”
The air goes cold, like a window open at night. Alaris’s eyes harden, a flicker of something dangerous moving over his features. I shiver. If I were the masked man, I would not like to see that look in the Sovereign of Arastos’s eyes.
“Never.” The power that rolls off him presses against my skin, buzzing in my blood. “He will never touch you again.”
Alaris is more powerful than I knew. But he can’t be beside me every hour of every day.
“Alaris.” I try to smile, but it falters. “I can’t stay in Arastos. He knows where I am now. I need to keep running.”
No matter how many knives I hide under my mattress, if he gets his hands on me, I can’t stop him.
I got lucky this time.
The hot tears rise up before I can stop them. I cover my face, swallowing against the panic. I got lucky. I’m alive.
Through my shaking fingers I see his hands reaching for mine. They pull my palms away, and with a touch so gentle I barely feel it, swipe the tears from my cheeks.
“No, Ly, you will stay,” Alaris murmurs, his voice low and soothing. “I’ll make sure you are safe here.”
“How? You can’t stay beside me all the time.”
“Who says I can’t?”
Ridiculous. I want to tell him so, but every blink is getting heavier. “You can’t.”
“I will make you safe,” he says again. “If it’s not to your satisfaction, you can have a hundred horses to ride away from here.”
I half laugh, and a few more tears leak out, replacing the ones he took.
Whatever words I want to say next dissolve before I can find them.
He settles my hands close to me and covers them with the blanket. It might as well weigh a thousand pounds, for how heavily it presses me into the mattress.
“Go to sleep, Ly.” His voice is a humming lullaby. “I’ll be here when you wake.”
I want to argue. But the sedative, or my injury, makes it impossible to fight.
I may never be able to sleep on my own again, but at least for now, I don’t have to worry about the masked man. I believe Alaris will stay here until I wake up.