Chapter 38
I surface slowly. There is no blood, no scent of roses. Just the crackle of a fire and the weight of the fur and the smell of cloves.
Through the open curtains, I spy Alaris on the couch, a massive book open across his lap. He’s leaning over it, one hand braced against the page, the other pressed to his mouth.
“How long was I out?”
His eyes lift to mine. “Just under three hours, with a few minutes to spare. How do you feel?”
“Better.” I push myself up against the pillows. My head is the clearest it’s been since I used the oraculi. “What are you reading?”
He tilts his head at the book in his lap. “I want to show you something.”
I pull off the fur and shift to stand. He rises from the couch, but I wave him off.
He stays where he is, the book under one arm, and watches me cross the room. I can feel his eyes on every unsteady step and the hand I rest briefly on the bedpost. I make it to the couch on my own and sit down harder than I mean to.
He retakes a seat beside me, his rings glinting as his long and elegant fingers play over the leather cover. “Have you ever considered you might not be a child of the flame?”
“Yes,” I admit. “I’ve wondered many times if I am just…mortal.”
Despite the assurances of the sophirian priests, many nights since my blood came and my power did not, I have wondered.
A union between a divinial and a mortal is always thought to produce a divinial—but what if I only inherited from the emperor’s mortal half, and my mother and father produced a child with no power at all?
There are no stories of it, but just like with me, it is not something powerful families were likely to report.
Alaris shakes his head. “I’m arastorian.
Mortals have a void within them. An emptiness.
I can see it.” He touches the crystal at his ear, playing with it.
His eyes flash bright silver. “I checked while you were sleeping. You do not have that void, Ly. You are of one divine line or another. And if not Ignar’s, the question is which? ”
His words set my heart racing, but before I come up with a response he sets the large book on my lap. The cover is so worn there is no legible title, the gold paint reduced to flecks.
He opens it to the first page. “This is a book of the gods, and their lives before sending the incarnials to this world.”
A colorful illustration depicts ten figures, arranged in the order of creation: Ignar, god of sun and consumptive flame, painted in gold and crimson.
Marith, Nyvorn, and Mordyn, representing sea, air, and earth.
Vernalia, goddess of life and growing things.
Thanovar, god of death and decaying things.
Cyralia, goddess of seasons, time, and cycles.
Sophiri, goddess of wisdom, clarity, and memory.
Delvara, goddess of dreams, chaos, and prophecy.
And at the far edge of the page, Arastor, god of night and the eternal void.
Their identities are easy enough to figure out, even though this artist didn’t render them like the standard depictions in the capital.
My eyes run over the image once, then again, landing on the god-touched traits divinials wear so proudly: Marith’s blue hair.
Sophiri’s golden eyes. Mordyn’s dark fingertips.
It’s impossible to imagine I could carry some other god’s blood, when I don’t even bear Ignar’s red hair.
“Imagine that’s true…” I can’t fully believe Alaris’s claims, but I decide to play along. “Do you already have an answer in mind?”
He nods. “I’ve had the last few hours to consider the options, but you lived it. I want to hear what feels true to you first.”
“Is it possible…” My eyes pause on Delvara. “That I’m seeing prophecies? Versions of potential futures, if only I made different choices?”
“It’s possible,” Alaris murmurs, running a finger along the bottom of the page.
The illustration of Thanovar makes my skin prickle. Ever since my birthday, it has felt like death was chasing me. Since the divinials of death aren’t actually behind the wither, I should let go of old biases. “Or Thanovar? Am I having visions of death?”
“It could be. What do the visions feel like?”
“They feel…real. Like I lived them.” I can still taste the smoke from the fire in Nyvos on my tongue and feel the pressure of Rinalda’s grip on my arm. These aren’t like dreams, fading into the morning light. They are more like…“Like memories.”
“Sophiri is the goddess of wisdom and memory.” He drags his finger to the golden-eyed goddess. “The oraculi is hers, and it did trigger this. But her blood can only reveal what’s already true. It can’t be the cause.”
“Vernalia then?” I let out a choked laugh, indulging in the absurdity of this whole conversation. “Did I…come back to life?”
“I will not rule anything out, but to my knowledge, even Vernalia’s incarnial never brought back the dead.”
“What then?”
He taps the page twice and cants his head.
He flips through the book, skimming over illustrated chapters devoted to each of the gods.
Past the halfway point, he stops on an intricately painted figure: a woman cloaked in white, with white hair and eyes, pale and radiant.
Above her head, the sky is split into four, with one segment for each season.
Her picture looks exactly like the ones in the capital: Cyralia, goddess of seasons, time, and cycles.
“I don’t understand.” My eyes lock on his. “You think I’m cyralian?”
“You said they feel like memories, and the oraculi only show truth. What you saw is real. Meaning you lived the same stretch of time, multiple times.”
“Multiple times? Then I lived, and died, and lived it again? But cyralians don’t control…” Time. My bones hum, the vibration from my sternum so strong I feel it in my teeth. I press my hand to my chest as it spreads, thrumming through my head and clouding my vision. “Whoa.”
I feel the truth of it. I lived all these months and moments, lived them, and then relived them. Each time, my death reset me back to the night of my twenty-first birthday.
“…Ly? Are you…?”
Alaris might have said something else, but I’m still too stuck in the resonance of the word. I open and close my mouth a few times. It’s true. It’s too strange to say out loud.
He lifts a hand toward my face, then drops it, and takes the book off my lap.
I shake my head as the leather slides through my fingers. “But I’ve never heard of cyralians having this kind of power.”
Cyralians at court have only ever performed weak seasonal magic, their displays with snow or autumn leaves stunted in the blaze of my father’s eternal summer. “Why haven’t I heard of any of them manipulating time itself?”
“There are good reasons to hide power that would be seen as a threat,” he says, still watching me closely. “It wouldn’t be the first forgotten truth in this continent’s history.”
Like Alaris’s shadowgates. No one knows the arastorian line has such a power. Control over time is even more dangerous.
But I don’t have control. This power, if it is really mine, hasn’t saved me. I only repeated the cycle, dying three times. The other night almost made it four.
“If that’s true then, I…I really died.” My voice catches. “I didn’t escape him. He is going to keep finding me.”
“Ly, he won’t reach you here—”
“I don’t want to die again.” My breaths are coming faster. “It’s horrible.”
“You’re not going to.”
“I can’t. I can’t…”
“Breathe with me.” Calming cold radiates from him, enveloping me. The room suddenly smells of night air, a soothing, fresh scent, like blackberry brambles. “I promise, Ly. Nothing will harm you while I’m here. No divinial. No emperor. No one hiding in shadows.”
I nod, my chest tight. “Okay, okay. This will just take…a little processing. I’m fine.”
“I told you to stop telling me you are fine.” His eyes rove my face. “You’re not fine. But you will be.”
He stands and moves away. I want to ask him to stay near, but he returns a moment later with a glass of water, which I gratefully accept. “Do you want to eat more?”
I shake my head. My eyelids are heavy. “I know I was unconscious for a long time, but it feels like I was awake. I think I”—I yawn—“need to sleep again.”
He looks like he’s going to object. But he takes the glass from my hand and puts out his arm. “Come on, then. I’ll help you.”
I slide my hand into the crook of his elbow. Being close to him is so comforting, I almost wish he was walking me back to his bed instead of my own. All too soon, I’m on the other side of the curtains. He stays at the entrance.
“No more reckless attempts to solve this yourself,” he says, voice gruff. “We’ll make a plan. For now, rest.”
His eyes linger on me until the velvet shuts.
All this time I called the certainty that drove me from the palace a premonition. I thought it was a warning of what was yet to come. But it’s not. It’s an echo of what already was.
I didn’t learn who the masked man is, but I learned how I know he’s coming. He already came for me. He found me when I was locked away, guarded, and watched, and he found me here, on the most distant edge of the continent, disguised and under a different name.
He will hunt me until I find a way to stop it.
Or we stop it.
Maybe this life, with Alaris’s help, I can survive.