Chapter 44
The most important question
Two hundred and fifty-seven days after Lyric méra Esmail, the last Vertex Seal, was revealed to be an imposter by a rebellious faction of mirané princes led by Hehet méra Davith, a star appears in the morning sky.
Lyric is falling again. Wind whips at his robe and skirts; tears suck out of his eyes even as they appear. He was holding Iriset’s face, but the intensity of the wind drags them apart. Lyric grabs for her arm, her waist, slipping against her sweaty bare skin.
The roar of air, the pressure of falling overwhelm him, but he must hold on. He tightens fingers in her hair and pulls. She slams against him, and Lyric wraps around her. Light stabs his eyes. “Iriset,” he says, then yells it. “Wake up!”
They hurtle down, Lyric holding her tight, and then with a huge gasp Iriset arches against him and her eyes pop open. She twists in his hold to face away, her hair snarling around his neck, choking him, but he holds on. All you have to do is hold on to me.
Iriset shivers and she reaches out palms down: The air around them heats up, thickens, slowing their descent.
They drift down through buttery air, and Lyric blinks tears away, skull aching.
But—
He tilts his head up and there it is: the pink-silver moon of Aharté, in the center of the sky. A midmorning crescent smile.
The Moonshadow cityscape surrounds them, balanced and alight, and familiar—also unfamiliar. Smoke rises from a long swath of destruction in the north, and a strange shadow covers a whole precinct nearby. But they’re falling still, and Lyric can’t make sense of everything.
They sink toward the broad Crystal Desert, and Lyric sees the many-petaled towers of his own palace, the high black-and-white dome of the Hall of Princes.
An energy shield at the edge of the complex shimmers like heat illusion, just like the boundary wall of the Moon-Eater’s fortress.
There are rows of tents like barracks set up around the nearest palace building.
People swarm below, larger and larger as they drop toward the glittering ground.
He sees the orange of palace attendants, the white of Seal guards, and there directly below is the midnight-blue dome of the Moon-Eater’s Temple getting too big.
They’ll crash right through the ceiling, but no, it’s already a hungry mouth of sharp tile and broken beams.
They whoosh through, wind tightening around them, and then they land hard.
Lyric grunts at the impact but holds on, stumbles back, dragging Iriset with him, and they trip, land on Lyric’s ass. Iriset’s weight knocks the breath out of him.
He chokes a moment while Iriset melts back against him, taking long, shallow breaths.
The temple is dim, lit only by sunlight filtering down through the broken dome.
They’re beside the altar, polished and clean, without any of the old fossil teeth that should be here.
Everything gleams; there’s the lingering smell of incense and a musty feather smell like birds nesting in the rafters.
They didn’t fix the ceiling—maybe, Lyric thinks wildly, it’s only been a few days.
They’ve only been gone a few days. If that’s true they won’t have had time to make the preparations necessary for the Moon-Eater’s release.
But Iriset predicted they’d return two hundred and sixty days after they disappeared, based on some arcane math Lyric never understood.
Then he hears the familiar, distant clatter of lacquered armor from the direction of the doors. Nobody comes in, though, and Lyric climbs to his feet, offering Iriset his hand. “They should be expecting us,” he murmurs.
“Because of your letter?” she whispers, as if she can’t find her true voice.
Lyric nods. They walk out of the Moon-Eater’s Temple holding hands. Lyric braces himself for Garnet and Amaranth, to see their faces again after so long, after not knowing if he ever would.
The sunlight glares, but not as hot as the midsummer it was for them a few minutes ago (four hundred years ago). That’s right, if Iriset’s math was correct, it should be late spring.
A line of Seal guards stand in a wide perimeter, their masks covering their faces, weapons ready but not drawn. Lyric can sense the hum of forces emanating from them, and the grounds of the palace of the Vertex Seal feel balanced.
Uncertainty slows Lyric’s footsteps, and he squeezes Iriset’s hand. She’s still barely dressed, and Lyric stops to undo his outer robe, and puts it around her shoulders. Iriset shoots him a wry look but accepts, tying it loosely around her waist.
Then there’s a command snapped out, and the Seal guards break into two lines, shifting in perfectly balanced formation to let through a small party hurrying from the direction of the palace proper.
It’s a quartet led by a masculine-forward person in blue lacquered armor and flowing robes, a veil mask fluttering over half his face. He sees Lyric and Iriset and picks up his pace into a jog. He’s too small to be Garnet, though he wears two force-blades on his back in the same fashion.
“Lyric,” the man says, and lifts his veil away. It’s Hehet méra Davith, except—
“Little Rabbit,” Lyric says. This has always been Maimeri: older, which is laughable because to be Maimeri, Hehet must be over four hundred years old now, but looks to be forty-five.
Maimeri smiles grimly, and the smile bends ahz eyes, ahz bright blood-red eyes, showing handsome wrinkles. “It took me a shamefully long time to understand why both of you called me Hehet when you first saw me.”
The Crystal Desert trembles, suddenly, and Iriset hisses. “Shit, it’s already—” She turns, letting go of Lyric, but he turns after her. He grasps her shoulders as the ground bucks with a strong earthquake.
More of the Moon-Eater’s Temple dome collapses, and Iriset plants her feet.
“The array should be fully complete. We can let the prison open on its own over the course of the next few hours, or I can do it immediately,” she says over the noise of cracking stone and distant yelling.
Over the noise of the entire crater breaking and Lyric’s pounding headache.
The quake settles, and there’s a moment of shocked quiet as people regain footing. “Where’s my sister?” Lyric looks back to ask Maimeri. “Where’s Garnet?”
“That’s not the most important question right now,” Maimeri says, something hard and old in ahz bloody eyes.
“Lyric,” Iriset starts, but she’s interrupted by a voice they haven’t heard in quads and seasons and four hundred years.
“Is it them? Rabbit, are they finally here?”
It’s soft, urgent, and lightly accented with a cadence so familiar.
Iriset steps back in shock, her heel landing on Lyric’s toe. He takes her elbow as they turn together.
The speaker stands there, just behind Maimeri’s small party, in a long layered dress of emerald green and sea blue, her perfect skin too pale in the hard sun, her dark eyes wide and the left side of her face painted with lush pink flowers.
Lyric stares, unable to comprehend, so it’s Iriset who says, “Singix?”