Chapter 16
Chapter Sixteen
“Soraya?” I whisper through the stone.
I’ve tried everything I could to shift the lid. The sheer weight of it is impossible to move, and the distraction across the grotto will only last so long. Which means the only way I’m getting through it is by using my magic.
I pace around the sarcophagus.
Falion Sifted beyond sight.
But how? How did he do it?
Pressing my hand against the sarcophagus, I try to reach through it the way I reach through shadows. Nothing. Nothing but cold stone against my touch.
I can’t help thinking about the first time I ever Sifted.
My two foster brothers hurled me over the lip of a well, and I woke up in a nearby forest.
Nearly a mile away.
I did it once.
But how?
I was four. I can’t even remember what I was thinking that day. It’s my first formative memory, but it’s as shadowy around the edges as the gloom that fills this room.
The well. Strong hands levering me over the edge.
“We’re done feeding you, you little bitch,” my eldest brother said.
I can’t even remember his name.
But Riori? I remember him. I remember that you never dared allow yourself to be alone in a room with him, and as he held me over the edge of the well, he leaned close enough to whisper, “I hear you sniveling at night. You’re scared of the dark, aren’t you?
Well, this ends in darkness, you little bastard.
And the only people who will hear you scream are the two of us.
The well monster’s going to feed well tonight. ”
And then he lets me go as he laughed.
That day filled my nightmares for years. Sometimes I wonder if my recollections of it are even real, or whether they’ve become some twisted amalgamation of my dreams.
I fell for what seemed forever.
And then the icy shock of cold water swallowed me whole.
I couldn’t swim.
It was so dark down there I could barely breathe.
I thrashed, and I screamed, and I looked for them, but all I could make out was a thin circle of light above me, with two dark heads peering over the lip of it before I went under again.
And then something touched my foot.
Something cold and slimy curled around my ankle, like a bony hand that was half-rotted.
“You’re not the first brat we’ve fed to the well,” Riori said as he dragged me out of the hut. “You’re finally going to go meet the rest of our brothers and sisters.”
I screamed and screamed and screamed.
Please. Please!
A glowing hand reached out to me, plunging through the dark waters like a full moon rising.
“My little girl,” whispered a voice in my head, “if you ever need me, reach for me. I’ll be there for you. I promise. I love you… I love you….”
I took that hand, and it felt like a doorway opened within my mind. I finally fell through it.
And then I was sobbing in the forest and that door was still open somehow, an invisible hand stroking through my hair before the sensation faded and a pair of dry leaves skittered over my skin as the wind stirred them.
My eyes blink open, and I’m standing in front of the sarcophagus.
I’d forgotten about that hand, that voice….
Yanking my hands off the stone, I strip the glamor from my skin and stare as a faint luminescence bleeds through. I’ve spent my entire life hiding that light. It’s a dangerous kind of weakness to show before my wraithen brothers and sisters.
Before my king….
Swallowing hard, I curl my fingers around the glow. Spears of light stab through my clenched fingers. I don’t know what it means. I don’t know what any of it means.
But there’s one thing that’s starting to embed itself in my mind: Shadow is the absence of light. Light is the death of shadow.
What if I was able to manipulate more than mere shadow?
You are not merely wraithenkind, Zemira….
I let the light escape along with the exhale of my breath. Even if I am half fae, there’s nothing for me in this world. My ghostly pale skin sees to that. I can hide it behind glamor, but I’ll always be hiding it. I would be forever living a lie, no matter how much I yearn for that lie.
There is no place of acceptance here, even if I wish I could escape my father’s court….
The only one who has ever accepted me—betrayals or no betrayals—is entombed alive within this sarcophagus.
Soraya is all that matters. I’ll need her if I’m going to be able to pull off this heist.
Or maybe I just need her.
It’s a tasteless antidote to swallow.
I place my hands on the stone again.
And this time I push through them.
Soraya. Soraya. Soraya. I try and channel that focus, that desperation I had the first time I Sifted beyond my limits. Darkness flickers in and out of my mind—there’s something….
There.
I plunge through the sarcophagus, and then I’m tumbling onto a warm body.
“What the fuck?” Soraya bursts out, grabbing me by the wrists.
I’m groggy and disorientated, but I have precisely two seconds to remember she’s an assassin and will probably take to my sudden appearance in a similar way to a sleeping cat that’s suddenly had a dog thrown upon it.
“It’s me!” I hiss as she wrestles with me. “Soraya! It’s me!”
Harsh gasps burst through the small space as she freezes. “Z?”
I wilt against her. “Hold tight.” There are chains around her wrist. “I need to pick these locks.”
She clutches my hands as I pick the manacles, her breath coming loudly in the dark.
The dark.
She hates that I know this, but she always sleeps with a faint light because she’s afraid of the dark.
“Did Malechus talk you into these shackles, or did he actually fool you? Because I’m going to be very disappointed if you fell prey to the crown prince of the Blood Court,” I tell her in a conversational tone.
“How did you find me?” she snaps. “What are you doing here? You were in the—”
“Abyss?” I finally get the second lock open. “Apparently Father was getting a little concerned that you weren’t checking in. He sent me in to finish what you started.”
“What I started?” I can’t see her in the dark, but I know her head just whipped toward me. The movement throws me forward until I have a knee in her thigh. “But you’re not….”
“Not what?”
“Goddess’s breath, are you done?” she grinds out. “There’s not enough air in here for two.”
I was hoping she’d spill her secret mission, but it appears she’s starting to think again.
“I’m done.” I slip the lockpick back into my belt and curl up against her side. “Just how much do you want to get out of here?”
“What do you mean?” And then she stills. “How did you intend to get me out?”
“That’s the problem. I can’t lift the lid—”
“Zemira.”
“Just hold still. Really still.” I let my body relax, melting into shadows. But this time, I hold myself right on the edge between corporeal and incorporeal.
Falion did it.
He took Mistmark into the Sift—an act I’d previously believed was impossible. And while Mistmark didn’t look too happy about it, I have to presume he was still in one piece when he arrived.
“Don’t you dare.” Soraya stiffens. “Zemira. Zemira! Have you ever done this before?”
“Sshh.”
The bond between us flickers to light. There. There she is. I feel her flesh, feel her breath in her lungs, her heart racing. I sense her eyes going wide, and then I plunge us both into the Between.
A single second that stretches to an eternity.
I don’t think I could do this if we weren’t bound by blood.
We burst onto the flagstones of the grotto floor, and Soraya scrambles out of my arms, whipping a knife into her hand and staring at me with wild eyes. It’s one of her little tricks: It doesn’t matter whether she’s been unarmed, she can always Summon a weapon when she needs to.
“What the fuck did you just do?” she rasps.
Her words are a slap in the face. So much for the warm welcome, the gratitude. “I’m fairly certain I just rescued you.”
“Rescued me?”
Soraya’s stern facade lasts all of a half second, before she’s paling. “I think I’m going to be sick.”
And then the staggers for the nearest statue and vomits behind it.
* * *
“So Malechus got the jump on you, huh?” I rub her back after she spends fifteen minutes retching into an urn.
I hauled her into the hallway and well away from the grotto before Malechus could deal with his fire.
Now we’re sitting in some underground room somewhere, that might have once been a cellar. “You got sloppy.”
Soraya sits back on her heels, scrubbing at her mouth. “If I didn’t still feel like I’d been turned inside-out and then put back together again, I would punch you.”
“Please. You’d have to catch me first. And you can’t even do that when you’re at your best. Also, you’re welcome. I saved your ass. I’ll accept any favors and gratitude you can throw my way.”
Soraya shoots me a murderous look.
The last time we confronted each other, she was glamored to look like me as she tried to drive her knife into Keir’s chest and steal the amulet around his throat. We both thought it was the relic our father was looking for, and she double-crossed me at the last second.
It’s not the first time.
It won’t be the last.
And yet, despite everything, it’s good to see her again. She’s the one constant in my life, and even if we’re often at odds, if some outside force wants to harm one of us, he’ll have the other to deal with.
“You look better than I would have expected, considering you were in the Abyss for three months,” she says gruffly.
“You look like shit.”
Soraya shudders. “Some asshole just pulled me straight through a stone sarcophagus. All I can taste is bile and granite. What did you expect?”
Circling the sarcophagus, I give it a kick. “My abject apologies. The only person I know who might be able to lift the lid probably has you high on his kill-on-sight list. I went with the only option I thought might be able to work.”
At that, her gaze sharpens. “What are you doing here? Who are you with? What does Father want?”
“What he always wants. A means to break the curse. He wants the Horn of Shadows. And I’m here with Prince Keir—”
“Keir?” She actually pales a little.