Chapter Sixty-One Thyra
Chapter Sixty-One
Thyra
Ifight the overwhelming need to look back.
Fight the weight of faith in Antony’s eyes. Those savage green eyes that weren’t cold when he launched me into the air, but filled with life.
As if the blood and death around him centered him.
As if, within the acts of killing, he knew who he was.
Azul takes me along the mountain ridge and down its western side, where a much smaller stone structure sits.
A simpler building than the family temple near Antony’s cabin.
Only a single carving is etched in the white stone above the entrance.
That same Vividari symbol I must seek once I enter the building.
Azul crouches as low to the ground as he can so I can dismount safely.
“Thank you, Blue.” Reverting to the first name I gave him, I reach for his neck, pressing my cheek to his feathers. “Wait for me here.”
He tosses his head, an action I take as agreement, his crimson eyes gleaming, and I sense his unyielding gaze on me as I hurry toward the temple.
Before I reach the front opening, my brow furrows at the worn-down grass all around the entrance. It’s been trodden many times. And recently, too.
Antony hasn’t been coming here… I gleaned that much from his painful history, but someone has.
Possibly Galla…
If it weren’t for the vision I had, where I saw myself walking within these walls, I would worry that there could be protections around the temple that might stop me from entering it.
As it is, I step inside without hindrance, inhaling the slight tang of iron in the air as I hurry onward.
Another oddity. But the scent is probably all over my clothing from the burned blood that was spilled back at the fight, and this closed-in environment is heightening it.
The room I enter is vast, with pillars rising up at intervals and stone benches beside them. It’s hushed in here. A place of reflection.
My vision didn’t show me the details of how I get to the tombs beneath the temple, and I’m forced to slow down, looking for an alcove that might enclose a stairwell…
There appear to be two.
One in each far corner, and I’m not sure which to choose.
Taking a chance, I head left, hoping my instincts have steered me correctly. Reaching the little alcove, I descend the spiraling steps as quickly as I can.
The stairs lead out into a room with three arched openings.
While the openings directly ahead and on my right are brightly lit, the one to my left is dark, and the scent of iron coming from it is intense.
That smell…
Stronger even than the scent of iron in the air when the village burned…
The hairs on the back of my neck stand on end, and I back away from that opening, unable to stop my quiet groan, my hands pressing to my upper right rib. Even the Lethian silver seems to react, a shiver through the threads rippling my armor around my body.
I tell myself: If I fear a thing, I should confront it.
Often, I would.
But the brightly lit doorway straight ahead of me is the only opening with the Vividari insignia etched above it, and I don’t want to delay.
Facing darkness will have to wait.
Hurrying to the bright opening, I step into the corridor.
It’s exactly like my vision, but what I foresaw is pale in comparison to this beautiful place.
A wide walkway extends into the distance, the walls on either side sparkling with starlight…possibly actual starlight…infused into the stone. Silvery, glittering, calming. A mass of twinkles as I run my fingertips along the carved etchings that run at shoulder-height along the wall.
The air is clear, not a hint of iron, and my silver armor settles as I let out a full exhalation, expelling the sour air I inhaled moments ago.
I don’t know how many Vividari might be buried in this corridor. Antony said they were entombed in individual chambers in the walls.
I know I should be looking for the next symbol, but it’s difficult to focus beyond the peace that has filled my heart, not because I’m mesmerized, but because peace is such a rare and precious thing in my life.
Always, I’m on alert. Always ready to run.
Back at the family temple, I felt the quiet, but I was still ready for an attack.
In these brief few heartbeats right now, I have a sense of safety.
Even if it’s most likely false.
Exhaling once more, I draw on the memory of my vision, following the etchings on the wall, retracing steps I haven’t yet taken.
Halfway along, just as my vision showed me, I reach the Vividari insignia etched at eye-height.
This is where the hammer is hidden.
Only a full-blooded Vividari should be able to open this tomb, but I saw myself do it.
With my heart in my throat, I press my fingertips to the small indent beneath the symbol.
For a moment, nothing happens.
Maybe my vision was wrong—
A second later, molten gold energy seeps across my palm, flowing gently from the blade’s image to my fingertips.
I brace for the blade vision that might strike, but just as when I read the Chronicle, the molten energy streams outward instead of up my arm.
Golden light washes up across the Vividari insignia, sinking beneath the sparkling stone surface and vanishing from sight.
My heart hammers as the outline of a panel appears in the rock. Slowly and silently, the panel slides back into the wall, leaving a square opening three hand spans wide and tall.
Exposing a small, dark chamber.
The darkness within the little chamber is so complete that I can’t see what it contains, let alone tell how far back it extends. Inky-black light fills the space without spilling beyond the opening, giving the startling appearance of a void against the backdrop of starlight around me.
Telling myself I can reach inside it without harm, since I saw myself do it, I take deep breaths to calm my pounding heart and extend my fingertips into the darkness—
“There’s a reason only a full-blooded Vividari should open that vault.”
A smooth baritone voice reaches me from the corridor’s entrance, clawing through my memory like a knife, jolting me away from the chamber.
That voice…
Coming at me through the starlight. But it may as well be ripping at me through shadows, dragging me back to a moment when I was pinned against a wall and a blade covered in iron dust sliced across my flesh.
I gasp for breath, poised to defend myself as the man who hurt me five years ago strides toward me along the corridor.
He’s dressed like one of Galla’s lords, decked out in an elaborately embroidered white tunic and long white pants. Clearly a highborn, although I didn’t see him among any of the highborn back at the celebration.
With deceptively boyish features, ruffled brown hair, and innocent brown eyes, he could lure me to trust him again like he once did.
I don’t have a weapon. Not even the ruby circlet. But I raise my hands and plant my feet, taking up the defensive stance I saw Cassia take when Galla’s lords had filed into the training room this morning.
The man slows his pace. “Easy, Thyra.”
He comes to a stop seven paces from me, also lifting his hands, but palms up and open. “I’m not here to hurt you.”
He doesn’t appear to carry a weapon. No sword at his back or dagger at his waist, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t concealing one. “My scar says otherwise.”
He sucks in a long breath between his teeth before letting it out. “A heinous crime I’ve long regretted. Perpetrated under the belief that you delighted in leaving us to our pain.” He grimaces. “Which I now know wasn’t the case.”
He takes a step toward me. “If you’ll allow me—”
I jolt back a step, maintaining the distance between us, although the hard reality is that I can’t let him drive me too far from the chamber’s opening or he could seize its contents. I also have nowhere to go. At my back is a dead end. The only way out is past him.
At my movement, he stops again. “I’ve come to warn you, not hurt you.”
I can’t allow myself to believe him. I shouldn’t. But one tiny memory gives me pause.
In my vision, when I was pulling the hammer from the chamber, dark light had flashed across me, and my stomach had swirled with terrible dread.
“Warn me?” I narrow my eyes, watching for any sudden moves. “About what?”
“About the hammer.” His hands lower. “About why my brother really wants it.”
My mind whirls, and my thoughts split in three directions at once. The first is a churning anxiety about what this man means to Antony, the second, the startling fact that this man knows about the hammer, and the third…
A jolting realization about who this stranger is.
The only sibling I hadn’t yet been introduced to.
“You’re Hadrian.”
He inclines his head and points to his face. “I don’t blame you for not knowing who I am. It’s the eyes. Brown. Not a hint of Mother’s power.”
“I nearly met you…so many times.” I take a step back, snatching a breath at how close I came to seeing him. “You were waiting with Galla at the top of a Constellation tower when I first arrived.”
He shrugs and matches my step. “But you went to the forge instead.”
“And then when I first met Galla, she ordered you out of the room.”
“Right before you entered it,” he says. “The door had barely closed behind me.”
“This morning, Cassia said we just missed you.”
“You passed me in the hall outside the training room. Did you know that?”
My skin prickles at the memory of how bustling with activity the hallways had been this morning.
Hadrian shrugs, and for a second, I glimpse once again the shadowed rage with which he dragged a knife across my flesh.
“The advantage of being overlooked is that people forget I’m there.
I see things they don’t know I’ve seen. Hear things they don’t know I’ve heard.
Things they don’t want anyone to know about. But I know.”