Chapter Thirty-Seven
I wake well rested and at peace, flashes of last night trickling in, a blush rising in my cheeks at the thought. I move my legs beneath the silk-soft sheets, wriggling, seeking his warmth, only to realize he isn’t there.
Slowly, I ease up to my elbows. The room is empty, as is the balcony. Worry prickles at my mind. How long have I slept? It feels like forever.
Then my breath hitches. Today is the Syndicate deadline, and here I am, languishing in Anton’s bed. Shame suffuses me, knotting my stomach.
I stand, taking a moment to orient myself through the stars that spiral through my vision. When they clear, my gaze catches once more on the balcony where I found Anton.
Or rather, on the codex sitting atop his seat.
I move on unsteady feet and take it in my hands. It’s at least six inches thick, and I already know who it belongs to.
I know it with the certainty of one who catches the scent of salt and knows the sea is near.
Confirmation comes when my trembling fingers flip to the bookmark where he left off.
Because it’s my codex, I can read any page, no matter the order. Holding my breath, I skim the text, landing on one particular passage. My fingers fly to my lips.
He knows—all of it.
He knows.
The codex falls from my hands. Tears crawl down my face, one after another.
I know where he’s gone if he knows the truth.
I shimmy into the first dress I find in the armoire of my connecting room and run.
Sundar isn’t in his room when I pass by, perhaps having left to grab breakfast, but I find the pendant on his night table.
I snatch it and tuck it into my bodice, continuing as fast as my feet can carry me until I’m outside the palace and in the mountain tunnel once more.
This time, it isn’t guarded. But why?
When light finally shines through, I get a glimpse of Moranya’s Citadel—that lone claw prying its way into the aurora above. Reaching for the pendant tucked inside my breastband, I slide it around my neck for quick access should I need it, and approach despite the trepidation running through me.
She is in there. I can feel it.
Swallowing my fear, I push inside the tower.
The inside is dark, far darker than before, the sconces unlit. The moment the door clicks shut, however, they flare to life.
“I admit, I am rather pleased to finally be able to speak with you, Vastianna.”
The voice is smooth, ethereal, as if from a dream.
Frantically, I snatch the pendant and yank it out, holding it up to one of the sconces. But no one appears.
“Come,” says the voice again, a soft caress as if a finger were trailing up the base of my neck.
Despite my thudding heart, I follow the stairs, knowing that finally, I will face her.
Death.
After all this time. After the years of begging for her to take me—only to later cling to life, knowing that with any wrong move, it might vanish.
I bypass the middle floor, for it, too, is dark, and instead climb the final, lit stairwell. There are silver doors at the top, each one embellished and jeweled as if pocked by stars. Tentatively, I push them open.
The ovular space is ringed by cerulean torchlight above, save for the far side, where a tall mirror extends to where the ceiling vaults.
There Moranya waits.
She’s facing away, a silver-blue gown draping down her hips to spool along the floor, her sleeves sheer and cascading just as long. Her iridescent blue hair floats around her the way it did when I first saw her, like strands of silk caught in a breeze.
I brace for her to shift into an illusion. To somehow lure me to death.
Instead she smiles. “You are in no danger,” she muses. “To hurt you would be to hurt my cause.”
My brows furrow, but I move the hand holding the pendant behind my back and use my thumb to shove it up my sleeve and out of sight. She doesn’t seem to notice.
“I am not surprised to see you here, Vastianna.”
“You owe me answers,” I say.
“I imagine I do.”
A pause.
“Is that the mirror the Fate of Dominion gave you?” I ask, glancing once more at her reflection. There’s not a crack in sight. But then, hadn’t the mirror the Fate of Dominion made for her been handheld? And much smaller?
Through the mirror’s surface, Moranya’s gaze meets mine for the first time. “It is not.”
“Anton. Where is he?” I ask. Fates, if she made another bargain with him, trapped him somehow—
“I will answer your questions,” she says, “for I owe you a great deal. But to understand, you must know the truth of my story. Tell me, what have you learned so far?”
She thinks she owes me something? But I respond before I can make sense of that.
“Scattered things, really. When you were Queen Mercy, you prayed to the Fates to grant you the ability to give the dead a home. But our world was so riddled with war, the Fate of Dominion was sent to destroy it outright. Instead he fell in love with you. He gifted you a mirror with the power to trap and steal the power of any Fate who might threaten us again.”
“So simple a version, but you are not incorrect,” she says.
“Kastiel was the lord of both life and death, of judgment. The harbinger of justice, and so much more. The Fate of Dominion indeed. The Fates are numerous and vast, but so are our realms; our mortal world is one of the most inconsequential. Still, it was too quarrelsome, so his mandate was to wipe us from existence. In the end, though, it was love that stilled his hand.”
Again her eyes meet mine—until she lifts a hand.
The mirror goes black.
But only for a moment. As I watch, an image flickers into life there on the glass.
It’s dark at first, blurry, and then the scene sharpens until I recognize Mercy’s chapel—the very one I had been in not two days ago when Anton and I stepped through the portal and back into Ansa.
But rather than ruins, it’s whole and rather beautiful, the stained-glass windows coloring streams of light and basking the inside with a prismatic glow.
Mercy herself is illuminated, kneeling before a pew.
Her pale blond hair cascades down her shoulders, a lace veil overtop. Behind her, a stranger in a lightweight silken shroud appears—the scene coming to life.
Mercy lifts her head, hearing his approach.
So you were the one who badgered us with relentless prayers, says his voice—a melodic, dreamy tenor as soft as it is deep. I thought I’d come see you first.
“Kastiel didn’t bother hiding his purpose,” Moranya says. “I begged him to give me until winter’s solstice—a period of ten weeks—to prove that the Fates were wrong about us. That we were worthy of salvation and mercy. I suppose it was my boldness that intrigued him. So he agreed.”
In the mirror, scenes flash. Kastiel observing Mercy’s court.
Her showing him around an older Miridran, new in its foundation but with a rich history of scattered people and clans.
I see them on horseback, riding from place to place, her without her crown and the both of them attired in peasant’s clothes, blending in.
They even visit Razam, an ancient village just over the border.
They return to the palace thereafter. It was so much smaller back then, more a fortress than anything.
“For those ten weeks, he did not depart from my side. I showed him as much as I could—how beautiful and complex mortal beings were, how much we could create in so little time. How, despite our short lifespans, we erected castles, monuments, and countless other wonders across the world. We created legacies and tales that spanned generations. There was so much the Fates didn’t see—because they didn’t bother to.
He was the first one to try. And he didn’t just fall in love with me; he fell in love with our kind.
Our histories, our stories, both the pain and the beauty.
So yes, in the end, he spared us. More so, he crafted a mirror that would trap the power of any Fate who might try to finish what he did not do. ”
In the mirror, I watch as Kastiel weaves threads of light in his hands, shaping them until they harden and dim into a handheld mirror that matches the sketches I saw. It’s surprisingly unremarkable in appearance, but perhaps that was the point.
“I tried to explain to Kastiel that death in its finality was unfair. That our souls were worth preserving after death. He had the notion that it was because of our short lives that we did so much with so little time. He argued that this was what made us valuable—our impermanence. Our fragility.
“But I had seen so much death, and felt it was unfair that our souls perished after such a short time, unlike the Fates, who were no better than us. I knew that eventually he would come to understand that; he even offered me immortality of my own. But that wasn’t fair, and I could not wait—not as I watched those who had survived the war still perish from their wounds. My desperation mounted with every loss.
“I was out of time,” she explains, “so I used the mirror Kastiel made on him.
I thought only to trap him and borrow his power, hoping that with it, I could create a realm to preserve our souls.
I had planned to set him free and return it thereafter.
He would be angry, of course; I knew that.
But every moment I waited was one that another soul was lost.
“So I trapped him. Only creating my realm took too much power, and I was draining him completely. I didn’t realize that a Fate cannot live without their inherent power, and I watched in horror as his soul began to fade away.”
In the mirror, it plays out: Mercy rising from bed in the night, the mirror in her hand. Kastiel, asleep next to where she had been, cracks open his eyes, then rises quickly. Mercy, no—
The mirror’s power flares a bright, glittering blue—and then he is gone, trapped inside. Power wraps around Mercy’s hands, that same light twining through her fingers. She lifts the mirror, tells him she will set him free soon. He pounds against the glass, fruitlessly. Mercy, what have you done?