Chapter 21
“You believe he speaks the truth, starling?” Jace’s question presses into my ribs as we traverse the back garden.
Rain damp wildflowers and groomed greenery straighten toward the morning’s light, welcoming the fresh scent of dew on stone.
I swallow, aware of how he moves beside me—slow, precise, like a shadow trailing the sun.
“I do. He’s not our rider, unfortunately.
Although, if anyone can track down surviving Ceti descendants, it’s him.
You saw how many Sovereign tomes are packed in his library.
Astora willing, we’ll have a new lead within the week.
” My words hang in the air as I match his stride, every muscle tense under my skin.
It’d been nearly two days since arriving in Storm, and the sun warming my cheeks is the first in that time.
The thunderheads lingered with blistering fury, claiming shop fronts and young flora in its wake.
How many times has the faction rebuilt? Subjected to the sheer force of the skies over and over again.
Just on the horizon, another front brews, whirling like an approaching threat.
“I’m not one to trust so easily.” Jace’s dark eyes catch mine, the storm of the previous days reflected in their depths.
“You trusted me, of all people,” I say, the words lighter than I intend. We round a silent pond. Shimmering pink minnows bubble from the bottom, combing through green algae plumes and lotus blossoms.
“Since we’ll be here for a few days, there is some business I must attend to at court.
Nothing incredibly urgent.” His hand slides into his pocket casually, but those midnight eyes never leave me.
“Queen Raine has summoned me this morning to discuss trade alignments with Shadow. I don’t want to leave you here alone, but I am…
most certainly not wanted here. Lightbrood made his opinions quite clear when we first arrived. ”
“You’re simply leaving me unattended? What’s stopping me from running the moment the council doors close?” I scoff, a grin slipping past my defense.
His mouth twitches, almost a smirk, but it’s gone before I can fully claim it. “You won’t run, starling.”
“Oh, and what makes you so sure?” I raise a brow.
“Payout aside, you’re intrigued. You want to learn what Yaris has to offer. Don’t think I’ve mistaken that gleam in your eye for anything less. Besides, you enjoy my company too much.” He shrugs and starts toward the street of townhomes.
My jaw ticks. “I’d rather surround myself with hungry hatchlings than spend time with the likes of you, King Ashborne.”
“Right, keep telling yourself that if it helps.”
Cocky fucking bastard.
Our fingers brush with the next passing stride, sending a current of shivers up my arm. His hand doesn’t move, doesn’t falter. He doesn’t look at me, or acknowledge the touch at all. He simply swallows the awareness of it, of me.
There’s that damned quiet between us again, stretching and shifting. He is a predator in the shape of a man, composed yet impossibly sharp, walking beside me, leaving me all too aware of my own hesitation.
Then finally, he speaks, just above a whisper, as if confessing a secret shared only with me. “But if you do run, Nova, I’ll find you. I’ll always find you.”
Rain drums on the metal roof when I meet Yaris in the library, rounded spectacles balanced on the tip of his nose.
“Found anything of significance?” I ask, taking a seat beside him.
“The records I have go back three hundred years and within that, only three descendants of Ceti married into other factions. Their blood lines died out over a few generations.” He slams the book shut with an exasperated sigh.
“Only three? That can’t be possible.”
“It’s like Astora herself willed it. This one here…
” He retrieves a scroll from a stack to his right and taps an index finger on a handwritten name.
“Married into House Raine, but she and her husband never produced any children. And here…” He unfurls a second scroll.
“He was an emissary to Smoke but never married. I don’t understand. ”
“Damn.” I sink into the chair beside him. “What about a noble daughter or son estranged from the family that’d deserted or disappeared into another faction?”
Yaris shakes his head. “Ceti is the most exclusive of noble houses, and the most loyal. Their blood runs thicker than ore. None of the descendants, at least those of record, ever left Sovereign.”
“Well, shit,” I say, inspecting the scroll. “There has to be at least one surviving member, Yaris. The egg waits for them.”
“We’ll keep looking.” He glances up to me, reassurance glistening in his watery eyes. “You have my word.”
Jace’s words come back to me in a faint echo.
As much as I hate to admit it, the King of Shadow is right.
Yaris sits beside me, willing and eager, to teach me, to fill in the gaps of my lineage.
While I’m still wrestling with an anger that refuses to simmer, this opportunity is fleeting.
So, I relax into my seat and swallow my pride.
“I thought you might teach me about our people…our customs. I was only a child when I left, and I’ve realized I know almost nothing about our faction.” Our faction. The words are foreign on my tongue, bitter and uncomfortable, but I say them anyway.
Yaris straightens and glances up through his spectacles. “Let me show you something, then.”
He rises and starts for the library’s exit without another word.
Hastily, I follow, my palms pocketed and eyes low. We descend the carpeted steps to the first floor and cross the entryway with white cotton curtains fluttering in the open bay breeze. Even in heavy rainfall, the windows stay open. Water drips in, collecting in candlelit puddles beneath the sills.
“Just this way, my dear.” Yaris gestures toward the basement steps. We descend into a wine cellar, the air dryer than expected. Rows of corked amber bottles line the room. Opposite us is another stairwell, spiraling to a lower subterranean level.
“I had this built when I purchased the place. It was a feat, digging out the lowest level, but…”
He disappears into the shadows, and for a moment, my step falters. My experience alone in dark, empty rooms hasn't ever gone well, but curiosity’s chokehold is one that rarely lets go. I sigh and follow him down the steps.
The stairwell landing opens into a small chamber, coated in glorious crystals. My breath snags when Yaris turns the knob on an oil sconce, and the room brightens.
Unlike the wine cellar, the room is pristine—not a spiderweb or speck of dust to be found. Four velvet seat-cushions encircle a raised silver bowl, its contents swirling and glittering in the room’s warm light.
“Yaris…” I breathe, approaching the bowl. “Is this what I think it is?”
“Directly from Astora’s Falls. Before I left, I filled a canteen in the chance that Smoke’s dragons would decimate the place.” He takes a seat on one of the cushions and crosses his legs.
My mother spoke of Astora’s Falls and the sacred rituals she performed there to honor our goddess, but here and now, the opalescent liquid entrances me entirely.
“Sit.” Yaris gestures to the cushion beside him.
“I worked in the sanctum with your mother—cleaning the prayer chambers after events and rituals.” He retrieves a wooden ladle from a box nestled under the bowl’s stand.
“I picked up a few things, though. Did your mother teach you about the astral plane?”
“Of course she did, but that’s not knowledge specific to Sovereign. Children across the factions are all taught of the gods’ dominion.”
“You’re right in that sense, but only those of Sovereign know how to cross into it.” He holds out the ladle.
“You’re talking about astral projection?
Yaris…I—it’s forbidden now.” Shock winds up my throat.
When Sovereign fell, all of their practices burned along with it.
The factions outlawed performing the sacred ritual, claiming they brought humans too close to the heavens.
“Have you been practicing down here? All of these years since?”
Yaris offers a slow and steady nod in response. “Of course I have. It’s what keeps our culture—our memory—alive. There are those that fear what they do not know. I’m offering to teach you these ways, if your mother hasn’t already.”
“She died before I was able to learn,” I say, eyes catching on the bowl.
“Astora might provide answers,” he says. “She is all knowing after all. This could be the best way to find your rider.”
“No.” My fist collides with the stone floor before I realize it.
“Don’t you want to learn of your heritage? Your ancestors and the faction they hail from?”
“Of course I do, but I came looking for books and fond memories. Not sacred fucking rituals that should’ve been left to time with those who died protecting them!” I rise to my feet, vision speckled with hot-blooded rage. “This was a mistake.”
“Nova, wait,” Yaris says, meeting my eye level. The little sliver of myself that clings to a childhood I don’t remember gives me pause.
“I ran from the promise I made to your mother, and for that, I won’t ever forgive myself.
Let me teach you the ways of our people—at least only the foundation of our practices—then the decision is yours if you want to continue.
But, please, let me make up for my mistakes in the only way I know how.
” His eyes search my expression with heartbroken pleas.
My feet beg to flee, to fly back upstairs and run from this place without looking back, but I can’t.
I’m closer to something that, up until only a few days ago, I thought was gone forever. My chest strums with the glimpse of a face I’d nearly forgotten—now blurred by time and faded like an ancient painting—my mother. Would she want me to have followed in her footsteps?
Then something else eats at me. What if I’m not meant to? What if Astora doesn’t want me to learn her servants’ ways? What if I fail? Those worries are scorching as I swallow them back down, leaving a bitter taste of regret on my tongue.
“Fine. Show me,” I say.
Yaris grins and returns to his seat, patting the cushion beside him. “Come.”
I settle back on the floor, the velvet smooth under my crossed legs, and take a breath.
“Astral projection is easy once you’ve accomplished it, but it requires many attempts and trials before successfully crossing into the gods’ plane for the first time.
” Yaris retrieves a glass jar of herbs from a shelf below the basin.
“We use these to open our senses to the cosmos, most notably, crushed lavender buds. The aroma keeps the airways smooth and engaged.”
I watch with held breath as he uncorks the jar and taps a sprinkle of the herbs into the bowl. The scent reaches me almost instantly—clean and fresh like the fields outside my childhood home in Sovereign.
Lavender is an incredibly rare import and with the majority of its native habitat now burned to ash, it’s next to impossible to find. The scent nips at my nose, shooting memories through me.
“Deep breaths in to steady your heartbeat.” Yaris’s voice is a whisper through my mind. I follow his lead, drawing in, then out, until my body melts into the floor cushion.
“Good, now, focus on the basin. Listen for its words. Do you hear them?”
There’s nothing but silence. Nothing but my own breath, and Yaris’s expectant presence beside me.
“No,” I reply, squeezing my eyelids tighter.
“Keep listening. It may take some time,” he says.
We sit in stillness, both with closed eyes and open ears, but nothing comes to me. No whispers or ancient tonals. No voices or rush of knowledge. It’s just a basin filled with empty promises and forgotten secrets.
Seconds, then minutes, then an hour has passed—or at least I think it has—time either sprints or crawls by there in the quiet light.
We sit. We breathe. We listen.
My muscles twitch under the forced stillness. Thoughts I’m desperate to ignore race through me, and I find myself questioning whether that faint whisper is the creaking foundation or a voice from the cosmos. When my knees ache and my thighs cramp, I open my eyes.
“This isn’t working. Maybe I’m just not meant to.”
But Yaris doesn’t respond. He’s seated straight backed beside me, his lips thinned over his face. Where his eyes usually glimmer violet, now glow with a smattering of stars—like fractured gemstones reflecting the sconcelight around us.
I leave him to his journey, praying to Astora for a safe return.