The Songbird and the Heart of Stone (Crowns of Nyaxia #3)

Chapter 14

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

O ur journey to the next Sanctum dragged on. Time muddied the farther we got from the surface of the mortal world—there was no sunrise or sunset to mark the end of a day, after all, and we soon traveled so far that I couldn’t even feel the sun in my veins at all.

Asar led us through a twisting maze of hallways and staircases. The path was convoluted. Sometimes, we had to leave the halls of Morthryn and venture briefly into the Descent. It was barren out there, the ground dusty and sky empty. I could hear cries in the distance, but Asar always quickly shepherded us back to another mysterious branch of Morthryn’s roots before we had any encounters with whatever made them.

Asar reminded us often that this was nothing compared to what we’d experience in the lowest Sanctums—where Morthryn’s roots didn’t extend at all, and we would have no reprieve from the Descent itself. Still, the journey was tiring. Our bodies knew we were venturing into territory where mortals didn’t belong and reacted appropriately. Our fingernails blackened. Our eyes were tired. Chandra, as a human, had the lowest tolerance for it. Her face grew wan. The prayers at her lips were constant. When we all lay down to rest, I’d hear them whispered long into the night. It reminded me of the hushed hymns I’d hear at the Citadel, the distant echoes audible even from my room.

It should have been comforting, and I wasn’t quite sure why it wasn’t. Maybe because I increasingly felt as if I were hiding something from my god.

While the others rested, Asar would come and get me from my makeshift bed. He led me to various arched doorways that looked like the one I’d saved him from. Some were much calmer, intact, if straining. Others crumbled, clearly at the precipice of collapse. Together, we would restore the glyphs.

It was easier than I wished it was.

Asar had been right—the same techniques applied, even if the magic was different. It wasn’t complicated stuff. Asar basically fed it to me, doing all the hard work of the setup and leaving me to extend the reach of his magic. But it reminded me of my early days in the Citadel, when I’d gleefully discovered magic for the first time, and had thought that nothing could be so easy or fun or simple like this.

Meanwhile, every time I would huddle alone at night and try to call the power of the sun, I had to haul it to the surface like a boulder that just kept getting heavier.

The contrast scared me. I walked the line of my faith carefully. I’d agreed to help Asar with the gates, but I refused to go further than that. Maintaining the veil, I figured, was beneficial to Atroxus, too. And besides, if the Descent collapsed, we’d never make it to Alarus’s resurrection at all. I couldn’t justify anything more than that. Not when the temptation was so great.

This aggravated Asar, who, I quickly learned, was borderline gleeful at the prospect of pushing my magical abilities. Maybe he saw me as another interesting artifact to add to his extensive collection. Or maybe he was just confused by me, and it offended him to leave questions unanswered.

Either way, I had to constantly slip from his attempts to dissect my abilities. It started out as me turning down training exercises. Then he started to get sneaky about it. He went through a stretch where I would constantly sense him pressing on my mind, and I’d be forced to steel my mental walls against him.

Eventually, I pushed him violently away and snapped, “I told you to stop doing that!”

He just smirked in victory.

“You’re unusually good at that,” he said, too casually. “You should practice more.”

The bastard had been testing me.

That one had almost worked, because the last thing I wanted was to incentivize Asar to rummage around in my head, knowing how important it was that I kept my secrets intact. But I held my ground. I reinforced the gates. I helped Asar when he needed it. No more than that.

Only one other time did the dead breach a gate, like they had the night I rescued him.

It wasn’t nearly as bad this time. Only a few of them got through. Asar and Luce barely needed my help fighting them off. And I was grateful for that because he was one of them.

I tried to hide the way I shied away from him and the sigh of relief I let out when Luce herded him back through the door. He’d reached for me, and only me, as he fell through again. I could hear his pleas echoing in my head as Asar and I repaired the gate.

Afterward, I lingered with Asar longer than I usually did. I wasn’t in any rush to go lie down and see the ghost of that half-rotted face as I listened to Chandra’s prayers to the god that had failed him. We sat in a dusty old sitting room, gnawing on a piece of bread—after I’d complained enough, he’d started offering me real food, too, not just blood. I appreciated it, even though it also gave me the distinct impression that I was probably being trained like a dog. The food didn’t taste like much these days, but it reminded me of what it felt like to be human.

Asar was talking about something that I wasn’t paying attention to.

“Iliae!”

I flinched. “I don’t like it when you call me that.”

He gave me an odd look over his shoulder. He was sorting books on a crooked bookshelf. Apparently, he didn’t approve of Morthryn’s organizational systems.

“It’s your name,” he said.

I didn’t feel like explaining it.

“Why are you still here?” he asked. “You’re usually long gone by now.”

I didn’t have an answer for him. So I asked the question that had been nagging at me instead. “Are any of them here for you?”

He turned around and set the book down. “Who?”

“Them. At the door.”

“You mean the wraiths.”

I nodded. Something flickered in his face. I liked trying to read Asar. I found most people easy to decipher, but he was a nice little challenge, like the wooden puzzles Saescha used to give me when I was a child.

“I don’t have many who would follow me anywhere, dead or alive.”

Luce whined at this, as if offended by her erasure, and Asar scratched her head absentmindedly.

“That’s not a no,” I said.

He paused before answering. “We all have things that haunt us. I’ve damned many souls to the Descent. I wouldn’t fault those scorned souls if they were looking for their vengeance.”

Vengeance. My heart lurched at that. I hadn’t thought of it that way. Was that what Eomin wanted? Could I blame him, if it was?

I was quiet, gnawing on my crusty bread. I could feel Asar’s stare, though I dutifully ignored it. It was a mistake to stay here. I should’ve just gone to bed, where he wouldn’t be looking at me like that.

“Who’s the boy?” he asked.

I stopped chewing.

Of course he’d noticed. I hated that he had, and I hated that I wasn’t surprised.

I held up the bread. “Do you have anything better than this hiding somewhere?”

“A lover?” he guessed.

I thought of an elbow touching mine.

My heart clenched, but I laughed lightly and gestured to myself. “Priestess.”

“The Order of the Destined Dawn doesn’t require chastity vows.”

Gods fucking help me. Leave it to Asar to know every inane detail of a religious group half a world away.

“My sect did,” I lied. “We should get back and get some rest before the others wake up.” I started to stand.

But behind me, Asar said, “What was his name?”

I stopped mid-stride.

I tried not to say it, even to myself. It was too painful. I hadn’t spoken his name—any of their names—in so long. Not even to Raihn, in his many fruitless attempts to learn more about my past. I didn’t get to say their funeral prayers or write upon their gravestones.

“What happens to them?” I asked quietly. “The ones who are stuck out there in the Descent? Can they pass through on their own?”

A pause. “Sometimes,” Asar said.

He was trying to spare my feelings, which was actually sweet.

“The truth,” I said.

“The ones who get trapped occasionally can slip through to the underworld, as they were supposed to. But most of the time, they just wander, frozen in whatever phase of the transition they got caught in, trying to get to life or to death.”

“Forever?”

I thought of how many souls I’d seen in the Sanctum of Body alone. Hundreds. Thousands. And surely, there were countless more that never crossed my path.

All those people, stuck between life and death, forever?

My friend, stuck there, forever ?

Asar’s nonanswer said all it needed to.

“What was his name, Iliae?” he asked instead. “Just his name.”

I hadn’t said it in so long. But he deserved to be acknowledged aloud. “Eomin,” I said, and I turned away before Asar could see the tears stinging my eyes.