At last he saw a white tongue of flames against the smoke. His eyes stung, and his stomach heaved as he dragged himself toward it. With as much strength as he could muster, he took the last of the rope gathered in his arms and threw it into the flames.
The fire flickered, and Hassan fell to his knees, violent coughs wracking his body. Shutting his eyes against the burn of the smoke, he crawled away, following the rope to find the exit.
The heat grew more intense. The rope had caught fire, burning quicker than he could crawl.
He rolled to the side to avoid being scorched and tried to follow the line of white fire. But the smoke was pressing in on him. He could no longer see. He could no longer breathe. The smoke was in his lungs, in his mouth, in his eyes, filling up his head. His chest felt like it would burst open.
Soon the fire would reach the chrism oil and set the whole tower alight. Hassan had done what he needed to do. He had no more strength.
Just like his father, he would die protecting his people.
He closed his eyes, and the smoke enveloped him.
64
ANTON
Anton climbed.
It was like he was in a trance, following the dizzying stairs that wound farther and farther up the lighthouse. The crashing of waves against rock grew fainter as he climbed higher.
The Godfire at the top had been just a far-off light when he’d begun, but now he could see its pale flames and the whirring glass panes that protected it from the wind. His legs burned in protest as he passed the observation deck. The stairs narrowed. The flame grew nearer, its light consuming his gaze.
Flames licked out against the gray sky as he careened onto the stone platform surrounding the torch. Heat scorched his back as he edged along the parapet.
A tumult of dark green and gray waves raged below. Hands shaking, Anton raised himself onto the slick surface of the stone, climbing slowly, carefully, up from the platform onto the parapet. He wavered there for a moment, the wind buffeting him. Then, slowly, he reached toward the flame.
“What are you doing?”
A voice. Its sharp edge pierced through Anton’s daze. A torrent of esha crashed over him like a breaking storm. He turned.
Jude stood at the top of the stairs, aglow in the light of the pale flame. His face was its own storm, his eyes the same perilous green as the tempest sea.
“Don’t come any closer.” The wind swallowed Anton’s plea.
Jude strode toward him. “Come down.”
Anton looked back at the Godfire flame. He shook his head. “I have to do this.” The flame was hot on his skin, but inside, he was as cold as the day he’d plunged beneath the ice. He had to get rid of it, the thing that had haunted him since that day. “This is the only way.”
He had to burn out his Grace.
“Either come down here,” Jude said, voice rising over the wind, “or I’m coming up there.”
Anton didn’t move. A moment later, he felt Jude’s warmth beside him on the parapet. Wind cut across Anton’s cheeks, blowing wet strands of hair into his eyes.
“Look at me,” Jude said.
Anton shook his head, focusing on the bright flame. He just had to touch the flame, and then, he knew, all of this would end. The nightmares. The memory. This was the only way he would find salvation. The only way to be free. “You shouldn’t have followed me.”
“Anton,” Jude said, trying again. “The reason I found you in that cistern. The reason the Witnesses wanted you. It’s because—”
“I’m a Prophet,” Anton said, meeting Jude’s eyes at last.
A Prophet. It was impossible. It was the truth.
“Yes,” Jude said steadily. “Your birth was foretold. Before they disappeared, the Seven Prophets knew that you would arrive. They told us the signs. ‘Born beneath a light-streaked sky. An heir with the blessed Sight. A promise of the past undone.’”
“‘The shadowed future made bright,’” Anton said, the words coming to him unbidden, like something he’d heard in a story once. But he hadn’t.
Jude’s bright eyes widened in surprise. “Yes. You are the Last Prophet, Anton. It is my duty to protect you. I won’t let anyone hurt you. Not Illya. Not the Witnesses. No one.”
Anton looked at the dark line of Jude’s brow and then down at his hand, where it was clenched, white-knuckled, at his side. “They’re not the ones I’m afraid of.”
Jude faltered. When he spoke again, his voice was barely audible above the howl of the wind. “Then what?”
Anton shook his head. “I—I saw something. A long time ago. But I—”
“What? What did you see?”
“A vision,” Anton said at last. “I was so young, but even then, I—I knew, somehow, that what I saw was something that hadn’t come to pass. But that it would. And that when it did … no one could stop it. Least of all me.”
Something dark was coming for this world, and Anton had seen its shadow.
“A vision?” Jude repeated. “You mean you—you saw it? The end of the prophecy? The future that the Seven couldn’t see?”
Was that what it was? A vision that the Seven Prophets themselves hadn’t been able to see?
He shook his head. “I don’t know. I can barely remember it. It put me in some kind of trance, I think, and I went out onto the lake. I remember falling through the ice. Then—just flashes. Darkness. When my brother pulled me out of the water, I ran. I couldn’t face it, whatever it was.” He still couldn’t. He looked away from Jude, casting his gaze toward the horizon. “Feels like I’ve been running away from this thing my whole life.” Running from something in his own head. Running from something he would never escape.
“Then maybe it’s time to stop.” Jude’s voice was quiet and earnest, and so close beside him.
Anton heard it over the wind, over the crash of waves against the barren rock. He would, he thought unsteadily, be able to hear that voice over anything.
He turned. Jude’s eyes were bright and dangerous.
A crack split the air, louder and nearer than thunder. The lighthouse lurched beneath them. Anton wavered at the edge of the parapet.
“Jude!”
The sky, the wind, and the sea held their breath for a silent moment. Then a flash of light burst from below and lit the world to white flame.
The lighthouse swayed. Flames licked through the air. Anton stumbled back. Jude leapt forward.
Together, they fell.
65
JUDE
Jude’s blood seared as he leapt through the Godfire.
He ignored the pain, ignored the fire that raged in his veins and the wind that whipped at his face as he threw his arms around Anton, shielding him from the flames. His Grace surged as he held the Prophet tight and pushed off from the edge of the lighthouse parapet, arcing their fall toward the sea.
The water rushed up to meet them. Bright light filled his vision. Godfire ignited his Grace, setting his body ablaze with pain. The scorching white heat consumed him until he could hold on no longer.
He could feel nothing, see nothing, but he could still hear the soft sound of Anton’s breath rising over the howling, pitiless wind.
They splashed down into the water, and everything was silent.
66
ANTON
The sea folded Anton into its embrace.
Fire burned behind his eyelids. Darkness reached up, closing around him. It had chased him since the day on the frozen lake.
He’d done everything he could to protect himself from it, but the vision had always been there, waiting. In the water, in the darkness, he couldn’t run anymore. He couldn’t fight. He let it in.
And sank.
* * *
He was in a city of ruins. Ash and dust choked a red sky. A shadow eclipsed the light of the sun.
A curl of black smoke beckoned Anton along an eroded path, past crumbling pillars and collapsed arches.
Anton … Anton … Prophet …
The smoke led him to
the heart of the ruined city. To the broken tower—rubble, a skeletal frame, and one standing wall rising up like a great monolith.
Four black twists of smoke spiraled up from each crumbled wall, joining in the center like the points of a compass.
A low hum permeated the air, growing louder until it resolved into a voice, crackling like flames.
The final piece of our prophecy revealed.
In the ruin of the tower lay a body, twisted unnaturally among the crumbling stones. The smoke wound around it. The figure began to crack, like a stone statue broken. White light poured out from the fissures.
In vision of Grace and fire.
The smoke rippled and curled together into a single form, rising up from the figure, blocking out the bleeding sky.
Anton looked up.
Two bright eyes, searing with light. Eyelids of rippling black smoke.
To bring the age of dark to yield.
They saw him. Saw inside him. He could not move, could not think, could not see anything but those eyes. Eyes of cold flame and light.
Or break the world entire.
He stood at a precipice, overlooking a city he’d never seen before, a city of lush green palms and cerulean water tucked in the embrace of rolling dunes. An immense gate carved of red rock towered over the edge of the city. A crack split the air, and suddenly the gate collapsed. The entire city began to waver, as the shifting sand beneath swallowed it.
Another city rose in its place. This one he knew by the two great statues that flanked its harbor. Tarsepolis. Light and fire rained down from the sky, igniting the city in a blazing inferno.
From the ashes, Pallas Athos rose. Anton stood at the highest tier, on the steps of the Temple of Pallas, watching as a wave of blood flooded in, turning the once-white streets and buildings red.
One by one, the Six Prophetic Cities fell.
He returned to the broken tower where he’d started. Only now, he was standing within the ruin, beneath the blood-red sky. Smoke twisted around him.
He looked down. The body lay there, face twisted up toward him.
Her eyes opened, and Beru let out a shattering scream. The vision dissipated in a blast of bright light.
Anton woke.
67
BERU
Beru stood beside her sister in the ruin of their home, staring at the body of the boy who’d brought her there.
Hector lay spread out in the dirt, his eyes gazing blankly up at a cloudless sky. Beru knew the last thing those eyes had seen was Ephyra’s face.
“What did you do?” she said. Warm blood trickled down her wrist. She tore her eyes from Hector’s still body to watch the drops of blood splash down into the dust at her feet.
What have we done?
“Beru.” Ephyra’s voice was wracked with pain. “I had to. I had to. He brought you here to die. I couldn’t let that happen.”
“He was innocent,” Beru said, her voice hollow. “He was innocent, and you killed him. You murdered him, Ephyra.”
“To save you.”
Dirt, blood, and tears stained Ephyra’s cheeks. Beru stared at her sister, feeling like she was seeing her as she truly was for the first time.
“I would rather die than be the reason you become a monster.” Beru’s voice caught on the edge of those words. She felt a wave of nausea and the pressure of tears behind her eyes. “But I think it’s too late.”
“Beru—”
“I told you, Ephyra, I can’t do this anymore.”
“We can still find the Chalice,” Ephyra said, reaching for her. “Just because Anton couldn’t help us doesn’t mean—”
Beru pulled away. “No more. No more searching. No more Pale Hand. No more people dead because of what I am. It’s over.”
“It’s not over,” Ephyra said fiercely. “You’re still breathing. Beru. Please—”
“Hector told me there’s a prophecy,” Beru said haltingly. “A prophecy that says that an Age of Darkness is coming, and … we’re the ones who will cause it. The pale hand of death. And one who rises from the dust.”
Ephyra let out a humorless laugh. “Are you serious? A prophecy? There are no more prophecies. The Prophets are gone, and they aren’t coming back. You don’t really—”
“That’s what he told me. And I believe him. I do. Because he’s right, Ephyra. Look at what you’ve done. This place … our home … we destroyed it. If we’re capable of this, I don’t need a prophecy to tell me that we’re capable of much worse.”
“Is this what you really think?” Ephyra stepped toward her. “That we have some sort of destiny to cause evil?”
Beru swallowed. “All I know is that there’s something dark inside of us. I can’t ignore it anymore.”
“What are you saying?” Ephyra asked desperately. “What are you going to do?”
Beru raised her chin and looked past her sister, across the yard and toward the distant sun. “I’m saying that I’m leaving. And this time, you aren’t going to follow me.”
Ephyra stepped toward her. “Beru.”
“I’m saying goodbye.”
“No,” Ephyra said. “No, you don’t get to—”
“I don’t get to?” Beru echoed. “I didn’t get a choice in dying. I didn’t get a choice in being brought back. But I get a choice now. I’m not going to let us become monsters. I choose to leave.”
“Beru, you can’t do this.” Ephyra’s voice cracked. “Please.”
Beru curled her hands around her sister’s arms. “You’re my sister, and no matter what you’ve done I’ll always love you.” She stepped back, releasing Ephyra. “But this is the last time you’ll ever see me.”
Beru watched as her sister’s heart broke. She could see it in the way her face crumpled, in the way her body shook. She made herself watch until she couldn’t anymore, and then she turned away.
She needed to do this. Hector had known that, and now she did, too. This was about more than his death. More than the lives the Pale Hand had taken. More than the village Beru’s resurrection had destroyed.
Ephyra loved Beru enough to tear the world apart to save her. And Beru loved Ephyra enough not to let her.
So she turned, and she walked from the shade of the acacia and into the light.
68
HASSAN
The first thing Hassan became aware of wasn’t a sensation, but the lack of one—pain. His eyes no longer stung. His chest no longer felt like it was about to collapse. Air moved through his lungs with ease—in and out, in and out.
Somehow, he was alive.
The next thing he felt were cool hands against his cheek. The scent of citrus and earth tickled his nose beneath the stench of smoke. He wanted to fall into it. Lips brushed his forehead, and he moved, catching the kisser with one hand and pressing his lips to hers.
Khepri let out a small noise of surprise, and then a sigh as they separated. Hassan blinked his eyes open and sat up. Khepri was kneeling beside him, her face sooty but wide open with relief. The other soldiers stood around them.
“What happened?” he rasped out. His throat, he realized, was still sore from the smoke.
Khepri hesitated before answering. “When you didn’t come out of the lighthouse, I went in after you.”
“Khepri,” he said, meaning it to be a reproach.
But she didn’t look the least bit sorry. “You were just inside the door. You’d almost made it out before you collapsed.”
“She carried you on her back.”
Hassan looked up and saw Faran standing over both of them, arms crossed over his chest.
“You two barely made it clear of the explosion.”
Hassan sat up. “The lighthouse?”
“It’s gone,” Khepri said gently.
“I want to see.”
Khepri pressed her lips together but dutifully stood and helped pull Hassan to his feet. He was still a little weak, but after a moment of swaying, he was able to stand and look beyond the seawall to the ruins of the li
ghthouse.
The legacy of his family. The pride of his kingdom. It was gone now, and no matter what happened next, no matter if they succeeded in driving out the Witnesses and deposing Lethia, this piece of his people’s history would never be the same. The lighthouse that had stood for over a thousand years now lay beneath the sea. And Hassan would be remembered as the prince who had brought it down.
It was difficult to find triumph in that.
“Prince Hassan.”
He turned. Behind him stood the Herati soldiers, their faces tired and streaked with soot, some of them wounded. Dozens fewer than the full force that had come to Nazirah.
“Prince Hassan, what do we do now?”
There was no telling what would happen to them here. They would be hunted. They could be executed.
But they had stopped the Witnesses together. They had kept the city from being burned to ash. The lighthouse of Nazirah was no longer standing, but these people were. And so was he.
“We find shelter,” Hassan said. “We regroup. And soon, we strike.”
He wasn’t on anyone’s path anymore—not his father’s, not the Order’s, not Lethia’s. Nothing was promised, except the girl beside him and the people who believed in them both. The Kingdom of Herat was more than a lighthouse. More than a prophecy. Now that Hassan was back on its shores, he would do whatever it took to keep it safe.
In the distance, the Order’s silver-sailed ships turned, gliding away into the sea.
Hassan lifted his face to the sky. There, in the east, the sun broke over the horizon.
69
EPHYRA
A breeze stirred the acacia leaves over Ephyra’s head. The sun had set on the village of the dead.
Beru was gone. Ephyra was alone, after everything she’d done to prevent it.
“Hello, Ephyra.”
Ephyra whipped toward the sound of her name. Not so alone. Not yet.
She didn’t recognize the woman who stood at the edge of the yard, but something told her she should.
There Will Come a Darkness Page 38