She wore brown trousers and a simple shift of sky blue, the same type of clothing the people in Medea would have worn. A pale orange scarf, the color of the blushing sunrise, covered her dark curls. She was beautiful, Ephyra could see that—deep-brown skin a shade or two lighter than her own, eyes the color of dark liquor.
“Who are you?” Ephyra asked as another breeze rustled past them.
The woman stepped into the yard, making her way toward her with fluid grace. “Well, I never did tell you my real name.”
“Mrs. Tappan?”
That’s not her real name, you know. That’s what Anton had said, that night that felt like an eon ago, standing in his flat in the City of Faith. Now that Ephyra was finally face-to-face with her, she knew Anton had been right. Whoever this woman was, she wasn’t just a bounty hunter. And now she’d tracked down the village of the dead, where Ephyra had begun.
Ephyra clenched her fist. “What are you doing here?”
“I came to help you,” the woman replied.
“Help me?” Ephyra said. “You’ve done nothing but ruin my life. You are the one who sent us to Pallas Athos. You are the reason Hector found us there. All of this is your fault!”
The woman watched her impassively. “I may have put you in Hector Navarro’s path, but it is your actions, and your sister’s, that brought you here. Those who cannot own their choices will always be mastered by fate.”
“Is this just some sick game to you?” Ephyra choked out. “Sending us on a wild chase to find some legendary Chalice? It doesn’t even really exist, does it?”
“Oh, the Chalice does indeed exist. And it can help you save your sister. Is that still what you want?”’
Ephyra dragged in a harsh breath. Saving Beru had been the one constant in her life for so long. There was never room for anything else. There was only the next city, the next kill, the next line of ink on Beru’s skin.
She didn’t know a life without it. She didn’t know how to want anything else.
“Come with me,” the woman said, tilting her head toward the house. The house where both of Ephyra’s parents had perished. The house where Beru had taken the first breaths of her second life.
Ephyra followed.
The woman glided through the draped doorway and into the small sitting room, with its low table surrounded by worn cushions and the tall bookshelves that lined the walls. Ephyra couldn’t help reaching out to trip her fingers over the spines of the books, the way she used to when she was young. Nostalgia hit her like a sudden ray of sun, for a moment blasting through her grief. She felt just like a little girl again.
The woman turned to one of the bookshelves and pulled something out. Ephyra recognized it instantly. It was one of her father’s sketchbooks. He used to take it with him on long caravan journeys, capturing within its pages the faces of the people he’d met and the sights he’d seen. She remembered many evenings, tucked warm against her father’s side, exclaiming, What’s that! each time her father turned a page to reveal a herd of camels or a strange artefact he’d encountered from another merchant caravan.
The woman opened the sketchbook and began paging through it. Ephyra bit back a cry of protest. Her father’s sketches felt like something private. Sacred.
The woman stopped on a sketch of Beru. In the picture, she looked about ten or eleven, a gangly sprite of a kid. Her arms were stretched above her head, diving to catch a falling kite. Ephyra remembered that day. The village kite festival. Beru had caught more kites than any other kid. She’d been so proud. It was only a few weeks before Beru had gotten sick.
Tucked between that page and the next was a piece of loose parchment, folded into quarters. The woman held it out to her.
With shaking hands, Ephyra unfolded it. It was another drawing, but not of a person.
It was a cup. She brushed her fingers over the fine detailed pencil strokes depicting a cup of elaborate silver filigree, studded with tiny jewels. It looked like it belonged on the table of an ancient king of Behezda.
Not a cup. A chalice.
She slowly raised her eyes from the chalice to the woman’s face. “Is this—?”
“Look at the other side,” the woman said.
There, Ephyra found a map of the Seti desert, stretching from the eastern Pelagos coast to Behezda, and from the northern Inshuu steppe all the way to the South Sea. Tiny ink x’s marked off dozens of desert villages, some she’d never even heard of.
Clipped to the bottom corner of the map was a scrap of parchment with words written in an unfamiliar hand.
Aran, it read. Her father’s name. I’m afraid we can’t help you with this one. If the Chalice exists, you don’t want to go looking for it. The only thing you’ll find is a quick death.
Ephyra read the words three times over, as if they might change. Long before she even knew it existed, her father had been searching for Eleazar’s Chalice. All those times he’d left with a caravan to trade in the desert, was this really what he’d been doing? Her heart thudded in her throat.
“What is this?” she croaked. “Why was my father looking for Eleazar’s Chalice?”
The woman didn’t answer.
Ephyra lunged forward, smacking her father’s sketchbook out of the woman’s hands.
“Answer me!” she cried. “If my father was looking for Eleazar’s Chalice, it had something to do with me, didn’t it? Why I’m … why my Grace is like this.”
The woman tilted her head. “Like what?”
“Powerful,” Ephyra said. The word felt strange on her tongue. She didn’t think of herself as powerful, but the proof was here, in this village, and burned into the skin of every person she’d ever killed.
Had her father known, somehow, what Ephyra was capable of? Did he believe the Chalice would help her control her Grace?
The woman swept her gaze over the room. “You and your sister did not start this. The Pale Hand and the one who rises. But you will be the ones to finish it.”
Ephyra flinched. Beru’s words about the last prophecy came back to her. An Age of Darkness is coming. And we’re the ones who will cause it.
“All I wanted was to save my sister,” Ephyra said, her voice breaking. “None of this was supposed to happen.”
“But it did,” the woman replied. “And now, knowing that, knowing what it costs, do you still want to save her?”
Ephyra closed her eyes. “Yes.”
“Then you’ll have to finish what your father started,” the woman said. “Make your choice.”
Ephyra looked at the map in her hands. If she could find the Chalice, she could save Beru once and for all.
And she might doom the world in the process.
As she met the woman’s unwavering gaze, Ephyra made her choice.
70
ANTON
Anton hadn’t drowned.
His head throbbed. The world rocked and swayed. He needed to throw up, but he couldn’t seem to figure out which way was up. He wrenched his eyes open. Bright light drilled into him.
In a flash, it all came back—the cistern, the lighthouse, his brother, Jude—and he sat back, panting.
“Let’s try and take it easy for now, all right?”
A hand pressed flat against his chest. He felt the hum of esha suffusing the room, pleasant and brassy. Calm. Focused. Powerful.
Anton stared blearily up at the woman. She was pale and muscular, tawny freckles dotting her face and what he could see of her neck and arms. Her copper curls were gathered into a thick braid, hiding part of a silver twist of metal around her neck. Her dark blue eyes seemed to warm when they met his. But there was an edge of unease beneath them.
Anton’s stomach heaved, and he flopped to his side, emptying its contents onto the wooden floor.
The woman didn’t even blink.
“Water,” he rasped when he was done.
There was a bowl sitting beside the cot. The woman carefully held it to his lips, tipping his chin back to help him drink. The touch was
unexpectedly tender. Reverent, almost.
Anton shuddered and lay back against the pillows, closing his eyes. Groaning, he threw his arms over his face, trying to block any light.
“Do you know where you are?” the woman asked. “Can you tell me your name?”
“Anton,” he mumbled underneath his arms. “We’re on a ship.”
“That’s right,” she said gently. “My name is Penrose. I know you must be very confused right now, but I can promise that you’re safe here. Very safe.”
“Where is Jude?” The last thing he remembered was falling, Jude’s arms around him, shielding him from the Godfire, the two of them splashing down into the sea, and then—
Penrose’s lips pressed into a thin line, and her face, already pale, went white. Anton’s stomach swooped low, and he leaned over, certain he was going to be sick again.
At last, Penrose answered, “He’s on the ship.”
A breath rushed out of him, choking in its relief.
But Penrose wasn’t finished. “I saw you both fall from the lighthouse. I saw you go into the sea. We dove in after you—Annuka and I—and pulled you out as quickly as we could. Jude wasn’t breathing when you came out. The healers are doing everything they can.”
Anton’s head thumped with a rush of hot blood, and he felt dizzy all over again.
“Anton.” Penrose’s voice was still soft, but there was new urgency beneath it. “What were you and Jude doing on top of the lighthouse?”
Anton didn’t say anything for a long moment. Then, when he sensed Penrose was growing restless with his silence, he said, “You’re one of them, aren’t you? The Order of the Last Light?”
She nodded.
He drew in a shaking breath. There was no point anymore, hiding from this, running from it. He’d proved that on top of the lighthouse. And it had nearly gotten him killed.
It had nearly gotten Jude killed.
“I want to see him,” he said abruptly.
Penrose hesitated.
“Please. Take me to him, and I’ll tell you whatever you want.”
* * *
It took three tries for Anton to make it out of his cabin. Penrose was patient, supporting most of his weight as he stumbled to the door and down the narrow, creaking hallway. They paused every few hundred steps so he could lean against the bulkheads and stop his head from spinning.
When they finally reached the sick bay, there were four more people in the hallway, two dark-skinned men, and a fair-skinned woman and man who looked so similar they had to be siblings. They all wore the same dark blue cloak and silver torc as Penrose.
“Is that—?” the fair-skinned man began, staring openly at Anton.
Penrose cut him off with a meaningful look. “He wants to see Jude.”
The hatch eased open, and the pale light of the sick bay spilled into the hall. Anton swallowed, hesitant now that he was standing so close to where Jude lay broken and helpless.
He pushed the door open and entered. A row of cots lined the room, half of them curtained off. Wan light suffused the room. Penrose led him to one of the curtains and swept it back.
Jude was small and pallid against the gray sheets of his cot. His arm was wrapped in bandages, and pale scars crept up the side of his throat like the cracks in shattered glass.
All because of Anton. Because he’d been a coward, running to the top of the lighthouse because he hadn’t been able to face what he was. What he had seen.
He was going to be sick again. He ran from the room, pushing past the hatch and the people in the passageway. He made it all the way to the main deck before his stomach heaved. He emptied it over the side of the ship.
When he was done, he laid his head against his arms, slumping over the gunwale. The inside of his mouth was hot and astringently bitter. A hand fell tentatively against his shoulder and he felt Penrose’s brassy esha again.
“The Godfire,” Anton said hollowly. “At the top of the lighthouse. Jude leapt through it to get to me.” He could still remember the heat, the serpentine twist of flames that cracked like a whip through the air between them.
“When you hit the water, the flames were put out,” Penrose said haltingly. “The burns are minor. There’s a chance—” She stopped, emotion swallowing her next word. “There’s a chance the water doused him before the Godfire could burn out his Grace. We won’t know until he wakes up. We just have to wait.”
Wait to see if Jude’s body could withstand what Anton had done to it.
“Jude was still using his Grace as you fell,” Penrose said. “He used it to leap away from the falling lighthouse and swim away from the undertow.”
Anton looked up, not sure what she was getting at. She was looking at him carefully.
“It must have taken a lot of will,” Penrose went on, “for him to use his Grace with that much pain. I’ve touched chains forged in Godfire, and that alone was almost more pain than I could bear. I can’t imagine what it would feel like to try to use my Grace with the flames themselves scorching me. Whatever he was fighting for … it must have been very important.”
Anton raised his head, meeting her gaze and the unspoken question in it.
“I’m a Prophet.” He’d said the words to Jude at the lighthouse. They didn’t sound any less strange now. “The Prophet, I suppose.”
Penrose held herself very still. “It’s true, then.”
“You knew?”
“You’re the right age,” Penrose said quietly. “And when I saw Jude—” Her voice caught.
Anton waited.
“Jude abandoned the Order in Pallas Athos. He turned his back on his duty and betrayed his vows. For a Paladin, to betray your vows is to forfeit your life.”
“Oh.”
Anton thought of the Hidden Spring, and the grim set of Jude’s mouth when he’d set down the golden torc and declared he, too, would come aboard the Black Cormorant and sail to Tel Amot. He thought of the sound of Jude’s voice—broken, defeated—aboard the ship Illya had held them captive on, saying that he’d failed.
Shame flooded his chest. Jude had risked his life, in more ways than one, to keep Anton safe. He thought he had failed, that he’d betrayed everything he believed in. He’d told Anton as much, in the hold of the ship on the way to Nazirah. But it wasn’t Jude who’d failed to live up to his destiny. It was Anton. By trying so hard, for so long, to escape it, he had nearly doomed the both of them.
“When I saw Jude in the lighthouse he said he knew you were in Nazirah,” Penrose said. “He said he could feel your Grace. Can you tell me what happened?”
Anton took a shuddering breath. He was suddenly so very tired. But he thought of Jude, lying half-dead in the sick bay, and he knew that this—the secrets he’d kept his whole life, the vision his mind had tried to erase—were what had put him there.
So he started to speak. The more he talked, the more he wanted to keep going—to get it all out, dig it up from the deep, dark place inside him.
At some point, the chill of the night air grew too cold, and he and Penrose retreated to the cramped space of his cabin.
“When we were down in the cistern, my brother told me that the Prophets made a final prophecy before they disappeared.” He could still see Illya’s face in front of his, gold eyes gleaming in the dark. “That’s why they wanted me, I think. Somehow, I’m part of it all. The Witnesses—the Hierophant, I guess—wanted to get inside my head, to know what I saw all those years ago.”
Penrose drew in a sharp breath. “What did you see?” she asked, her voice barely a whisper but taut with urgency. “Anton, did you see how to stop the Age of Darkness?”
The words tugged at him like a memory. “Stop what?”
“The prophecy,” Penrose said in a rush. “The Last Prophet is meant to complete it. You are meant to complete it. To see how to stop the Age of Darkness.”
Anton shook his head, his heart plummeting like a stone to the bottom of a dark sea. “I saw something. The Age of Darkness. I sa
w it unfold. But not…”
Penrose’s fist tightened in her lap. “Tell me what you saw.”
He closed his eyes. The shadow over the sun. The broken tower. The dark smoke. And those bright eyes, pinning him in place, ripping him open. The ruins of the Six Prophetic Cities. The vision surged behind his eyes—he could see it, could smell the smoke and the blood-red sky.
He could see Beru’s face, her eyes the same bright white as the Godfire flames.
“Ruin,” Anton said at last. “I saw the whole world in ruin.”
* * *
Anton haunted the ship like a living ghost as they sailed across the Pelagos Sea. A sickness had settled heavy in his stomach, a sickness that no amount of sailor’s wine seemed to be able to cure.
The Order members stared when they encountered him in the narrow corridors, and whispered among themselves when they saw him on the mess deck. They spoke in hushed tones of the boy who’d climbed to the top of the lighthouse to spread his light. The boy who was their savior. Their Prophet.
He didn’t return to see Jude in the sick bay after that first night, even when days passed and Jude still didn’t wake. Anton took to staying in his room, sleeping during the day when the light was brightest. Penrose would wake him for supper, bringing flatbread and dried figs to his cabin. He ventured out only in the middle of the night, when he was sure that only a bare-bones crew would be awake.
The Guard did not raise any protests, though Anton could tell they weren’t pleased whenever he slipped out in the middle of the night. Nevertheless, one of them was always waiting outside his door, ready to trail after him like an imposing shadow.
Tonight, Penrose was on watch, standing in silence behind him as he bent over the rail, leaning into the wind as the ship raced into the night’s black embrace.
“Penrose.”
Anton stilled. Eight days had passed since he’d last heard that voice.
“Should you be up here?” Penrose asked. “You’re barely on your feet.”
Anton turned. Jude stood a few paces away, dressed in a simple linen tunic and pants. The moon washed him in pale light.
There Will Come a Darkness Page 39