by Lori M. Lee
But his desire had turned to madness, and whether that was the Dust or Istar’s influence or his own ambitions, I didn’t know. In the end, it didn’t matter.
I sighed, studying the way the fauhns frolicked across the white stone.
If you accepted your true form as an Infinite, Kronos had said, you could move through all of time and space with nothing but a thought.
I could have the power to walk through history, to see the way these creatures and all the others now extinct had lived, to experience the world as it had been when mahjo were revered as Kahls. It was a temptation like no other.
But it was also a sadness I didn’t know if I could bear.
The nostalgia became a knot in my chest, and I moved on. I left the Hall of Memories behind, making my way up to my bedroom.
For all the unforgivable things Lanathrill had done, I had to concede that they’d done some good, too. Fauhns had survived because of them, and that was something. It didn’t mean I wanted to be cheerful neighbors with them, though. What Emryn and the Council had done would not go unanswered.
I pushed into my room, gently rolling my shoulder as I did. My arm was in a sling, and my shoulder ached. The medic had pushed it back into place a week ago, but it would be a while before the shoulder fully healed. There had been only one vial of healing tonic left, and that had been used to keep Mason alive long enough for the medic and his own healing ability to save his life.
A pile of plump sweet rolls and a saucer of cream sat on a silver tray on my dresser. I smiled and made a mental note to thank Master Hathney. He’d been sending extra meals up to my room ever since he’d heard about what almost happened to me on the wall. While I wasn’t keen on being pitied, I could hardly argue with the pastries.
I sat down in the armchair to enjoy a roll, wishing Mason were here to share these. The thought of him made my brow furrow. He’d left yesterday to return to Etu Gahl, with two hollows to watch over him and keep him safe. He’d barely been able to do more than grit his teeth and cling to his scout.
For the first few days after the attack, I had watched over him as fever scorched his skin. His entire upper body and his jaw had been stitched back together and bandaged up as best as the White Court medics could do, but there was little doubt whether he would have survived had he not been mahjo. It had been difficult even to look at him, knowing that he’d almost died because I had chosen to protect Reev instead.
The first thing he’d said to me upon regaining consciousness was “You’re not Kalla.”
I had frowned, wondering if he was delirious. “No, I’m not,” I’d said tentatively.
Even as pale as Death herself, he’d cracked a smile and said, “I figured if I was dead, it’d be her I woke up to.”
Once the fever broke, he’d begun healing more quickly. It wasn’t like that moment in the arena when I’d watched Avan’s skin knit back together in a matter of seconds. Hollows recovered faster than regular humans, but such a devastating wound would still take time to heal. He was lucky not to have lost his arm. Even with the ready supply of healing tonic that awaited him back in Etu Gahl, Mason would carry the scars of his injury for the rest of his life. Another item to add to my vault of guilt.
I hadn’t wanted him to leave yet—he’d broken a sweat just sitting up in bed—but he’d insisted on taking his chances on the journey rather than languishing in a hospital bed. Miraya had approved his departure with the added hope that the hollows in Etu Gahl would have heard something from Irra. There’d been no word from either him or Kalla.
I could only imagine how Irra would react when he learned about what happened to his hollows. If he chose to retaliate, even a mountain wouldn’t be enough to protect Emryn from Irra’s retribution.
There was a knock at the door, and I called for whoever it was to come in.
Reev opened the door, smiling when he saw me. “Hey. How’d the meeting go?”
I turned to face him as he sat on my bed. “Looks like war.”
I’d just met with Miraya, her ministers, and the sentinel captains. For once, they’d all been in agreement: Lanathrill would pay for their treachery.
The rebels had elected a new leader, and she had been in the meeting. After holding a citywide farewell ceremony for all the lives lost, Miraya and the rebels had struck a truce. With Istar at the helm of the attack, the rebels had their proof that Miraya wasn’t the Infinite’s puppet, and they would unite to face their common enemy. I had left Miraya in her newly designed war room with the sentinels to discuss their campaign. A rider had been sent out to make contact with Peshtigo in the hopes that Ninurta could form a true alliance this time with a neighbor. And the hollows who’d accompanied Mason would extend an invitation to those in Etu Gahl. No doubt they would be crying for vengeance as well.
I wouldn’t be joining them. After the meeting, I’d resigned as adviser. Let the ministers trip over themselves to win her favor and the position.
I hoped she wouldn’t pick one of them. The ministers’ loyalty still felt shaky to me, so I’d suggested to Miraya that she bring in someone new. Someone who wouldn’t care about upsetting the ministers so long as the decisions made were in Ninurta’s best interests.
Naturally, I’d recommended Reev. He’d spent hours cooped up in Irra’s impossibly humid laboratory to help work out a solution to their technology issue, which proved his devotion to the tasks he set for himself. He’d said he would never serve another Kahl again, but an adviser wasn’t a servant.
“War,” Reev repeated. “Good.” I lifted my eyebrow. “They were going to sacrifice you, Kai.”
I ripped a roll into chunks to keep my hand busy.
“What would you have done if it was me they almost sacrificed?” Reev asked, snatching a roll from my plate for himself.
“I would have killed them,” I said without hesitation. It scared me how easily I could say that, but it was still true. “But they didn’t. Miraya will deal with them.”
And I will deal with Istar. But Reev didn’t need to know that.
For a couple of minutes, we ate in silence. I watched the muscles in Reev’s jaw tighten and relax as he chewed. He’d seemed a bit aimless this past week, as if he was still trying to find his place in this new life. Whether it was tinkering in a lab or trying to infiltrate a rebel network, Reev thrived when he had a purpose. His purpose used to be protecting me, but things were different now. If Miraya asked him to be her adviser, I hoped he would accept. He would make a much better adviser than I had.
“What about Avan?” Reev asked.
“What about him?” I touched the leaf brooch pinned to my tunic, rubbing my finger along its smooth edges. He’d taken his chimera and headed north. I had no idea where he’d gone or when he would come back.
“It’s not like you to do nothing.”
My lips curved. “Are you implying I’m an instigator?”
“Not implying anything, although trouble does tend to happen around you.”
“And yet you stick around.”
He shrugged. “I guess I like you.”
I laughed and stood. I crossed to the bed and reached for his hand. Twining our fingers together, I said, “Avan will come back when he’s ready. And if he takes too long, then I suppose I’ll have to go drag him back.”
He grinned. I held up our linked hands, studying how smooth and unmarred his skin was next to the scars still fading from my knuckles. I remembered the way his hand would engulf mine when I was little. For the longest time, I’d looked up at him and thought how unattainable he was—my impervious big brother, more an idol than a person. It had felt reassuring back then when I’d needed his protection, when I could remember so little that he’d been the only anchor I could grip.
But now, having known a few of his secrets and having seen him at the mercy of Ninu, he felt more real. Closer somehow. More reachable. I rubbed my thumb against the center of his palm. Warmth filled my chest, rising into my cheeks, and I looked up to find his gray
eyes studying my face with a strange thoughtfulness. I shied away, suddenly embarrassed and blushing for no reason.
Before either of us could say something, there was another knock at the door. I went to open it.
It was a servant. “Excuse me, but do you know where your brother is?”
I opened the door wider so she’d see him.
“Ah!” the servant said with a relieved smile. “Kahl Miraya has requested your presence in her war room,” she told Reev.
I turned to him with what I hoped was an innocent shrug. He looked wary, but he left with the servant and a promise to go with me to the oasis later.
I settled back into my armchair with the rest of the sweet rolls. The city was a bit lonely without Mason, Hina, or Avan. I dipped a chunk of bread into the cream and then tensed. The threads were vibrating. I reached out hesitantly. Awareness prickled my neck, and I spun in my chair.
Kronos was standing by the doorway.
“Can’t you drop in like a normal person?” I asked.
Kronos clasped his hands behind his back as he made a slow perusal of my room. His robes fluttered around his feet as he wandered over to the mantel where he paged briefly through a book about the Temple of Light that I’d borrowed from the library. Picking at the seam of my tunic, I watched him poke around my room, seemingly not in any hurry. It was extremely disconcerting. I supposed any girl would feel this way about her dad looking through her things.
Kalla had promised to keep him away, but that was before she left to deal with the sepulcher. And besides, the arrangement had been only if I remained as Miraya’s adviser.
This whole situation with Lanathrill had shown me how much I not only needed my powers, but also how much I had left to learn. There was no more denying the threads. My magic was vital to me, and I couldn’t reject such a huge piece of who I was.
My dreams had changed again. I still had nightmares, but now they were about what I’d seen in the Fields of Ishta. The dreams where I had to witness myself murder my loved ones had stopped.
After much reflection, I’d decided I needed to stop ignoring what Mason had said in Lanathrill, the theory I hadn’t wanted to hear at the time. My nightmares—and likely the dreams of Avan, which had also stopped—had been a result of guilt: guilt over what had been done to my loved ones because of me, and guilt over taking Ninu’s life, no matter that I would do it again if necessary. That guilt had been tied directly to my powers, so as I began to deny them in my waking hours, they had appealed to me in my sleeping ones. When I’d opened myself to the River, I could only assume that all the parts of me had finally accepted that I was not at fault for what had happened.
In truth, the guilt would never truly go away. But at least now, without those nightmares, I could try to leave it in the past.
“Can I ask you something?” I said as Kronos paged through my library book again. There was one aspect of my dreams that was still bothering me.
He smiled, but didn’t look up at me. “You may ask me whatever you like.”
“While I was in Vethe, I dreamed about Avan asking if I remembered—” I caught myself before I could admit to my father that Avan had been my first kiss. “Um, asking if I remembered something. And then Avan mentioned later on that he’d dreamed the actual memory. What do you think that means?”
He closed the book and set it back on the mantel. “Emotions are a powerful thing,” he said quietly. Hadn’t Mason said something similar? “Particularly yours, with your tie to the River. You never lost your powers, Kai. You only blocked yourself from them.”
“Are you saying that I inadvertently restored that particular memory?”
He closed his eyes. His fingers moved through the current, threads flashing in and out of sight as he searched for something. It took only seconds before his fingers stilled.
“No,” he said, returning his hand to his side. “The memory remains severed, but I imagine you must have presented the thread to him subconsciously.”
“I can do that?” I traced the air above the nearest thread with my forefinger. It shivered, glinting at me in welcome.
“There are a great many things you can do. You could even heal that shoulder simply by immersing yourself in the River.” He turned to face me fully. I could see in his eyes that, despite his indulgence of my questions, this wasn’t a social visit. It never was.
“What is it?” I asked.
“The sepulcher is missing.”
I found it suddenly difficult to breathe. “That can’t be good.”
“No,” he murmured, taking a seat on the stool in front of my dresser. “Kalla is attempting to trace it. It’s been releasing miniscule amounts of magic, which means it is, in fact, fractured.”
“Wait, so it wasn’t the Dust that gave magic to Emryn and his Council?”
“The magic in the Void has withered to ash and madness. It isn’t nearly enough to restore a mahjo’s powers. However, it did weaken the humans and make them more pliable to Istar’s manipulations.”
“I don’t get it. Why would only Lanathrill’s mahjo be affected by the sepulcher?”
“Since I imagine Istar has the sepulcher, the magic leaking from it responded to the nearest magical source—the mahjo.” He straightened out the long sleeves of his robes. “Istar has access to more power than any single Infinite should ever possess. And once she figures out how to invoke that power . . .”
“No more balance?”
“No more balance,” he confirmed.
Istar had wanted Emryn to attack Ninurta so that she could feed off the bloodshed. It seemed she would get her way after all, with Miraya determined to go to war. But with the sepulcher, a war between countries would be nothing. Strife would rip the world apart until there was nothing left.
As I was now, there was no way I would be able to face her and live. The utter helplessness I’d felt on the wall, unable to do more than cling to the threads as Reev and Mason lay vulnerable—I would never allow myself to be cornered like that again.
If I was to become stronger, I would need to access what Kronos had locked away: the Infinite inside me.
“So now what?” I asked. He wouldn’t have come just to tell me what was happening.
“Now the Infinite gather to discuss what is to be done.”
“And what about me?”
“You are Infinite,” he said. “Should you choose to attend the Gathering, you may.”
I considered this. “But I’m not a full Infinite.”
He lifted his chin. In daylight, the shadows of his face looked less severe. “Being that you are my heir, born of the River, you will be allowed entrance.”
“And I won’t lose myself?” Although I asked, the prospect no longer scared me. I knew what it meant to be human. I wouldn’t forget.
“Hardly. I offer nothing more than a glimpse at the world in which you belong.” He stood, his robes billowing around him, and extended his hand to me. “Tell me, are you ready to learn what you could be? The true extent of your powers?”
I stared at his hand, his long, elegant fingers. Every thread within my vision and beyond had been crafted by him. I didn’t think about the enormity of the duty he wanted to place on me. I thought about the power that awaited me if I had the courage to embrace it.
If I refused him, where did that leave me? Here, in this palace, waiting: for news from Mason, for the war with Lanathrill, for Avan to return. For the next time danger found me, and my strength failed again.
A glimpse. That was what he was offering me.
I wanted more.
I placed my hand in my father’s.
“I’m ready.”
Acknowledgments
A SEQUEL IS a curious beast. Completing this book was perhaps one of the most daunting things I’ve ever done, but I couldn’t have done it without an army of people supporting me. Thanks first and foremost to my editor, Robin Benjamin. She is a constant source of insight and skill.
Thanks also belong to:
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br /> The team at Skyscape: Courtney Miller, Miriam Juskowicz, Timoney Korbar, Andrew Keyser, Melody Moss, Tony Sahara, and Megan McNinch.
My agent, Suzie Townsend, who is as intelligent and savvy as she is fabulous, and the New Leaf crew for always being ready and eager to help.
Mindee Arnett and Lauren Teffeau, without whom this book would be far less legible. Thank you for being so amazing and such inspirations.
GfA: Natalie Parker, Amy Parker, Amy Tintera, Corinne Duyvis, Michelle Krys, Gemma Cooper, Deborah Hewitt, Ruth Steven, Kim Welchons, and Stephanie Winkelhake. Publishing would be a much more formidable undertaking without them.
My fellow 2014 Skyscape debuts: Christina Farley, Jessie Humphries, and Meredith McCardle. Debuting was considerably less terrifying thanks to their support and wisdom.
The librarians, teachers, and booksellers who helped to get my book into the hands of readers.
My family, for always being over-the-top excited at every piece of news I have, however small. And to Cha, Katalina, and Oliver, who mean everything to me.
Finally, to my readers: thank you for every e-mail, every tweet, every Tumblr post. I’m grateful every day for your support and enthusiasm.
About the Author
Photo © 2012 PrettyGeeky Photography
LORI M. LEE was born in the mountains of Laos. Her family relocated to a Thailand refugee camp for a few years and then moved permanently to the United States when she was three. She has a borderline obsessive fascination with unicorns, is fond of talking in caps lock, and loves to write about magic, manipulation, and family. She currently lives in Wisconsin with her husband, kids, and a friendly pit bull. She is the author of Gates of Thread and Stone. Visit her at www.lorimlee.com.