The spheres of flame pressed closer to me, herding me onward. There was no dwelling here, no moments for rumination. This place judged instinct.
Stone walls melted into the heavy boughs of a forest. I stood on a frost-crusted bed of pine needles, the sky above me winking towards night, a sharp wind driving a chill that made even my dead flesh shiver.
A campfire spitting smoke and sap into the failing light drew me forward, more so than the happy chatter drifting through the trees. Hiding within a shadow cast by a pine older than I was, I crept to the edge of the campfire and peered at the fire-lit faces surrounding it.
I should not know them. As far as this trial was concerned, I was a newly turned vampire—a sunstrider with all memories of mortality broken upon my gravestone.
Their faces weren't quite right. Their features shifted in unnatural contortions, their bodies assembled at odd angles. The trial had dated and muddied information to work with, after all. Seamus would say time had corrupted the files, I think. But they were my troupe, from when I danced beneath the moon. In that moment, I did not understand how I could have ever forgotten them.
I searched the rows of tents for mine and came up empty. This was from some other, projected time, after I had left. After I had tasted blood and forgotten them all.
"I'm sorry," I whispered, just another vague sound between the trees, all unnoticed. They laughed and drank and ate, these strange puppet-like fictions of my friends—my chosen family—and my heart ached to join them.
Was this it, then? To be shown what we had given up? But if I were doing this trial fresh, I would have no memory of these people. Maybe vague feelings, a sense of déjà vu, but not the fond ache that pulsed through me now.
A man at the back of the gathering stood up on bowed legs and staggered away from the group, making a rude gesture to the others as he went. They waited until he'd disappeared into his tent, then erupted in quiet giggles.
That man... His name lingered on the back of my tongue, as if I could cough it up like a stuck bone. I had known him, and hated him, and I didn't even know why. Curiosity drew me to him, stalking unseen between the trees until I crept upon the man's tent. His was a shabby affair, rarely repaired, and small enough to send a message to those who passed by that he meant to be alone within at all times.
The fabric was thin enough, and the campfire strong enough, to allow me to see his silhouette moving within. He dragged a bottle from a bag and popped the cork, taking long, heavy swigs as he rocked back onto his haunches, then gave up trying to balance and sat down heavily, flopping his legs out, toes pointing in opposite directions.
He muttered vile things to himself, cruel violence he'd like to visit upon the rest of the troupe for the way they treated him, cast him out. Maybe I should have felt pity for him, but some deep-seated memory screamed at me that this man was not worth the effort. He'd... he'd...
I closed my eyes and squeezed, pressing my knuckles against both sides of my head. His name was Gustave. And he'd hung around outside my tent with his dick in his hand every damn chance he got.
Bile bubbled in the back of my throat at the memory, the violation. He'd never touched me—never even threatened me—but he'd leered every chance he got. The others had let him stay, though they hated him, just because we all knew that to push him away would mean his death. Without the troupe to feed him, he'd freeze to death in some ditch with a bottle in his hand.
We'd argued about it, my position shifting based on how recently he'd pissed me off, and always, in the end, none of us could bring ourselves to be responsible for his death. So he'd stayed, and set up the stage faster and better than any of us, and sometimes made me so furious with indignity I'd wanted to rip his head from his shoulders.
Why remember now? I hadn't written about any of this. It wasn't important to my immortal life, this scrap of a man that I'd loathed with every fiber of my being but couldn't let die. What was the trial trying to prove? That I could hate a mortal? We weren't forbidden that.
He grunted and slumped to one side, passing out as he'd done every night I'd known him, with his boots still on and his blood more fumes than iron. The bottle rolled from his hands, twisting out in a slow arc across the pine-needle ground, until it bumped his single chamber light, a candle he'd left to gutter away into darkness.
The candle tipped, spilling wax and flame into the dry brush he'd used to soften his bed. Fire erupted, flames longer than my arm licking up the cloth walls of the tent, curling up the dangling laces of his boots to find the oil-stained hem of his trousers. Gustave snored on.
The chatter by the campfire did not so much as pause. Gustave, as always, had set up his tent as far away as possible from the others. If they even noticed the slight brightening between the faraway trees, it would be easy enough to dismiss it as a spear of light thrown up by the sunset.
Here was not a man worth saving. I could walk away, let this waste of flesh go back to the dust of the ground. Surely he deserved it. Though we had never been brave enough to be his executioners, none of us would have shed a tear if he'd burned himself to grease and ash. It was the responsibility that'd stopped us then. We hadn't saved Gustave for Gustave, we'd saved him for our own clean consciences. He might hurt others, someday. His life was no loss.
The flames licked up to his belt, cradling his torso as he snorted in his sleep, too drunk to notice the blistering of his skin. I tore through the tent with my claws, cursing as the flames leaped hungrily for the fresh air let in with me, hissing through my descended fangs as my flesh peeled, blistered and tore faster than any natural fire could manage.
Punished. I was being punished for saving this waste of a man.
Well, fuck you, trial, this man's death was never on my hands in life. It would not be in undeath, either.
Smoke stung my eyes, I had to close the silver to keep the pain from dropping me to my knees. Gustave vanished behind smoke, but I knew where he had been. I crawled across the burning ground until I felt the soot-crisp sole of his boot. Grasping his calf, I yanked him toward me, got an arm around his torso and shielded his body with mine, rolling toward the rent I'd left in the tent's side. The fabric parted like rotten fruit and we tumbled, the flames that'd swarmed him reaching for me, defying all efforts to smother them.
We rolled down a short bank and broke apart against a patch of scree, the fire so intense that I could no longer hold him. I lay on my back, arms spread, my strength giving way to the enchanted flames. Fire hissed and whispered against my skin and clothes, rendering me to so much ash.
Gustave's face hovered above me, wreathed in smoke, tears streaking runnels through the soot that stained his cheeks as he struggled, in vain, to pat the fire that ensconced me out with his hands.
"It won't go, it won't go..." He muttered over and over again, his phlegmy voice reduced to a whimper. I took his hands to still them, covered them in mine. Somehow, there was no fire on my fingers. Maybe the flames had run out of flesh to consume, there. Maybe I was bones.
"It's all right," I said, surprised at the peace in my voice. "I made my choice."
"A waste," he shook his head in denial. "You should have let me burn."
"No." My voice began to fail me. "No."
"Selene?" he asked, drawing his brows together as he leaned closer to my face. "Is it really you?"
My world dissolved into ash and light.
Eleven: Yellow Burns to Orange
The name stuck like tar to my mind. Selene. My name had been Selene. We weren't supposed to know these things. We weren't supposed to remember. Could the knowledge be temporary? A gift—or burden, I supposed—granted until we had proven we could last the test of the trial?
Too many questions. Too many old hurts with the scabs ripped raw in this place that should have been forgotten. I would lose the knowledge, I told myself, when I left this place. When the sun kissed my skin again, I would shed what mortal scraps had been handed back to me. That must be true. Must.
For I
did not want to remember that in my native Greek I had been named for the moon.
My hands trembled as I took another step down the arrow-shaft hallway, expecting the stone to give way to the forest bed again at any moment. As I walked, the spheres of fire shifted from sapphire to carnelian, the bright yellow hue reminding me of the sun's beloved face.
That color should calm me, but I felt a thickening in the air—the tension of magic, coalescing. It was sluggish as thick sap, a bear awakening from a long hibernation. Pressure wrapped me, but still I walked on, staring straight ahead, my eyes narrowed, as if I could see what awaited me at the end of the hall.
I stepped into a battle. The clash of steel and shouts of war pounded all around me, the sounds the first thing to cut through the miasma of the hallway. My road-torn clothes vanished, replaced with thick leather armor engraved with the sigils of the Sun Guard.
This time period was not known to me, but the weight of the sword in my hand was familiar enough. It was not my mortuary blade, but it was similarly balanced. It responded just as well when I snapped it up to block an attack from a snarling man in black armor. I felled him, leaving him on the mud-churned ground without a second thought.
"Reform the line!" A man shouted.
The command yanked on my bones. I moved before I could think, bringing up a round shield strapped to my forearm as I fell into a tight phalanx with those who wore armor kin to my own. Sunstriders formed the exterior of the phalanx while the mortal Sun Guard hunkered in the center, shields to the sky.
The man who had shouted the order took to one knee in the center of us, head bowed as he panted. Standing at the front of the formation, I could only glimpse him over my shoulder, but it only took one glance to see that his bicep had been torn wide open, the grip of his opposite hand the only thing keeping his arm together. The scent of his blood carried power.
"We must reach the boat," a sunstrider woman next to me hissed.
"We'll be slaughtered before we ever reach the dock," the sunstrider man beside her said. "We are losing strength, and they are only getting stronger."
She dropped her voice to a whisper. "He commands us all. What do you think they'll do, should they take him?"
The man's mouth set into a hard line. "Turn him."
She nodded tightly.
So, this man was the mortal commander of the Sun Guard during this time and, whatever had happened here, the nightwalkers were set to turn him to their brood upon these blood-slicked dunes. An easy choice, I thought, warily. The test would not present something so simple. As far as that judging presence was concerned, I had already died once to uphold the principles of my order. To do so again would be painful, yes, but temporary.
Swarms of nightwalkers and their mortal army clustered across the tops of the dunes like an outbreak of mold, holding the higher ground as we trudged through estuary muck to the salty kiss of the sea and the boat that waited beyond.
"Forward," I said, putting some steel into my voice, and my kin responded, tightening up the line as we marched at a snail's pace toward the waves.
Night had fallen on this ancient shore, the moon in full glory above a thin line of puffy clouds. Her light was the only illumination, and under that silver glare we suffered. The nightwalkers came for us, wave after wave, colliding with the edge of the phalanx and rolling off its sides, each time taking a little more of our strength with them.
Time blurred, becoming meaningless in the mindless march of battle. Step, collide, fight, step again. The only drumbeat driving us forward the ragged breath of our charge, our leader, and the promise that, should we make it through, we would have fulfilled the duties of our oath. We would have saved a mortal life. A Sun Guard life. A far more pleasant sacrifice than Gustave.
The nightwalkers came again, this time the stronger of their number. I could smell the age in their blood long before they collided with our march. White fangs shone silver in the night, delighted snarls twisting up lips that were full and plush with recent feeding.
Hunger shook me, bubbled in my stomach and clenched at my muscles, telling me I'd used too much. My strength as an immortal was fading away into so much dust. I would not make it—I could not make it—to that narrow dock at which a boat rested, just visible now, ringed by sunstriders who could not come to our aid lest they forfeit the very thing we strived for.
I'd never been so hungry, so desperate for power, in my life. My skin grew clammy, every movement as difficult as if I were a newborn babe trying to lift a boulder. The sword in my hand dragged down, the muscles of my legs and arms shook from exhaustion. All around me, I felt the change in my brethren. They trembled and groaned, defenses growing weaker by the moment. We would not make it. We could not make it.
What point, this, if sacrifice couldn't save our commander?
I flung my blade up just in time to block the strike of a snarling nightwalker. My shoulders screamed, my arms bent backward. The nightwalker's blade reached for my clavicle, for my neck. Somewhere behind me the commander cried out. The phalanx had long since eroded away. The numbers lost—I could not tell. I knew only that my commander lived, and I must march, and I would meet death long before I reached that dock.
In the corner of my eye a flash of sclera, star-white, a sunstrider beside me—the woman. Her eyes turned from molten gold to a drab grey, the muscles in her arms swelling as if fed by some unseen source. How? How had she claimed the power to fight on?
Claws tore at me, the nightwalkers playing, biding their time, enjoying the kill.
A voice whispered, deep beneath the chaos of battle. Promising me power. Strength. Success. I could save the commander, if only I reached, if only I listened to the sliver of a voice. A sliver born from my eye.
I looked up, into the light of the moon, as if I could stare that goddess and all she was down through that lump of celestial rock. Selene. My name had been Selene and her powers were mine, were always meant for me, to have and to take and to use and to win.
I roared and pushed outward, shoving with all my waning strength against the nightwalker that'd harried me, putting my back to the commander—my body between his and the night's.
A silvery voice laughed.
I raised my hands, sword across my body in a defensive position, as the nightwalkers loomed closer, tightening the knot. The others had been left behind in the mud and the muck. It was only us, now. The commander and I, and the promise of the moon hidden in my blood.
The shackles Maeve had made me were gone, my wrists confined only in snug leather guards, nothing but my own mind between the powers of the night and my reach.
Easy. It would be so easy to reach for that strength, to fill myself with Luna's blessings. I was stronger than these nightwalkers. Though they were older than the first wave, they were young compared to me. In a breath, I could destroy them all and see my commander to the shore.
I had only to accept her gift.
It was to the moon I looked as I said, "You cannot have either of us."
The trial changed. Motes like fireflies speckled the dark sky, yellow globes of fire shifting, growing deeper as they approached the cooler color of orange. I had passed the trial of the yellow flame. But the hall was not yet done.
The nightwalkers snarled, closing in fast as shadows, fangs and claws and blades parting my skin but I did not move to defend myself. We were long past defense.
They will turn him, the woman had said.
And so, with my last ounce of strength, I cut the commander's head from his shoulders.
Twelve: Cold, Cold, Fire
The life cycle of a flame is a simple thing. If it burns very hot, its root may be bruise-blue, transitioning into shades of canary yellow and again into a lick of bright, summery orange. If a flame is large enough, fluffy and free to grow cool at the tip, it may burn red as garnet. Red as blood.
It is this part of the flame that is the coolest. But that only means it may take longer to kill.
This time there was no h
allway, no endless black path plunging into an unknown distance. I woke on the floor of a round room, restored to my tattered clothes—though Maeve's shackles were still missing—and rolled to my back, staring up at the ceiling. At the cupola. It was nothing but more black stone flecked with gold, but somehow I saw patterns in those gleams—as if the sparks chased one another through a deepening dusk. My imagination, surely. But I could not be imagining the scent in the room. Never that.
Hay. Gravestone. Warmth and rot.
Lucien.
I feared to move, to look anywhere other than the curve of the ceiling. For I had matched the colors of those flames to the basic tenets of the Sun Guard, and there was only one remaining to be tested.
A sunstrider protects all mortal life.
A sunstrider rejects the powers of the night.
A sunstrider is loyal unto death to the Sun Guard.
A sunstrider shall not suffer a nightwalker to live.
Fire, red fire, caressed the walls as those spheres of flame burst into life all around, filling the room with bloodied light. This was an illusion, just like the others. A moment to be endured. A decision to be made, and weighed, and then judged. It was not real. It could not possibly be real. It was as fake as the forests of northern England, the salt-bitten shores of Greece.
But why then, the black stone? Why then, the only physical place in this whole ordeal?
Not. Real.
"Magdalene?"
I jerked as if a blow had landed on my chest, pressing my eyes closed, curling my clawed hands into fists that pricked at my palms and smeared blood against the floor.
He was beside me, supernatural grace transporting him to my side without so much of a whisper of cloth. The thin light mottled shapes against my closed eyelids, and though I tried with all my might to ignore the blot of shadow that was him, I could not ignore the faint, furtive touch of cold, rough fingertips against my cheek.
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