Eliana pushed herself faster, ignoring the exhausted buzz in her head and the cramp pinching her side. She sent a fleeting thought to each of her castings and felt nothing in return. Her eyes stung with frustration. Harkan was right; she should have eaten, she should have slept. All her work, all her self-torment, and for what? For two castings that remained a mystery to her and provided no comfort.
She recalled the sensation of the flames lining the rafters in her room—how their heat had pulled at her, how her castings had felt tugged forward by an urgent, ruthless hunger. She had created the flames, and yet they had been of something else too—not just of her own will, but of something else’s.
She had felt, in that moment, that she was a mere vessel. A conduit between the power in her blood and the flames overhead, licking for a taste.
Would there ever come a time when she could use her power and not feel as if it was using her?
Zahra pressed against her fingers, her touch so faint and careful that it could have been a mere twitch of nerves. Later, my queen. We can talk about that later.
Eliana’s tears muddied the dark corridor. With each thin breath, her abused body protested. Promise me.
I promise. Once Navi is safe, you will be able to think more clearly.
Eliana didn’t dare to hope that could be true. It had been so long since she had been able to think clearly, since she had felt in control of her own tired mind, that she hardly remembered what it felt like.
“Here,” Zahra instructed, her voice small, contained, and they turned a corner, obeying her.
Eliana sensed her fear of speaking too loudly while within these walls, of existing too completely. She had explained it to Eliana: How easily would you find an unfamiliar aberration of the skin on the back of your hand? A sight you knew intimately and saw every day?
It would not take long. And so the wraiths would easily be able to catch her scent, if she wasn’t careful—an aberration in their hive. An unwelcome visitor.
At the end of a narrow stone corridor, they flew down two sets of stairs and then through a labyrinth of passages dimmer and lower-ceilinged than the rest. At last, their path deposited them before a black door set in the wall, one of several such doors in a corridor that stretched several yards in either direction. At one end of the hallway stood an archway that led to darkness.
At the other end, a wall of stone. A dead end.
Harkan withdrew a set of lock picks from his pocket and knelt, prepared to work while Eliana stood guard, Arabeth in hand. Her castings were dim and quiet.
But the door was not locked.
Instead it stood slightly ajar, a faint artificial light beyond.
Harkan froze, shoulders tense.
Eliana stared at the door, her heart pounding so fast she could feel it in her forehead.
Zahra?
I don’t know, Zahra replied, fainter now than she had been before. Quickly. Inside. I’ll keep watch at the door. She is close.
Wraiths could be careless, Zahra had told her during their swim, distracting Eliana’s thoughts from the cold and the dark with information that would have made Remy’s eyes shine like stars. The wraiths of Annerkilak weren’t Empire soldiers, efficient and disciplined. They were gangsters, dulled by debauchery and spoiled with power. They could have come downstairs to retrieve a fresh jar of lachryma and been so drug-addled that they’d carelessly left the door open.
Whatever the reason, Eliana didn’t have time for debate.
She held her breath, tightened her hand around Arabeth, and stepped past Harkan into the room.
It was larger than she’d expected—deep and wide, lined with dozens of tall shelving units. A smooth black ladder on wheels stood attached to each one. The floor was stone, but polished smooth. Galvanized lights—harsh and white, buzzing faintly—hung from the ceiling rafters in an orderly grid. Neatly labeled white tins lined each shelf, their labels marked with angelic writing. Lissar.
They moved quickly along the shelves, scanning the unfamiliar lettering. The air was cool, but so still Eliana felt suffocated by it. She drew a hand across her sweaty forehead, squinting up at the ocean of angelic markings overhead.
“Nothing here,” Harkan muttered, hurrying past her to the next aisle of shelves.
They searched in silence for long moments that felt as vast as ages, and then, at last, a particular word caught Eliana’s eye.
She climbed a nearby ladder to the fourth shelf up, where a row of rectangular tins labeled zapheliar sat in neat stacks.
Zapheliar—the angelic word for crawler, Zahra had told her. And if she was interpreting the markings correctly, it seemed that there were variations of the antidote, perhaps for different forms of crawlers.
She cursed, hesitated for a moment, and then grabbed one of each. She turned on the ladder, whispering softly for Harkan.
He was already there, holding open his bag at the base of the ladder. She tossed the tins down to him—eighteen in total. They were lighter than she’d expected and rattled oddly, as if they contained items made out of alien material.
“Is that all of them?” Harkan asked.
“I saw nine variations. Grabbed two of each.”
Harkan fastened his bag shut and looked around the room, frowning as if chasing a sound he couldn’t pinpoint, and Eliana had just started to climb down, a question on her lips, when the air in the room changed.
She looked down just in time to hear Zahra cry out a warning and see a slender metal net shoot out of the darkness—a spider’s web, gilded silver. Copper plates snapped open from its heart, like wings unfurling, and Zahra screamed at the sight of it, the sound of her unrestrained terror one of the most frightening Eliana had ever heard.
Harkan drew his sword; Eliana jumped down to the floor, brandishing Arabeth. Distantly, she thought of her castings, but they remained dark, useless. Everything was happening too quickly for her to focus her thoughts and summon anything but panic.
Instead she watched, horrified, as Zahra’s faint dark form diminished, sucked violently into the spinning copper contraption. Then the awful thing snapped closed and clattered across the floor with a hollow metallic racket, where it quaked, buzzing, as if it now housed a swarm of bees. It was a flat octagonal box, glinting and copper-plated, small enough to fit into Eliana’s palm, and from within it came a distant wail that sounded faintly like it could belong to Zahra—but a smaller, frightened version of her that Eliana hardly recognized.
She darted forward, grabbed the box, and shoved it into her pocket. Harkan was at her side at once, his expression ferocious. His free hand hovered over his coat pocket, where Eliana knew a bombardier waited, ready to be uncapped and thrown.
“Show yourself,” she demanded of Zahra’s attacker. “What did you do to her?” a pushed herself faster, ignoring the exhausted buzz in her head and the cramp pinching her side. She sent a fleeting thought to each of her castings and felt nothing in return. Her eyes stung with frustration. Harkan was right; she should have eaten, she should have slept. All her work, all her self-torment, and for what? For two castings that remained a mystery to her and provided no comfort.
She recalled the sensation of the flames lining the rafters in her room—how their heat had pulled at her, how her castings had felt tugged forward by an urgent, ruthless hunger. She had created the flames, and yet they had been of something else too—not just of her own will, but of something else’s.
She had felt, in that moment, that she was a mere vessel. A conduit between the power in her blood and the flames overhead, licking for a taste.
Would there ever come a time when she could use her power and not feel as if it was using her?
Zahra pressed against her fingers, her touch so faint and careful that it could have been a mere twitch of nerves. Later, my queen. We can talk about that later.
Eliana’s tears muddied the dark corridor. With each thin breath, her abused body protested. Promise me.
I promise. Once Navi is safe, you will be able to think more clearly.
Eliana didn’t dare to hope that could be true. It had been so long since she had been able to think clearly, since she had felt in control of her own tired mind, that she hardly remembered what it felt like.
“Here,” Zahra instructed, her voice small, contained, and they turned a corner, obeying her.
Eliana sensed her fear of speaking too loudly while within these walls, of existing too completely. She had explained it to Eliana: How easily would you find an unfamiliar aberration of the skin on the back of your hand? A sight you knew intimately and saw every day?
It would not take long. And so the wraiths would easily be able to catch her scent, if she wasn’t careful—an aberration in their hive. An unwelcome visitor.
At the end of a narrow stone corridor, they flew down two sets of stairs and then through a labyrinth of passages dimmer and lower-ceilinged than the rest. At last, their path deposited them before a black door set in the wall, one of several such doors in a corridor that stretched several yards in either direction. At one end of the hallway stood an archway that led to darkness.
At the other end, a wall of stone. A dead end.
Harkan withdrew a set of lock picks from his pocket and knelt, prepared to work while Eliana stood guard, Arabeth in hand. Her castings were dim and quiet.
But the door was not locked.
Instead it stood slightly ajar, a faint artificial light beyond.
Harkan froze, shoulders tense.
Eliana stared at the door, her heart pounding so fast she could feel it in her forehead.
Zahra?
I don’t know, Zahra replied, fainter now than she had been before. Quickly. Inside. I’ll keep watch at the door. She is close.
Wraiths could be careless, Zahra had told her during their swim, distracting Eliana’s thoughts from the cold and the dark with information that would have made Remy’s eyes shine like stars. The wraiths of Annerkilak weren’t Empire soldiers, efficient and disciplined. They were gangsters, dulled by debauchery and spoiled with power. They could have come downstairs to retrieve a fresh jar of lachryma and been so drug-addled that they’d carelessly left the door open.
Whatever the reason, Eliana didn’t have time for debate.
She held her breath, tightened her hand around Arabeth, and stepped past Harkan into the room.
It was larger than she’d expected—deep and wide, lined with dozens of tall shelving units. A smooth black ladder on wheels stood attached to each one. The floor was stone, but polished smooth. Galvanized lights—harsh and white, buzzing faintly—hung from the ceiling rafters in an orderly grid. Neatly labeled white tins lined each shelf, their labels marked with angelic writing. Lissar.
They moved quickly along the shelves, scanning the unfamiliar lettering. The air was cool, but so still Eliana felt suffocated by it. She drew a hand across her sweaty forehead, squinting up at the ocean of angelic markings overhead.
“Nothing here,” Harkan muttered, hurrying past her to the next aisle of shelves.
They searched in silence for long moments that felt as vast as ages, and then, at last, a particular word caught Eliana’s eye.
She climbed a nearby ladder to the fourth shelf up, where a row of rectangular tins labeled zapheliar sat in neat stacks.
Zapheliar—the angelic word for crawler, Zahra had told her. And if she was interpreting the markings correctly, it seemed that there were variations of the antidote, perhaps for different forms of crawlers.
She cursed, hesitated for a moment, and then grabbed one of each. She turned on the ladder, whispering softly for Harkan.
He was already there, holding open his bag at the base of the ladder. She tossed the tins down to him—eighteen in total. They were lighter than she’d expected and rattled oddly, as if they contained items made out of alien material.
“Is that all of them?” Harkan asked.
“I saw nine variations. Grabbed two of each.”
Harkan fastened his bag shut and looked around the room, frowning as if chasing a sound he couldn’t pinpoint, and Eliana had just started to climb down, a question on her lips, when the air in the room changed.
She looked down just in time to hear Zahra cry out a warning and see a slender metal net shoot out of the darkness—a spider’s web, gilded silver. Copper plates snapped open from its heart, like wings unfurling, and Zahra screamed at the sight of it, the sound of her unrestrained terror one of the most frightening Eliana had ever heard.
Harkan drew his sword; Eliana jumped down to the floor, brandishing Arabeth. Distantly, she thought of her castings, but they remained dark, useless. Everything was happening too quickly for her to focus her thoughts and summon anything but panic.
Instead she watched, horrified, as Zahra’s faint dark form diminished, sucked violently into the spinning copper contraption. Then the awful thing snapped closed and clattered across the floor with a hollow metallic racket, where it quaked, buzzing, as if it now housed a swarm of bees. It was a flat octagonal box, glinting and copper-plated, small enough to fit into Eliana’s palm, and from within it came a distant wail that sounded faintly like it could belong to Zahra—but a smaller, frightened version of her that Eliana hardly recognized.
She darted forward, grabbed the box, and shoved it into her pocket. Harkan was at her side at once, his expression ferocious. His free hand hovered over his coat pocket, where Eliana knew a bombardier waited, ready to be uncapped and thrown.
“Show yourself,” she demanded of Zahra’s attacker. “What did you do to her?”