Anguished, Domenic continued. “It’s walking her to the door in the Vault’s corner. I hadn’t even noticed it when I was here. I think it…”
“What? What is it?” Ellery whispered.
“Remember how I told you after we bonded with Val and Izzy, the Council gave me the first piece of the prophecy on a leaf? They told me that it’d grown in the same place where all the past prophecies had first grown. Somewhere sacred beneath the Citadel. Well, I thinkthat’swhere I’m watching Syarthis take Hanna. And it’s the same night Hanna brought me to the Vault. The same night Valmordion thawed. The same night the words of the prophecy first appeared.”
Indeed, in the memory, Syarthis opened the door into a cavern. Roots tangled over its ceiling and walls, iron-thick and starkly white.
The roots of Gallamere’s alban tree.
“I see it,” Domenic continued. “The leaf they showed me—it’s the only one left. And Hanna’s plucking it. But I-I can’t read the words on it, for some reason.”
Even as Hanna stared down at the leaf in her hand, its image blackened, as if an ember had ignited in its center and was spreading, seeping over the entire memory.
Syarthis had tampered with it, somehow. Maybe to hide it from Domenic. Maybe to hide it from Hanna herself.
“And now Hanna…” Domenic clutched his stomach. He tasted bile. “She’stearingit. The leaf with the words of the prophecy—Syarthis destroyed it before anyone else ever saw it. A-and now Hanna’s pointing Syarthis at the alban roots, and there’s a new leaf sprouting. And the words on it, ‘an ancient peacemust be restored’… El, that’sourprophecy. The first piece, the one the Council showed me, Syarthis wrote it. It’sfake.”
Domenic fell to his knees beside Ellery and Hanna. The very shape of the world felt changed beneath him.
“What did the true prophecy say?”he demanded, seething.
Syarthis stared at him but gave no answer.
“Why would you do that?”he shouted. It was disorienting to yell at Hanna when it was Syarthis he was truly yelling at. But he was so furious he couldn’t be sure that was true. Even if he should’ve noticed something was wrong with Hanna a long time ago, shouldn’t she have noticed, too? If Syarthis had been controlling her for months, certainly her memories had holes, inconsistencies. Why hadn’t she told anyone? Why had she always,alwaysinsisted she was all right when she clearly wasn’t?“Why?”
This time, the Archives responded freely. The roots coiled around him, and Domenic squinted into the flashes of millions of memories. Even Domenic, so often overwhelmed with emotion, had never felt a deluge of it like this. Though none of these memories belonged to him, hefelttheir pain; hefelttheir sorrow. And so did Syarthis.
In the deepest chasm of the Archives, ancient memories shined. Glimpses of untouched forest. Of mountains and rivers whose names he knew but had yet to ever be spoken.
“Syarthis wants… release,” Domenic said, and though he wished to feel no sympathy for this monster, despite himself, he did. “Not from any magician, but fromallmagicians. From humanity. It wants to return to what it was before it became a wand. A ghast, I guess. Or something like it.”
“So Syarthis sabotaged the true prophecy because it wanted us to fail. Itwantsthis cataclysm—the final cataclysm—to come to pass. Because it thinks that if it does, the Living Wands will fall.” Ellery gazed around the Vault with horror. “Th-that must be why it came here. To wait. For itself to change. For all the others to join it.”
“Then how do we learn what the prophecy truly said?” Domenic choked. “Not even Syarthis knows anymore. The memory is destroyed.”
“Maybe we never will,” Ellery whispered. “But wecanget the next piece. We know the traitor, so now, according to destiny, we have to—”
“Condemn it,” Domenic finished. He swallowed.
On Ellery’s lap, Hanna shuddered. Syarthis’s healing magic had begun to falter. Her blisters spread, blooming bloody around her collar, her chin. Her chapped lips darkened as if with char. Smoke wafted from her breath.
Panicked, Domenic reached toward Hanna. Then he froze, his fingers hovering inches from her shoulder. For years, he’d buried thoughts too despicable to confess, yet no matter how deep they lay or how much he hated himself for them, they were still there.
All this time, it had not just been Syarthis that terrified him, Syarthis that disturbed him.
Finally, he grasped Hanna and tried to prop her against him, gentle even as he cringed. Her hair smelled greasy and burnt, yet he pressed his forehead to it. He held her tight. “Hanna, if you can hear me, I need you to last a little longer. I need you to survive this.”
With one hand squeezing Valmordion, Domenic rested his other over Hanna’s eyes. He envisioned his magic as Hanna had always described her own—like a needle. As soon as it touched her, she thrashed—or Syarthis thrashed, it didn’t matter. He felt her heart accelerate, felt the fragile skin around her sockets begin to burn. Yet he didn’t stop. Not until the heat of Valmordion’s power surged through her bloodstream. Not until he scorched every trace of Syarthis out.
At last, Hanna stilled. Her hand went limp, and Syarthis clattered onto the stone floor, its eyes closed in slumber. Still condemned to be a wand, but bonded to a wielder no longer.
In the terrible silence that then fell, even so deep underground, Domenic could hear the dim raging of the storm outside. The storm that was coming for them all.
And in the storm, he heard words.
from where the magic of Summer and man
united, and the land was forged anew,
