“I can’t be an excuse that your father uses to hurt you again,” I said. “I won’t.”
He nodded, kissed me quickly again, then moved his lips to my ear. “I swear on my own life, Fox, that I will fix this. And when it’s time, we’ll find each other again.”
I tried to memorize his face: the curve of his lips, the intensity of his eyes, the soft silk of his hair. And I hoped fate hadn’t snipped this thread.
The soldiers were getting restless, and I was running out of time. I glanced at Wren.
“You aren’t just a girl who sees ghosts,” she said. “Not anymore.”
I swallowed down the last of my fear and looked at Lochryn. Nodded.
And then his arm was around my waist, his skin hot enough to burn even through his armor, and the world disappeared.
A heartbeat later, Lochryn and I were standing in the middle of a well-trodden dirt road. Around us were skinny trees that rose from mossy ground, their canopies so high and thick they nearly blocked the sun. The air was damp and smelled of growing things. Somewhere among the trees, birds sang songs I’d never heard before.
Luna appeared beside the god and nodded at me.
“Where are we?”
“Intarha, at the edge of the Thieves’ Forest. I took you through the Aetheric.”
“That’s impossible.”
Intarha was in the middle of Carethia—more than a week’s journey from the stronghold—and then only if the pass was clear and the weather good.
“Not for a god. Or for you, if you learn the skill.”
I followed him toward a stacked stone wall that rose to my shoulders and badly needed tending. Rocks had tumbled out into piles in front of it, leaving gaps like grinning teeth. Hepushed an arched wooden door, left open and hanging from a single hinge, and waited for me to walk inside.
The wall enclosed a square garden a little larger than the back courtyard at the Lady’s manor. It was a tangle of brown, reedy weeds killed by winter and not cleared away, and new spring grass that peeked through them. There was no sound but for the rustling of dead leaves.
In the middle of the space stood a polished gray rock, rounded to an oval, like a thick egg in an overgrown nest. Light filtered through the trees that shifted with the breeze, and reflected off something resting atop the stone. I moved carefully through the greenery, my skirt snagging on the hard edges of old thorns, and picked it up.
It was a golden half mask, similar to the one the Aetheric practitioner had worn. But instead of jagged edges, the sides flared into delicately engraved feathers, and it was cold and heavy in my hand.
I looked back at Lochryn and Luna. “What is this place?”
He walked forward and put his hand atop the stone, which shuddered and began to glow, as if he were filling it with Aether.
“It’s a shrine to those who serve two realms: the Guardians and the Luminae. It wasn’t tended while I was imprisoned, when Aether mostly disappeared. It’s time for it to be tended again. For you to steal things that aren’t mere trinkets.”
“Such as?” My voice was barely audible. Maybe, if he didn’t hear the question, I wouldn’t have to hear the answer.
“Countries. Crowns.”
“What?” I looked at Luna, and there was sadness in her eyes. But in Lochryn’s I found only vicious determination, hard and sharp.
“Luna says you have no memories of life before the seal was placed.”
“Almost nothing before I was delivered to the manor. And after I met the Aetheric practitioner the first time, when he accidentally cracked the seal, only a few images that came to me in dreams. My mother was killed. My father took me away.”
“The Emperor Eternal and other leaders of his ilk decided they did not want my interference in their realm. They care too much for their own power, and too little for those they rule. They found a Guardian, an Anima once loyal to the Carethian throne. And with the help of Enshrined Monks who wanted more power in this realm, they used old magic—Creators’ magic—to imprison me.” He paused. “And then, when I was gone, they decided it was necessary to remove any remaining humans with Aetheric powers.”
There was a look in his face that I didn’t like.
“I can’t give you back your memories,” he said. “But I can show you.”
And then I was falling, and the world went white, and I landed in the grass. I saw a child—myself—playing with flowers and singing a song to myself while clouds moved in the sapphire sky. My father sat on a bench at the edge of the courtyard, tossing seeds to the birds that gathered there.
