“The prince will be in greater danger. Ever more reason for you to stay away from him.”
“Luna, I can’t stay locked in the Lady’s manor forever. Iwon’t. I wanted to see Vhrania, and I doubted I’d have a chance like that again. I don’t regret it.” Even if it had annihilated my fantasies about an imperial guard. “But I told the prince we wouldn’t be helping him anymore.”
“You did?” Wren asked.
I nodded. “I understand why he lied. But he’s a prince. It’s too dangerous to be acquainted with someone like him, especially if we can’t rely on what he tells us.”
Even if he wanted to be a different kind of prince, it didn’t matter. He lived in a world where his enemies had armies of their own.
“Stay away from the Aetheric practitioner, Luna. And the prince. They’re both too powerful for us.”
“I’m a Guardian,” she said. “I have responsibilities. But I will be careful.” She moved closer until I could feel the warm vibration in the air around her. “As you must be, too,” she said, and disappeared, leaving only a few motes of light flickering where she had been.
It was late, and Wren was asleep.
I wasn’t.
Too many things rolled around in my head, like marbles in a child’s game. I tossed back and forth in the bed, moving from hot spots to cold and back again, before I finally gave up and rose. I needed to move,to do, so I picked up my boots from their spot by the door, and crept outside.
The courtyard was dark as I pulled on my boots, both moons rising but not yet full. Nheve and her assistants would soon be lighting the kitchen fire, beginning the day’s work of boiling water, rising bread, preparing stocks. But not yet. For now, themanor was still asleep. There would be guards at the front gate, and the side gate was creaky. So I used the pangan tree again, landing in a crouch in the empty road. I walked south.
The curfew patrol was quiet now, but I could hear the drummer who beat the hour to the east. I hurried south and out of his range, slipping from shadow to shadow, until I reached the main road.
A cart rumbled over cobblestones, and I moved behind a group of trees and crouched down. A cart of garrison soldiers, drunk and singing a dirge about a girl lost in the mountains, made its way down the road. Rill, of course, was posted on the back of the cart, legs swinging and tankard of ale in hand. It was the worst rendition of “I Lost My Lass on Mount Cennet” I’d ever heard, and I’d heard Wren. She had many skills, but song was not one of them.
When it passed, I darted through the shade to a copse of trees near the white stone building that sat in the middle of a wide lawn.
This was the stronghold’s Aetheric shrine, where the Perpetual Fire burned. It was a ziggurat of white stone, a blocky pyramid roughly in the shape of a flame. The ground level, where the Enshrined Monks contemplated the Aetheric and its mysteries, was surrounded by a colonnade of more white stone. The entrance was marked by a wide arch with “Ashentis Fuerest” carved in the lintel. It was the creed of the Aetheric god—“souls burn brightest.”
I walked beneath those carved words, wondering if I’d feel the pinch of pain. But there was no Aether here, just the quiet hum of mantras being repeated inside. The path within the columns was painted with words asking for luck, or praying that family members in the Aetheric remembered them, or entreatingthe gods to maintain their perfect tension and keep the realms in balance.
I liked the building. I’d never been inside, but the colonnade was peaceful and quiet. Plus, shrines were exempt from curfew, so night guards rarely bothered patrolling here. It made a great place to tuck in and avoid garrison soldiers. There were a hundred shadows in which to hide.
“May I help you?”
I was a thief; I knew how to sneak and how to listen. And I still nearly jumped a foot in the air when the Enshrined Monk appeared behind me in a hooded habit of white broadcloth. The robe’s hem reached the ground; the monk’s pale face was largely covered by the hood, hands hidden by the long sleeves. I instinctively took a step backward.
“You seem lost,” the monk said in a voice that sounded male and maybe a little younger than me. “May I help you?”
No point in wasting time. “There’s a person manipulating Aether to hurt people. He tried to kill the prince, and he succeeded in killing Tommen, the blacksmith.”
“Yes, we have heard. We have prayed for Tommen’s safe passage through the River of Souls to the Aetheric.”
“The River of Souls?”
He beckoned me to follow as he walked from the colonnade to the grass lawn and pointed up at the pale, milky streak of stars that ran across the sky. “The path taken by souls from our realm to the Aetheric.”
I felt his gaze shift to me. “Are you a believer?”
“I don’t know.” I touched statues for luck, but I didn’t think the gods cared much for us. Especially when we’d been ignored for a decade. “I guess you’re a believer?”
His smile was calm and patient, as if he’d been asked thisquestion a thousand times before. “I have seen the Anima who have allowed it. I have seen the faces of those soothed by the existence of the Aetheric. I do not need more proof of the Aetheric God’s existence, if that is what you mean to ask.”
“Do you know where he is?”
“It is not my business to know, but to honor.”
“And the Aetheric practitioner. Do you know where I can find him?”
