“No,” she gurgled, her voice wet against the blood coating her throat.
I slumped to the ground next to her as I gently removed the skull from her face.
“Thank you,” she rasped. “For making the choice. This will not be the hardest one to make, Shadow Shifter.”
The dried blood on my temple cracked as my brows pinched.
“You must take it now,” she continued. “I know you planned to. Kai will not let you leave with it. He’d rather see it destroyed.”
“I don’t understand,” I croaked, my voice coming out harsher, drier than I’d expected.
“Faron was cunning, wise. I hoped you’d figure it out before they came.”
Before they came… “What do you?—”
“Take it. Unlock it. You’ll need this,” she breathed, holding up her left fist in the darkness, allowing her eyes to close.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered into the darkness.
Nerissa appeared by my side.
“Whatever for?” A soft smile formed on Xenelpha’s lips that sent a familiar burning sensation to my eyes.
Nerissa’s boots scraped against the icy bank. Her form lowered, kneeling on the other side of the dying matron.
“It was an honor to have known you both, as briefly as I did,” Xenelpha murmured. “Life. Death. Change and rebirth. Powers reforged with new masters.”
“Xenelpha,” I whispered. “Who is the Impostor?”
Fear flashed in her eyes before they hardened into disgust. “He…It… is a world walker. It watches through silver eyes, jumping between bodies. A spy… The Messenger for the Ehp’uch, theEmbodied…”
The blood in my veins stilled as the word hovered in the air above Xenelpha’s lips. An eerie sense of awareness swept through me as the Transcindiel and Obscura wrapped around each other.
“The caeluma are the key. They didn’t expect them… They will find you…”
I opened my mouth to ask more when Xenelpha’s cough became shallow, her breathing more ragged as her eyes drifted to the blue-black night sky. The Obscura, despite having settled deep within that chasm, uncoiled and turned its attention to the woman lying before me.
Death beckoned, I realized, and I placed a cold hand on her eyes, pulling the lids down. As I did so, a whisper of darkness escaped my fingers. I slid it into her being and laid a calming hand on her life force as it flickered out.
Nerissa’s indrawn breath pulled me from the hollowness that remained, and I found her gazing at me, a tender curiosity written across her face. I took Xenelpha’s cold fist and pried her fingers open to take what she’d freely given.
The key to the burial chamber.
