It just feels inevitable.
“It’s going to be alright,” says Ronan. I can sense his calm using the new power we were just given despite our total lack of magical energy. It’s like the new power, the extraordinary power, doesn’t depend on us at all.
I’m reassured by Ronan’s lack of alarm. Maybe there are two sides to whatever is down there, and I’m just feeling the bad feelings. The doubt, the fear. And Ronan has the hope, the comfort.
We walk between the tombs. I read their inscriptions on the way down the steps: on the left lies Queen Julia I, the God-Queen of Selara, 298–361. On the right lies King Leander, her King Consort, 297–361. Though they were hounded by assassins all their lives, at least they lived a long time before they finally succeeded.
The chamber is small and empty except for a single pillar in the middle of the room. Its usage is clear: there’s a holder for the torch and a groove for the sickle below it.
“Together?” says Ronan as we approach it.
“Together,” I say, and I lower the sickle into the groove as Ronan drops the torch into the holder.
The room vanishes around us, and we’re outside above ground where the temple once stood. I’m lying on the altar, and Ronan is on top of me like before.
I can feel him inside of me as he takes me on the altar. His shadows reach out and hold me down, and then I take control, rocking forward and pinning him down in return. The sky is red and filled with fire and smoke as I lean back into it, lightning streaking across it as the ground rumbles beneath us. I feel something building along with the release of my body, ancient and primal, swelling with god-like power, the power of the sun and moon and stars combined.
Then I’m back in the chamber, and the light from the torch is bouncing off the walls, unscrambling the words engraved there.
It’s the same message, written in Selaran script, repeated over and over again:
When light is dark and dark is light,
When sunless day claims starless night,
When Vahlo’s child joins Vayla’s blood,
The world shall end in fire and flood.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
The Shadowbound Prophecy.
It must be. This has to be the Shadowbound Prophecy, the one that was stricken by magic from every record that we could find, the one that they murdered Queen Julia and King Leander for, the one that binds us together, that has bound us together from the beginning.
It isn’t the gift of some extraordinary power that we can use to save the kingdom.
It’s the end of the fucking world.
I turn to Ronan, my shoulders shaking, my legs going weak. I can’t breathe. I can’t fucking breathe.
“Sylvie!”
He catches me as I collapse to the ground. He’s confused. He doesn’t realize; he doesn’t understand—
“What is it?”
“The world shall end! We’re going to end the world.”
Ronan shakes his head as he strokes my hair. “That’s just what the people who made this place thought. I can’t tell if they were trying to make it happen or trying to prevent it from happening by hiding it all here. Maybe both. Maybe theyguarded the secret here, hoping that when the next people like us who could fulfill the prophecy came along, they could pass the tests to prove themselves worthy of the gift. Or maybe they thought by hiding it they’d make it come true. I don’t know.”
I’m sobbing without tears, my body too exhausted and defeated to cry. “I don’t understand,” I say through gasps. “Why aren’t you upset?”
He shrugs. “The way I see it, either it’s a prophecy that must be fulfilled, and whatever we do to try to fight it won’t matter. The world will end either way. Or we can make a choice to fulfill it or not, and we’ll just choose not to. There were a number of conditions. I bet if we don’t meet them all, nothing will happen.”
His face is so perfectly composed it seems unreal.
“But what about the visions?”
