And Ronan does too. He stops moving, his mouth closing and his eyes snapping back to me. “The temple.”
“I saw it too.”
“The temple?” asks Taran.
“A dream we shared. Were you being chased?”
Ronan nods. “By someone with a sickle.”
A sickle. That’s what that sound was. A sickle cutting through grain.
“How did you find this?” Ronan turns the torch over in his hand, looking at the carvings on the bottom. “I don’t recognize this writing.”
“I was looking for you. It felt like you. It still feels like you, like a mirror of you. I could use my physical shadows with it. Ronan, I think it understands me.”
To my surprise and delight, he agrees. “It’s intelligent but not human. Like Kira.”
Taran remains unconvinced. “I think we ought to put it somewhere well out of the way until we find out what it is. It drained your magic, Sylvie. It might be dangerous, something made by the alchemists to trap you.”
“I don’t think many of them know what it is at all, or it wouldn’t have been where it was. They hid it in plain sight. They couldn’t have known I would find it. Ronan, do you think any of them are trustworthy enough to ask about it?”
Ronan shakes his head. “The only thing I’m certain of after today is that they want me tothinkthey aren’t up to anything. The magic suppression research is going as we expected—they’ve made little progress, but they’re certain a breakthrough is just around the corner as long as I leave them alone and let them do whatever they want. I’m certain they’ll defy me the second they think they can get away with it. They had this in plain sight?”
“In a hallway underground. There were other ordinary torches nearby.”
“Sir, we have a more urgent problem. Sylvie spoke with an apprentice who heard Cyrus telling Zara to keep something hidden. We searched the Guild Mistress’s chambers, but it’s a disaster in there. They could have hidden half of the secrets in the realm, and we’d never know it.” He tells Ronan about thespyglass and the secret compartment in the desk, but like me, Ronan can barely take his eyes off the torch to listen.
“It’s a strange fire, isn’t it? The color is wrong.”
“That’s what I said.” Taran hadn’t believed me, but he’s a water-born, after all. He doesn’t see the subtleties in the light that Ronan and I do.
“This could be insane, but do you think it’s Vayla’s torch?”
Oh, gods. Of course. The goddess Vayla—the ruler of the gods, the goddess that Ronan supposedly embodies as her representative on earth—gifted the first Selarans a torch to guide them.
I might have thought of it myself, only I imagined that the story in the Codex, the story that’s depicted in the temples and in every statue of Vayla, was figurative. I didn’t think there would be a literal torch to be found. Selara was founded over six hundred years ago. How could a torch possibly burn for that long? Had it been rediscovered only recently?
Or perhaps it was made by someone, possibly one of Ronan’s more recent ancestors, to honor Vayla. Maybe they imbued it with their light magic, and it recognizes their bloodline.
Or maybe Taran is right, and it’s a Guild trap that we’ve fallen directly into.
“I’m not sure about the torch, but I think we should confront Cyrus directly,” I say, nodding to Taran. “We can see if he knows anything about it.” And find out what else he did to betray Ronan.
“Agreed. Taran, order your guards to bring all of House Horatio to me the second we’re back in the palace.”
“I’m expected on the battlefield, sir. Would you like me to ask Commander Elia to lead the sortie?”
“Dammit, I forgot the sortie. No, you go. I can handle it.”
“I’ll stay,” says Taran. His eyes flash to mine, and I understand his concern. He’s worried about how Cyrus will react to being confronted.
I’m worried about that too.
We wait in the library for House Horatio. Taran has swept the room, insisting on removing anything that could be used as a weapon, complaining all the while about not having this conversation somewhere more secure.
“House Horatio has served House Alta for generations,” Ronan explains. “As much as I’d like to push him from a balcony if it’s true that he was helping Zara, I need to treat him with the courtesy his status affords him. If you rule without mercy, you make a world without mercy. And I don’t want to live in that world.”
“If he was working with Zara, there’s no telling what weapons he might have at his disposal,” says Taran, eyeing the torch I stole with suspicion through the open door.
