Apologies for being brief, but we’re out of time. I deceived you when you asked if I helped Zara. I did help her, but for a very important reason. I have served House Alta all of my life for one purpose only: I believed your House to be critical to the Shadowbound Prophecy, our one chance to restore the balance of the world.
For a long time, I believed your father was the subject of the prophecy, but I was mistaken. I discounted the possibility of your involvement, believing you ill-suited for what will be required of you, but I realized my error when Sylvie arrived.
I should have explained myself sooner, but I didn’t think you’d believe me. I doubt you believe me now, but if I’m right, it won’t matter.
This world has been doomed for a long time, since long before the ash crisis or the scouring of Machair. Those issues are symptoms of the larger problem: the world has been broken. Corrupted. You and Sylvie must restore it.
Seek the relics of the gods. I have searched and searched for what you must do with them, but I’ve found few answers. Zara believed the tomb of God-Queen Julia would hold the key, but she searched the Mausoleum in Dalven and found it to be false. I will continue the search once I get to safety.
Perhaps I will find you there. Good luck, and may the gods watch over you.
-Lord Cyrus of House Horatio
“What the fuck? The Shadowbound Prophecy? Ronan, what does any of this mean?”
“Who knows? It’s the ravings of a madman. At least I’m reasonably convinced he won’t immediately run to Adria with all of our secrets.” Ronan tosses clothes into a leather satchel, and he hands me an empty bag to do the same. “Bring your flute. We may need some kind of story for why we’re on the road.”
I do as he says and pack up some of my Nithyrian clothes. There’s no point trying to hide who I am from the Orsa. They know House Verran far too well to be fooled, and we need heavier fabrics if we’re heading into the mountains with winter on its way.
Ronan takes his lute down from the wall—the lute Stella’s mother gave him when she taught him to play—and then he retrieves some papers and coins from his desk. Finally, he reaches into the back of his bookshelf and pulls out a small wooden box.
“What’s in there?” I ask.
“Something I’m definitely going to need later.” He offers no other explanation, and I feel a strange sensation in his magic. A secret strengthening it, just like they strengthen mine.
I let him have his secret. We need our strength right now.
The last things we pack are our weapons. We both take daggers, and I take my Nithyrian rapier while Ronan carries the soldier’s longsword he wielded when he rescued me from Seth.
And then I take the torch from the hearth. “I’ll keep you out as much as I can, but you better let me snuff you without complaint this time.”
“Are you ready?” he asks me with a lingering look at his chambers. This is his home. I know it kills him to leave it, to leave the palace and the city and the people. But I can’t see another way. If he stays and tries to fight Adria, thousands of people will die, and if Taran is to be believed, he’ll lose anyway. If he surrenders and lets her take him captive, it may save some of his people, but Adria will kill him, likely in a public execution.
And Seth and I are certain to suffer the same fate.
The only hope we have of saving Faros is by leaving it. “We’re coming back here,” I tell Ronan, placing my hands on his shoulders. “We’ll be back here before you know it. We’ll save them. We’ll come home. You’ll see.”
Ronan tilts his head down until his forehead meets mine. “My home is wherever you are.” He blinks back tears from his eyes. “I never thought my reign would end like this. I thought I could…it doesn’t matter. All that matters is that we’re together. All that matters is that we live to fight another day. Together.”
“Together,” I say, and then I take his hand and lead him from his bedroom for what I pray is not the final time.
Chapter Twenty-Five
We meet the others outside of the chambers: Seth, Taran, Larus, and Typhon.
“Elia?” asks Ronan.
Taran shakes his head. “Too weak to go with us. She’s heading with the other guards to Minar. They’ll be traveling slower.”
Our journey will not be slow. We’ve got to put as much distance between us and the palace as we can as quickly as we can, and for that, we’re taking a servants’ passage that leads underground all the way to the stables near the northern wall of Faros.
It’s less a passage than a series of passages, I realize once we’re in the damp cellars beneath the city. “This route was only recently rediscovered,” Ronan explains. “We found many of these longer passages only after the Guild upheaval.”
Which means that few people know about them. We’re not the only ones using the passages, but everyone we encounter is Selaran. They pass us by without much thought, primarily because Ronan is no longer Ronan but Soren once more.
We nearly make it all the way out without incident, but at one of the final turns before we’re outside of the city walls, we find our path forward blocked by a collapse from the building above.
Larus reaches out with his magic, feeling something in the obstruction that I can’t begin to understand. “It goes on for at least fifty feet. If we were all earth-born, maybe we could get through, but with just me?”
