And so we head out into the Wastes, into the blighted land Ronan’s father made from what was once the fertile soil that fed Nithyria. Seth prattles on as we walk, conjecturing about the poisons and nature-born magic used to scour the land, the only one of us seemingly unaffected by the eerie silence of our surroundings.
“I wish I could have seen it for myself,” he says, trudging over the sand dunes with dramatic effort. Lightning flashes in the distance over the mountains, casting strange shadows among the sands. “It must have taken hundreds of people to do it while we were all fighting.”
“Thousands,” says Ronan absently, his eyes on Kira in the skies with Octavia. “We were without healers for more than a month.”
“Insanity. Your father was really something.”
I glare at Seth. The admiration in his voice, despite all that we suffered for God-King Aurelian’s foolish decision, is despicable.
“I’m just saying that it was a bold move. If we’d known they were without healers, we would have pushed harder. To be honest, we couldn’t tell.”
“Ronan did nothing but heal during that time,” says Taran. “He exhausted himself every day.”
Seth rolls his eyes. “Of course he did.”
Our journey has done little to endear my brother to Ronan, but Ronan’s general detachment has kept them from coming to blows.
That, and the goodwill of Taran coming between them.
We make good time across the wastes in spite of how unpleasant they are to travel. The griffins are unaffected by whatever magic makes this place seem inhospitable, and the open landscape makes it easy for us to see each other while we ferry across it.
By nightfall, we’ve made it to the shadow of the hillside where Avaris once stood. It’s a strange hill, approaching it from this direction. I remember standing on it as a child, looking out at the golden grain in the plains. It felt like a cliff then, but from this angle, I can see that it stands on its own, isolated from the rest of the flat land like someone scooped up one of the Palador Mountains and dropped it here out of place.
Ronan takes my hand as we prepare to stop for the night.
“You remember our dream?” he asks me, looking up at the top of the hill.
There’s no temple there, but he’s right—this is the place.
“Maybe we should keep going. If we travel through the night, we can make it to the mountains.” I can’t shake the sense of unease when I look up at the empty spot where the temple stood in our dreams, can’t help but hear the sickle at my back, to feel the wind it stirred in the breeze.
“I was going to ask if you wanted to go up there to see. Don’t you feel drawn to it?”
“No. I feel…” I’m not sure what I feel. “It feels wrong somehow.”
Ronan nods. “To me as well. But I feel like it wants me to go to it. Like the way you felt with the torch.”
“All the more reason not to go then. That torch has been nothing but trouble.” At my words, I feel it stir, a weak reflection of Ronan’s feelings from within his bag a dozen feet away.
I manage to convince Ronan to wait until the morning, but he’s up early, pacing around before dawn.
“It feels like you. No, not just you. Us. I can sense it from here.”
“Come on, then.” I take Ronan’s hand, and I nudge Quinn awake from where she sleeps next to Taran. “We’re going up to see the ruins. We’ll meet you on the other side.”
“Wait,” says Quinn. “Shouldn’t we all go? Did you wake me because you knew I couldn’t follow you without help? That’s a low blow, Sylvie.”
“It’s not a long walk. You’ll be able to see us from down here if we get into any sort of trouble.”
“Fine. If you get into trouble, shout if you’re not dead. I’m going back to sleep.”
I follow Ronan as he cuts a path up the hillside, switching back when the terrain gets too steep. The ground here is barren, like the rest of the wastes. This side is completely without buildings, the land too steep to build on even during better times. The climb is tough on my body after so many days ofhiking. Ronan helps me along, guided by some unseen force that compels him beyond all reason.
The rocky soil levels out near the top. Over the side, I see the ruins of the settlement of Avaris, little more than a pile of rubble and a handful of low, half-destroyed walls of grey stone. It looks like no one has been there in years.
Despite the fact that it’s been clear there’s no temple or any sign of it for some time, I still expect to see it there somehow when we arrive. “It should be right here.”
“I know,” says Ronan. He walks around the sides of where the temple stood in my dreams, careful not to cross into its interior. He enters through the invisible doorway, and I follow him in, ignoring the brushing feeling against the back of my neck, the sense of being watched.
