Kael wraps an arm around my shoulder as convulsions take over my body.His warmth penetrates my jumpsuit, and the intimacy of it sickens me—not after what I saw done in the Light’s name.I flinch, shaking him off, my muscles twitching as I struggle to stand.
Nyx’s voice floods the chamber—no longer a whisper, but a vibration that rattles the stone and my bones alike.
As one wakes, two yet sleep.Sisters stir, ready to emerge from the deep.
“You hear that too?”I whisper.
Kael doesn’t respond, but he dips his chin, the whites of his eyes stark in the dull space.
The glow of the pool fades, leaving only the fiery after-light veining the walls.My hands shake; the water drips from them like bruised blood.I feel his gaze on me—studying me as if I’m something new.Something terrible.
“What happened?”
He doesn’t pull his eyes away.It doesn’t seem like he can.
“I—I don’t know.I think—” I wipe the remaining substance from the fabric on my arms, searching for words that can carry the magnitude of those images.“—I think I saw the moment she died.”
Shivers snake across my skin as I wrap my arms around myself, suddenly feeling the cold absence of the gel.The glossy surface of the pool remains unbroken, untouched—as if I had never been there at all.
“What did you see?”he asks.
My gaze slides to his, but my vision isn’t with him.It’s back in the pool, trapped under the three masks looming over me.“The Triarch.”
Above us, the ceiling groans.Dust rains down as the Light’s foundations begin to crack.
“What have you done?”Kael asks, watching motes of stone fall into the dark water.
Something deep inside finds the words for me.Before I can stop them, they release: “What I was born to do.”
Her whisper returns, softer now.Almost tender.
Run, my child.The sun remembers what it buried.
31
KAEL
The echo of her words clings to the stone.
Run, my child.
The sound isn’t hers, yet it’s inside my skull—vibrating behind my eyes, reverberating through the mark on my wrist until it feels as though the skin itself is speaking.
My eyes squeeze shut, biting down on the pain lacing up my arm.And then they come—images, not memories.
Soldiers dressed in silver and gold.Blinding flashes of light.Black blood splashing over stone.The Triarch.Power cracking the air apart.Wisps of shadow torn by light.
Screaming.So much screaming.So much death.
I palm the ache that’s forming behind my eyes, but the pulse under the mark beats harder—defiant, syncing with the runes.
Shaking my head to clear the vision, I look to Seren.
She stands at the pool’s edge, drenched and trembling.The fragility I saw before is gone, replaced by something that has carved her into something sharper.Her eyes catch what little light remains, reflecting not the red of the veins in the walls, but a ring of violet.
“Seren,” the name comes out as a rasped whisper.
She doesn’t look back.Her shadows coil around her feet like obedient pets, a faint blue sheen turning their darkness liquid.She seems to hear something else—something I can’t.
