Page 43 of The Edge of Darkness

Amarna came up to my side and gripped my ankle. “You will need an anchor to this realm if you are to summon a god.”

Maeson stepped up to my other side. “And you will need someone to speak the Old Language while you call the god forth. Guess that’ll be me,” she said, eyeing Amarna across the bed.

Amarna gave her a curt nod, then lifted her own Alatyr from around her neck. She turned to Niall. “So as not to get the signals mixed,” she explained, handing it to him.

She opened her mouth again to speak, but Niall cut her off. “With my life,” he said, replying to the command she was surely about to issue.

I steadied myself. “Guide me, would you?”

“Okay, we’re really doing this,” Maeson said, taking a deep breath and grabbing my other ankle.

“You need to put the Alatyr on to command it,” Amarna directed. “You are not an Elder, so there is no guarantee it will even work, and if it does it might⁠—”

“Let’s not go there,” I said quickly, lifting the chain around my head and letting the stone fall to just above my navel. “What next?”

“Now, you are going to need to call upon the god you want to petition,” she instructed. “There is no right way, but you will need to call forth your power when doing so. It is your power, and the Alatyr, that will invoke the god or goddess you choose. We will hold you here, grounding you. In the presence of a god, it can be hard to tell what is reality and what is not. You don’t want to get lost in the space between your physical body and whatever the god shows you. Some can be fickle.”

“I’ve heard that before.” I clutched the stone in both hands. “Will the god actually physically appear?”

“Only to you, if they deem you worthy,” Amarna answered, a hint of worry lining her brow. “Your interaction will be in your mind. We will not see what you see. Just remember to come back to this body when the task is finished.”

I breathed in deeply and closed my eyes.

I would call on the goddess of healing, Nephira. She was one of the few gods I’d learned about when I was a child, when the city became plagued with a deadly sickness. My grandmother had contracted it, and our entire family had prayed relentlessly for her to be brought back to health. When she succumbed to it, I didn’t understand why our prayers had not been answered.

That was the last time I had prayed to the goddess.

I’d been a horrible patron to the gods my entire life, only frequenting the few temples in our realm when I was a child. And now, here I was, about to demand an audience with one of them. I hoped the gods still had faith in me, despite my shortcomings.

There’s no right way to do this, I reassured myself.

Maeson began chanting under her breath, the power in her words flowing into me and channeling into the Alatyr.

Going with what felt natural, I lifted the stone in my hands, and as I rallied my power, I spoke the words in my mind. I summon you, Nephira. Hear my plea. I call for your aid and your strength, to heal⁠—

A sudden gust of wind descended upon me from all angles, whipping my hair into a torrent and lashing the Alatyr’s chain against my neck. I heard a medicine table crash to the ground somewhere behind me, but I kept my eyes shut.

Someone nearby called out for me, but their voice was growing more distant.

A sense of panic washed over me.

Amarna’s and Maeson’s grips tightened in unison on my ankles, but then the pressure grew lighter and lighter. It felt like I was being torn from my existence and brought into a void.

Then, everything went quiet. And in the white abyss of my mind’s eye, a black mass opened before me.

I had heard of Nephira’s beauty. Of her creamy brown skin, matching eyes, and long, curly hair. But the being that stepped forth was the opposite of the goddess I had called upon. He wore long robes that were black as night, and carried a golden scythe in his right hand. With his left, he pushed back his hood, revealing skin as white as snow and as pale as death.

He had thick, pale lips, and a broad nose, crowned with a pair of milky, opaque eyes that churned and swirled like endless clouded depths. His hair was twisted and tied back on his head in multiple, matted, rope-like strands the same shade of white as his skin.

I had never seen anything like him. He was so strange—so unsettling—and yet so defyingly calm.

As he approached, I felt that same calm wash over me, as if he was projecting his posture upon my thoughts. The emotion he evoked was at complete odds to the fear my body was screaming at me to feel. And the power that radiated off of him was indescribable.

All the air rushed from my lungs as I realized who he was.

He stopped mere feet from me, and I stared up into the face of the god of death.

His opalescent eyes roamed over me, weighing me down with their clouded stare.