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“The Oracle will be here in a couple hours,” Raz reminded him, but Tristan just snorted. “She’s coming at dawn, and if you think I’m doing this sober, you’re sadly mistaken.” He and Tavion traded winks while I rolled my eyes.
“If you’re both pissed when she gets here, you won’t be of any help, and we all need to keep our wits about us. What do you think she wants?”
“To scold you for killing Solok.” Tristan held out his empty glass in mock salute.
“Maybe she’ll give you a medal.” Tavion’s grin widened as he poured him and Tristan another glass. “That would be my recommendation.”
“When I touched the skull, I saw all of us die.” I swallowed hard, the memory coming back full force. “We were fighting a war against an enormous force, but we weren’t…Fae. We were enormous—fifteen feet tall—towering over the invading forces. And we spoke to each other, but not with words. We talked inside our heads.”
Raz tensed then slowly set his drink down and pulled me back into his lap. I wrapped my arms around him, willing this sense of dread to disappear.
“Our magic acted in a way I’d never imagined magic could work. I could draw directly from the earth, then I channeled power—lightning—into Tavion.” I pointed to the snowcapped mountain looming outside the window. “I think we were there, if I have my bearings right.”
For a second, the vision swept back in, wiping away this sense of safety, the warmth of Raziel’s body around me.
I was back out on that ledge, magic flowing into my body from the ground, lightning crackling around me. Power, the kind I’d never before imagined, followed by a death I hadn’t seen coming.
“We were definitely in the mountains,” Raz murmured, his arms tightening as he gazed out the window. “An outcropping, where we’d been cornered by an army.”
I shook my head. “No, the outcropping was part of our plan. We wanted our enemies there…the cold made them vulnerable, the terrain…benefitted us. We’d killed all but one—a prince, I think—but then there was a boom, and everything went dark.”
“Astragulus Centaria.” The name was little more than breath spilling between Raziel’s lips.
“An ancestor of the two kings.” I nodded. He’d been mentioned in one of the books I’d read, though that seemed like a lifetime ago. “He brought his army to Old Valarian to conquer this world.”
Tavion’s face was pale, the half-full glass forgotten. “The mountain collapsed. We were all crushed,” he whispered, and my breath caught at that empty, hollow tone. We’d all seen the same thing, then, except for Tristan, who’d had enough sense not to touch anything.
As if he saw my thoughts, he lifted his glass with a saucy wink.
I nodded. “That’s what I thought, from the way the skull…” I swallowed down the bile souring my throat. “I think that crushed skull was me, a long time ago. I was one of the Old Gods, and the battle we saw was when the Fae conquered Valarian ten thousand years ago.”
“Your name was Amalla,” Tavion whispered, his drink forgotten. “I think mine was…Ardaric.”
“You saw all this…when you touched the bones?” Tristan threw back his glass. “Thank fuck I kept my hands to myself, since I’ve been raised right and I’m not a heathen like the rest of you.”
“So that room was where those first Fae conquerors buried the Old Gods?” I scanned the face of the mountain looming over us, the snowcapped summit. “They must have dug them from the rubble, then hidden them in the catacombs, after the war, where they’d never be found.”
I turned to Raziel. “Didn’t you say Torin’s throne was made from a skull found in the catacombs by the first King of the Fae? She displayed the skull so everyone would know the Old Gods had been defeated.”
If my skull…my ancestor’s skull…was the one that was crushed, and Tavion’s the one on the plinth, then the others—three more in total—belonged to Raz, Tristan, and Zor.
“I’ve been through that portal more times than I can count, seen those bones a hundred times. But before yesterday, I never sensed anything unusual.” Tavion sat heavily into a chair, his drink cradled in his hands, whirling the liquid round and round. “But when I went through, what used to take a second felt like I was trapped between worlds for hours.”
“What did you see when you touched the skull?” I asked softly. Tavion tossed back the rest of his glass, then picked up the bottle and drank deeply before Tristan snatched it away with a curse.
“I wasn’t planning to touch the godsdamned thing. I’ve seen them before, you know. Enough times not to be curious anymore. But I swear, I heard the bones speak to me. I heard these voices in my head, and then the vision…it didn’t stop.”
His eyes landed on mine. “Until the mountain collapsed, and Anaria…”
“I’m never touching those fucking bones,” Tristan muttered, emptying out the bottle into his glass. “You lot are well and truly fucked.”
“You’re not outside of this, Tristan,” Raz warned. “I didn’t touch the bones…but I touched Anaria while she was having her vision, which was enough. If you think you can walk away…”
“Who said I’m walking away?” Tristan tossed back the drink in a single go. “You’d just drag me back into this mess, of that I’m sure.”
That vision of death, this sense of impending doom seemed to hang over every shaky breath I took. I’d never felt as trapped as I did right now, crushed between the Oracle’s impending visit, the stone I’d found through a High Seer I did not trust, and the fact none of us knew what came next, no matter how much we wanted to pretend we did.
“I’m scared,” I admitted, drumming my fingers on the table. “She’s orchestrating our every move. Chances are, she gave us that two-day deadline to force us down into those tunnels, knowing full well what they held. And why separate us from Zorander?”
