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I hold on to this thought as we continue further into the darkness.
29
“Well, that’s inconvenient.”
This comment comes from Li when he looks up at what should have been the last obstacle in our journey to the summer house: a staircase carved into the farthest corner of the cavern. It stretches all the way up to the ceiling, where a small ledge leads to the door to outside. Theoretically, it should have been easy climbing up those stairs, but half of them are broken, and the staircase’s entire bottom is rubble. While it would still be possible for a small child to scramble up it, as Keita once did, there’s no way that’s feasible for any of us. We’d be likely to break our necks if we did.
Thankfully, we won’t need to.
“Ixa,” I say, glancing at my companion. Fly us up?
Deka, he agrees. His body immediately begins growing. Within moments, he’s large enough to seat the entire group. We all hold on as he lifts into the air, headed for that ledge, which ends in what looks like an impassable slab of stone.
Britta gestures at it. “Tell me that’s not—”
“The hidden door to the summer house? Unfortunately, it is,” Keita says, leaping off Ixa the moment we’re near, since my scaled companion is much too large to land on the ledge.
I hurriedly do the same, rushing over just as Keita begins to run his hand over the side of the slab. His eyes are narrowed in concentration. “There’s a lever somewhere right…here!” He pushes.
The stone gives way with a loud click, the sound muffled, blessedly, by the thicket of vines that’s grown in front of it. While we’ve seen neither hide nor hair of Melanis since we entered the cavern, we can’t expect such luck to hold now that we’re almost out of it.
Keita turns to us again. “Father always did like his escape routes,” he says, pulling at the vines. “This is the first one he showed me. Little did he know how useful it would be.” He continues aggressively pulling, little streams of sunlight now filtering through. “The deathshrieks shrieked and pushed against the door all day, but they never found out how to open it.”
He turns to me with a grim smile. “Father’s foresight saved me.”
My heart jolts as I imagine it: Keita, a small, bereaved child huddled against this stone door with the monsters on the other side of it. I reach for him. “Keita, I—”
“Hurry,” he says, turning swiftly away from me. He’s closing himself off again, making sure I don’t see even a hint of his emotions. “We have to get a move on.” He rips away the last few vines, allowing sunlight in completely.
And finally, I can see where we are.
The door is hidden by a group of boulders. They sprawl at the edge of a soaring mountain peak, upon whose highest point sits an estate so immense, it would give even the most magnificent homes in Hemaira a run for their money. I have to crane my head to look up at it. My eyes goggle as I take in the lush gardens framing the colossal house—no, palace—that is its center, its delicate pink walls shimmering in jewellike tones under the hazy golden sunlight. The only time I’ve seen walls made of stone like this before was in Laba, the capital of Maiwuri. But that’s not the estate’s only marvel. The roof as well is a thing of exquisite beauty, each of its tiles made from a pale-green mineral I’ve only ever seen in jewelry worn by people from the Eastern provinces. The edges of the tiles are feathered with gold, adding to their already stunning appearance.
And yet they’re untouched. My brows wrinkle as I realize: the entire estate is in pristine condition, unmarred by the hands of thieves or even the elements. There’s not a touch of decay or disrepair anywhere. It’s as if it’s been protected somehow, as if something is shielding it from the outside world. Even as I think this, I feel it, a deep thrumming of power coming from somewhere inside the estate. Power I immediately recognize, despite having never felt it before: my kelai!
I speed forward, a thousand emotions racing through me—hope, fear, dread…. If this truly is my kelai, then this is it, the end of my journey with my friends. The end of my life as I know it in Otera.
But none of my friends seem to realize that. They’re all just staring at the estate in wonder. “He told us his family was nobility, but I don’t think I really understood until today,” Li says, staring at Keita, who’s continued jogging onward, in awe. “This place is a palace.”
“An’ it’s been perfectly preserved,” Britta says, eyes practically round as she stares at the mansion and the profusion of sweet-smelling fruit trees lining it. “Like someone placed it under glass for wha—a decade? How is that possible?”
“I don’t know,” I swiftly mumble, although that’s not the strictest truth. I have a very good idea why the estate has remained untouched. But I don’t want to face the reason yet, don’t want to say it out loud.
“I do.” Belcalis turns to me. “It’s your kelai. It’s here.”
“And the jatu aren’t.” This brusque comment comes from Keita, who is now well down the path. “If we’re lucky, that means we’ve preceded them.”
He beckons us onward. “Let’s keep moving,” he says curtly. “We have only a few hours of daylight left.”
We hurry behind him, entering the fruit groves, where brightly feathered glimmerbirds roost in the trees, their tail feathers so long, they graze the ground. They aren’t alone. Little nuk-nuks, those mossy-green deer, gambol underneath the trees, blithely unconcerned as we walk past. How the Gilded Ones never found this place, never thought to look, I don’t understand. But perhaps the rules of existence work differently here, as they do in every primary temple of a group of gods.
And that’s what this place is, a temple.
“Infinity take me, these are good!” I turn, startled when Kweku takes a bite out of one of the perfectly ripe fruits that hang thick on the trees.
Asha slaps it from his palm.
“Hey!” Kweku protests. “That was a perfectly good fruit!”
