Page 14 of Oath-Maker

The tallest and only humanoid demon guard of the group held out a hand to me. “My queen, it’s not safe. We do not know what dangers lurk here.”

“None anymore,” I said, leaving the “probably” unsaid. “Basara is gone. I made her a statue just over there in the dark. We’ll be okay, and you won’t be far if we need you.”

He looked like he wanted to argue, but Jessa turned a pleading gaze on him and he relented. I stifled my smile. The guard must have thoughthewas causing her pain specifically.

“Ten minutes,” the guard said as he lowered his hand to let us pass. “We’ll check on you then, and then in ten minute intervals.”

“Deal.” I stepped past him and pulled Jessa along before he and the others could change their minds. “See you soon.”

We left them by the stairs and a void of darkness swallowed the distance between their torches and Jessa’s light. I summoned celestial magic to my own palm and held it before me, illuminating the old stonework floor and wide arches of the temple. The darkness felt too tight and small.

“I swear this place was bigger the last time I was here,” I said. “Granted, I was also under Basara’s control at the time.”

Jessa raised her hand and increased the light coming from the glowing magic. It looked effortless on her fingertips, which sent pride beaming through me. I remembered first meeting Jessa, this scared, fragile, petite celestial-kin. Now… Now the both of us had grown.

“Won’t take long to look through then,” Jessa said with a smile before she singsonged, “so we can get you back to your knight in shining armor.”

I knew she meant well, but every time I thought about Lucius right now, I was only reminded exactly how short a time we had left together if things didn’t go our way. You could heal wounds. The celestials even had a way to stave off light sickness, apparently. But you couldn’t bring back the dead. It was the one thing magic, even ours, couldn’t do.

Silence sifted naturally between us as we explored the dark remains of the ancient temple. I hadn’t had much time to investigate during the battle when I’d been here last, least of all with as much light as Jessa and I were now producing.

The temple was definitely old, either built before the tear in the Veil that’d ushered in world-changing war, or just after. Basara had made it her home, or at least a base of operations. We didn’t find evidence of the temple being lived in, necessarily, but altars still had offerings on them in the form of herbs, stones, crystals, and various vials filled with liquids; a fire pit contained fresh soot and ash; and a few shelves of ancient, yellowed tomes in languages neither Jessa nor I could read were dotted around the edges of the space.

And then I saw it. Standing there so flippantly, so unreal, my heart froze in my throat.

Broken marble, shattered with the force of magic very different from the potentiality power that had created it.

Basara’s statue had been cracked and shattered. From the inside, it looked like, given how the pieces flared out around the base of the statue—the same one I’d made to imprison her during the battle for Alastia.

My breath caught in my throat. I spun slowly, scanning the darkness for any trace of Basara.

“What is it?” Jessa asked as she emerged from a swath of shadows. The radiant magic in her one palm lit her face angelically. She was now holding a rolled-up scroll in her other hand.

I pointed to where Basara had once stood as a statue. How had she escaped? Assuming, of course, she was still alive after the marble had been shattered.

No… she wasn’t still alive. Before, when Basara had lived, she’d always felt like this haunting dark presence on the edge of my awareness. I didn’t sense that now, even when I tried.

“Ayla?” Jessa came to stand beside me.

“Basara.” I pointed the base of the statue, the only part of it still intact. “I guess she’s really gone now.”

“How do you feel about that?” she asked carefully, watching my reaction.

I shook my head slowly. “I don’t know. Relieved, I guess. She’s one less enemy to contend with.”

Jessa raised the scroll in her hand to me. “She knew things, Ayla. Read this.”

I flashed her a confused look, but she lifted the scroll higher instead of explaining, so I took it from her. My fingers shook with the weight of everything as I carefully unrolled the scroll. I was sure that if something else happened, I’d probably lose it. Between Lucius and light sickness, Merek and the coming battle that seemed inevitable, I wasn’t sure Iwantedto know what Jessa had found that made her so worried. I took a breath to steady myself and pushed down my fear and dread. They weren’t useful emotions, not right now, and there may not yet be time for them again anytime soon.

Suitably numb—I thought, at least—to further surprises, I began to read. Which was difficult at first because the scroll had been written in the same ancient celestial languages as the other books in this temple. But, unlike with those other tomes, the longer I read this scroll, the more words swam magically into English. And what a story they and the decorative images around those words told.

“Where did you find this?” I asked Jessa as I read the passage inked here who-knew-how-long ago. This felt too old and fragile a scroll to be from Earth. If Basara had come over with the original tear in the Veil, she must have brought it with her.

“Near that altar,” she said, pointing to one adorned in red and gold runes that looked a few sparks of magic away from being a powerfully protected space. “I know there was risk there, but this scroll was the only thing on it. It must be important.”

I pressed my lips together. Jessa had taken a risk, but given the predicaments we’d kept finding ourselves in over the course of the last few days, maybe it’d been warranted. “I think you’re right.”

I focused again on the passage. It told the broad story about the demon and celestial war that we on Earth already knew about. That they hated each other, mortal and immortal enemies. I skimmed past that to the end, where the text got bleaker as it talked about ominous end times. About an end to demonic rule.

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