Page 87 of Beyond the Shadowed Earth

Eda took a step backward, afraid of the darkness in Niren’s eyes, afraid ofNiren.For the first time since she had entered the Circle of the Dead, Eda felt the cold. She stared at her sister, and ached. “I’m sorry. For everything I did to you in life. For bargaining you away to the gods. For dragging you to the capital. For forcing you to be my friend. And you’re right. If I don’t go in there—” Eda glanced at the writhing river. “If I don’t, all this will be for nothing.”

Niren gave a sharp, final nod. “Then go. While there is still time.”

Eda wanted to pull Niren into an embrace, to cling to her and weep with her and tell her they were really sisters. But Niren was like a stranger here, as cold and unreachable as a god.

Eda bowed to her, very low, and then stepped past her, pacing down the bank and into the river.

Instantly the shadows were on her, jagged teeth tearing into her legs, her arms, her sides. They tugged her down, down, pulling her under the shadowy current. She couldn’t breathe, or see, or hear. Terror and pain burrowed deep. In another moment the shadows would swallow her whole. In another moment, she would be lost forever.

But her hand found the priestess’s knife, and she thrashed it about, slicing through the shadows. She fought her way to the surface again.

Still the shadow creatures twisted and shrieked and tore at her flesh. Slimy clawed fingers closed around her throat. Poison crept into her veins.

And then something compelled her to touch her forehead. Her body blazed with heat, with light. It poured out of every part of her.

The shadows screamed in agony and fell away like so many husks.

Blood poured down her arms and back and legs. The heat of the Starlight could not quench her all-consuming pain.

But before her stood a doorway, carved in stone and pulsing with the same light that burned inside of her.

She shook the dead shadows from her feet, and stepped through the second door.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

“EDA? EDA,ARE YOU LISTENING? SOMETIMESI swear on Tuer himself I don’t know where your mind goes.”

Eda turned from the window, where she’d been looking down at the sea. She’d lost herself for some moments in the mesmerizing waves, watching them break with white foam on the rocks. She must have slipped into some kind of daydream, but not the pleasant kind. The kind filled with darkness and shadows and fear. She didn’t want to think about it.

So she smiled at her father and hopped down from the windowsill, climbing onto his lap and cuddling with him in his favorite chair. It had been a lovely day and tomorrow would be just as lovely. It was spring, and her father wouldn’t be leaving to give his report to the capital for some weeks yet. Her mother was happy in her garden, so Eda mostly had him all to herself.

“Such a sad story, Father,” said Eda, tucking her head under his chin. She listened to his heartbeat.

“Erris should not have made a deal with Tuer that he didn’t understand,” her father said gravely.

“Still,” Eda murmured, “Tuer must have known what Erris meant. He didn’thaveto be so cruel.”

“No. I suppose he did not. But that is the way of the gods, my love. Their ways are different than ours.”

“Their ways are cruel.”

They shoved her screaming into the carriage. She fought and kicked. She sank her teeth into her newly appointed regent’s arm and bit him, hard. Rescarin swore and slapped her face, twisted her arm, told her he’d chop off every one of her fingers if she wouldn’t be still, if she wouldn’t let Baron Lohnin take her back to Eddenahr.

She was still.

The carriage rattled away and she didn’t cry. Her dead parents were to be buried tomorrow, and no one had thought that she should attend their funeral. No one remembered she was a child whose parents had died. She was simply an inconvenience. A nuisance.

Lohnin dozed in the carriage on the seat across from hers. His spittle caught in his beard. She hated him almost as much as she hated Rescarin. She thought about what it might be like to kill Rescarin. To take a knife and drive it straight into his heart. His eyes would grow dim, like her parents’ had. He wouldn’t bother her anymore. She could go home.

But she didn’t think she could kill him. There would be a lot of blood, and she didn’t like blood. And besides, killing was an offense against the gods, and the gods were the only ones who could help her now.

She was careful of the words she spoke to Tuer when he came to her in her family’s temple, her knuckles aching and bloody where she’d pounded them against the stone altar. “My life in service,” she promised him, “to make me Empress in my lifetime.” She was proud of that last phrase. Erris hadn’t thought to make any such addendum, and look where that had gotten him.

But she hadn’t thought Tuer would ask for anything more.

She hadn’t thought he would ask for Niren, whom she loved best in all the world.

In one heartbeat, she decided.

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