Page 127 of House of Dusk
Sephre breathed in. Strange that she could breathe here, in this watery realm. But she felt her chest rise, felt the flood of coolness in her lungs. “You’re her. The Maiden.”
Not some shadow named faithless or faithful to serve those who survived her. Not a legend or a story or a half-remembered tale. This was the woman herself. Or some part of her.
“Why can I see you?” she asked.
“You know why.” The woman regarded her steadily.
Sephre had suspected. Had seen the shadow of this truth in Nilos’s eyes. Even so, her lips did not want to move. To speak it. “I’m...am I you? Reborn?”
One corner of the woman’s mouth tilted up. “Reborn. A mortal word, for something beyond mortal ken. You carry something of me.”
Even so, if that was true, it had other implications. When a spirit was reborn, any trace of the old body fell to ash. Sephre forced herself to ask the question. “Then the bones, the reliquary we took from Bassara...”
“Are not mine. They belong to another.”
She had expected it. Still, it shook her.
“If you wish to aid her,” said the woman, “then you must finish the work I could not.”
“What?” Sephre asked. “You mean the Ember King? Stopping him from breaking the cycle? What does that mean?”
A shadow passed over the woman’s face. “It means the end of all this. The return of something old and terrible.”
“That’s all you can tell me?”
“I’m sorry.” The woman shook her head. “So much is ash. I couldn’t...I needed to forget.”
“I understand.” Sephre had almost done the same. And who was she to judge another’s pain? Pain was not some coin to be counted and measured and tallied up. It justwas. You endured or you escaped.
“But...” The woman frowned, lifting one hand, brushing her fingers close beside Sephre’s temple. She thought of Nilos, cupping her cheek, and breathed deep again. “There is a face. In your memories. A face I know.”
“That makes no sense,” said Sephre. “You died centuries ago. Everyone you knew is dead.” Even the Serpent wore Nilos’s face, now.
The woman didn’t seem to be listening. She twitched her fingers. “This one. This one I know.” Her voice trembled with an emotion Sephre couldn’t name. A tangle of love and loathing.
She stepped back, clutching what looked like a bundle of quivering threads. When she opened her hand, they wove themselves into an image.
Sephre stared into the colorless gray eyes, the bland, forgettable face that had sent her to poison a city. “Lacheron.” She blinked. Breathed in the certainty of it. “He’s the Ember King. He’s the one who commands the skotoi. But...how can it be him? Still living? After three centuries?”
The woman was still staring at Lacheron’s semblance. It reminded Sephre uncannily of the way Lacheron had stared at her, on the mountaintop. A hungry, searching look.
Then she blinked, shook her head, and the vision of Lacheron unraveled. “His vengeance drives him. And his master preserves him. So that he in turn will preserve his master.”
“His master?”
“The First Power. The eldest child of Chaos. The destroyer.”
What had Nilos told her, earlier? A legend of five children of Chaos. A murderous firstborn god, sealed into the abyss, who threatened to one day rise and claim the world for himself.
“Why would anyone serve a god who wants to destroy the world?” That was the part Sephre had never fathomed. “Vengeance is one thing, if he blamed the Serpent for not sparing his people during the plague. But isn’t this...overkill? Is there more to the story?”
There must be. Like the unseen roots of an ancient olive tree, driven deep, tangled into stone, anchoring the silver leaves above. But she could not see the shape of them. Only a barest inkling, sieved from a dozen different—and often conflicting—legends. A maiden who fell in love with the Serpent. A king who sought to slay death itself. A witch who stole the power of a god. The haunted expression in the gray-eyed woman’s face. And Lacheron himself, telling her what he had sacrificed.I lost the one person who mattered most to me. And I know I will never get her back.
“Was the Ember King...someone important to you?” she asked. “Is that how he convinced you to slay the Serpent?”
The woman hesitated. Trying to remember? Or trying to forget? “I’m sorry. My memories are ash. All I can tell you is that his face is...familiar.”
Sephre clenched her fists, nails biting into her palms. “Never mind. It doesn’t matter why he’s doing it. What I need to know is how to stop him. Especially if I can’t just stab him.”
