Page 84 of House of Dusk
There was a rushing, like the indrawn breath of a great beast. Then, nothing. She was still chanting her own name as she fell to the stones, shivering and gasping. Her teeth chattered. “S-Sephre. I’m Sephre.”
“Yes,” said Beroe, her voice cool, tinged with regret. “Sephre.OnlySephre.”
Sephre couldn’t make sense of the words. She lifted her hands. Her palms were cold. Her entire body was so cold, so cold.
Something gold glimmered in Beroe’s cupped hands. A ball of soft yellow flame.
Understanding howled through Sephre then.Herflame. Beroe had taken it. Even now, the agia was turning, holding the handful to the split stone, feeding the yellow sparks back to their source.
When Sephre had first come to Stara Bron, she had overheard two of her fellow novices gossiping about a red brother who had left the order three months prior. Apparently a soothsayer had named him the reborn heir to a powerful cloth merchant. The merchant had given a large donation to Stara Bron, and the red brother had given up his flame in order to accept his new role. But he had done so willingly.
Don’t, she ordered herself. She couldn’t stop to mourn. She had to go.Timeus.
Lacheron was frowning. “Agia, she must not be allowed to—”
Sephre stopped paying attention. All that mattered now was escape. She spun, kicking out, catching one man in the knee. Slammed a fist into the neck of the woman beside him. Then threw herself toward the stairs.
“Stop!” shouted Beroe.
Sephre did not stop. She pelted down the steps, ignoring the throbbing of her head, the ice in her chest. A bolt of blue flame exploded against the stones beside her. She ducked, and ran on. If she could just reach the ridge below, she could cut across the mountainside. It would be a rough scrabble, likely too rough for Beroe, especially if she meant to keep her new robes pristine.
There. The last turn. Just a few more steps.
Pain exploded across her shoulder. Blue sparks danced in her eyes. Her next breath was like sucking down a storm, lightning hammering her chest. She smelled burning hair. Burning flesh.
Then she was falling, slamming into the stones. The world stuttered, shadows grasping at her vision.
Death. This was death. She thought that naming it might make her less terrified, but no. She was trembling. She’d always thought she would meet her death bravely.Fates. Forgive me, Timeus.
She could beg it of him. Not the others. But Timeus, at least, she had tried to save.
Darkness fell over her. This was it, then.
Hands grasped her arms. The shadow shifted, becoming a man. “Not so fast,” he said. “You’ve still got something I need, sister.”
That voice! Sephre blinked, her vision still bleary.
“Did you miss me?” Nilos stood over her, his green eyes wickedly bright.
She couldn’t work her lips, not even to curse him. He gave her a wry smile. “I told you we’d meet again. We’ve much to discuss, you and I.” He crouched, hefting her into his arms. The movement set off a spiderweb of pain. Her shriek came out a tormented croak.
“Shh.”
Was he really trying toshushher? She tried to glare at him, but the shadows returned, swarming over her vision. Her body went limp, and darkness took her.
CHAPTER 23
YENERIS
“Well?” asked Sinoe. “Do I look like a dutiful daughter about to visit her stolen corpse-mother?” The princess spun round in the center of her dressing chamber, setting the long pleats of her gown swirling like wisps of clouds around the dark eye of a storm. Her hair hung long and loose at the back, the curls pulled out into rippling waves, glossy and dark. Even the bright slants of late afternoon sunlight found no hidden sparks of red, thanks to the oakleaf treatment her handmaids had applied earlier, in preparation for this visit.
She looked beautiful, as usual, but Yeneris couldn’t say that. There was too much between them. If they had been born into other lives, maybe they could have been friends. Or lovers. But not in this life. That was clear.
When Yeneris was six, she had told her mother she was going to become a dustspinner. They’d just visited the Scarab’s Grotto, to lay flowered garlands at the kore’s shrine. Her fingers smelled of hyacinth, her eyes peeled wide to take everything in. The shaggy cavern above, dripping fingers of old stone that glimmered in the lamplight. The veins of silver in the stone walls, a finer and more fitting adornment for such a holy place than any tiled mosaic.
But even more impressive to her child self had been the woman standing guard. Strong and sturdy, as if she might have been carved from the stone herself, clad in an iridescent habit the exact blackish-blue of a scarab’s wing and armed with a glossy black blade. The dustspinner was everything Yeneris dreamed of being: beautiful, powerful, and heroic.
To her credit, her mother hadn’t laughed when Yeneris declared her intention. She had always taken Yeneris’s dreams seriously.I think you would make a fine dustspinner, Ris,she said.But it’s a hard path. And it requires sacrifice. You would need to travel away, far to the south, to be trained in the House of Midnight.
