Chapter 6

Dravyn

I waited until Captain Sordrin had been gone for nearly a full minute before I exhaled the breath I'd been holding. Another minute before I chanced movement, and one more before I dared to step back into the hallway.

The palace was quieter than it had been upon my arrival. It meant less questioning gazes and bodies to avoid, but unfortunately more silent space for my thoughts to run wild in.

These thoughts kept circling back to my brother, wondering if there was more I should do where he was concerned.

I knew—better than any of the council I'd just witnessed—what the elves were truly capable of and what they might be planning. Did I have an obligation to wait until my brother returned so I could tell him these things? A duty as his family? As a god his people worshipped?

Or maybe Rieta was right, after all, and I was simply looking for an excuse to see him.

No; I wouldn't see him this trip, I decided. I'd risked enough already. I'd collected good information—information that I needed to take back to the divine realm. That would be enough for tonight.

And yet.

And yet…

When I looked up, I found myself standing at the head of a familiar hallway. This one was silent, completely devoid of any people or signs of life. The air hung stale and heavy, as though it had been undisturbed for a very long time.

My chest caved in, slowly but surely, as I realized where I was. I should have been paying more attention to where I was going. Because this hall…of course I found it familiar.

My room had once been behind the second door on the left.

And all my siblings…their rooms had been here, too.

My older brother might not have been in the palace—physically—but it didn't matter. These halls still held him. They still held all of us. I didn't dare open any doors to see if their rooms remained intact, but I swore I could hear the laughter of my younger siblings echoing out from them.

I could smell Elora's paints, her latest work of art still drying on one of her many easels.

Closing my eyes tightly caused shining blobs of black and blue to spill into my vision—like the splatters of ink that always covered Sylas's hands and clothing, remnants from his hours of studying and note-taking.

My heart pounded as if we were playing a game, as though they were all looking for me.

Why was I hiding from them?

Then the smell of blood eclipsed it all.

So much blood.

Then screaming. Pounding footsteps. A weight against my chest—the weight of my little sister, too heavy for my younger arms to bear. Too heavy, too heavy, too heavy… so I was too slow.

Too late to save her.

The memories rose like waves, each one crashing with more violence than the last. Cursing under my breath, I staggered back, kicking free of the shifting water and sand I imagined around my ankles, refusing to let it pull me into deeper, darker depths.

As calmly and quietly as I could, I turned and hurried away from the hallway.

Only to round the corner and find myself facing a dead end, looking up at a half-covered portrait.

The black mourning shroud that had been hung over it had begun to droop on one side, revealing part of a painting of the once-complete royal family.

There was my father—whom everyone always said I favored—with his serious glare and a crown of twisted, diamond-studded gold resting on his dark blond waves.

There was my mother, somehow striking a perfect balance between power and warmth as she clutched one of our family heirlooms: a golden sword with outstretched eagle wings forming the guard.

My elder brother stood beside her with a proud smile and his hand on my shoulder; even now I remembered the way he'd dug his nails into me as we'd sat for the painting, trying to goad me into crying out. He'd been unsuccessful. I had a high tolerance for pain—then and now—and the painted version of my younger self wore a determined, grim expression.

My younger brother and sister were below me, still covered by the mourning shroud. It was a small mercy, not having to see their faces; I might have stared at them forever if given the chance. The temptation to uncover them was enough to make my fingers cramp and itch with the need to move, but I kept my hands at my sides, unflinching.

It's time to leave. Over and over I told myself this— leave, leave, leave.

But the truth was that I had never truly left this place.

I didn't know how to.

Countless years had passed, but I still remembered all the horrors that had happened here with a kind of cruel, brilliant clarity.

I closed my eyes, trying to make it easier to turn my back on the painting of my family.

An instant later, I felt a series of sharp pains on my ring finger, as though the dragon there had coiled more tightly around my skin before biting into it.

Looking down at the dragon's sparkling ruby eyes roused me back into something like awareness. I didn't know how long I had until Mai's spell wore off—but I knew I couldn't be standing in this cursed hallway when it happened.

I made my way back to the lofted area overlooking the entry hall. I wanted to sprint down the spiraling staircases and out the front door faster than I'd ever sprinted in my existence. Maybe I could finally shake this palace and its memories off my trail if I just ran away from it all fast enough.

But I walked, because running would have been too loud, and the palace seemed to be filling up with more and more people all of a sudden; I couldn't risk bumping into someone.

The extra bodies were dangerous, but the walls were worse—they felt like they were shifting away from me, dragging at my hair and clothing as they went, like a beast trying to inhale me, swallow me whole, never let me leave the belly of despair ever again.

Somehow, I put one foot after the other and marched on.

Somehow, I slipped out the same door I'd come in, through a city turning sleepy and quiet, and then beyond that, into a forest of thick pine filled with the beating of owl wings and the competing songs of chirping insects.

And somehow , finally, I stood before the restless river that would bear me back to the divine realm.

Head pounding and heart hammering, I knelt and pressed my palm against the surface, just as I'd done in the divine realm on the other side.

The water should have turned thicker, closer to the consistency of molten metal, as it was in that other realm. But the river didn't shift, not in the slightest, as though it didn't recognize my authority at all.

I suspected—hoped—it had less to do with my wayward magic and more to do with a lack of concentration. I was too far removed from my divine existence in that moment; I couldn't travel to the middle-heavens while so many images of my mortal life remained dominant. I couldn't belong to both worlds.

I tried harder to push the images of my family and my old home away.

I had to push them away.

But no matter how I tried, I couldn't form even the faintest image of the divine realm in my mind—and so the river would not take me back to that realm.

My fingers dug into the cold mud on either side of me.

Magic stirred in my bones, tempting me to use it instead of the river.

The pools of water around me dried with the heat I gave off, rising as steam into the night air. Little fires began blooming in the grass and mud. They crackled and hissed against the damp ground, the sounds seeming to whisper words that were at once taunting and encouraging.

You don't have to surrender to the mud. You're a god. You don't need a river to carry you anywhere. Your magic can take you away from this place.

I realized then how little I'd come to trust that magic of mine…so little that I wouldn't even risk a simple transporting spell. Mai had been right; I was a mess.

The fires were becoming brighter, more numerous. I didn't feel out of control of them—they were still harmlessly small—but they were popping up breathtakingly quickly. This was fast becoming a nightmare.

Nightmare .

The word stirred something inside of me. My hands lifted of their own accord, shaking away mud and putting out several fires with the same motion. And as quickly as that, I could picture the divine realm again—or a small part of it, anyway: my bed, with Karys resting in the center of it.

What if the potion Rieta had given her hadn't worked? What if another terror had awakened her by this point and she was wondering where I'd gone?

My fingers reached out, hovered over the cold water. Instead of trying to picture the heavens themselves, I only tried to picture Karys's face. It was surprisingly easy to do, even with the fires still building around me and the blood-stained memories still clawing at my back.

I could—I would —make my way back to her, even if I had to crawl to her through fire and mud and memory, and whatever else tried to come between us.

With an effort that sent a painful spasm up my arm and drew a deep groan from my chest, I forced all the fires around me to extinguish.

Darkness engulfed me. Fire started to rise within me, but I resisted the urge to let it overtake me again.

Instead, I leaned forward and dipped my hand closer to the river's surface, still not quite touching it. I kept perfectly still as the water moved toward me. It rose almost tentatively to my fingertips, like a lover slowly moving in for a kiss, until finally, it swept over my hand, up my arm, and pulled me fully down into its embrace.

It was not a smooth journey. The waters seemed to have grown darker and even more restless in the short time I'd spent in my old kingdom. I was tossed and battered about, striking rocks, getting caught in violent currents, washing onto what seemed to be shorelines, only to be yanked back—almost as if Eligas could not decide what to do with me.

Once I finally reached a familiar shoreline, I stayed sprawled out by the water's edge for several minutes, unable to bring myself to move. I was sore. Exhausted. And afraid to open my eyes completely, convinced that even after all that painful tumbling around, I was still in the mortal realm. The water hadn't felt right. The air here didn't feel right. Nothing felt right, except…

When I focused, I could feel a second, fluttering force of magic alongside the heartbeat of my own.

Karys.

Closer. She was closer, and certainly in the same realm as me. So I was back in the heavens I'd been aiming for. But I still had at least a mile to go to reach her. Picturing her face once more, I shoved myself upright and carried on.

I made it back to the palace, all the way through the front door, and nearly to my tower before I had to kneel and catch my breath.

It was in this frustrating, embarrassing position that Mai happened across me. She scrutinized me from head to toe—likely making sure I wasn't in any immediate danger—before scrunching up her nose and sniffing as though I'd dragged something dead in alongside me.

"You look like shit," she remarked.

"Thank you," I said, wincing as I took a deep breath. "That's helpful."

Her hands went to her hips. "Well? What did you find out?"

The images from the night's travels raced through my mind. I shook them away. "Later," I told her. "I need to go wash the pieces of that realm from my skin."

Mai's gaze turned softer and brighter—a mixture of concern and curiosity—but she only bit her lip and gave an understanding nod.

"Karys," I began, "is she..."

"She's fine. Still asleep, last I checked."

I gave her my thanks and staggered to my feet, waving her away as she tried to offer a hand for balance. I managed to stand and walk well enough on my own, and without another word, I climbed the stairs toward my bedroom.