Page 79 of Still the Sun

Skin pebbling with an internal chill, I turn from the tower and bolt back for Emgarden, fear my only fuel.She’s dead, either way.

I sprint for Salki’s home.

People are still in the streets, looking at the tower, murmuring to one another. “I’m sure it was turning,” one says. Another, “It’s never shaken that hard. Look how it broke my shutter!”

“Pell, do you know?” Frantess asks as I pass.

I shake my head and keep running, searching faces, sidestepping Amlynn and nearly colliding with Maglon. No Salki. My shirt sticks to my back by the time I reach her home. I don’t bother knocking.

“Salki?” I push the door open.

She’s not here, but Casnia is, sitting at their little table, drawing furiously. I step in, as though Salki might suddenly appear from behind a cot or within a cupboard, but there’s no trace of her.

“Cas.” I put a hand on her shoulder. “Where’s Salki? Is she in the fields?” I used to know her schedule to the minute.

Cas shakes her head back and forth, scribbling so hard that her chalk breaks. She’s drawing me and Salki again, the colors off as usual, as are our proportions. I’m nearly a head taller in this rendition.

“Okay, I’m going to find her.” Releasing Casnia, I head to the door. “Stay here.”

Casnia ignores me and continues coloring with a nub of yellow.

I shut the door, turn for the road—

Be quiet. Don’t let him hear you.

I freeze, my hand on the door handle. This. Something before ... It was like this. No ... likethis, and I lean into the doorjamb. Bend my knees, trying to trace the memory the way I did with Heartwood’s. Like ... this. I didn’t want to be seen.

It’s slipping away again. I feel it slipping. This wasn’t right. This—

Lifting my eyes, I notice the corner of Ramdinee’s house across the street—not directly, but askew, set back from the road. It’s still empty; Emgarden is so small, and no one’s needed the building. But in the moment my eyes glimpse the edge of the roof, my skin tingles with electricity.

There.

I don’t blink. Barely dare to breathe. Cross the street, nearly running into Balfid. He says something to me, but I ignore him.Concentrate.It was there. I know it was.

Reaching the small house, I press my hand to its stonework. Mist. I was here during the mist. The high mist. Came around to the only door.

Entisa’s been so sick and so demanding. Salki’s wearing herself thin. It’s the least I can do.

Cakes.I came here for cakes, for Salki. Ramdinee made the softest, sweetest cakes—

I approach the front door. Touch the handle. Lean back against the doorjamb. This is right. I was hoping she wasn’t asleep, because it was dark inside. But I heard a shuffle. I didn’t knock, did I? I thought she’d fallen.

Depressing the latch, I push the door open a few millimeters.

It’s so dark, I can barely see. Darker than the mist could ever make it. Blacker than any shadows the closed shutters could afford. If not for the shock of white hair, I would have missed him. I would have walked right in—

Ramdinee’s feet don’t touch the ground. Her knees curl in, her hands clasped around his wrists, her eyes wide, her mouth open in a silent scream. There’s a pit in his torso, a dark and empty vacuity, spiraling, growing larger as Ramdinee’s skin turns ashen. As her grip weakens.

Whatever Moseus is doing to her, I can’t stop it. I can’t fight him. I release the handle and tiptoe away on shaky legs. Rush back to the tower. This proves my fears in the worst of ways.

He is no peacekeeper. He is a sucking pit of darkness.

I’m wrong. I have to be. But all of Heartwood’s stories make me think of it, until I can’t shake the idea from my mind.

I whip my hand back from the door and press it to my mouth. Bile burns my gut. I slide down the jamb until I sit on my backside, staring into nothing, shaking as though struck with fever. Sick, like Ramdinee had been a year ago. So suddenly, and then she was gone, just like that. Sick, because I couldn’t remember otherwise.

I’d gone right to the tower, but Heartwood wasn’t there. I thought Moseus hadn’t followed me, hadn’t heard me, but I was wrong. He’d suspected me, just as I’d suspected him. For so many cycles I’d suspected him. The obsession with the tower, the craving for darkness, little comments he’d make that tickled at lore. But I never shared it. Thought I was losing my mind then, too.

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