Page 86 of Still the Sun

“She fell.” I wipe my eyes. I remember, but Arthen doesn’t. Casnia gave the last of herself to make meremember, and she had nothing left to give. “I don’t know if she’ll wake up this time, Arthen.”

“This time?” he lifts his eyes, then pauses. Blinks. “P-Pell?”

Lifting the collar of my shirt, I catch stray tears. Arthen’s never seen me cry before—

“What happened to your hair?” he asks instead. “Your ... eyes?”

“What do you mean?” Panic leaks in with my renewed understanding. I rise to my feet, turning, spying a metal spoon on Salki’s table. Rushing to it, I pick it up and peer into the convex side. My lips part.

I expect to see my old self, to see eyes and hair turned gold. But no—my brown hair has darkened to jet black, and my eyes ... my eyes are a brilliant violet,just like Cas’raneah’s.

In that moment, staring at my warped reflection, I understand how Ruin did it. Why Moseus and Heartwood look so similar. The paleness, the green eyes, the hair—they’re not features of his people. Of gods or otherwise. They’re all features ofHeartwood.

Cas’raneah gave her power to me and subsequently changed my appearance. When Heartwood came here looking for his sister, Ruin must havestolen his. It had nothing to do with the planet. The only curse upon Tampere is that bastard locked insidemy tower.

Moseus needed Heartwood. The forest god was his damned battery, but he wasn’t enough—thus Moseus’s sickliness. The dried-out copse of wickwoods, the ruined row of crops ... Moseus must have been siphoning life from them in attempts to hold on to his stolen form. He needed Heartwood to remain physical, and he needed me to fix the machines. But in six hours, he won’t need either of us anymore.

I can’t do this alone. I never could.

“Get her to the bed,” I shout, storming toward the door. “And get everyone to the alehouse,now—”

I run right into Salki, nearly knocking her over. But she steadies herself, her eyes round as ball bearings. She, too, is a sliver of her old self. Her short hair grayed, her body wrinkled, her stature small—

She’s holding a stack of papers.Mypapers. The ones I hid under my floor. The ones with my hundreds of paragraphs of what happened to me, should I forget a second time.

I’m relieved. It will make the rest that much easier.

“Salki, I’m ready to explaineverything. To everyone,” I promise. “And I need you to help me do it.”

The table I stand on in Maglon’s alehouse creaks with my movement as I address the crowd. Everyone is here but Casnia, who still lies unconscious but has been deemed stable by Amlynn. People fill the pub, and they’ve left the doors open to accommodate more bodies. Farmers and craftsmen alike sit hip to hip on the bar. Every chair is taken, every disbelieving eye on me. Had they not seen the tower and the sun move, had Casnia not overlaid her colors on me, they never would have believed my story. But these are three witnesses that something has changed, and so the crowd listens, albeit with a thick air of skepticism.

When I’m done explaining, Frantess says, “So you want us to believe thatweare Ancients, and we forgot because Ruin itself lives on the planet? But you remember becauseCasniaof all people cast some sort of spell on you?”

“Casnia was changed by the war. We all were,” I repeat, struggling to keep a hold on my temper. I could call salt salty and she would disagree with me. “I don’t have time to debate it with you. Salki?”

Salki, in the doorway, turns away from the crowd. She’s checking the sundial, which she had lain in the street. “Five and a half hours,” she reads.

“That’s how much time we have before Ruin returns to his full power.Itsfull power.” It’s hard for me to think of the Devourer as anything buthim—Moseus. “I need help. We have to get into that tower.”

“We’ve never been able to get into that tower, Pell.” Arthen works his hands.

“We’ve never gotten the whole of Emgarden to try,” I retort. “Do you not understand? Ruin will destroyeverything, and it won’t stop with Tampere. I can’t give your memories back to you, I can only tell you what I know, both before and after this happened!” I gesture to my changed self. “Don’t you wonder why we don’t have blood parents, or children? Why none of us can remember a place before Emgarden?” I stop to rub a throbbing spot on my brow. “If nothing else, there’s an enormous amount of metal in there. Enough to supply us for a long time. Let greed entice you, I don’t care. But Ineed help.”

The crowd grows silent. My gut knots.

“Arthen, you had the longest, most annoying beard.” The table creaks as I lean toward him. “You would never cut it. You accidentally lit it on fire all the time. And Balfid”—I twist toward the farmer—“you were the size of an ox. You thought the gods liked you the most because of it, but you were lazy as a rock.”

“Hey!” he protests.

“Amlynn”—I find her in the crowd—“you were an architect, and a healer. You always have been. But you were also a brewer, and you’d come up with all sorts of weird potions in what I considered a very obvious attempt to impress Maglon.”

Amlynn’s face brightens to a ripe shade of red.

I turn again. “Maglon, that scar on your back isn’t from a fall, it’s from a horse. We used to havehorses. Gethnen used to sing late into the nigh ... the mists. He could make up a song on a whim and neverlose his meter. Frantess, you were so young, so new, so intrigued by the world around you. So gods-damned annoying, too.”

A few chuckles echo across the room.

“Thamton.” I scan the room and find him in the corner. Oddly enough, emotion chokes my words. “You were the oldest of us. The first. You helped us find ourselves, our purpose, especially once the war started and called away our makers.” I swallow, trying to regain my composure as I search the doorway. “And Salki, you have been and always will be my best friend and greatest supporter. Ruin took so much from you, and yet somehow you still find it in yourself to forgive, even when I’m narrow-minded and selfish. I’ll make it up to you, somehow.”

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