Page 94 of Still the Sun

Weakly, Heartwood lifts a single finger and points toward the portal.

I place a soft kiss on his lips. “Amlynn is a doctor. She’s going to help you.” I glance back at her as she gingerly dabs something over the worst of Heartwood’s burns. Hopefully gods respond to mortal medicine.

Heartwood blinks. For a moment I fear his consciousness is slipping, but his lids lift a little more, his pupils narrowing on mine.

“Heartwood?” I grasp his hand.

In a voice rough as sand, he says, “You have my sister’s eyes.”

Dizziness strikes me like a blow to the head. “Your sister?” I squeeze his fingers. “Heartwood. Ether. What was her real name? Her name in Thestean?” He grunts from Amlynn’s ministrations. I pat his cheeks to keep his attention. “Heartwood. What was her name?”

He swallows. Seems to fall asleep for a moment, but his lips murmur, “Cas’raneah.”

Tears fill my vision. This whole time. Ether is Casnia. She’s been in Emgarden since the war, and he didn’t know. None of us knew. Moseus used him. He used all of us.

“I’ll take you to her,” I promise, “if you live.” It’s half promise, half threat.

He doesn’t answer. Regretfully, I pull away from him and turn toward the purple emptiness on the wall.

“Maglon, with me.”

He nods.

I meet Salki’s gaze. Neither of us speaks.

I got us into this mess, so it’s only fair that I pass through the portal first. Grabbing both of my weapons, I let it suck me in. It feels cold, which I suppose I should expect.

Ruin waits for me on the other side.

Chapter 30

Moseus—Ruin—stands on the top of the tower, his gaunt face peering west to the nearly sunken sun. He is clothed only in black shadows and smoke, and that gaping hole in his torso spews darkness like the fog machines spew mist. It rolls off him in a bubbling dress, cascading off the sides of the tower like the acetic silver wall. His eyes, the same noncolor as the void at the tower door, sit atop sunken sockets. His cheeks and throat are hollow. The whiteness of his skin has rotted to a splotchy, ashen gray, as has his hair. A cool breeze stirs it, tossing tangled locks over his sharp shoulders. Whether overexertion or the nearness of night caused his transformation, I’m not sure. The fog lifts, revealing the bold colors of sunset.

As Maglon steps through the portal, Moseus says, “I’m impressed, Pelnophe.” His voice sounds like the scratching of a dozen hands down a slate, folding over one another in broken harmony. “But it’s too late.”

I lift two fingers at my side as I stand on the protrusion, the encased branch of Machine Five. Maglon pauses before moving into Moseus’s sight. His jaw tenses at the rolling darkness. Finding a handhold, he climbs up and southward. Moseus faces west.

I need to keep Moseus talking, but I don’t want to show my hand. Guess it’s time to see if I learned anything about lying. “I don’t understand, Moseus. What’s happened to you? I ... Let me help you. You’re hurt.”

He turns and grins. He actually holds my gaze and grins. A shiver courses down from my neck to the backs of my knees at those empty, lifeless eyes. “Watch, and you will see.”

He raises his arms as orange rays of sun dim against the sky—I’d have to move to the end of the protrusion to see the setting star myself, but I don’t dare move.Twenty minutes ...Hues of periwinkle and indigo swirl through the sky. That slip of sun is a mere candle against Ruin’s power.

A shadow shifts to Moseus’s left.Maglon.

“Where is Heartwood?” My voice shakes. I hope he reads it as worry or awe.

A dark cacophony with the semblance of a chuckle emanates from that gaping hole in his torso. “You are an empty fool, Pelnophe of Emgarden.”

I grit my teeth. “Moseus, come down. Let me help—”

A sound like a snuffed fire issues from the void god’s mouth as Maglon’s hands connect with his shoulders, shoving him toward the lip of the tower. Toward the five-story drop.

It happens in a blink.

Moseus teeters. The darkness at his center pulses, gushes. He grabs Maglon by the throat as he falls and twists, landing on the protrusion between me and the portal. The god’s rotation continues, and as he releases Maglon, the barkeeper’s skin turns to ashen dust, just like those wickwood trees. Just like Hagthor’s.

“No!”I scream, reaching for Maglon, but his body falls into the stretching shadows, puffing into ash when it hits the ground.

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