Page 59 of What Blooms from Death

“As opposed to staying out here?” Aleksander asked, glancing around. “Where it’s positively bright and cheerful and safe?”

“It just feels like she’s not being very forthcoming with the details about this place.”

No one could disagree with that.

“I want to get a closer look, at least,” I said, though my voice threatened to tremble with the suggestion. It felt like a bad idea—but once again, so did turning around.

Rowen and Farren both agreed to my suggestion, giving us the majority.

We moved cautiously down the hill toward the main gate, making our way onto a great, sweeping pavilion that stretched in front of it, its polished marble floors reflecting the twisting and tumbling fires of Erebos in a way that was both enchanting and ominous. Arches of all shapes and sizes were erected across this pavilion, most with words or symbols carved into their faces; there seemed to be some organizational purpose to them, but I could only guess at what it might have been.

Stretching through one of the grandest of arches—one close to an iron-barred door to the right of the gate—a line of shades had gathered; like a queue, almost. I found myself wandering closer to it, searching for the green-eyed girl who wanted to play tag earlier, but I didn’t find her.

Thalia returned to us a few minutes later, her horse’s hooves clopping loudly against the shiny stone.

“There are always hordes of them waiting at the gate,” she said, quietly, acknowledging the line of shades with a slight nod.“Unfortunately for them, the city opens her doors very sparingly. There simply isn’t enough room for all of them inside.”

“You said the wraithsinside there are worse off than the shades out here, though,” I reminded her.

“In my opinion, yes.” Her hand twisted and untwisted Uldrin’s lead rein. “But the ones on the outside are drawn to the possibility of the city and its energy, all the same.”

“So, how doweget inside?” Zayn wanted to know. “As royalty, we’re not really accustomed to waiting in lines, I’m afraid.” He flashed Thalia a smile and a wink.

She looked entirely unimpressed by his charm. “We’ll just be guests passing through,” she explained. “There’s a different entrance for that. It will come at a price, but it won’t be impossible—you just have to know who to bargain with, and how to win him over.”

“And you know these things?” Aleksander asked.

“I’ve passed through here often enough,” she said, and then she unceremoniously dropped her horse’s reins into Rowen’s hands. “Mind the beast. He doesn’t like this city. There’s always a chance he’ll try to bolt and take all your belongings with him.” Without waiting for a response, she turned away and strode toward the gate.

Zayn followed, mumbling something under his breath.

Again finding myself without a better option, I started to follow as well—until I noticed Aleksander lingering behind, studying the line of shades. That line seemed to be growing longer by the minute.

I hesitated. We’d ignored each other for the better part of the day, staying just close enough to keep his magic balanced, but not close enough to actuallyspeakto one another.It was much more peaceful that way.

Yet, for some reason, I couldn’t help moving closer to him now.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

He cut me a sideways glance.

“Or, never mind,” I muttered. “We can continue ignoring each other, if you prefer.”

He looked back to the shades, seemingly eager to do just that. But I only made it a few steps away from him before he said, “The number of ghosts we’ve encountered today is…a lot.”

What did you expect on an adventure through the underworld?I started to ask—but caught myself. Because he hadn’texpectedto be experiencing anything in this world, had he? I’d had years to prepare for my descent into Hell; he’d had mere seconds.

“It’s even more jarring, I suppose, because no one speaks of the dead very often in Elarith,” he explained. “We rarely even hold funerals. Our ‘graveyards’ consist of simple books listing the names of the deceased, whose ashes are piled into a collective urn. Anything more than that is considered grotesque.”

“Really?”

He nodded. “Which is strange, I guess, but I never thought much of it until my own parents died and I was not permitted to mourn them for longer than a few days—not publicly, at least.”

“A fewdays? That’s absurd.”

He shrugged.

“Death is a part of life.”

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