Page 79 of Voices in the Stars
“I’m dreaming,” I muttered, turning away from him to sit on the torn bed. “Or I died. I tripped on something in here and now I’m dead, too.” A laugh ripped out of me as I tried to make sense of everything.
“Not quite,” he said as he reached out to me again. “Please look at me, princess.”
“I don’t know if I want to,” I mumbled, even as I turned back to him, just in time to see the hurt take over his face. “This has just been a lot,” I offered as explanation.
He nodded. “I knew it would be. I also knew you would be able to handle it. You had to. I couldn’t let him take you like the rest of us.”
“How are we even talking right now? Where is everyone else?” I asked, mind spinning as I tried to keep my own thoughts straight.
“Most moved on. There’s someone else here with us, but I think she wants to stay hidden.” His voice trailed off with that as he looked around the room. I followed his moves, hoping to see the mystery woman. “As for us talking, I’m not sure. You weren’t supposed to come here.” Disappointment was thick in his voice.
“Where was I supposed to be? I didn’t exactly have a handbook to follow on what to do when getting tortured,” I snapped, feeling like I was back to being a child who got scolded for not following exactly what he said. He was always a man of prophecy. It shouldn’t have been shocking that even in death he was the same.
“Tortured?” His brows pulled together. “You weren’t supposed to be tortured.”
“What was I supposed to be doing, then? I’m fairly certain I was more than half dead when I got locked away and stumbled into Kier.”
“That’s not right,” he mumbled, looking away from me. “None of the gods were wanting to get involved. That’s why we had to take it into our own hands.”
“He’s not a god, only the son of one.” I mocked Kier’s previous words right before the realization hit me. “Kier! He told me to kill him because he didn’t have any fancy powers like his siblings. All he could do was talk to the dead.”
“You killed him?” he yelled, looking over me before staring up at the ceiling, like one of the gods was going to come bursting through.
At this point, I would’ve taken any divine intervention I could get.
“Well, he forced me to, in all fairness,” I said, hoping to ease some of the panic in his eyes.
It didn’t seem to help. Instead, he started frantically looking around his bedroom. His hands passed through everything he tried to grab.
“We don’t have time to worry about the consequences of me killing Kier. I need your help,” I pleaded with him. “I need your notebook to get rid of the barrier you placed around here.”
My father just shook his head as his gaze settled on me. Every breath was shaky as tears had already started welling at just the sad expression on his face.
“It’s gone.” His voice was soft as it shattered any hope I had left. “King Laertes took it only a few days after I was already gone. Afterleaving you with that family, I tried so hard to make it back to Kilrest.” He cleared his throat as his voice started breaking. “I didn’t make it far. His soldiers saw me running through the forest. I’m so sorry, my sweet Nari. My letters inside were how he knew you were still alive. All of this is my fault.”
“No,” I cut him off as I wiped at my damp cheeks. “No one here is to be blamed besides him.” I gave him a watery smile, the heaviness in my chest lifted as some of the misery left his eyes. The broken desk pulled my gaze away from him. None of this would help Atlas. My eyes widened as I looked back at my father. “You wrote everything in that notebook. Just tell me how to bring the ward down.”
With a nod, the emotions cleared from his face. This was what I remembered growing up. The clear difference between my loving father and my teacher.
“It’s one of the simpler ones I had created. Something in me knew it would need to come down one day. The best one being what’s still around Donnaway.”
“That’s why none of this happened before,” I cut in with a smile as he gave me that frustrated look whenever I’d interrupt him or stop listening. It brought me back to us sitting in the main room of the temple. Moments like this was what my life could have been filled with if it wasn’t for Eris. Not that it mattered now. One way or another, this was going to end today.
“Between them wiping the humans’ memories along with yours, none of us wanted you accidentally burning the city down,” he explained.
I nodded along as some of the fragmented memories started making sense. There were still more questions than answers. I opened my mouth to ask the next when a scream tore through the air. Both our heads turned toward the door.
“Close your eyes,” he spoke quickly, placing a hand over my eyes. All it did was slightly darken the room like someone placed a sheer cloth over my head. I still followed his instructions and closed them. Without sight, the fighting outside seemed much louder. Each grunt coming from Atlas pierced my chest. “Ignore everything around you. We were made for magic like this. Feel the power of it around you.”
There was nothing. I flinched every time metal clanked together in the temple. He was fighting for his life, and I was here doing nothing. Anger bubbled inside as I listened to hit after hit. My skin started heating up as my teeth ground together. This was just another thing to hate Eris for. I would’ve already learned these things if I hadn’t been taken from here. The burrowed powers from Kier did nothing to stop the heat from rising as it retreated, so it rested underneath the scar on my chest. As I focused on my own feelings, the sound of the fighting quieted until there was nothing.
“I found it,” I whispered as I felt it. A vibration in the air. I followed it in a dome shape around us. It felt like my father with the same traces of warmth that came from hugging him.
“Good. Get used to the feel of it. Everyone and everything has their own magic. This is how we heal and manipulate.” I could hear the smile in his voice. “Just repeat after me.”
The words that followed were in a language that I didn’t recognize. There was a hint of a memory that told me I had heard it before. I focused on each syllable he said, trying my best to replicate them perfectly. The vibrations sped up as we spoke until everything went still. I opened my mouth to question it. He continued the next line before I could speak. It was a little late to start questioning it now. As I finished the next sentence, the dome shattered like glass.
Flames burst along my arms. A sigh left me as a pressure I hadn’t realized was building suddenly released. I didn’t try to smother them as I ran out of the room, yelling a quick thank you back to my father before I threw open the door back to the temple. Only to be met with my own scream.
