Page 131 of Antiletum
My heart pounds harder as magic melds with my wife’s into one. To be certain of success, I brace myself and clamp a hand around Rainah’s waxy, cold wrist. Joined necromancy wafts towards Rainah’s still, cold heart, a seed of life dropping in its center. Delaney and I release a cold stale breath at the same time, purging the death from her sister’s corpse.
Rainah’s heart pounds in her chest once again, like it never stopped at all, a spread of red appears on her cheeks. Instantaneous in our power. Lifeblood reinvigorating and coming back to fruition, flowing unencumbered.
Delaney and I fall back together, clinging to each other’s bodies, when Rainah’s eyes pop open, and she sucks in a loud, long breath. A grating, hideous croak.
Rainah lurches forward, vital once again. Wide eyed. Shock owning her features. Mallin leaps backwards. Even Blair startles, hand over her own heart. Selise lets out a strangled little screech.
My lip is worked into a pulp between my teeth, Delaney’s nails digging into my chest and arm hard enough to draw blood. Staring as her sister reaches for her neck—still bruised from where I strangled her.
It’s tense.
Watching my friend heave in lungfuls of air for the first time in months. Coming to terms with the fact that she died—howshe died—and is now living once more. Waiting for her to see me here. Probably respond by murdering me in turn.
Finally, Rainah rotates her head our way, dazed but aware.
My own breathing is louder than Rainah’s. Louder than anyone’s. Delaney and I are practically warring for who can hold the other tighter. The three of us stare at each other in complete silence. Seeing who will break it.
I’m about to scream at her to say something, to put me out of this anticipatory misery, when Rainah laughs. Long and hard and loud, echoing across the catacombs.
Delaney and I glance at each other, confused, and then turn back to her sister.
“The Heartstones.” Rainah smiles, wide and manic. “I know where they are.”
A lifetime in the dark
Epilogue
Ahiss echoed through the chamber, followed by a groan. The straining thud of magic overwhelmed the room. Loud and unwell, eating away at the opulence.
“Were going to have to move it,” the woman mused, gazing down from a balcony at the large stone below, taking up space in what was previously a lavish living area. All furniture haphazardly pushed to the walls. Left forgotten, collecting dust.
“Not yet.” The man’s expression remained stoic, his velvet robe hanging open to expose his chest, more unkempt than he typically deigned to be in the company of others. Only ever appearing relaxed around his sister. “It barely made it here without shattering. It needs to strengthen before being moved again.”
His stare bounced across the Heartstone rapidly, inspecting too many slips of sun falling across it, light breaking through the panels of curtains hiding arched windows. After a lifetime in the dark, the divine fox’s heart didn’t take well to the light. The balcony overlooking one of three sources of magic was as close as the siblings dared to venture to their uncle’s petrified heart, carved from the earth andstolen from its den in the ground. Not quite dead, but certainly not alive. He still hadn’t found a way to fully slaydeos.
Fresh bleach spots marred the Heartstone’s surface daily, contrasting the black stains deepening since the relocation.Vinculumrods shoved through the darkness did little to stop the festering spread of decay.
The woman turned to face him fully, nearly a head shorter, their black eyes mirror images of the others. “You underestimated him. The girl.”
The man sighed. “Magic has always been precarious, Mila,” he ruminated. More to himself than his sister at his side. “Even before we took it in our hands.”
She shook her head with condescension. “Unchecked power needs to be weeded out. And we could have pruned them quietly! That was the whole purpose of laying Father, Auntie, and Uncle to rest. In constructing the clocks. I told you it was odd—the Thornridges thrusting one daughter into the spotlight while hiding the other. We should have bred growers out of existence. Same as the necromancers. Their power is too similar, and I’ve been saying it for years.”
The man glowered at Mila, eyes flashing dangerously. “Remember your place.” He had been giving the reminder far too often in recent years, barely keeping his sister from defying his orders to not bring negative attention to the necromancers in their midst. Power rumbled in his voice, vibrating the air, the windows, the Heartstone trembling with effort below.
Mila cowered—if only briefly. Undeterred by her brother’s glimmer of wrath, she shook out her shoulders. “Nevermind the girl. Why you allowed him to be taken in by Llewellyn is beyond me. Legitimized him as his son. If you were so determined to put him in a place of power, you should have just claimed him yourself. Separating himfrom Lydia wasn’t enough.” She glared at her brother, eyes youthful, unlined—her age only given away by the intensity of ancient energy radiating from her black irises. “This all may have been avoided, if you’d just slit his throat rather than leaving him to starve in the streets. You have been weak, unable to kill either of them yourself.”
A silent glare, pulsing with his authority, answered Mila’s observations. She clamped her mouth closed. Not wanting him to voice her own failings and weaknesses concerning her son.
“Clearly he was meant to survive.” The statement acted as more of a warning.
“Careful, Ellden. One may begin to think that this is what you’ve wanted all along. That you’reproud.”
Ellden shot Mila with a malicious grin, raking a hand through thick tawny hair, easily finding their common ground once again. “Not so dissimilar to how Father was once proud ofus.”
She scoffed, but her ire had waned as quickly as it flared. Her smile spoke of nothing more than conspirational sibling mischief, not familicide and the waste ofdeos. “And look what Father’s pride earned him in the end.”
“Yes,” Ellden agreed absentmindedly, running a hand over the brand new clock hanging on the wall, itsvinculumhands crafted from the same hunk of metal as the rods plunged into theVulpesHeartstone. A similar pride slunk through him for yet another thing that he made.
“And I look forward to what our dear sire has to say about it when Valledyn and his wife bring him before us again.”
