Page 121 of Aïdes the Unseen
Her voice was already fading. “A reminder. When she is lost again, you will find her here.”
Then, on a breath, she was gone. Not vanished. Justreturnedto the shadowed corridor from which all memory once emerged.
The silence left in her wake was not empty. It wassacred.
I turned, the weight of her parting still warm against my chest, and followed the path where Despoina—whereIrina—was waiting with the key. The key, the dog, and the door.
Once I was with her, she moved ahead with purpose. Barefoot. Robed. Crownless, and yet more sovereign now than I’d ever seen her. The dog padded beside her—long-limbed and almost too large for the space now, ears perked, pace sure. Loyal to the pulse of her. Every moment that passed, he seemed to grow further into his form. A guardian, becoming.
And I—I kept a pace behind. Just enough distance to watch her without intruding.
She didn’t turn. Didn’t speak. She wasn’t trying to leave me behind. Something had changed inside of her and she listened inwardly to that change, to the name she had just reclaimed.
To the ache of lifetimes pressing against the walls of her mind like waves against glass. To the way the chamber trembled slightly with her every step.
I considered thefinal giftMelinoë had given me.
I didn’t know what she meant, not fully. Only that something subtle had embedded itself just beneath my skin. I rubbed a hand to that spot, to the echo pressed into place. It hadn’t hurt. It hadn’t glowed. It had justsettled, like the feeling of a remembered word that had not yet surfaced.
Was it a marker? A compass? A compass felt right. But it wasn’t one attuned to direction so much as devotion.
“When she is lost again, you will find her here.”
But where washere?
Not a place, I suspected. Not this chamber. Not even this myth. More likely, she had given me some element similar to what she had guarded, atruth. A threshold. A state of being that only love could navigate.
Love. I let that emotion swirl through me. Ahead, Irina—Despoina—stopped near the next archway. Her shoulders shifted. She was breathing deeper now. Not from exhaustion, but from the slow act ofreturning to herself.
She pressed her hand to the wall. The sigil we had unearthed behind the spiral door was still glowing faintly behind us, like a heartbeat lingering in the stones. But this space was quieter. Thicker. A breath held too long.
She tilted her head slightly. The dog sat, tail thudding once. She turned and her gaze found me. Of course she wasn’t surprised to see me; she’d known I was here.
“You’re not going to let me do this alone,” she said softly.
It wasn’t a question. It wasn’t even a test for me. She wanted to comfort herself. I stepped to her side, careful not to brush her too suddenly. Her fingers still lingered against the wall, searching.
“I told you,” I murmured. “I will always choose you.”
She didn’t reply, or at least, she didn’t with words. She reached for my hand, threading our fingers together. Her grip was strong. Fierce.
The air ahead of us continued to pulse. It was thick with memory and possibility. Whatever waited beyond the next threshold, I knew two things.
She would face it, and I would be right alongside her.
At the door, she squared her shoulders as if she had done it many times before. Maybe she had. Maybe Despoina had stood here a dozen times in a dozen lives, but it had been more than an age since she passed through. The stone knew her, and the threshold trembled with recognition.
She didn’t hesitate now.
The key she had found—etched in her memory, revealed through blood and olive-root and spiral song—fit into a groove in the stone that hadn’t been there until her hand found it.
There was no click or glow; the stone merely accepted the key and the door shuddered out a breath as it began to open.
It didn’t part like something mechanical. Itpeeled, like petals of basalt uncoiling from a flower that hadn’t bloomed in ages. Silvery light, soft and lunar spilled out.
A memory soaked in rain washed over me and wrapped a lullaby from before language around us. Irina didn’t flinch.
Her body tensed with recognition and knowing so old it had lived beneath her bones before she had a name.
