As the Shadow Rises: Book Two of The Age of Darkness

by Katy Rose Pool

  Still, it was with unease that Jude followed her down the walkway and up another set of stairs that led them inside an echoing hallway, with a glass ceiling that peeked out to the night sky. She took them through double doors that landed them in a sitting room that overlooked the river.

  “I’ll make up rooms for you,” she said, and swept away.

  “She’ll make up a room?” Anton asked. “No servants?”

  “How do you know her?” Jude asked.

  Anton ran his fingers across the edge of a bookshelf. “We met a few years ago. She tried to teach me to use my Grace. It didn’t work, I ran off, and she found me again in Pallas Athos.”

  “You don’t trust her.” It wasn’t a question.

  “I don’t trust anyone, Jude,” Anton said, weary.

  “You trust me.” That wasn’t a question, either.

  “Yeah,” Anton said. “I guess I do.”

  Jude felt unsteady under his dark gaze, and looked away. There was a new tension in the air between them, and Jude wasn’t sure if it was because of what had happened on the barge, or if it was just in his own head.

  He felt the weight of the Pinnacle Blade at his hip and brushed his fingers over the cold metal hilt. This was why he couldn’t draw it. This was why his Grace would no longer answer to him.

  The door clicked open, and Lady Bellrose reappeared. “Let me show you to your rooms. You both look like you could use some rest.”

  She led them into another hallway lined with a series of maps that seemed to depict the Six Prophetic Cities over the past two thousand years, as well as a few of the Novogardian Territories and the Inshuu Steppe. The woman opened a door near the end of the hallway.

  “This is you,” she said to Anton. Anton glanced at Jude. “Don’t worry,” Lady Bellrose said, amused. “He’ll be right next door.”

  Anton slipped into the room, but instead of leading him to the next door, Lady Bellrose drew Jude back up the hallway. “Let’s talk for a moment, Keeper.”

  Her hand on his arm felt strangely cold. “I don’t have anything to say to you.”

  “You couldn’t draw the Pinnacle Blade, could you?”

  Jude froze. “You know why.”

  “It’s as I said.”

  “You said the sword would know whether I am Keeper of the Word. So that means I’m not.”

  She stepped through an archway and into a small study. Leaning back against the writing desk, she said, “Keeper of the Word is just a title. It holds no power. The power is in you.”

  “My Grace doesn’t work.” It was too late to wonder if he should keep that to himself. At this point, he was desperate.

  “Not your Grace,” she said. “Your actions. Your intentions. Your purpose, I suppose.”

  “I know my purpose,” Jude said, more harshly than he’d intended. He’d known his purpose since he was three years old, and still, after all this time, he let himself be distracted. He let himself think thoughts and feel feelings that a Keeper of the Word shouldn’t.

  “And what if you’re wrong about what your purpose is?”

  Jude jerked his head up to meet her gaze, startled.

  “I must ask you,” she continued. “Have you ever been honest with yourself? Even just once?”

  “Have you ever been honest with him?” Jude shot back, heart thudding.

  “I was tonight,” she said. “Whether or not you believe me.”

  “What do you want from me?” Jude demanded. “Do you want the Pinnacle Blade back? Fine, take it back. I can’t use it anyway.” He unclipped it from his belt and held it out to her.

  She curled her hand around the hilt. “This sword can only be drawn by the Keeper of the Word. The man who sold it to me was desperate to get rid of such a useless weapon. So is that what it is to you, Jude? Is that what you are to it? To him? Useless?”

  Shame welled up in his chest, suffocating. Anton had been right before. Jude had made him a promise he couldn’t keep. And breaking it would break them both.

  “You don’t know me. You don’t know anything about this.” But his heart thundered out the truth. “I’ll fight for him. No matter what, I’ll fight for him. Even if I lose.”

  She looked at him almost pityingly. “If that’s what you want, Jude, then that’s what you’ll have. But maybe one day, you’ll learn to stop fighting.”

  Before she could say another word, Jude fled.

  Jude sat on a balcony overlooking the river. The sky was pitch-black, the only sound the rush of water below. He wasn’t sure how much time had passed since his conversation with Lady Bellrose, he only knew he couldn’t get her words out of his head. Sleep was a far-off thing.

  “Still awake?” Anton’s voice sounded behind him and Jude turned toward it.

  How many times had they met like this before? In the middle of the night, their defenses lowered, truth struggling toward the surface like the sprouts of new spring.

  Anton approached, half-shadowed by moonlight, and Jude felt—

  He didn’t know how he felt. He didn’t move, just watched as Anton sat beside him.

  “You’re upset,” Anton observed.

  “I thought,” Jude began. “I thought it would be simple. My whole life, I knew what my destiny was. All I wanted was to be worthy of it. And I thought when I found you that I would know what to do. And when I didn’t, I—”

  “Gave up,” Anton said quietly.

  Jude looked down. “I called you a coward that night at Kerameikos. But I’m the one who’s been running away.”

  Every cruel word he’d said to Anton that night he had really meant for himself. All the shameful things he hadn’t been able to admit. He couldn’t stand knowing that he’d taken it out on Anton.

  “You’re scared, Jude,” Anton said. “That doesn’t make you a coward.”

  “Aren’t you?” Jude asked, before he could stop himself.

  “Always.”

  “And you just . . . live with that?”

  “I wasn’t aware there was another option,” Anton replied drily.

  “I just mean . . .” Jude rubbed at his forehead. “The Prophets were the one thing I always believed in. My faith is all I have. The one certainty in my life, when I was uncertain of everything else. And I . . . I don’t know how to go on, if I don’t have that. I don’t know how to get it back.”

  “Maybe you’re not supposed to,” Anton said.

  “But I need to,” Jude said. “My Grace . . . it’s gone because I no longer know how to be who I’m supposed to be. I can no longer follow the path of the Paladin. I couldn’t even draw the Pinnacle Blade. It knows I am not worthy of it.”

  “If you’re not worthy of it, Jude, then no one is,” Anton said.

  Jude shook his head. “You don’t know. You don’t know what selfish thoughts I—” He couldn’t look at Anton. He couldn’t say more. He closed his eyes and tipped his head back toward the sky. “All I’ve ever wanted was to serve the Order.”

  “We both know that isn’t true.”

  Everyone wants something, Jude. Even you. Anton had said that to him, the night they met. He’d known, even then.

  Jude wanted to hide his face. He didn’t.

  “You see too much,” he said, his voice trembling. It was the most terrifying thing about Anton. More terrifying than the teasing jokes or the way, even without his Grace, Jude always seemed to know exactly where he stood in a room.

  More terrifying, even, than the way Anton was looking at him now, swathed in moonlight, his dark eyes clear.

  “I see you, Jude.”

  Anton’s hand came to rest on Jude’s, his thumb brushing the knob of Jude’s wrist. The weight and the warmth of it felt more intimate than the way their bodies had been pressed together in the private collection room on the barge. Jude knew he should put distance between them, but he could not keep stepping away from this boy who invited him closer, close enough to smell his skin, to hear the gentle thump of his heart in his chest. He could not.

&
nbsp; He must.

  Jude’s own heart stuttered against his ribs. He felt dizzy as Anton leaned toward him, touching his back. He closed his eyes and they stayed there a moment, a breath away, until Anton pressed their lips together and everything went still.

  The kiss lasted only the length of a breath before Anton drew back. Jude’s chest ached with the absence and before he knew what he was doing he surged after him, pulling him close, seeking his lips and his warmth. Kissing him felt like waving a hand through fire, wanting and wanting not to be burned. Like diving off the top of a lighthouse, without hope or sight of safe landing.

  Like sinking to the bottom of the sea, knowing he would surely drown.

  31

  ANTON

  “PLEASE,” JUDE WHISPERED AGAINST ANTON’S LIPS. ANTON CURLED HIS fingers around a handful of Jude’s shirt and leaned in to kiss him again.

  Jude pulled back. “Don’t—don’t offer me this. Please.”

  Anton opened his eyes. Jude was trembling under his hand, his eyes dark.

  “Are you so afraid of having what you want?” Anton asked, searching Jude’s face.

  “You’re the Prophet.” On his lips it was a refrain, a mantra, a warning, and only now did Anton realize what a chasm those three words created between them. “And I’m the Keeper of the Word. I shouldn’t want anything from you.”

  Anton reached for him. “But you do. Is that so bad?”

  Jude caught his wrist. Anton felt his pulse beat against Jude’s thumb as his grip tightened, like he was fighting himself. “It would mean breaking my oath.” His eyes flickered up to meet Anton’s. “It would mean never restoring my Grace. Please.”

  Neither of them moved for a moment. Then slowly, Anton drew his hand back.

  “All right,” Anton said, lowering his gaze. “I won’t do it again. We’ll go back to how things were.”

  He looked up with a smile that he was certain looked as false as it felt. He didn’t recognize this tender feeling inside him, wasn’t sure if he wanted to squash it or cradle it close against his heart.

  He watched as Jude stood up in one swift motion, hands clenched at his sides, putting distance between them that Anton knew they would not cross again. He thought he’d been giving Jude something he wanted, but he saw now how dire the conflict was in him. And it was Anton now who couldn’t shake off the taste of Jude’s lips, the warmth of his hands, the soft press of his body. He wasn’t used to wanting these things, and it seemed only now that Jude had taken them away that he realized how much he did.

  “Anton,” Jude said, shifting his weight and looking like a storm. But it seemed he did not know what to say, and neither did Anton.

  So he just sat there, staring out at the river and listening to Jude’s footsteps as he walked back inside and closed the door.

  Anton dreamed of the lake for the first time since Nazirah. Everything in the dream was the same—the snow, the gray sky, the razor cold water—except instead of Illya above him, it was Jude. He was reaching for Anton, calling his name, but no sound came out.

  The world turned on itself, and it was suddenly Jude falling, drowning, while Anton reached for him, screaming his throat raw.

  He woke gasping, hand searching for Jude beside him instinctively.

  Only Jude was not there. He was behind a wall. Anton resisted the urge to duck out to the balcony that adjoined their rooms and slip into Jude’s room to tell him about the dream. Instead, he crept down the hall, toward the Nameless Woman’s study. The door was cracked open, and golden light spilled from within. Anton pushed it open further.

  “You’re up awfully early,” the Nameless Woman said as Anton entered the room.

  “I had a dream.”

  “A bad one, it looks like.”

  “They’re always bad,” Anton replied. “But I’m not talking about just now. I had a dream a few weeks ago. You were in it.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “That’s flattering.”

  He stepped farther into the study as she poured a glass of dark bronze alcohol.

  “You knew that, though, didn’t you?” Anton said slowly. “I wasn’t dreaming about you. You were really in my dream.” He shook his head. “How is that possible?”

  She slid the glass across the desk to him. “With a great amount of practice. Not all scryers can do it.”

  “But you can,” Anton said, sitting across the desk from her. “Did you see what was in my dream?”

  “Bits and pieces.”

  He wondered if she’d seen the piece of his vision that had been in the dream. He wondered if he lay down right now and went to sleep dreaming of it, if she could step into his mind and see it all. The destruction of the Prophetic Cities, that cold, consuming light, Beru’s body in the broken tower. At least that way, he wouldn’t have to bear knowing it alone.

  “You were trying to tell me something,” he said. “Was it about the Relics?”

  She nodded, pouring herself another glass.

  “The Hierophant was in that dream,” Anton said. “He was searching for the Relics. And my grandmother—she was in it, too. It’s been years since I dreamed about her. But that day I’d been reading Vasili’s last writings . . .” He paused, recalling a specific entry. The Stone calls out to me. It knows that it was stolen, it wants to punish me for the sins of the Seven.

  “The Relic of Sight,” he said. “The Stone. Vasili had it, didn’t he?”

  The Nameless Woman nodded. “The Relic of Sight is what led to his madness. It consumed him. He knew its origin and he believed it would allow him to communicate with the slain god. To overthrow the Prophets. In a way, it worked.”

  “What do you mean?” Anton asked.

  “Isn’t it obvious?” the woman asked. “Vasili’s was the last prophecy that the Prophets saw fulfilled. Vasili failed to defy their prophecy, but they disappeared shortly after that. And left behind their final prophecy.”

  “The Age of Darkness,” Anton said.

  The Nameless Woman bowed her head. “What Vasili did with the Relic of Sight—whether he was truly able to communicate with the god or not—I believe it set all of this in motion. The last prophecy. The disappearance of the Prophets. The Age of Darkness.”

  “Tonight, in my dream, I was in the lake again, at my grandmother’s house,” Anton said, the words tumbling out of him. “And there was . . . something pulling me down. Something at the bottom of the lake. Not a person. More like . . . a power. Stronger than anything I’ve ever felt.” Stronger, even, than Jude. “It felt like every thread of my power was being pulled to it.”

  He met the Nameless Woman’s gaze. It was steady and alight with realization.

  “The Relic of Sight is there, isn’t it?” he said. “When Vasili died, he must have passed it on to his son. And he must have passed it on, too. My grandmother has it.”

  “I’d long suspected that,” the Nameless Woman said. “Anton, how do you feel about going home?”

  Dawn was just peeking over the mountains when Jude, Anton, and the Nameless Woman gathered in her study. Anton explained his dream to Jude, and how they’d figured out the Relic of Sight was back at Anton’s old home.

  “We need to go find it,” Anton finished.

  Jude’s lips pursed. “We need to discuss this with the Order before we decide anything. They’ll be here soon.”

  “We don’t need the Order,” Anton said stubbornly.

  “Anton, I can’t—”

  “Protect me, I know,” Anton replied. “I don’t need you to. I need you to trust me.”

  “I do,” Jude replied softly. “But that doesn’t mean we don’t still need the Order.”

  Anton let out a frustrated sigh. “I’m not going to change your mind about this, am I?”

  Jude shook his head, and then turned to the Nameless Woman. “Can you send a messenger to the Temple of Endarra?”

  “I can,” she hedged, shooting a glance at Anton that told him she would only do so if he agreed. Anton chewed on his lip
. What would meeting the Order mean for Jude? Would they separate them, stick Anton with the rest of the Guard and keep Jude from him?

  Anton thought miserably of how Jude had rebuffed him the night before. Did Jude want them to?

  He wouldn’t care, Anton decided. He’d grown too attached to Jude as it was and it was better this way. But even as the thought formed, he couldn’t bring himself to believe it.

  “Send the message,” Anton said, and the Nameless Woman rose to do so, leaving Anton and Jude alone in the study.

  Anton looked over at Jude, acutely aware of the fact that this was the first time they’d been alone together since he’d kissed him. Jude looked as though he’d slept even less than Anton had. His dark hair was rumpled, his eyes bloodshot, and there was a pallid tint to his face. It made Anton’s chest ache.

  Jude’s gaze slid over to Anton and it seemed to take him several attempts to speak. “Why do you want to go after the Relic?”

  “The dream that I had about the Hierophant,” Anton began. This wasn’t exactly safe ground, but it felt safer than any other topic of conversation. “He was searching for the Relics. Even if the Nameless Woman is wrong about the god, we still need to stop the Hierophant from finding them. And I . . . I saw the lake in my dream. I think that means we need to go there.”

  Anton didn’t know what waited for him, but when he’d left he’d intended never to return. His home was the place of his nightmares. But going back was the brave thing to do. And Anton was trying to be brave.

  “You saw it in your dream?” Jude asked.

  Anton nodded.

  “You’re trusting your Grace.”

  He was right. Anton’s dreams had led them to the Pinnacle Blade. And now they were leading him home. This was what the Order had wanted him to do all along, but he’d been too afraid.

  Anton knew what the difference was, why he was able to trust the visions in his head now when he hadn’t before. It was the same reason he could even consider returning to the nightmare of his childhood.