Beru followed his gaze. The wrapping trailed off her like a snake’s shed skin. Exposed beneath it was the dark handprint branded into her arm.
Hector’s grip tightened as he slowly turned it toward him.
“‘To death’s pale hand the wicked fall,’” he said, eyes locked on the handprint. “‘That which sleeps in the dust shall rise.’” He looked up at her face. “It’s you.”
Beru squeezed her eyes shut. She didn’t know what Hector’s words meant, but there was a horror in his eyes she couldn’t bear to see.
He let go of her wrist, backing away. “Revenant.”
The word hissed through the air between them like smoke.
She clutched her wrist to her chest, as if by hiding the mark she could cover the truth of what she was. But it was too late. Just as the pale handprints marked Ephyra’s victims, the dark handprint marked Beru.
Hector had seen it, and he knew what it meant.
The reason Ephyra took lives to heal Beru. The reason their stolen esha always left her. It was because she wasn’t just sick. Five years ago, Beru had died.
And Ephyra had brought her back to life.
She heard the scrape of metal and opened her eyes. In the dim light of the alcove, Hector stood above her, his sword in his hand.
“Wh-what are you doing?”
“You rose from the dead,” Hector said. “You’re the third harbinger. You’re going to bring about the Age of Darkness.”
Hector’s words lanced through her, though she scarcely understood what they meant.
He raised his sword. All Beru could do was stare, frozen, as the blade glinted above her.
But then—a flash of movement, and suddenly a body collided with Hector, knocking him away.
Anton. He’d come back.
Hector stumbled forward into the table. The bug-eaten wood creaked beneath his weight and collapsed, sending him crashing to the floor in a heap of jagged wood and dust. A rain of beads and seashells scattered to the floor.
Beru gaped for a moment, until Anton turned and seized her wrist, tugging her toward the stairwell.
“Come on!”
Beru stumbled after him, grabbing her overcoat as they fled through the doorway. Together, they raced up the narrow stone steps and through the passage that led them out into the ruined sanctum.
“Thanks for coming back,” Beru said breathlessly, tugging on the coat.
“Seemed like a good moment,” Anton said as they veered up and into the mausoleum. Dusty light poured through the half-caved-in roof. “Sorry I—well, you know.”
“You can make it up to me by taking me to Ephyra.”
“What?” Anton said. “We can’t go back there.”
Beru stopped short, bringing them both to a halt. “I can’t just leave her!”
“That cell may be the safest place for her right now,” Anton said. “That swordsman doesn’t have any proof she’s the Pale Hand. That’s why he was looking for you. The best thing you can do is stay away from the citadel.”
Anton was right. If Beru showed up there, Hector wouldn’t even need her to say anything. One look at the dark handprint that marked her wrist, and everyone would know that not only was Ephyra the Pale Hand, she was also a necromancer.
“You need to get as far away from here as you can,” Anton said. “If they can’t prove Ephyra’s the Pale Hand, they’ll have to let her go.”
Rapid footsteps echoed up from the crypt. Hector was right behind them.
“Get out of here now,” Anton said, his eyes wide and trained on the stairs they’d just ascended.
Reaching into the front fold of her overcoat, Beru drew out the train tickets.
“I need you to do something for me,” she said seriously, holding one of them out to Anton. “Find a way to get this to Ephyra.”
Anton reached for it. “I can’t promise anything, but I’ll try. Now go!”
Beru turned and ran for the gaping hole in the wall that had once been the door. She didn’t look back.
29
ANTON
Anton whirled as Navarro’s dissonant esha crashed over him. Rage poured off the Paladin like smoke as he emerged from the passage below and stepped into the shadowed sanctum.
“Where is she?” he demanded, eyes scanning over smashed tiles and blackened reliquaries. “Where did she go?”
Anton took a breath and moved to block the exit. Beru could get out of the city if he could buy her just a little more time. He owed her that much.
“You don’t know what you’re doing,” Navarro said. “Move aside.”
“She’s innocent.”
“Innocent?” Navarro repeated. “You don’t know what she is, do you?”
Anton didn’t answer.
“That girl you call innocent is a creature of death,” Navarro said. “A revenant. Resurrected by her sister.”
It seemed impossible. Revenants were from stories, the frightening creatures that had once laid waste to the Kingdom of Herat under the command of the Necromancer King.
But then again, Beru and Ephyra had been searching for Eleazar’s Chalice, the artefact that had imbued the Necromancer King with enough power to create an army of the undead. Why would they need that, if what Navarro was saying wasn’t true?
Navarro glanced at Anton’s hand. “What is that?”
Anton’s grip tightened on the ticket that Beru had handed him just moments ago. He moved to tuck it away, but Navarro snatched it quicker than Anton could react.
“Tel Amot,” Navarro said, eyes scanning over it. Then, almost to himself, “Why is she going there?”
Anton dove for the ticket. Navarro knocked him to the ground without a trace of effort.
“Thank you for this,” Navarro said, tucking the ticket away.
“You said you weren’t going to hurt her. You said no harm would come to her.”
Navarro peered down at him. “Did you not hear what I said? She’s a revenant.”
“So what?” The words came out before Anton could stop them. “You’re going to kill her for what she is? For something she never chose?”
Navarro’s eyes flashed as he advanced. “You know nothing of what you speak.”
Anton scrambled to his feet, putting himself once again between Navarro and the exit.
“Move aside,” Navarro said. “Despite that stunt you pulled downstairs, I don’t want to hurt you.”
Anton stayed put.
Navarro stepped back. “If you won’t move,” he said, drawing his sword slowly from its sheath with a metallic scrape, “then I’ll make you.”
Sunlight glinted on the edge of the blade.
And then, through the fear that spiked his veins like ice, Anton felt it. The esha that had been haunting him since that morning in the marina. The one that had swept over him again when he was locked in the tower in the citadel. It was closer now than it had been then, almost palpable in the room. Navarro and the blade in his hand seemed to bleed into the background, as the esha reverberated around Anton, taut and charged like a sudden drop in air pressure.
He looked back at Navarro to find him staring, sword still gleaming between them, confusion shadowing over his face. For a moment, Anton thought that somehow Navarro felt the esha, too, but then the sound of hurried footsteps rebounded from the portico, followed by a voice echoing into the sanctum.
“Hector!”
Navarro cursed, sheathing his sword. A split second later, he grabbed Anton by the front of his tunic, throwing him back against the crumbling side of the scrying pool. Anton stumbled, grappling against the slippery stone for purchase. The esha grew stronger, like a gathering storm.
“Hector!”
In the gaping opening of the sanctum, a second swordsman appeared, dark-haired and compact, his sword still sheathed at his hip. The light pouring in through the threshold blurred the edges of him, glowing. Not quite real.
He turned, fixing Anton with a gaze that swept through him like fire.
Anton’s knees threatened to collapse from under him. He could not look away from the swordsman, could not stop his Grace from rippling out to feel his esha. The same one he had felt in the marina, and in the cell, only now it was right here, filling the sanctum with torrential power, pulling his Grace into the eye of the storm.
Every particle of air around them stood at attention, like the whole world had shifted, reordering itself with them at the center. Anton’s Grace thrummed in his body, pulsing out and back, reverberating off the gusts of the swordsman’s esha. Like it was calling out to him, reaching for him. Like it recognized him.
30
JUDE
Jude’s gaze snapped from the boy hunched against the edge of the scrying pool back to Hector.
Hector looked stunned. “What are you doing here?”
Jude stepped into the sanctum toward his friend. Whatever was going through Hector’s mind now, he was still Hector. “I could ask you the same thing.”
Hector’s jaw tensed. “I told you last night. I have to stop the Pale Hand.”
“By going after her sister? An innocent girl? This—this revenge, it won’t heal you, Hector.”
“I didn’t come here for revenge,” Hector said. “That innocent girl? She’s a revenant, Jude. A revenant that the Pale Hand created. She’s the third harbinger of the Age of Darkness. ‘That which sleeps in the dust shall rise.’”
Jude’s mind reeled. Hector sounded so certain. But he knew that Hector was also grappling with grief, fury, and helplessness. He might be wrong.
But even if what he said was true, that was just more reason for him to return to the rest of the Guard. Tell them what he knew, so they could, together, decide how to handle it.
“Hector,” Jude said, moving toward him. “I believe you. Come back to the Guard with me. We’ll figure out what to do.”
“I have to stop her, Jude. You, of all people, should understand that.”
Jude stopped an arm’s length from Hector. “What does that mean?”
“You know what your destiny is. You always have,” Hector replied. “I thought—I thought that it was mine, too. Finding the Prophet and—and—”
“It still is.”
Hector shook his head. “I searched for the Pale Hand for almost a year. After all that time, after I gave up, after I returned to the Order, now, now is when I find her. The moment you finally find the Prophet is the same moment that I finally cross paths with the Pale Hand again. That means something. It must.”
“Yes.” Jude reached a hesitant hand to clasp Hector on the shoulder. “It means there are two paths in front of you. One that leads to your past. The other to your future. It’s up to you to choose.”
Hector shuddered beneath Jude’s touch. “You’re right,” he croaked. His hands came up to clasp Jude’s shoulders, and Jude felt relief ripple over him.
Until Hector’s grip tightened and he shoved Jude back toward the gaping threshold. In a hollow voice, he said, “I’ve made my choice.”
He turned and leapt onto the toppled pillar that leaned across the middle of the sanctum. He raced up it to the sanctum’s half-collapsed inner wall.
“Hector!” The name ripped out of Jude as he leapt after him.
Hector disappeared behind the wall, then reappeared as he took a flying leap up to the edge of the buckled-in roof.
Jude drew in breath and raced after him. The smoke-blackened stone slipped beneath him, but he kept moving, leaping from the pillar to the half-destroyed roof. The damage from the fire had left it a patchwork of crumbling stone and gaping holes.
Hector stood at the edge, his eyes scanning, searching the streets below. Jude concentrated on the placement of his steps as he crossed over toward him, careful to avoid the parts of the roof that had already collapsed or seemed unstable.
“Hector, don’t do this.”
“You don’t understand. You can’t.” Wind swirled between them. “And you know what? I envy you, Jude. I do. You’ll never have to know how it feels to lose your family. Go back to the Guard, back to the Prophet. That is your place—it always has been. This is mine. I will follow the revenant all the way to Tel Amot if I must. I swore an oath to my dead family that I would set right what had been done to them.”
“You swore an oath to obey and serve the Order!” The words bellowed out of him. “You swore an oath to me.”
Hector’s eyes narrowed. “This has nothing to do with you. I should never have accepted a position in your Guard.”
Anger flared, sudden and sharp. Jude launched forward, slamming into Hector. Hector reared back, throwing his fist toward Jude’s jaw. It collided with a sickening crack that rang through his entire skull. This was not the elegant, practiced combat of a Paladin soldier. Nor was it the playful, juvenile wrestling Hector had greeted him with at Kerameikos. This was a fistfight, a brawl, born of hurt and consuming anger.
“You selfish”—Jude jabbed an elbow into Hector’s throat—“ungrateful—”
Hector’s leg swept his feet from under him. Jude caught himself, stumbling before he toppled into a sheer drop.
“Me, selfish?” Hector shot back, charging at him again. He swung a fist, and Jude raised his hand to catch the blow.
This was no different from the way Hector used to act out. Picking fights, mouthing off, behaving as though the rules of their world had been put there for him to break.
Jude tightened his grip on Hector’s fist. “I chose you, Hector! Against my father’s wishes, against Penrose’s advice. I chose you.”
“I never asked you to!” Hector replied. “I never wanted you to. But when have you ever cared about what I wanted?”
He swung at Jude with his other hand, and then they were grappling, pulling at clothes and hair and skin. Grasping Hector’s shirt, Jude drew him close, pinning him against the edge of the roof.
Even cornered, Hector had never been one to back down. He looked fiercely into Jude’s eyes and bit out, “You have always asked more of me than I knew how to give.”
It hit Jude harder than any blow from Hector’s fists.
Jude’s grip slackened, and Hector pushed himself away from the edge of the roof, breathing heavily. Jude was suddenly, excruciatingly aware of the sound of his own heartbeat. Anger burned low in his gut, but the rest of him felt numb. He closed his eyes. He wasn’t a boy any longer. He was Keeper of the Word. Leader of the Paladin Guard. He knew his duty.
When he opened his eyes, Hector had turned away.
“If you don’t return with me, then I will have no choice,” Jude said to Hector’s back. “As captain of the Paladin Guard, I will have to dispense punishment for the desertion of your sworn duty.” The words were firm, but his heart thundered out their lie.
Hector stopped, and for a moment, hope welled inside Jude that his words had jolted Hector back to his right mind.
But then Hector spun, unsheathing his sword like lightning. Jude didn’t move. The blade sang through the air—and then stopped, inches from Jude’s throat.
“You’re going to end me?” Hector asked, his eyes as sharp as his blade. “How are you going to do that when you can’t even draw your sword against me?”
Jude reached for his hilt. A flare of energy hit his Grace, as if the Pinnacle Blade was responding to him. Chastising him. As if it knew its true purpose was to protect the Last Prophet and was warning him he could not draw it for the first time now.
But even without the blade’s warning, Jude knew that he could not draw his sword on Hector, no matter the purpose. He let his hand fall back to his side.
“Just let me go, Jude.” The words came out a desperate plea.
“I can’t.”
Hector’s eyes met his, and something flickered through them, something that felt akin to the ugly shame that twisted Jude’s gut. Like the shock of cold water on a warm summer night, they flashed with sudden understanding. The thread that had been fraying between them for years snapped.
The ground shifted under them.
Before Jude could say anything, before he could begin to put words to the secret that had slipped into the light, the stones beneath his feet gave way.
He registered, vaguely, the sound of Hector calling his name as the world spun out of place. The roof crumbled beneath him, plunging him down to the dark sanctum below.
31
BERU
Beru’s heart pounded as she boarded the train. Once they pulled out of Pallas Athos Station, it would be the first time she was separated from Ephyra in her entire life.
Yet despite the fear and uncertainty, there was a small seed of excitement. Ever since she was a little girl growing up in the dusty town of Medea, she had always wanted to ride the Armillary Rail. Some said it was the greatest feat of Graced engineering the Six Prophetic Cities had ever seen. It had been built almost two hundred years ago by the world’s most skilled Graced artificers to connect five of the Six Prophetic Cities over land, making it possible for landlocked Endarrion and Behezda to reach the other cities in under a week. Since then, the Armillary Rail had expanded considerably, with routes weaving in and out of the countryside, connecting trade routes and ports. Every day, it brought hundreds of foreign travelers to Tel Amot. Occasionally, a handful them would find their way to Beru’s village, bringing with them stories of the Six Prophetic Cities and beyond.
Now, Beru was one of those people, returning to Tel Amot with knowledge and stories of all the other places where she and Ephyra had lived the last five years. She looked around at the rest of the passengers—the father pointing out the gleaming gears and brasswork on the train car to his tiny daughter, the brand-new traveler trailing behind the porter with a dazed expression, the young couple walking hand in hand through the compartments to the tearoom car.
Beru wondered what it would be like to be one of these people. To luxuriate in arrival and departure, in the flashing of the world going by through a window. To live on time that was not stolen, but her own.
The train whistle blew, startling her from her thoughts, and a moment later they had begun to move, whisking smoothly over the tracks. The attendant poured her tea, and Beru let the cup cool, trying not to think about where she was headed and what she was leaving behind.
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