I don’t stop until the moon chases the sun from the sky. We walk without rest for hours and arrive at the Temple in the dead of night. I expect to find a graveyard and the smell of death on the air, but there are no bodies here. Efiya burned them so the chieftains couldn’t return to their vessels. She left the grass beneath them pristine and untouched. I can’t help but wonder if it’s some sentimental gesture from our days in the garden in Kefu.
There’s not much left of Heka’s Temple besides toppled bricks and fallen columns. Through the chieftains’ memories, I see Efiya destroying it in frustration after they escaped her grasp. I climb up the uneven steps with Rudjek at my side carrying a torch—the others stay behind. We step over chalices and broken statues and cracked stone. The whispers only stop when I reach a raised dais that sits upon a smooth platform. It’s covered in dust and debris, but otherwise untouched by the destruction. I nudge the platform with my feet. “It’s here.”
Rudjek kneels and tries to shoulder the thick slab of granite aside to no avail. He pauses, sweat slick against his forehead. “It’s possible I need a little help.”
I kneel beside the granite. “Try now.” When we both push, the stone groans as it slides away, and dust and debris drop into a bottomless pit below.
Rudjek whistles and the sound echoes in the chamber. “Now we get to crawl into the belly of the beast.”
“Not quite the belly of the beast.” I reach for the ladder dug out in the wall. “But close.”
Rudjek lights several discarded torches and sets them about the Temple to give us more light. When he drops one into the pit, it falls so far that the flame goes out before it hits the bottom. We look at each other—his grim face echoing my own. “I’ll go first. We don’t know what’s down there.”
“Nothing living,” I say. Nothing we want to see.
Rudjek secures an unlit torch across his back, then descends into the darkness. I don’t tarry as I start down too. I don’t want to be far from him, for fear that Efiya might step out of the void and steal one of us away. The dank air chokes me and burns my throat.
Rudjek yelps and I freeze, clinging to the rungs. Cold air snakes around my neck as his voice settles into silence. Has Efiya snatched him from the ladder like a thief in the night? Has some other demon come to claim him as their prize? Or has some new, unknowable force come to spirit him away to spite me?
“What’s wrong?” I ask to break the stillness.
“I thought you said nothing was living down here.” Rudjek pouts. “Something crawled across my hand.”
I ease out a sigh at the incredulity in his tone, and we continue descending into the cold, dark chamber. “I amend my original statement. Nothing living of consequence.”
“Giant insects are quite consequential.”
I force down a laugh that settles in my belly. This is the side of Rudjek that I missed the most—the side of him that doesn’t take himself too seriously. I’ve missed you. I want you. I don’t say the words out loud, like speaking them might be tempting fate. Hasn’t the universe, whether by design or not, already conspired against us? Instead, I hold my words close, and they stoke the fire already burning inside me.
Rudjek lands in the chamber with a thud and a loud crunch. “Twenty-gods.”
When I reach the bottom, he strikes a flint and relights the torch. His eyes stretch wide as he takes in the room. “It’s a grave.”
Bones cover the floor of the chamber: jawbones, skulls, shins, shoulders, and ribs. Tiny bones and large bones of men and women who must’ve been giants. Suddenly time shifts around me, dragging my mind down a black hole so fast that the world turns upside down. The stack of bones shrinks until there’s nothing left but a white marble floor. Sunlight pours into the open windows overlooking a lush mountain range. I blink several times to clear away the fog in my mind. I haven’t moved—this is the same place. In the past it once sat upon the highest mountaintop, and in the present, it’s buried in a deep pit.
The kas in my mind are silent.
One by one other details come into focus. The gold trim along the base of the walls. Crystal vases so fine that the red roses and water inside them appear suspended in thin air. People frozen by magic like statues, their desperate, pleading eyes finding me. They’re twice as tall as me with white feathered wings that cast prisms of shadows across the room. Eyes that all glow a stunning shade of green. Their teeth are sharp points, their skin as diaphanous as the Northern people. There’s some reflection of the orishas’ ethereal nature in their postures.
They wear shimmering gold and silver tunics, and rings of rubies and diamonds and black opal. My breath hitches in my throat as I move closer to them. Close enough to see the rise and fall of their chests. Their panic is palpable even if it doesn’t touch the unnatural smiles upon their faces. This place is familiar, from the crisp mountain air to the sweet roses, and especially the macabre art. I glance over my shoulder to ask Rudjek if he’s seeing this too, but he isn’t here. This is a vision of the chamber from another time. He’s standing in the room as it is now, a tomb.
As I cross the chamber in the vision, the living statues make slight adjustments to keep me in their sights. A nighthawk lands on the windowsill, cocks its head, and stares at me with curious black eyes. I leave the antechamber through an archway large enough to accommodate people as large as the statues. It leads into another room of white marble—this one grand and expansive.
Steps arch over the room, where a throne floats like a cloud. It takes on a yellow hue from the sunlight pouring through the windows. I step closer, my footfalls ringing like bells in the chamber.
“You’ve finally come home, my love,” hums a voice as smooth as the finest silks, laced with the sweetest honey. His breath is a warm breeze against my neck. It raises a deep longing in me like the first strike of a firestorm. A shadow of his power wraps around my chest.
Just like it did before, when Arti cursed me with his magic. “I’ve missed you,” he says.
I spin around, but there’s no one here. My gaze lands on the steps again and against all logic I climb them to the throne high above the room. I don’t know how or when, but I’ve been here before, and without a second thought I sit on the throne. In an instant, I’m wearing a red dress that flows like lava at my feet. Gold bands embellish my arms, and my hands rest upon the crowns of two polished human skulls. Thigh bones shaved and strung together with gold twine form the seat. Animal skulls line the arch across the back. Ribs give the throne its distinctive curve. I have been in this chair many times. This place is a memory, and it feels as real as stepping into the chamber with Rudjek a moment ago.
“Your mother marked you with my magic to keep you safe from Efiya.” Another whisper on the wind. His name tingles on my tongue; it rings in my ears. His words are full of angst and longing. “I won’t lose you again, not when we’re so close.”
“Who are you?” I say, my voice trembling, but I know the answer. The Demon King has found a way to invade my mind when Efiya and Merka failed. Now he’s whispering lies to get me to trust him, lies that only a fool would believe.
The scene changes and I sit beside a frozen lake with my legs crossed beneath me. There’s a boy at my side—the most beautiful boy I’ve ever seen. His long hair is a shock of white that matches the wings folded against his back. One wing sits a little higher than the other, as if it hasn’t healed right after an old injury. A memory flitting at the edge of my consciousness threatens to crack when I look at him, so I stare at the lake instead. Still I catch glimpses of his face in profile and my heart flutters.