IF LISTENING TO MY HEART WAS THE KEY TO ATHEON, my heart led me to Hal. That meant it was Hal who needed to listen with his Farhearing. Veric had been a bloodscribe like me, and Leozoar had been a wind demigod like Hal. Of course they’d have worked together to hide the Fatestone. Of course it would be impossible to find the Fatestone without both gifts. Once I understood that Hal was the answer, it all made sense.
Why hadn’t my mother just told me? It chafed a little that it had taken this long to figure things out when she could have given me stronger direction. But whose fault was that? I was the one who had stayed angry at Hal. I was the one who had been slow to forgive, and slow to admit my own feelings. My mother must have wanted me to find my own way to the answers, to be sure of my own heart. I understood.
“You’re the key,” I told Hal, who had sat down to hold Iman.
“What?” he asked.
Zallie nursed her own baby, Nera, not minding us. By now she was more than used to our odd conversations and arguments.
“It was something the shadow god told me that only makes sense now. I need you to listen. That’s how we’ll find the Fatestone. Listen for something out there that sounds like me.”
Hal closed his eyes, and I recognized the tilt of his head that meant he was reaching beyond his normal range. At the same time, I reached for the well of dark magic in me that I now knew had come from the shadow god. It wound through me in its familiar way, and I gently drew on it to brighten my Sight.
“I don’t hear anything unusual,” he said. “I listen to the city all the time. If I heard something that sounded like you, but wasn’t actually you, I would have noticed long before now.”
My heart sank. Maybe my theory was wrong.
“Aw, don’t frown like that,” Hal said. “Here, hold Iman for a little bit. That’ll cheer you up. We can keep thinking about the answers. We’ll figure it out.”
I took the baby from him, grateful that lack of dexterity and grip in my left hand didn’t affect my ability to hold Iman. Even though the knowledge that Iman was Ina’s child nagged at me from time to time, he felt like my child, not hers. The way he felt pressed to my chest was already so familiar and natural, like he had always been meant to be there. I hummed him a lullaby made of memories of my mountain.
“Wait,” Hal said.
I stopped humming.
“There’s an echo. How did I never hear it before?” He stood up and paced to the window.
My breath caught. “Where?” I asked.
“Sing that tune again,” he asked.
I hummed the simple melody.
“It’s not far away. It sounds like it’s coming from the center of the hedge maze.”
“I have to go, then. Right now,” I said, reluctantly handing Iman back to Hal.
“You can’t seriously go looking by yourself,” he said, gently rocking Iman in his arms.
“Why not?” I asked. But I already knew.
Hal looked down at the baby sleeping in his arms. He didn’t have to say a word.
“I know.” I deflated. “Every time we leave him to go out, I worry. And the thought of leaving him to go somewhere that could be dangerous . . .” I bit my lip. But everything relied on it. How could I turn down the first solid lead we’d had on the Fatestone?
“You’re a good mother,” Hal said softly.
I wasn’t prepared for the tears I had to suddenly blink back. I had never thought I would hear those words, or that they could belong to me. I recognized that for all the importance Nismae placed on family by blood, Hal wanted a family built on choice, with the person he loved and trusted most: me.
I had always thought if only I knew my parents, I’d be different. Better. Whole. Right. But they hadn’t chosen me, and they hadn’t given me the chance to choose. Now I got to decide what kind of family I wanted.
I knew the answer.
“I have to go,” I said. “Promise me you’ll stay with Iman until I return. If something happens to me . . .” I couldn’t finish the sentence.
“I will. But I wish you didn’t have to do this.” Hal looked at me sadly.
“Me too, but I promise you that I won’t do anything with the Fatestone without talking to you about it first, all right? I want this to be a decision we make together,” I said. The relief of sharing the weight of it with him made it so much easier to bear.
His expression relaxed a little. “I’d like that,” he said, then smiled at Iman, who was just waking. “Should I tell you a new story?” he asked the baby. “Once there was a sheep named Shep, who liked to swim. . . .”
After leaving Iman safely in Hal and Zallie’s care, I took a lantern from near one of the castle doors and slunk outside. In the dead of night, the palace gardens were empty other than the occasional guard. I used my Sight to avoid them without any trouble. My shadow cloak protected me from anyone else who might be using the Sight. The hedge maze towered over everything else and was devoid of the fragrant and colorful blossoms that decorated most of the other gardens. A few turns into the maze, the barest thread of something shadowy tugged in my Sight. The deeper I ventured, the stronger the pull of the magic became and the more wild the hedges. I followed the trail of power through the empty maze until I reached the hush in its center, where tangled walls of greenery blocked out all sound.
All that stood in the center of the maze was a small fountain, old and stained, with vines crawling haphazardly over it. Water burbled from the mouths of three stone birds on top to cascade down tiered sides into a basin. The pulse of the magic beneath it was as sure and steady as my own heartbeat.
I sighed and took out my knife. I already knew what it would take to unlock the secrets of this place.
As soon as a few drops of my blood fell into the water of the fountain, the earth groaned beneath my feet. An archway burst out of the earth on the far side of the clearing, showering soil as it rose. Dirt and knotted roots clung to the damp stone, beneath which a dark hole opened to reveal a stairway.
Dread crawled slowly down my back, but I couldn’t turn back now.
As I entered the cave, the scent of must and earth hung in the stale air, making it hard for me to breathe. At the bottom of the stairs, a narrow tunnel continued farther into the earth. The lantern cast a pool of light around me that felt far too small for the enclosed space.
While it seemed as though the walls had once been smooth and polished, fissures now ran through them and the edges crumbled at the seams where they’d been tiled together. The tunnel wound into the ground, branching out in dozens of directions. I followed where my magic led. The deeper I traveled, the more the tunnel narrowed. Several times I had to duck to avoid tree roots that had punched through the passageway from one side to the other, leaving piles of rubble all over the floor.
Finally, the tunnel opened up into a large room. Something about it made the hairs on the back of my neck rise as I entered. I held up the lantern to look around, and immediately wished I hadn’t. The ward in this room had taken more than one enchanter to create—and they were all still here.
Skeletons hanging from the walls with arms outstretched and fingers entwined encircled the room in a bony embrace. Jeweled charms dangled from nails hammered through their foreheads. Their jaws were wired shut, the metal holding them together rusty. I couldn’t imagine why it had been done, but the horror of it made my mouth go dry.
A twining rope of power moved through their linked hands. They had cast the same kind of ward on the room that the coliseum had—one that prevented seeing any magic within it from the outside. That was why I hadn’t been able to find this place with my Sight.
At the center of the room, a stone tomb protruded from the floor. A statue loomed at one end of it, the folds of her marble cloak cascading in a canopy over the grave. Like the dais in Veric’s Sanctum, the surface of the tomb bore a handprint on the top with a blood groove. The stone of the handprint was cool to the touch, and my fingers came away smudged with dust.
My heart beat so loudly in my ears that I could hardly hear my own thoughts.
I reopened the cut on my finger and let my blood drip into the handprint as I had in the Sanctum. Slowly the flat stone atop the sarcophagus slid away. I tried not to think about the layers upon layers of earth above me, or the bones waiting for me below. They were just remains, just one more thing I had to face to get what I needed.
Inside, a skeleton lay on its back with its arms crossed over its chest. The bones carried an unmistakable aura of magic that matched my own. The Sight of it sent an unexpected wave of sadness through me. This had to be Veric. Now I knew where the echo of my magic had come from. Inside his rib cage, something golden glimmered, untouched by the passage of time. I leaned in to get a closer look while my heart raced even faster. Etchings of twining vines adorned the golden parts of the ring, so precise that they had to have been created with magic. They reminded me of the carvings I’d seen in Veric’s Sanctum. Through the middle of the band ran a channel of dark red that swirled and glittered in the torchlight. Veric’s blood.
I had found the Fatestone at last.
Joy flooded through me. The battle didn’t have to happen. I could change the past. But right on the heels of my joyous realization, darkness encroached. Did this mean I would lose Iman? And Hal? And even Zallie, whose sweetness had grown on me every day as I watched her tenderly care for Iman?
There were so many things to weigh. It was too much to bear.
But I had Hal. He would help me carry these burdens if I needed him.
I sketched the symbol of the shadow god, then reached carefully between Veric’s ribs and picked up the ring. It seemed unfathomable that one tiny object had created so much strife, especially one that wasn’t even a weapon. The lengths mortals would go to in order to set aside their own mortality staggered me. They didn’t seem to realize that a long life could be a curse more than anything else. I shuddered as I remembered Leozoar and the creature of darkness he’d become.
The ring had more weight in my hand than I expected, and as I slipped it over my finger, it shrank until it lay warm and perfectly fitted. I felt different the moment I put it on—like it held back everything in the world that might pull at the threads of my own life, what little held me together. I doubted any mortal would feel what I did once the ring was on. It might prevent them from aging, but it wouldn’t do for them what it would for me. For the first time, I felt powerful.
The future was mine.
There would be no more gray hairs.
No more lives sacrificed due to my mistakes.
Everything was fixable now, the past and the future flexible in my hands.
I swore to myself I wouldn’t take advantage of it, but it was still a heady rush.
“Thank you, brother.” I hoped he would rest peacefully and that wherever his soul was, he knew his wishes had been carried out.
I knelt before his tomb, then sketched the symbol of the shadow god again. I owed her thanks as well for leading me here. And perhaps even the wind god, who had given me Hal.
Then I heard footsteps.
“Who’s there?” I stood up, my heart racing wildly.
An arrow flew through the cave, shattering my lantern. Oil poured onto the floor, and then the flame winked out.
I sensed nothing at all with my Sight, smelled nothing. The footsteps drew closer at a deliberate pace. I fumbled back along Veric’s tomb, trying to take shelter behind the statue.
A strong arm locked around my neck and a burst of acidic powder exploded in my face.
Peaceroot.
It stole my abilities even as I struggled in the person’s grip, bit their arm, tried to grasp at magic that slipped away as the herb took hold.
My vision blurred, silver sparks warring with the comfort of absolute darkness. They’d mixed something else into the peaceroot. My entire plan had unraveled before I could even begin. Whoever had me this time would surely bleed me to death. Soon my mother would welcome me into her arms, which might have seemed like a better place if not for Iman, whose face was the last thing I thought of as consciousness slipped away.