“What is it exactly that you’re looking for?” I asked Devrim as he led the way out of the archives. “Will we be able to come back?”

  The herald shook his head. “I am not sure. Some of it depends on the success of our search.” He held out his hand for the keystone. “And some of it depends on you.”

  I frowned as I handed the keystone back to Devrim. “Are you sure I shouldn’t hold onto that in case we need to make a hasty entrance or exit if mournlings appear?”

  His grin spoke to his lack of trust in my ability to handle mournlings, with or without a keystone.

  “I’ve faced them before, you know,” I added, unable to prevent myself. I couldn’t have the herald thinking I had no value beyond leading Hume to ancient ruins and opening doorways.

  “And where did you learn to fight mournlings?” A note of concern lingered in Devrim’s voice. Bansaerin had always said the Hume feared our power, what would happen if we stepped fully into our own. I could understand that fear well enough—each day we lived through what the aftereffects of the ancients’ mistreatment of the Hume. It seemed only natural that Lifkin, if given the chance, might respond in kind to how the Hume had treated us.

  “My uncle.” I kept pace beside Devrim, the passageway curving up and back into the bulk of the isla being wide enough for us to walk two across. I thought about adding that Bansaerin had taught me a few fighting skills as well but decided against it. The herald didn’t need to raise his suspicions against Bansaerin any higher.

  “He wanted me to be able to defend myself, and he was one of the only once who encouraged me to hone my magic as well, just in case I was in a situation where it could help me and my sword couldn’t. That proved useful when I came here the first time.” I glanced up at Devrim and startled. He watched me more intently than he had even when we first met, as though if he studied closely enough, he could read the magic radiating off my person.

  “I-I really appreciate you telling me how to use the keystone.” I glanced away, studying the smoothed stone of the hall instead of the suddenly hyper-aware Hume beside me. As the path grew steeper, the deep purple etching at hand level widened, casting more light across the hallway.

  “Both my parents were magical. They wanted . . . me to be able to wield magic as well, even though many of our people think it’s dangerous.” I didn’t want to tell Devrim about Iredella, not yet, even though the sheriff said Devrim knew where she was. If he was this interested in my magic, maybe that would be the way to win his favor and convince him to tell me where my sister was.

  “M-my mother didn’t talk about magic in terms of will. She encouraged us to think about what we desired and imagine it coming true.” The herald’s gaze didn’t falter, so I pressed ahead.

  “I had to practice in secret, usually during the periods of silent contemplation when Aveela had sent me to meditate and listen for spirits.” Sometimes I wondered if she’d known that I wasn’t just listening in that cave lit by the pale blue bioluminescent algae and moonlight, the few nights a year that the clouds didn’t completely obscure the stars. “When I’ve shown others, I frightened them.” I bit my lower lip and looked up at the herald.

  There was no judgment in his expression, only intense curiosity. “There’s something wrong with my magic,” I confessed, recalling the look of horror on Hytham’s face when he connected the tangled mass of black vines with me. ‘Lifkin witchcraft,’ he’d called it.

  “Wrong in what way?” The corners of Devrim’s eyes narrowed.

  I shrugged. “It’s full of shadows.”

  Before he could ask me what I meant, the path before us curved away sharply with the first stairs we’d encountered since entering the isla. Devrim took the narrow trio of stairs on the inside track, and I hurried up the wider outside, curling around in an about-face.

  We both stopped in our tracks at the top of the stairs.

  A half-open doorway like the one we’d seen in the archives stood ajar in front of us, one of the doors slightly off-kilter as though it had been jarred by a large, powerful force.

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  Beyond the door was a hallway, glowing more brightly purple than any space we’d seen yet. The ridge beneath the strip of light was also wider, casting the lower half of the hall into relative darkness. But the darkness wasn’t enough to obscure what lay in wait in the hall—a line of bodies, stretched out, piled against one another, trapped by a sealed, glowing set of double doors.

  Chills ran down my arms at the sight of so many bones. I whimpered, picturing what I would do if all the spirits of those fallen were waiting for me within the chamber. How would I help them?

  Beside me, Devrim held perfectly still. I leaned forward, sniffing the air before us. Only the slightest hint of decay—the bodies had lain here, untended, for centuries, but they weren’t mournlings.

  “I don’t sense any,” I murmured to Devrim, my hand drifting to the dagger at my belt that my uncle had given me. I hadn’t smelled the mournling waiting for me the first time I entered the isla either.

  “Stay alert. We’ll continue on.”

  I nodded and tiptoed over to the partially open archway.

  Devrim didn’t have to remind me to check the runes for traps, but there was no sign of danger indicated in the doorway’s carvings. They spoke only of energy and potency, a message that didn’t make sense given the bodies in the chamber beyond.

  I led the way as we tiptoed past the twisted, stretching skeletons. I shivered, unable to draw my gaze away from their wide mouths and hollowed-out eye sockets.

  The archway that had kept the skeletons trapped interposed itself between us and the way forward. Devrim drew out his keystone. Wordlessly, he handed the stone to me. I took a deep, slow breath and willed the way forward to open, just as I had before.

  Swirling, bright blue light erupted around the runes of the keystone, and the shimmering curtain of the door parted for us into a room of giant vines, a silver well shining from the center.

  #

  “This is it,” Devrim murmured, gliding, mesmerized, into the vine-heavy chamber. He held out his hand as he passed, and I returned the keystone to his grasp, trying to push down my sense that we should re-seal the chamber behind us lest mournlings teem down the hall and swarm into the chamber before we could stop them. The herald slid between the pile of skeletons on the left and a skeleton facing back the way we’d come, his legs crossed at the ankles, head leaned back.

  The skeletons’ clothes had decayed, though a few still wore shining implements of a style I recognized from drawings from the Bright Age.

  As much as I wanted to block the skeletons and their terror from my sight, I couldn’t. It was my responsibility, as a spiritspeaker, to lend them my aid if they needed it.

  If one of their spirits had lingered, they would have retained the terror of their state and likely would have screeched at mine and Devrim’s approach.

  Before I proceeded after Devrim, I stopped to look more closely at the skeleton leaned against the door. The smell of decay rose thickly from the chamber beyond. We would not be alone for long.

  The skeleton’s posture was more relaxed than that of those further down the hall or those piled against the opposite side of the door. Where they stretched toward the opening, he reclined against the hall, more like he’d stopped here for a rest. Had he been the one to seal the chamber off, protecting what was inside?

  Perception +5, Luck 11, 16 total.

  My breath caught as I studied the skeleton more closely. Beneath a layer of cobwebs, held carefully between long, delicate finger bones was a keystone.

  I bent to lift the keystone from the skeleton’s grasp. The moment I touched it, the stone hummed to life.

  It was brighter in hue than Devrim’s, more blue than purple, the runes’ pattern similar, though the markings were not the same. Faint blue lines ran through the rock like veins.

  One rune stood out to me from the keystone’s surface, this one carved into the surface rather than embedded with light. It spoke of the ancients’ magic and the line of the empress, a sacred bloodline. The same bloodline my parents had sworn themselves to serve.

  Time pressed upon us, and I knew my study would have to wait. I thanked the skeleton and blessed his spirit to find its way back to the Cycle, if it still lingered, and carefully slid the stone from his grasp before following Devrim into the chamber beyond.

  He stood in the entry still, his mouth agape in wonder. I tucked the keystone into the satchel at my hip, hoping Devrim wouldn’t notice until I’d had a chance to study the keystone’s runes for myself.

  The vines that wound toward the center of the chamber stretched far into the dark below, clinging thickly to the rock and tiled floor around the chamber’s edge, broken in several places such that Devrim and I would have to balance our way across the vines to cross the room.

  Along the chamber’s edges, on level with the central platform, was a narrow shelf-like protrusion that the vines anchored themselves to. Given a great degree of patience and balance, it might be possible to cross the edges of the room by sliding along the shelf, but if there were mournlings hiding out below, it would be impossible to defend oneself and stay balanced.

  The vines were as wide around as the hut I’d shared with Aveela. It was the smoky space around them that opened onto darkness below that would be the trouble, I sensed. I touched my foot to the edge of one of the vines, and it dipped beneath me. We’d have to move very cautiously or risk sliding off the vines into whatever awaited us below.