The whispers shriek.
At the same time, I see—somehow, I see—the others do the same. I see Magiano offering his power of mimicry to the immortal world; I see Raffaele sacrificing his connection; I see Lucent returning her mastery of wind; I see Maeve give up her right to the Underworld.
The world around me erupts. The power of it throws me to the ground. I suck in my breath and scream at the pain of my power being wrenched away from me. Darkness swirls—and the whispers are suddenly deafening. They scream in my ears, their pain my own. I curl in on myself in defense.
Then—all of a sudden—they are gone. The whispers that have haunted me for so long. Every word, every hiss, every claw. Every tendril of darkness that wrapped itself in the corners of my chest.
Gone.
A piercing sensation, one of fury and grief and joy, fills my heart, replacing the hollow. I reach, but there is nothing on the other end. No threads to grasp. I am no longer an Elite.
Go, Moritas says, the other gods’ voices echoing hers. Return to the mortal world with the others. You do not yet belong here.
I clutch my chest, overwhelmed at the emptiness in my heart. We are going home.
Then I see, across the shattered remains of the darkened pillar, the figure of my sister. Violetta. She is still encased in her opalescent tomb, her face peaceful in death, her arms folded across her chest. She hovers there before me. I reach out for her. I look for her to stir back to life.
But Violetta does not wake. My eagerness wavers. In this overwhelming silence, I wait desperately for her to open her eyes.
Moritas looks at me again. I can barely see her through the black, churning mist.
Your time in the Underworld has not come, Adelina, she says. In giving up your power, I offer you your life back. She turns to Violetta. But her time in the mortal world is past.
My elation fades. Violetta has already died. Moritas will not give up her soul. She will not return to the surface with us.
“Please,” I whisper, turning back to the goddess. “There must be something I can do.”
Moritas stares down at me with her silent black eyes. A soul must be replaced with a soul.
In order for Violetta to live, I must sacrifice something that does not give myself gain.
In order for Violetta to live, I must give Moritas my life.
No. I pull away, stumbling backward. All these things I have seen for my future, all that I can have. I think of Magiano, of laughing with him, of him smiling at me and pulling me close. Never will I do that again, if I give up my soul. Never will I walk the streets with my hand looped through his arm or hear the music of his lute. My heart twists in agony. I will not see another sunrise, or another sunset. I will not see the stars again, or feel the wind against my face.
I shake my head. I cannot take my sister’s place.
And yet.
I find myself staring at Violetta’s lifeless figure, forever sealed away. I know, with searing conviction, that the Violetta who had come with us on this journey would never hesitate to offer her life for mine.
I have killed and hurt. I have conquered and pillaged. I have done all of this in the name of my own desires, have done everything in life because of my own selfishness. I have always taken what I wanted, and it has never given me happiness. If I return to the surface, alone, I will forever remember this moment, the moment I decided to choose my own life over my sister’s. It will haunt me, even with Magiano at my side, until my death. What I saw for myself in my future is a future I cannot have, not with the past that I have already created. It is an illusion. Nothing more.
Perhaps, after all the lives I have taken, my atonement is to restore life to one.
I reach out instinctively for my sister. I stand up, walk toward her through the mist, and place my hand against the silver-white pillar.
She opens her eyes.
“Adelina?” she whispers, blinking. And all I can see before me is the little sister who used to braid my hair, who sang to me and whimpered under the stairs, who bandaged my broken finger and came to me when the thunder rolled outside. She is my sister, always, even in death, even beyond.
My heart twists again as I think of what I am doing, and I choke back a sob. Oh, Magiano. I will miss all the days we will never have, all the moments we will never share. Forgive me, forgive me, forgive me.
I open my mouth. I mean to tell my sister I’m sorry, sorry I couldn’t save her in the mountains, sorry I didn’t listen to her, I didn’t tell her more often that I loved her. I am ready to say a thousand words.
But I say none of them. Instead, I say, “The deal is done.”
A faint glow encircles Violetta. The pillar vanishes. She sucks in a deep gasp of air, then falls to her knees. She is alive. I can even sense the beating of her heart, the life that it gives her, that permeates through her like a wave, adding color to her skin and light to her eyes. She shakes her head, then reaches out to grasp my hand as I kneel beside her. “What happened?” she murmurs. She looks around. Behind her hovers the shape of Moritas, waiting patiently for me.
The deal is done.
Violetta tugs on my hand. “Let’s go,” she says, her fingers wrapped tightly around mine.
But I can already feel the weakness invading my body. My shoulders hunch. I struggle to draw in my next breath. All around me, the threads of darkness once tied to my body now anchor deep into the gray ground, and when I try to push against them, it feels as if each had pierced my flesh, a million hooks in a million places. Death has already come for me.
“I can’t,” I whisper to her.
“What do you mean?” Violetta frowns at me, not understanding. “Here, let me help you,” she replies, bending down to me, looping one of her arms around my shoulders and trying to lift me up. Her pull only strengthens the tug of the threads, and I cry out as pain lances through me.
“I am tied here, Violetta,” I murmur. “It is my bargain with Moritas.”
Violetta’s eyes widen. She looks at the looming darkness all around, the towering, faded image of Moritas silently watching us. Then Violetta turns back to me. Now she understands. “You traded your life for mine,” she says. “You came here for me.”
I shake my head. No, I’d come here for myself. That was my goal from the beginning, to save myself under the guise of saving the world. I spent my entire life fighting for my welfare and power, destroying in order to make it happen. I wanted to live. I still want to live.
But I don’t want to live as I had.
Violetta grabs my shoulders. She shakes me once, hard. “I was meant to go!” she cries. “I was weak, dying. You are the Queen of the Sealands, you had everything ahead of you. Why did you do it?” Tears swell in her eyes. They are the same as our mother’s, sad and kind.
I smile at her weakly. The darkness pulses, waiting for me, and the strings tying me down continue to pull. “It’s all right,” I whisper, taking Violetta’s hand off my shoulder and squeezing it in my own. “It’s all right, little sister, it’s all right.”
Violetta turns her face up to Moritas in desperation. “Give her back,” she says. A sob distorts her words. “Please. This is not the way—I am not supposed to live. Let her. I don’t want to return to the mortal world without her.”
But Moritas just stays silent, watching. The bargain is done.
Violetta cries. She looks back down at me, then curls her body around mine, pulling me to her. I reach out and wrap my arms around her, and, here in the mist, we cling together. My strength wanes; even the act of hanging on to Violetta seems to take all my effort, but I refuse to let go. Tears roll down my face. The realization sinks in that I am dying, and I hold on to Violetta tighter. I will never see the surface again. Will never see Magiano again. I can feel my heart breaking, and I am suddenly afraid.
Fear is your sword.
“Stay
with me,” I murmur. “Just for a little while.”
Violetta nods against my shoulder. She starts to hum an old song, a familiar song, one I haven’t heard in a long time. It is the same lullaby I used to sing to her when we were small, the one Raffaele had once sung for me along the banks of an Estenzian canal, a story about a river maiden. “The first Spring Moons,” she whispers. “Do you remember?”
And I do. It was a sun-drenched evening, and I pulled Violetta through the fields of great golden grass that spanned the land behind our home. She laughed, asking me repeatedly where I was taking her, but I just giggled and pressed a finger to my lips. We made our way across the expanse until we reached a sharp outcropping of rock that overlooked the center of our city. As the sun threw purple, pink, and orange across the sky, we crawled on our bellies to the very edge of the rock. Sparks of color and light danced on the city streets below. It was the first night of the Spring Moons, and the revelers had started to appear. We looked on with delight as early fireworks lit up the sky, bursting in great explosions of every color in the world, the sound deafening us with its joy.
I remember our laughter, the way we casually held hands, the unspoken feeling between us that we were, for a moment in time, free from our father’s grasp.
“Sisters forever,” Violetta declared, in her tiny, young voice.
Until death, even in death, even beyond.
“I love you,” Violetta says, hanging fiercely on to me even as my strength dies.
I love you too. I lean against her, exhausted. “Violetta,” I murmur. I feel strange, delirious, as if a fever had wrapped me in a dream. Words emerge, faint and ethereal, from someone who reminds me of myself, but I can no longer be sure I am still here.
Am I good? I am trying to ask her.
Tears fall from Violetta’s eyes. She says nothing. Perhaps she can no longer hear me. I am small in this moment, turning smaller. My lips can barely move.
After a lifetime of darkness, I want to leave something behind that is made of light.
Both of her hands cup my face. Violetta stares at me with a look of determination, and then she brings me to her and hugs me close. “You are a light,” she replies gently. “And when you shine, you shine bright.”
Her words are starting to turn soft, and she is beginning to fade. Or perhaps I am the one fading. The whispers in my mind are gone now, leaving the inside of me quiet, but I don’t miss them. In their place, there is the warmth of Violetta’s arms, the beating of her heart that I can hear against her chest, the knowledge that she will leave this place and return to the living.
Please, I whisper, and my voice comes out as quiet as a ghost’s. Tell Magiano I love him. Tell him I’m sorry. That I’m grateful.
“Adelina,” Violetta says, alarmed as she continues to fade away. The feel of her is growing faint. “Wait. I can’t—”
Go, I say gently, giving her a sad smile. Violetta and I stare at each other until I can hardly see her. Then she disappears into the darkness, and the world around me blurs.
I feel the cold ground beneath my cheek. I feel the pulse of my heart die down. Over me, the looming figure of Moritas bends to enfold me in her embrace, covering me in a merciful blanket of night. I take a slow breath.
Someday, when I am nothing but dust and wind, what tale will they tell about me?
Another slow breath.
Another.
A final exhale.
Violetta Amouteru
There is an old legend about Compasia and Eratosthenes. As Violetta crouches, crying, over her sister’s dying soul, she thinks of it.
Adelina had first told this story when they were very small, on a bright afternoon in the gardens of their old home. Violetta remembers listening contentedly while she braided her sister’s silver hair, wishing her own hair could look so beautiful, grateful and guilty that she did not have to bear the consequences of it. Long ago, Adelina had said, when the world was young, the god Amare created a kingdom of people, who ungratefully turned their backs on him. Hurt and furious, Amare called on the lightning and thunder, and pushed up the seas to drown the kingdom beneath the waves.
But he did not know that his daughter, Compasia, the angel of Empathy, had fallen in love with Eratosthenes, a boy in the kingdom. Only Compasia dared to defy Holy Amare. Even as her father drowned mankind in his floods, Compasia reached down to her mortal lover and transformed him into a swan. He flew high above the floodwaters, above the moons, and then higher still, until his feathers turned to stardust.
Every night, when the world was quiet and only the stars were awake, Compasia would descend from the heavens to the earth, and the constellation of Compasia’s Swan would transform back into Eratosthenes; and together, the two would walk the world until the dawn separated them again.
Violetta does not know why she thinks of this story now. But as Adelina made a bargain with Moritas for her life, so does Violetta find herself kneeling at the feet of Compasia, her own goddess, begging for the sister who had once cast her out, who had struck at her, who had nevertheless fought and hurt for her. She finds herself dreaming of the night they stood together, sailing through a sea and sky of stars.
Violetta aligns with Compasia, the angel of Empathy. And she makes a bargain of her own.
I am death. And through death, I understand life.
—Letter from General Eliseo Barsanti to his wife
Adelina Amouteru
There is a small, singular light somewhere in the distance. It is brilliant and blue-white, something reminiscent of the color I’d seen when we entered the immortal realm through the origin. It is a light of immortality, a light of the gods, a star in the sky among billions. I find myself yearning toward it, struggling through the night in order to grasp that spark of warmth. I can see, for a moment, the world beyond ours, the heavens, the stars that burn alongside me.
Somewhere in the darkness, I hear voices. They are unlike any voices I’ve ever heard—clear as glass, mighty and deep, so unbearable in their beauty that I am afraid it might drive me mad. I think they speak my name.
As I draw closer to the beam, it splits into various colors. Red and gold, amber and black, deep blue and pale summer green. They gather around me in shafts of color, until it seems as if I were on the ground and the colors surround me in a circle.
The gods.
Adelina, one of them says. I know it is Compasia, the angel of Empathy. There has been another bargain.
I don’t understand, I reply. They are so tall, and I am so small.
There is a feeling of light under my body, of wind and stars. There is the disintegration of my form. Then, there is sky.
You will.
Raffaele Laurent Bessette
There is a brilliant flash of light, and a ringing that reverberates outward from the origin. Raffaele falls to his knees. The world spins around him—the snow and monsters and forest all blending into one—and for a moment, he cannot move. Tears run down his face.
Through his blurred gaze, he sees the monsters slow in their attacks, their bodies hunched, their gaping jaws closed, and their eyeless sockets turned away. They seem confused, as if something had taken their energy and left them as hollow shells. One of them stumbles forward, letting out a low moan. Then it falls. As it does, its body disintegrates into tiny shards of black, scattering across the snow like broken glass.
The same happens to another creature, and another. All around them, the monsters that had seemed unstoppable now crumble into pieces. Raffaele looks down toward the origin. The beam of light—the merging of the mortal and immortal worlds—has disappeared.
Raffaele takes a deep breath of cold air and tries to clear his head. Everything had seemed like a dream, a streak of events painted on canvas. What had happened? He remembers falling through the depths of a dead ocean into the Underworld, arriving on the still shores of another world. There wer
e an infinite number of silver-white pillars reaching up forever into gray sky, and a black mist that shrouded everything around him, the tendrils of fog curling near his feet in anticipation of his death.
He remembers seeing his mother and father asleep, encased in moonstone. He saw old companions and friends from the Fortunata Court. He saw Enzo. He knelt at each of their feet, weeping. There was the sight of distant lights, his other companions that he could not reach. The gods and goddesses gathered before him, with their bright light and overwhelming voices.
Most of all, he remembers reaching into his heart and severing his connection to the immortal world, returning his power to the gods.
Had it really happened? Raffaele pushes himself into a sitting position in the snow. He holds out one hand. His grasp captures only the cold air, and his fingers touch nothing. There is an emptiness in his chest now, a lightness, and when he reaches out for his threads of energy, he finds that they are gone. It is as if a part of him had died, allowing the rest of him to live on.
The Dark of Night is eerily silent. All that remains are the snow and the forest, the remnants of creatures slowly fading away, sinking into white. Time floats past. His vision sharpens. Finally, Raffaele finds the strength to stand. Around him are the others. He sees Lucent first, shaking snow from her curls, and beside her, Maeve, pushing herself up with her sword planted deep in the snow. Magiano crouches nearby, clutching his head. They must be feeling the same emptiness that Raffaele now feels, all trying in vain to reach for the powers that had once always simmered right at their fingertips. On instinct, Raffaele reaches out to sense their emotions . . . but all he feels is the bite of the cold.
It is strange, this new reality.
“It’s gone,” Maeve whispers first. She closes her eyes, takes a deep breath, and lifts her head to the heavens. A strange expression is on her face, one that Raffaele instantly understands. It is a look of grief. Of peace.