The Midnight Star (20 page)

Then a boy with golden eyes and dark braids stands before me. Between us. His pupils are narrowed into black slits, and his jaw is clenched with resolve. He walks toward me without fear.

“Adelina, stop!” he says.

“
Get—out—of my way.
” I lash out at him with my illusions—but he narrows his eyes, raises his arm, and flings my illusions out of his way. They dissipate in a cloud of smoke around him. He continues toward me.

“Adelina,
stop
.”

It is Magiano. Magiano. Stop.
The name is a small light, but it is there, and I cling to it in the maelstrom around me. I falter as he reaches me and pulls me into a rough embrace.

“He didn't kill her,” Magiano is whispering. “Stop. Stop.” His hand cradles the back of my head.

My strength leaves me in a rush. The world around us lightens, the silhouettes of demons vanish. Teren crouches before me on one knee, leaning heavily against his sword, breathing hard. His pale eyes are fixed on mine. I look away from him and concentrate on Magiano's arms holding me tight.
Teren didn't kill her.

But she is gone. It is too late.

I start to cry. My tears freeze on my face. In my exhaustion, I step away from Magiano and stagger back to where Violetta's body lies on the cold ground. The others watch in
silence as I fall to my knees. I gather my sister into my arms, brushing her stiff hair from her face, repeating her name over and over until it becomes a constant loop in my mind. A note of anguish escapes me in between sobs. I see a vision of the night I'd first run away from our home, when we touched our foreheads together. I do this now, resting my forehead on hers, and I rock her back and forth, begging her once again, in vain, not to leave me.

It is the holiest of places, where the stars shine against rock and the twilight never ends. Be wary, for pilgrims may be so drawn to its power that they may lose themselves entirely.

—Charted Paths of the Karra Mountains
, various authors

H
ad Violetta died in Kenettra, we would have buried her ashes in the maze of catacombs extending underneath the city. But out here, on the cold paths of the Karra Mountains, without enough wood to create a funeral pyre and the ground too frozen to dig, we can only cover her beneath a mound of stones, turned in the direction of our homeland. Before we do so, I lay her cloak over her body and bend to touch her hair—how luscious and dark her locks once were, how much I'd envied them when we were young—now it looks faded, as if its light had gone from this world along with my sister.

We should have moved faster. I should have argued less with Raffaele when negotiating in Tamoura.
I should have been kinder.
The whispers haunt me with these words, and this time, I don't stop them.

The others stand beside me, hands folded into sleeves. Even Teren stands here, his face vacant. No doubt he does not grieve my sister, but to my surprise, he does not say it aloud. He seems lost in his own world, making silent prayers to the gods. Raffaele's head is bowed in grief, and his eyes are moist with tears.

“What do we do now, Messenger?” Maeve murmurs, her hand resting on the hilt of her sword. It is the question on all of our minds. “We've lost her. Is all this futile?”

Raffaele doesn't answer right away. Perhaps, for once, he
doesn't
know the answer. Instead, he just continues to stare at the mound of stones, wisps of his hair blowing across his face. The question is numb in my own mind. I let the whispers swirl in circles around me, their presence so familiar now.

It is your fault. It is always your fault.

“We continue on,” Raffaele finally replies. And none of us says anything different. It is simply too late to turn back now, even if it may not even be possible to step inside our destination, when we have come so far.

I should have listened to Violetta, all those months ago. When she had tried to take away my powers, I should have let her. Perhaps she would still be alive, if I'd done so. Perhaps we could have acted sooner, somehow. Perhaps we would have had more time together. The guilt sits like a weight in my chest.

I should have listened, but it doesn't matter anymore. None of this seems to matter anymore.

As the soldiers begin to pile more stones at her feet, I take out a knife sheathed at my belt, reach out, and cut a length of Violetta's locks. The warmth of my hand melts the ice on the strands. I entwine it with a length of my own silver hair, taking in for a moment the contrast, thinking back on the lazy afternoons when she used to weave my braids.
I love you, Adelina,
she used to tell me. The dried tears on my face crack when I move.

We stay for as long as we can, until finally Maeve commands us forward. I look back and try to hold Violetta's grave marker in my sights, until she disappears around a bend.

One morning blurs into another. The twilight becomes darker each day, and the snow turns steady. No one crosses our path. It is as if we were traveling at the edge of the world. Our travel settles into long silences, where none of us feel in the mood to speak. Even Magiano rides quietly by my side, his expression dark. The energy of this terrain pulls us forward, calling to us. I see illusions at night and during the twilight days, see them chased away only by the light of our fires. Sometimes, the ghost of Violetta walks alongside my horse. Her dark hair doesn't move in the wind, and her boots leave no prints in the snow. She never looks my way. Our path turns narrow, branching a dozen different ways every few hours, each leading deep into yet another set of mountains. Without Raffaele's guidance, I have no doubt that we would lose ourselves out here in the cold.

Then, one day, we halt in front of a yawning cave.

It is an ominous entrance, its mouth lined with jagged rock, leading into complete and utter darkness. Still, we never would have found this place without the pull of its energy. Here, I can feel the tangible presence of the pulsing power that calls to us, the strength of it like a thousand threads tugging against every muscle in my body.

“We have to go alone,” Maeve says as she trots up beside us. “My men, they cannot follow us this way.” She nods to our horses, some of which have thin trickles of blood dripping from their nostrils. Their suffering gets worse the closer they get to the entrance. My own stallion refuses to take another step forward. I look back at Maeve's troops. They also hang back. I'd never thought about how an energy powerful enough to affect each of the Young Elites might end up affecting common men, but now I can see it on their faces. Some have a sheen of cold sweat on their skin, while others look pale and weak. They have come as far as they can. If they enter this cave with us, they will die.

Maeve swings off her horse and nods at one of her soldiers. “Take them back with you,” she says.

The soldier hesitates. Behind him, the others shift too. “You will be left in a frozen wasteland, Your Majesty,” he replies, glancing around at us. “You—you are the Queen of Beldain. How will you make it back?”

Maeve fixes him with a hard stare. “We will find our own way,” she says. “If you join us, you will not survive. This is not a request. This is a command.”

Even then, the soldier lingers a moment longer. I find
myself looking on in longing and envy, bitterness and grief. Would any of my soldiers in Kenettra be so loyal to me? Would they follow me out of love, if I did not use fear against them?

Finally, he nods and bows his head. “Yes, Your Majesty.” He places one hand over his chest, then kneels in the snow before her. “We will wait for you at the bottom of the pass. We will not leave until we see you return. Do not ask us to leave you entirely, Your Majesty.”

Maeve nods. Her hard composure cracks, the only moment I've ever seen it do so. She suddenly seems very young. “Very well,” she replies.

The soldier stands and shouts an order to the troops. They salute their queen before turning their horses around, making their way down the path that we'd originally come. I stand in silence, watching them go. Would my soldiers ever salute me in honor?

When the sound of hooves fades to a dull rumble, Maeve returns to join us at the entrance of the cave. No matter how hard I try to stare into it, I can't see anything except black—it is as if there were nothingness on the other side, and we would fall into it if we enter. Raffaele stands at the edge and closes his eyes. He takes a deep breath, then shudders. He doesn't need to speak for me to know what he is going to say. I can feel the pull. We
all
can.

The Dark of Night is at the end of this cave.

Teren draws his sword and a long knife, while Lucent and Magiano do the same. I stand close to Magiano as we start to
walk in. Violetta's absence is a gaping void beside me. If she were here, I would tell her to stay close. She would give me a quiet nod. But she isn't here.

So I turn to face the darkness without her, and walk in. I am too afraid to wonder whether we will be able to walk out.

I can see nothing, at first, and it makes me hesitate with every step I take. Our footsteps echo in the darkness, coupled with the sound of metal occasionally scraping against stone. The others must be using their swords as a guide along the edge of the cave. The air is bitterly cold in here and smells of something ancient, salt and stone and wind. I gulp over and over again, trying to keep myself from thinking that the walls are caving in on us. If only I could see—
if only I could see
. My old fear of blindness now flares to life, taking on a shape of its own in this darkness, and I think I can see the eyes of monsters in here, their stares fixed on me.

You will never get out of here,
the whispers chant, pleased at my rising terror.
You will live in darkness forever, just as you deserve.

I jump when a hand, warm and callused, touches mine. “You're all right.” Magiano's voice comes out of the darkness like a beacon, and I turn toward him.
You're all right. You're all right.
I force the whispers in my head to repeat this, and slowly, the mantra gives me the strength to take one step after another.

After what seems like forever, my vision finally starts to adjust. I can see the subtle grooves of stone in the cave's ceiling, looming several feet above us, and from inside the grooves comes a faint ice-blue glow. Slowly, as more of the
cave comes into focus, I can see the glow emanating from nearly every crevice in the ceiling. My steps slow as I try to get a better look at it.

The light comes from millions of tiny, dangling beads of ice. They shimmer and twinkle, pulsing in a pattern, and they seem to gleam the strongest where we pass. For a moment, I forget my fear and just stand there, unable to tear my gaze away from their beauty.

“Ice faeries,” Raffaele says, his voice echoing to us from somewhere in front. “Tiny creatures of the north. They must have awoken at the ripple of our movement in the air. I have seen them described in the accounts of priests on their pilgrimages here. This is the place that travelers worship as the Dark of Night, but they go no farther.”

The glow lights our way, leading us along a trail painted by stardust.

Minutes pass. Hours. At some point, I feel the faint bite of a cold breeze against my face. We must be nearing the cave's exit. I tense, wondering what lies on the other side. Beside me, Violetta's ghost walks in and out of the shadows, faded and gray. The wind turns steady, until we round a curve in the cavern and find ourselves looking at an exit.

I suck in my breath at the glittering world of snow beyond it.

I have heard the myths about this place, the Dark of Night. But I am standing in front of it now, staring into an untouched, magical world. This is the entrance connecting our world with the gods. And we cannot enter without Violetta's alignment, her link to empathy.

Raffaele stands at the entrance and reaches out a hand tentatively. He shudders, and so do I—the energy beyond this entrance is overwhelming, a million threads to every one in the mortal world, something so intense that I fear it may crush me if I dare to step through. When the priests come searching for this place, is this where they stop? Do they sit under the light of the ice faeries and admire the beads of ice dangling in the cavern? Perhaps mere mortals cannot even tell that this entrance is here. Perhaps the energy here is so strong it is lost on them.

Raffaele stands there for a long moment, hovering between one space and another. Then he looks at us.
He is going to step through.
“We are already ghosts,” he whispers. I open my mouth, wanting to stop him, then close it. He is right, as he always is. If this is how we must end, then so be it. Raffaele takes a deep breath, and I study his silhouette in this dim blue light, this magical realm, outlined in a halo as if for the last time. Beside me, Magiano nods and takes my hand. Maeve and Lucent stand together. Teren looks ahead without fear.

There is a space beside me where Violetta would have stood. Without her, I am less afraid of dying. Without her, the world is that much darker.

Raffaele steps through. And we follow.

It is said that the Dark of Night can be entered solely by those who have known and suffered true loss—that only through surviving such agony can a mortal understand what it is like to set foot inside a realm of the gods.

—Tales of Travelers to the Dark of Night
, compiled by Ye Tsun Le

M
y boots sink into fresh snow that looks untouched for miles. A forest of frosted trees towers around us, their branches bare and layered with thick blankets of white. What freezes us all in our tracks, though, is the sight of the three moons in the night sky. They are enormous, great and golden and cold, covering half the sky, so large that I feel as if I could reach up and brush my fingers along their marble surfaces. Sheets of stars litter the sky, the constellations impossibly bright.
We are close to the heavens here.
As I stare, a curtain of faint green dances against the stars, undulating, appearing and disappearing in complete silence. I have never seen the night like this. It is as if the realm of the gods were reaching down to greet us here, and our mortal world yearning up in return.

“Gods,” Magiano gasps beside me.

We entered, after all.

How is this possible? We shouldn't have. It should have killed us. Beside me, Raffaele stares in astonishment.

When I look over my shoulder, I notice Teren. Like the rest of us, he is frozen in place at the sight. His pale eyes are very wide, and his mouth is open. There are tears in his eyes, and frozen streaks on his face. I can hear him whispering a prayer as he stares, so moved by the beauty of this entrance of the gods.

We make our way through the untouched land. The pulse of the origin is a steady beat now, guiding each of us along. The snow crunches softly under our boots. I tremble in the cold. The whispers in my head burst into chaotic voices with every step I take, growing stronger the closer we get to the origin. I try again to keep them at bay, but gradually, they start to drown out the silence around me, until I can't hear even our footsteps or our breathing anymore. The whispers speak nonsense now, in a language too ancient for me to understand. The trees in this forest seem to blur and shift every time I blink, and I rub my eye, trying to make myself focus.

Now and then, something flashes across my vision. A shape, a figure, I'm not sure. Other times, I see abandoned houses, covered with snow and broken glass. Each time, I shake my head and cast it out of my mind, telling myself to focus. I can control my illusions. This is
my
power, even if we are standing in the realm of the gods.

Another shape darts between the trees and vanishes. I
stop to look for it. No use—it's already gone. I look back at Magiano. “There is something in the forest,” I whisper.

He frowns, then glances at the gaps between the trees.

And at that moment, I stop. My stare goes up to the trees. I halt in my tracks. Beside me, Magiano turns and gives me an alarmed look. “What is it?” he asks.

But I can't answer him. All I can do is stare at the dead bodies hanging from the trees.

They hang from the branches all around us, dangling by their necks from ropes. Their bodies look gray, their faces ashen, and as I look on in horror, I start to recognize each one of them. The one closest to me is my father. His chest is skeletal as always, caved in, and drops of blood stain the white snow underneath him. Nearby is Enzo, his hair a deep, black scarlet, his neck broken, the same droplets of blood under his swaying body. Behind him is Gemma, her familiar face still half covered by her purple marking. There is the Night King of Merroutas, whom I'd once run through with a sword. There is Dante, his face contorted in pain. There are Inquisition guards I've killed, soldiers from foreign lands I've conquered, and rebels I've executed for daring to defy my rule. And there is my sister, my latest victim.

They are all here, their eyes open and trained on me, their lips cracked, expressions solemn. The whispers in my head grow to a roar, and I realize that the voices have always been
their
voices, the voices of those I have killed, growing and growing over the years as more have died.

What wolf? You're a little lamb.
This whisper was Dante's voice.

Broken so easily.
Enzo.

The dead cannot exist in this world on their own.
Gemma.

You do not leave until I say so.
The Night King of Merroutas.

Go ahead. Finish the job.
My father.

All this time, the voices have been the whispers of the dead, growing in number, taunting me, haunting me, driving me to madness for their blood that stains my hands.

I stumble backward with a choked gasp. Magiano rushes to catch me before I fall in the snow. “Adelina!” he exclaims. The others stop to look at me too. “What's happening? What are you seeing?”

“I see everyone,” I sob. “Enzo. Gemma. My father. My sister. They're all here, Magiano. Oh gods, I can't do this. I can't go on.” My knees give way, and I sink, still unable to tear my gaze from the sight.
This isn't real,
the rational part of me tries to say.
All an illusion. Just an illusion. Just a nightmare. This isn't real.

Except it
is
real. Except all of these people really
are
dead. And they are dead because of me.

“Don't make me go in there,” I whisper, clinging to Magiano's arms as he leans over me.

Raffaele approaches and kneels in the snow beside me, while farther ahead, Maeve, Lucent, and Teren look on. Raffaele takes one of my hands. As I struggle to regain control over my power, he begins to use his. I can feel his threads intertwining with my heart, seeking the panic and fear within
me and pushing it gently down. My desperate stare goes from the hanging bodies to Raffaele's beautiful face, his olive skin, and his black hair framed by snow, the ice lining his long lashes, the green and gold of his eyes.

“Breathe, mi Adelinetta,” he whispers. “Breathe.”

I try to do as he says. Raffaele is not Violetta—he cannot save me from my power. But slowly, gradually, his soothing begins to smooth over the raging tides of energy in my chest that threaten to drive me mad. I feel the energy settling, and with it, the bodies begin to fade. They look like ghosts, translucent and floating. Then they turn so faint, I can no longer see them. My breath fogs in the air. My limbs feel weak, like I've just been swimming for hours. I lean heavily against Magiano.

Finally, Raffaele stops. He looks exhausted too, as if it were harder to work his magic here against mine. I take a deep breath, then nod and draw away from Magiano. “I'm all right,” I say, trying to convince myself of it. “The energy here overwhelms me.”

Raffaele nods once. “It pulls at me too,” he tells me gently. “In a million different directions. This is not an easy place to be, a realm between us and the gods.”

Lucent walks over to me and offers me her hand. I stare in surprise. When I take it, she helps me to my feet. Beside her, Maeve nods at me once. There is something lighting her face, a sudden recognition. “Your sister,” she says. “You said you saw her back there, as an illusion. A ghost of the dead.”

“Yes,” I whisper.

“So that is why,” Maeve murmurs. “Of course.” She glances at Raffaele. “You said
all
of our alignments to the gods must be in the immortal realm in order for us to be here.” Maeve looks back at me. “We were able to enter without Violetta's alignments.”

“Because her soul is already
in
the immortal world,” Raffaele finishes, understanding. His eyes soften at me. “In the Underworld.”

She is already here,
I realize. And somehow, this thought sends a wild surge of hope through me.
She is already here. Perhaps I can see her again.

“We can't be far,” Maeve says, turning away from me and continuing again down the snowy path through the forest. “The pulse keeps getting stronger.”

The others all feel it too; I am not alone.
We're not far. We're almost there.
I repeat it to myself, letting it comfort me and calm my energy. We are not far from Violetta, where she waits for us in the realm of Moritas.

The others turn away, and I start walking after them. Magiano stays beside me, his hand now intertwined with mine. I try to concentrate on the warmth coming from him. I'm too afraid to look back at the treetops, for fear that I will see the dangling bodies again. I'm afraid that this time I might see bodies of those still alive, those who can still die.

As we go, the moons seem to move in the skies, edging closer together, growing ever larger until they look like they might hurtle right into us. They are going to align, I realize, each overlapping the next, when we reach the entrance to the
origin point. At the edges of my vision, dark shapes still flitter through the forest, vanishing when I try to look at them directly. I grasp for the threads in my chest and then try to hold on as tightly as I can, to stop my unconscious weaving. The figures waver and vanish for a while. But they don't go away altogether.

Finally, ahead of us, Maeve and Teren slow down. Through the forest and the night, a thin shaft of light shines in a clearing. I see it first. It glows against the bark of the trees, and as we round the corner, the glow intensifies, washing the landscape in an ethereal blue-white light. I squint. The trees grow sparse, then stop altogether. We step out into an enormous clearing of pristine snow. From here, we can see a valley nestled deep in the center of sharp, steep mountain ranges, with forests growing wild on either side.

In the middle of this valley is the source of the blue-white light, a narrow beam that seems to be pouring from another realm.

At the same time, the pulse of energy that I have been feeling for the past few days suddenly intensifies a dozenfold, sending a sharp stab of pain through my chest that reminds me of the way Enzo's tether had pulled. I gasp. The others do too—they must have been affected in similar ways. Magiano groans and clutches his head, while Raffaele hunches over and winces. Ahead of us, Maeve falls to a kneel, while Teren stabs his sword into the snow and leans against it. My illusions flare, sending sparks of dark silhouettes dancing through the snow around us.

This is the origin, the point where Laetes had once descended from the heavens to become a mortal, where the energy of the immortal world had originally torn, seeping into our world, where the Dark of Night formed around it, twisted by divine energy. Where the story of the Elites began. Even without Raffaele, I can feel the energy emanating from this place, made of threads from every god—War and Wisdom, Fear and Fury, Ambition and Passion.

I stand closer to Magiano, touch his arm, and move toward Raffaele. As I do, something flickers in the forests of the valley. At first, I think it must be my illusions again. Dark shapes, silhouettes that look like monsters.

Except that Teren also turns to look at them. He raises his sword at the same time Maeve does. “What is that?” he asks.

As the words leave his mouth, one of the shadows wanders out of the forest and into the clearing. It makes a sharp, clicking noise with its teeth. I recoil in horror. The creature has no eyes at all, only two soft, empty sockets where they might once have been, and a wide mouth full of fangs. It skitters forward on four legs, leaving prints in the untouched snow. In its wake hovers a blanket of fury, an energy so dark and vile that it makes me ill. Behind it comes another. Then, a third. They emerge from every corner of the forest, licking their lips.

“They are drawn to our energy,” Raffaele whispers, his eyes wide.

Monsters,
the whispers of the dead tell me.
Monsters from the Underworld.

I glance back at the way we came. More shadows stir in
the forests behind us. They are suddenly everywhere, drawn out by our powers. The clicking of their teeth echoes through the trees.

Run.

We all break into a sprint toward the beam of light. Our sudden movement causes several of the creatures to swivel their heads in our direction—they sniff the air, then pull their mouths open to reveal sharp fangs. They bolt.

My breath comes in ragged gasps as the icy air burns my lungs. In front of me, Lucent stumbles in the snow—I reach out and catch her before she goes down. Maeve pulls away from us, leaving some room between herself and Teren, then twirls her blade. Her eyes narrow into slits. She bares her teeth, hefts the weapon as one of the creatures draws near, and swings at it.

The creature snarls and lunges toward her. Maeve's sword slices right across its gaping jaws, slashing deep into each side of its mouth. The creature screams—the sound is deafening. A shudder of fury and fear ripples through me at the attack. It is as if Maeve had cut
me
along with the creature. Maeve herself winces too.

We both align with the Underworld.
These creatures
are
monsters from the immortal realm, creatures that are a part of us, connected to us.

Maeve slashes at the creature again. This time, she catches it in its side and sends it tumbling into the snow. There it twitches, while Maeve continues to run. “Hurry!” she shouts. Behind her, the creature starts to rise again.

Teren fans out to our other side. As we hurtle between the trees toward the blue beam, he swings at two creatures that come at us from the right. His swing is so powerful that it slices straight through the first creature's neck, decapitating it, before hacking deep into the second creature's chest. The first falls writhing in the snow, spilling black blood everywhere, while the second screams and thrashes. I gasp at the rush of pain from its death, stumble, and clutch at my neck. Lucent does the same. Maeve staggers to us, hauls us to our feet, and motions for us to keep going. We run faster.

Magiano darts away from my side. He spins around to face a growling creature behind us, draws a pair of daggers, and stabs them deep into the creature's face. Another jolt of pain courses through me. He yanks out the blades. We keep running as the creature collapses, shrieking.