Anton closed his eyes, breathing Jude in. “I didn’t even know what I wanted. All that time, I didn’t know what it was to be loved. Not until you. And now … I don’t know what I’d do without it.”

Jude didn’t answer, but his grip on Anton tightened, as if he was afraid Anton might slip away from him.

Their ship docked in the marina of Pallas Athos just before twilight.

By the time they reached the agora, the sky was blanketed in darkness. Jude paused before the Sacred Gate.

“What is it?” Anton asked.

“I—I don’t…” He looked unsure. “This is a holy place. Or—I thought it was. The Temple of Pallas, the place the Order of the Last Light served until the Prophets disappeared. The first time that I came here, I thought that this place was my destiny. I guess I was right, after all.”

Anton felt heavy with the reminder. He slotted Jude’s fingers between his own, and they crossed the gate together, the Wanderer and Illya following after them.

And then they all stopped short. Anton choked out a gasp.

Spread out across the agora were bodies. There must have been hundreds of them, collapsed along walkways, slumped over the stairs that led up to the Temple of Pallas. Each of them wore the familiar gold and black robes of the Witnesses.

Anton tightened his grip on Jude’s hand, feeling suddenly dizzy.

“Behezda’s mercy,” Illya muttered. “It killed all of them.”

“Their punishment at the god’s hands for following Pallas,” the Wanderer said. “And there’s almost nothing the god hates more than Pallas. In fact, I may be the only thing above Pallas on that list.”

Anton suppressed a shudder. If this was what the god did to the people who followed Pallas, what would it do to them?

They mounted the steps up to the temple, avoiding the fallen Witnesses. The blackened threshold welcomed them inside the sanctum. As Anton moved to enter, Jude squeezed his hand, stilling him.

“What if it’s still here?” Jude asked, pitching his voice lower.

It was as he asked the question that Anton felt it. Esha, reverberating within the temple walls. Familiar esha.

But it was impossible.

Anton stepped into the threshold. “Ephyra?” he called hesitantly. “Hector?”

Illya and Jude both stared at him in disbelief.

But Jude didn’t hold him back as Anton stepped into the sanctum. The entryway opened up to a set of stairs that led up a long, narrow platform that cut across the sanctum. It was lined by Godfire torches, and at the end of it was a circular dais upon which the altar sat, reaching up toward an open sky. And there, below the altar, stood Ephyra and Hector.

“What are you doing here?” Ephyra asked, panic lacing her tone.

Anton mounted the stairs two at a time, climbing onto the narrow platform, Jude at his heels.