She had actually liked the story as he read it to her—well, recited it. Perhaps after this, he could read her some other books. Of course she could read herself, but stories always sounded so much better when he read them. She was so lost in thought, she accidentally knocked off a candle, and it went skittering into the pews and went out.

Oh, oh, it was a long way down.

She quickly refocused on the arm and kept crawling.

There were thousand candles in the shrine. A thousand years. The prophecy had been right about that, at least. The Great Dark returned after a millennium.

She was surprised the wax hadn’t melted off in the fire.

She crawled down into the Goddess’s cupped palms. And there, underneath years of candle wax, was a dark shape that looked startlingly like a lockbox. She slid her dagger out of her boot and quietly began to dig for it. When the dagger struck the box, she quickly abandoned her tool and pried the wax away with her fingers, nails chipping as she dug the box free. She cleared the lock of wax, jammed the tip of her dagger into the lock, and twisted. The lock broke free.

She steeled her courage and opened the box.

A cool white light oozed from a small metal cube. A memory core. It looked so similar to the one she kept in her pocket now. She picked up the heart, and it vibrated—pulsing like a heartbeat.

This was the end of galaxies? This cube sucked the light out of people and feasted on their souls?

It was terrifying, how something so small could be so dangerous.

Gently, she took the heart in her hand, and she could hear it whisper—to her! She could see now why the Lady Valerio never wanted to destroy it. It was too important. There was so much more she could do with the heart than without it. It was childish to want to destroy something so perfect, something so—

The front doors to the shrine swung open, bringing with it a gust of wind that snuffed out half of the candles. The burst of cold snapped her to her senses, and she quickly closed the lockbox again. What—what had just happened? She remembered it whispering and then . . .

Fear curled in her chest. The heart needed to be destroyed, but a terrible part of her wanted to open the box again, to keep it safe—

Mellifare stepped into the shrine, a feral scowl tearing across her face. She raked her red eyes across the shrine.

“I know you are here, Ananke,” she said, her voice barely more than a whisper, but it carried all the way up into the rafters. The doors slammed closed behind her, trapping Ana inside.

Jax

Jax knew something was amiss the moment he saw the square in front of the Iron Shrine. Usually the square was teeming with people browsing the vendors set up around the square. There was always some sort of music, and the smell of freshly baked bread and meat skewers, but as he crested the last building and looked down—the square was empty. The stalls had been abandoned as if everyone had left in a hurry, baskets of fruits and vegetables overturned, mechanical parts strewn over the cobblestones glinting in the evening sunlight that came down from the harbor. He landed the skysailer on the far side of the square, beside the captain’s. As he landed, he noticed bodies in the debris left behind, blood pooling beneath them. He couldn’t sense their light at all, and he knew they were dead.