CHAPTER

THIRTY-FIVE

The path was narrow and overrun with deep green crawlers, thorns that pricked my soles. Music—was it music?—echoed through the chamber, high and wordless and strange. Light fell in silver wheels through the circular windows set high in walls; trees grew through the floor and strained their boughs toward the daylight.

“Save me.”

“Let me die.”

“Save me.”

“Let me die.”

I didn’t know where the voices came from; their argument continued in toneless whispers as I moved through the chamber. I was unafraid. This place felt as familiar as my own body; I remembered the days before it was abandoned and overgrown, the days when I was whole.

I was…?

—whole. And here they had walked, my children, my beloved ones, and they laid wreaths of flowers at my feet, and I made them whole.

Where was I?

The stairs leading to the altar were set with jewels, an intricate mosaic. Spirals of topaz and ruby, onyx and clear quartz.

“Save me.”

“Let me die.”

The body upon the altar wore her—my?—face. Her eyes were closed, and she looked to be asleep. As I watched, her skin began to glow diffusely, light bled from her veins. The sight repulsed me, for she was not one of mine, she was an outsider. A defiler. A thief.

I did not know where I began and ended, my thoughts stretched obscenely. The voices grew louder. I looked down and saw that my feet had vanished beneath a river of blood.

I sat up in bed, gasping.

Fat drops of rain skittered over the window pane. The sky outside was dark grey; the shadows of the trees swayed in the wind. I rubbed my eyes. The walls of the guest chamber were covered in burn marks, occasionally coalescing into words: save me, let me die, save me. And, written large over them all, TAKE THE PATH OF GRACE.

I worked to control my breathing. After a while, I slid out of bed and walked to the window. My feet sank into the pile of the carpet, muffling the sound. It was sometime before dawn, and although the wind had calmed somewhat, the rain showed no sign of stopping.

Ever since I had seen the words on the wall in the warehouse basement—taken everything from me, in my own handwriting—I had been turning over an idea in my mind. Thinking back to the graffiti that had appeared, for months, in the alleyway outside the dormitories.

Let Aytrium fall.

All along, had that been me?

There was a soft knock on the door.

“El?” Finn said softly.

“You can come in.”

He opened the door.

“Are you all right? You were talking in your sleep.” He stopped and took in the burn marks on the wall. “Uh, that’s … bad.”

I smiled to cover my unease. “One way of putting it. It’s a vision thing.”