“You have made your choices, all of you,” she said, looking at Lena, her brother, and the man she had loved. “There is nothing for me here anymore.” And, flitting past the few Ancestors rising in her path, she stalked out the door.

TWENTY-EIGHT

Mother

Constance ran up the spiral staircase and into the main burial chamber. Here the risen Ancestors walked in a slow procession up the steps—the trapdoors to the great hall already flung open. Once more, cries of fear drifted down into the darkness like the ghostly screams of owls. Constance hurried forward as she spied her mother’s hair, her long blue gown soiled but recognizable as she walked for the first time in years.

Hope and horror tugged at Constance’s heart. Before she quite knew what she was doing, she cried out, “Mother!”

To her surprise, the figure stopped. And when it turned, the last rays of daylight falling through the trapdoors from the great hall illuminated its face. The effect was different from mage-light somehow, as if the distant sun conferred a life of its own, even upon the dead. Constance could see her mother now. Although she looked hollowed out and pale, a ghost of herself, the embalmers had done their work in preserving her likeness. The high cheekbones, the full lips, the skin a shade darker than Constance’s, the hair a rich brown. The sapphires in her eyes even glittered a deep blue, lifelike. But it was false. This creature, gazing at her blankly in the semi-light, was not her mother.

Constance cried out in renewed rage. Power drained from her in a torrent of grief. She had failed. And she was weakened: the effort of drawing out the storm spell had nearly brought her to the end of her resources. She held out her cane and pulled on her magic, a loose, churning thing inside her, as insubstantial as the foam on the sea around the islands of her mother’s home.

In the moment before it was destroyed, Constance gazed one last time at the thing that had once been her mother. It almost looked as if it were about to speak. She let her magic go, and the Ancestor crumbled to dust—the gemstones of its eyes clinking as they rolled on the stone floor.

Constance hurried across the burial chamber, weaving in and out of the Ancestors and the empty graves. Tears streamed from her eyes, but she didn’t care. The masked priestesses had taught her how to lie, and be strong, and to hide her true self—and for what?

Run faster.

She dodged a grasping hand, stumbled, continued. She knew she could not fight every Ancestor in the crypts. She had to escape.

Survive. Live.

Meager firelight from somewhere filtered down through the open trapdoors. The sun had vanished. Dusk had fallen. The Ancestors crowded around the stairs like a funeral procession in reverse, and Constance felt a needle of doubt.