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They wereeverywhere.

I hadn’t imagined it during my initial walk through this city—allof the citizens of Ereboscarried flames on them in some manner. Some hung from bandoliers, others were fashioned into necklaces or rings, while a few simply carried them in small metal lanterns.

“What are all these blue fires for?” I asked Kaelen.

“Vivarisflames,” he replied. “They draw from the greater concentrations of similar fires you might have noticed scattered around the city.”

I nodded, remembering the sapphire wisps gathered along the base of his manor and elsewhere. “What do they do?”

“It’s…rather difficult to explain.”

“Thalia said the ones in this city are more alive than the shades outside of its walls,” I pressed, refusing to accept his evasive answer.

“She’s right.”

“Do these flames have something to do with that?” I asked. “I can sense magic in them.” My hand absently went to the bracelet of turquoise beads my father had given me. It kept happening whenever we drew close to a concentrated pool of fire—or even just a large group of flame-carrying wraiths—the vibrations, the humming.

But I still had no idea what any of itmeant.

“It’s very old magic,” Kaelen confirmed, “put in place by powerful beings back when this city first became what it is today. I’m a descendant of those beings—the only one left after all this time. I’ve been tending to the flames and the wraiths here since I was ten years old.”

Powerful beings…

More necromancers, like the ones who had built up the barrier where we’d first encountered Thalia?

“You’re the onlyliving being within these city walls, normally?”

“Yes.”

“And you’ve been here since you were a child…so you’ve aged and changed, while I assume the wraiths stay the same?” It was a theory I’d been piecing together while trying to understand the vision I’d had when I’d touched Red; if she hadn’t changed since her death, then perhaps the woman I’d seen—the one who looked like me—was merely a distant ancestor of mine who had known the child when she was alive. Maybe that’s why she’d been drawn to me; because she thought I was someone else.

“Correct,” said Kaelen. “Typically, only the ones with Shadowblood in their veins can survive in this realm these days.Though, we are aging at a more rapid rate than before, and our magic is becoming less and less potent.”

“Shadowblood…” The term struck me as somewhat familiar.

He read the curious look on my face, and he moved to answer it with a demonstration; he rolled up his sleeve and reached out a hand toward a nearby concentration of vivaris fire—a gathering of it inside a large metal bowl held by a regal-looking man carved from marbled stone.

I watched as the veins on Kaelen’s arm darkened. As the twisting strands of fire within the bowl did, too, the mass of them turning almost black before he began to pull some of that darkness out, siphoning it into his own body.

Once he was finished, the flames held by the statue were a much brighter blue than before, though the size of their collective mass had decreased.

Several of the meandering souls around us began to move with more purpose, funneling toward the brightened flames. They took the personal fires they carried and held them closer to the metal bowl, and one by one, those personal lights flickered and briefly burned with more intensity than before.

My turquoise bracelet shivered. I clenched it tightly as I studied the man beside me more closely, realization settling over me. “The way you drew that darkness in…you’re a necromancer. Like Thalia. Like me.”

His eyes returned to the road ahead, and he trudged onward through his city, guiding me underneath an arching black-iron gate as he said, “Yes. For whatever that’s worth anymore.”

“So, all of those with our blood can move freely through this dead realm.”

“That’s right—though the ones traveling with you seem to be managing it, too, Thalia tells me. The Light King’s magic must be very powerful and protective, indeed, for them to have lived and aged relatively normally in the seven years they’ve spent here.”

I nearly stumbled to a stop.

Whatelsehad Thalia told him? And why? She’d seemed furious with him earlier…why trust him with any of our secrets? What sort of relationship did the two of them truly share?

The longer I spent in this city, the more questions I seemed to have.

I tried not to let my nervousness show, attempting to steer the conversation away from myself and the ones I traveled with, as I said, “You tend to the flames here, then?”