Page 18

Chapter 17

Secrets Come to Light

Floundering for a moment, I felt my body heat rising and a flush stealing over me. I couldn’t figure out how to respond to his admission without stumbling down a dangerous path. We needed a safer topic of conversation. “What are you reading?”

His brow furrowed briefly before he held up the book to show it to me. “It’s a very old journal that covers the time just before the citadel rose, and immediately after.”

The journal looked its age, with curled, peeling leather and yellowed pages that were tattered around the edges. No wonder he was holding it so carefully. It looked like it might crumble into dust.

I was curious about what had had him so enthralled. “I thought you said you were trying to find out more about my people since the citadel rose?”

“I am, but this is a rare find. My people scavenged what books they could from abandoned villages on the ground, but to read a firsthand account is extraordinary. My people were too busy trying to survive the wraiths after they were pushed from the edge of the citadel. They didn’t have time to write accounts of the experience until much later. This was written by a person inside the citadel who had direct knowledge of what unfolded at the time it was happening.”

I rubbed the side of my head, my mind feeling weary as I tried to process what he’d just said. “What do you mean ‘pushed’ and ‘survive the wraiths’? You’re the Fallen. Your people created the wraiths, then fell. Right?”

His expression darkened as his relaxed demeanor disappeared. He passed me the book. “Read it for yourself.”

Taking it gingerly, I sat on the ground a little apart from him and skimmed the pages, handling the ancient book with care. The words were faded in places, and some pages had crumbled at the edges, but enough remained legible to follow the entries. A growing horror rose as I read, threatening to swallow me whole.

When I finally looked up, his shadows had crept closer despite the hovering lumis orb. “This can’t be true. It says Nur didn’t raise the citadel; it was the elders with the help of the vessels.”

Despite the lies I had already uncovered, the very words felt wrong to say aloud.

“It’s what our histories say as well.”

I stopped, unable to read any more for the moment, and looked at the other journals he’d worked through. “Are they all the same?”

“Not by the same author, but they tell the same story.” He paused for a moment, his jaw clenching as he struggled to find words. “I know it’s hard to grasp the extent of the lies you’ve been told, but everything in the codex is false. All of it.”

A burning, unfamiliar rage rose that had me swallowing hard, trying to drag it back down again. My mother had said the same thing, and I had assumed she’d meant they’d lied about vessels, not the very foundation of our society and how it was formed.

“How did your people survive the fall if you were pushed through the halo? From what these journals say, the light was burned from them, and some were physically burned too.”

He hesitated, and I watched him debate his answer before he finally spoke. “Not all of them survived the fall. Those that did wouldn’t have lasted long if the God of Darkness hadn’t intervened, but he is very reclusive so we don’t talk about him, out of respect.”

There was nothing in the codex about a God of Darkness, but if there was a Goddess of Light, it made sense. I wasn’t going to push him if he was uncomfortable talking about it because he was trying to honor his deity.

“So, the Fallen didn’t create the wraiths?” I couldn’t help but ask the question despite the words on the page in front of me. It felt too monumental, a shift in the very foundations of our society.

He shook his head, keeping his movements slow like he didn’t want to spook me.

“Then who did?” I asked. The journal hadn’t said.

He didn’t answer, just stared at me, his darkening gaze piercing me in place, and waited. A hundred unspoken questions flashed through my mind like fireflies that twinkled above the gardens in spring. I glanced at the books surrounding us. All the breath left my lungs, and I swallowed hard as realization hit me.

“We did.” My voice sounded flat to my own ears.

“That’s what our histories say, and others amongst these journals corroborate it.” He seemed reluctant to say more, but I needed to know.

“What else do your histories say?” We didn’t have the time for me to sit and read whole journals while he watched. What I’d read was bad enough. I’d come back another time and read them all.

He didn’t hesitate to meet my gaze and hold it. “The biggest lie your elders have told is about this citadel itself. Your elders raised the citadel but refused to explain how they achieved a feat so massive with the amount of light they had available. Then, within a day, your high lord was dead. Your people cut off communication with the other realms, and wraiths started appearing on the ground below the citadel. Their numbers have been growing ever since. They’re still coming from somewhere, and it’s all connected to the raising of Lumière.”

“Are you implying the elders killed our high lord?”

A tense stillness settled back over him, his earlier relaxed pose having disappeared as he talked. “Yes. The other realms believe that too. The High Lord of Lumière was alive when the citadel rose.”

The more I looked, the more lies I found. They kept piling up, but these lies felt like they were going to pull me under on a swirling vortex of air as they toppled in around me. Who even were we as a people if all our stories were lies? Who was I? I had dedicated my life to the teachings within the codex, even if I’d hated endlessly reading it.

“What else have the elders lied about? Is there more than what’s in these journals?” A restless anger was building within me. I’d been kept ignorant my whole life and taught not to ask questions. Now, I needed to know why.

Nier twisted a gold ring on his finger and eyed the door as if he wanted to escape this conversation. It was the first sign of agitation I’d seen in him. He was usually so still, his every movement precise and controlled. It belied the turmoil he was evidently feeling at my question. How much worse could it be?

His gaze when it landed back on me was torn, and his voice held a hint of frustration. “I don’t want to be the one to tell you.”

“Please. There is no one else, Nier. That’s why I’m here. With you.”

“Okay. Just…promise you won’t hate me for it.” His gaze was solemn. This was no deception; he was serious.

“I promise.” I nodded jerkily. I’d agree to anything if he’d keep giving me answers.

He looked to the ground, and his shadows unfurled from the corners of the room to curl in around him as he took a deep breath.

“The Neven aren’t isolated up here in the way you believe. Neven from the citadel have traveled to the ground and spread lies about the Fallen for centuries, telling tales that paint us as dangerous monsters, and that the wraiths are a river of death of our making. It forced us to live in hiding, exiled not just from the rest of our kind in the sky, but from our realm as well. The humans revile us, yet they have folktales of the beauty of your people and the wonders of your citadel—ones that can’t possibly be based on their own experiences.”

I brought my knees up and hugged them close. “Why would we do that?”

“Because your elders don’t want us protecting the humans on the ground.”

“Protecting them from what?” He was being too vague with his answers, forcing me to prod him. I wanted to know it all.

His voice turned hard as he finally gave me the answer he’d tried to avoid. “Neven guardians from the citadel kidnap humans. They promise them an eternity spent in privilege within the light, behind the gates of their unearthly city.”

I cocked my head, watching every movement of his clenched jaw, seeking any falsehood in his words. He held my gaze again, tense yet unflinching. I thought it through, but it made no sense. We had no new humans arriving from the ground, not that I knew about. “For what purpose?”

Sensing my edge of disbelief, he picked up a journal that was still old but less so than the other one and searched for a page before handing it to me. This one had pictures that seared my eyes, depicting harrowing scenes of humans being tortured by Neven. “Some become thralls to serve the citadel. It would explain why they act so afraid whenever they see one of you, and why their tongues were all cut out. As for the rest, the only place we see swelling numbers is within the wraith population.”

I wanted to deny his words along with the pictures in the book that fell from my hands, but the torment creasing his face went too deep to deny. He truly hadn’t wanted to be the one to tell me this. I felt numb. Overloaded. “How are the wraiths created?”

“We don’t know. But we know it’s not natural, because the wraiths have no young. We’ve only seen ones that are more feral at first—more humanlike—before they fade and become insubstantial somehow. The newer ones are usually the most dangerous, and they sometimes roam before they return to linger beneath the citadel. They can kill and frequently do.”

Nausea rose hard and fast, forcing me to swallow. I had no words. I was appalled to call myself Neven.

“It’s why I’m here. To figure out how they’re being made and how to stop it. I know we’re talking about your people and this is hard to hear, but they must be stopped.” His added words were gruff yet soft as he reached out and closed the top book in my lap. The stamped words on the leather cover jumped out at me.

“Lies of the elders.” It was so fitting I almost laughed. It appeared the answers to the many questions I’d asked myself had been right here all along, under my childish fingertips.

A sudden burst of anger coursed through me, unfamiliar and hot. I gripped the books tightly as something deep within me stirred, and a tingling feeling started within my chest. It flowed outward, pushing, seeking an outlet.

“Are you okay?” Nier asked.

“No.”

I felt off balance, unfamiliar to myself as my body heated and my breaths became a rapid pant that echoed in my ears. Dizziness swept in, threatening to steal the world away from me.

Nier shifted forward, but I held my hand out to stop him, determined to battle through this on my own. His shadows tried to move toward me as well, but he waved them back.

“I’m so angry,” I whispered, hardly daring to say the words out loud. It wasn’t encouraged for acolytes, or potentiates, to show any emotion other than gratitude or thankfulness.

“Good. If you were anything else, I’d be concerned.”

“I haven’t been angry in a very long time. Not like this.”

He was silent at my admission, letting me just sit with it. It made me realize how much had been taken away from me with the elders’ lies and their need to control. Not just my history, but my ability to process emotions.

“Is there more they’ve lied about?” I asked.

His dark, angry chuckle in response had the hair on my arms rising. “There’s a lot, but I think I’ve shaken you enough for today. Let’s leave some for tomorrow.”

I knew he was right. My world had tilted off its axis. But if he never came back, I’d never get any more answers, and the ones I’d gotten had stirred up a hundred more questions.

“You’re not leaving Lumière tonight?” I asked. The question felt pulled from me. I had no hope of keeping it inside. Meeting him had awoken something in me, and I was having trouble finding the quiet, contained watchfulness that had helped me survive for so long.

He made a frustrated growly sound in his throat. “I should. We’ve both lingered too long. We need to get back. Whatever you intend with the information you’ve learned will not be served by you being discovered here, and especially not with me.”

“Nier—” I started to say, but the lumis orb above us pulsed for a moment before he sprang to a crouch and hovered over me. His shadows whirled, consuming the lumis orb and plunging us into darkness.

A small noise on the other side of the shed wall had me stiffening too. Nier leaned over me and whispered in my ear, “We need to go.”

I nodded as he grabbed the books and put them inside his tunic before piling the others he’d scattered back onto that stack, trying to hide their absence. I looked at the other books longingly, wishing I could take one with me to read later, but I knew it was far too risky. Not while I was living in my mother’s suite in the citadel. Maybe I could sneak back one day after I moved into the town, now that I remembered it was here.

Knowing I’d likely be alone next time had an inexplicable sadness creeping over me. I’d spent so much of my time alone, but within a day, Nier’s presence felt like it had become indispensable. My emotions were a rioting mess that I couldn’t seem to contain any longer.

He grabbed my hand and yanked me to my feet before he pulled me in behind him, his complete focus on the door across the room. I knew it was so we could shadow walk our way out, but relief flooded me at the touch I’d been denying myself.

We paused outside the main door under an overhang as he scanned the area. A blur of movement falling from the roof overhead and a startled, high-pitched cry had my heart stopping as panic clutched at my throat.

One moment Nier was holding tightly to me, and the next, he’d let me go and was standing out in the sunlight with his arms outstretched, a movement so fast I’d barely caught it. As he spun back toward me, I saw a young child in his arms, probably not much older than I’d been when I’d discovered this place.

The child’s face was ashen, his eyes wide as he stared up at Nier. They darted all over the hooded visage and dark wings, fully exposed in the late afternoon light without his shadows to hide behind. Because he’d left his shadows with me. I was enshrouded within them, safe and out of sight.

Nier gently lowered the boy to the ground. He was a young Neven with immature wings—and no way to save himself from the fall. The child was shaking uncontrollably, and I didn’t think it was all shock. He looked at Nier as if he were a monster that had crawled out from under his bed.

When the child was standing on his own, Nier crouched in front of him in a way that did nothing to help ease the boy’s fears. “Tell no one and you can have this.”

I hadn’t thought it was possible for the boy’s eyes to widen any farther, but they did at the sight of the gold ring Nier held out in his palm. It was only then that I noticed the boy’s threadbare clothing and skinny frame. I knew the Neven who lived in the town weren’t as well off as the noble families in the citadel towers, but I hadn’t realized they were suffering in this way.

I felt intense shame swamp me, weighing me down. My life had been lived in a cage, but it had been a privileged, sheltered one. If I owned a ring, I’d have given it to him too.

The boy nodded stiffly before his hand edged shakily forward. On a sharp breath, he grabbed the ring and bolted, not willing to hang around and risk Nier changing his mind. The boy’s fear reminded me of Nier’s earlier words about how the humans on the ground feared the Fallen too. Was this how everyone outside his own people reacted to him? Even someone he’d just saved? I couldn’t imagine how it felt to live like that.

In that moment, he became more than just a Fallen to me. It appeared to hold a different meaning for him, though.

He didn’t give me a chance to say a word as he melted back into his shadows and we were moving again. I pressed against him, hoping being seen wouldn’t convince him to leave and this wasn’t the last time I’d see him. I told myself it was because there was more I wanted to know, but it felt like a lie, and I was tired of those.

All too soon, we were back in the citadel, and he pulled me into a shadowy space near the main halls. He stepped away from me abruptly and didn’t give me a chance to talk, or even meet his eyes, before he gestured toward the nearest passage.

“Taking you was a mistake. You need to go now, before you’re discovered too.” There was no trace of hesitant vulnerability with this Nier. He was all nightmare.

I knew neither of our worlds would allow us to be friends and that he had already lingered too long, but I didn’t want him to go like this—feeling like a monster—or for these to be the last words spoken between us.

“Nier—”

“Go, Alula.”

I drew in a strangled breath at the command in his voice and dropped my eyes out of habit as I stepped back out of his shadows. A newly awakened part of me rebelled at it now that I’d had a taste of something different, yet I obeyed without hesitation.

“Please don’t leave,” I dared to whisper, but there was no answer.

He was already gone.