Page 193 of Eternal Ruin

Actis never scar.And if Susenyos’s claw marks meant something, could these scars mean something too?

“June,” she said, brow furrowed. “Do you remember how we got our scars?”

Her ribbon bounced as June’s fingers went to her shoulder, lingered there a beat, then dropped. “No.”

Kidan nodded, turning away. “I need to see Susenyos.”

June nodded slowly. As Kidan traveled the polished tiles back to Susenyos, she wondered why her sister appeared nervous, as if she were lying.

69.

JUNE

Ever since June was five years old, she’d slipped back and forth between two worlds.

One existed when she was awake, and it was where her sister and Mama Anoet lived. The other, one she cleverly named Grassy Land, appeared when she was asleep.

No one except June could visit this place.

Well, that wasn’t true. “Visit” was the wrong word. June had no choice in the matter. She was dragged there every day, yanked from the real world like a puppet on a string and dropped from the blue sky into an endless green field.

Unforgivingly green except for a tall stone pillar in the middle.

Shortly after Kidan left her room, June’s eyes had become heavy. She hadn’t been able to reach her pot of hartshorn before she fainted. Now her eyes opened in that world, lying in the middle of the knee-high, sweeping grass. June’s skin no longer grew irritated at the prickling the plant’s sharp edges produced.

She groaned and sat up.

A couple paces away, upon cleared ground, an open book and a pen were positioned on a flat rock. Along the pillar, a chaos of symbols was carved. Triangles. Squares. Circles. All intertwined and forming new shapes, telling stories, old legends.

Usually, June would sit before the symbols, gripping the pen and ready to write.But today she stood with her fists clenched and marched to the pillar, tilting her head up.

“You promised you’d give me one night!” she shouted.

Her words drifted across the wilderness before something caught it.

“Your lessons must continue. There is still a lot you don’t know.” The mighty voice came down from the heavens.

At least, June used to think he was an angel.

“One night!” June shouted at the man perfectly balanced on the high singular pillar, dressed in thick handmade cotton cloth, a gabi.

The second-most powerful person to ever live. Creator of the Three Binds and June’s personal hell.

The Last Sage.

He had his legs crossed before him, face the picture of a silent storm. “We don’t have much time.”

Time.

There it was again.

June turned away in frustration. Her lovely clothes were gone, replaced with the traditional attire of the Amhara people—her ancestors’ embroidered kemis fell from her shoulders to her ankles, cinched at the waist with a sash.

“Come, Desta,” the Last Sage ordered, voice ancient and mighty.

“That’snotmy name,” June snapped.

“You will earn many names yet. But your mother named you Desta so I name you Desta. She only changed it to hide you from the map.”