Page 2 of Steeling Light (Shadowed Debts #3)

The strength of steel is not in its hardness, its ability to hold an edge, nor in its ability to draw power. Its true strength lies in its flexibility, in its ability to be forged into anything the heart desires. And that is the true strength of my House. We can become anything that is needed.

~Daegon Rahn, personal journals

Ainslee

I’m home. I may wear another woman’s face and a dress that I’d never choose for myself, but after two days of flying, I’m standing outside the Keep of Shadows.

This building may not be home, but as soon as I’m done trying to find Vesta inside it, I can spend a little time outside the Keep of Flames.

I seriously doubt Vesta is hiding inside the Keep of Shadows waiting for Maeve to come find her. It’s the obvious place to start my search, but nothing is ever this simple.

The Keep of Shadows does not have a door, at least not like the Keep of Flames or Steel do. Instead, there is a wall where the door obviously should be.

I press my hand against the white stone that the Keep of Shadows is made from.

Snow-white quartz that seems to be made of mist resonates with a rhythm that feels angry and at odds with the vibrations inside me.

At first, I think it’s the Steel, but then I smile.

No, Steel isn’t the opposite of Shadows. It’s Light.

My House is one of the few Lesser Houses that can destroy Shadows.

It makes me feel just a little better walking into what is most likely a crypt rather than a functioning Great House.

A pulse of power flows through the wall and into me, a single sharp note that reminds me of a branch slamming against a piece of tin, and then the world around me disappears.

I’m no longer outside in the shade of a Keep.

I’m in the foyer surrounded by darkness.

And burned bodies. Bile rises in my throat as I look at the shadow walkers that litter the floor.

Every one of them is burned beyond recognition.

Their black cloaks are gone, and their obsidian blades lie beside them, many of them shattered.

Their powers and weapons were useless against Cole and the rest of the House of Flames during the Shattering.

Every bit of cheer drains from me as I look around at the bodies, and it’s like I can hear Cole’s words of warning in my mind. Control your emotions, Lee. You’re not safe. You’re all alone in the most dangerous city in the world in a Keep that no one’s been in since the Shattering.

I turn away from the bodies and look around at the smoke-smeared walls.

What had once been snow-white quartz now looks black.

The only light seems to come from far away—some distant window that escaped the wrath of the flame wakers.

The world feels more like a cave than the grandeur and beauty of the Keep of Shadows that I remember.

And I smile. I have to. My only weapon against the shadows is my Light, and those powers don’t work without cheer in my heart.

I may prefer my Steel powers, but it is nice not to need a torch to explore. I pull the daggers from my belt, and a steady glow leaves my body in preparation for whatever is left in these darkened hallways.

Using a trick Cole taught me, pixie wings lift me into the air just enough that I weigh almost nothing.

Ash swirls around me, but I ignore it. My footsteps are soft enough they barely leave a mark on the soot-covered floor.

Silence lingers in the darkness, and I do everything in my power not to disturb it.

The hallways are all the same as I make my way toward the Throne Room.

Just like in every Keep, there will be Guardians near the Throne, and in this one, they’ll be sylphs.

I’m not as familiar with them as I am with the salamanders of the Keep of Flames or the phantari of the Keep of Light.

What I know is that the guardians are rarely aggressive or dangerous unless you threaten the one who sits on the Throne.

Hopefully, these will tell me where Vesta is. “Hopefully” is the key word in that thought. More than likely, Vesta is hidden in some corner of the world, and no one will know where to find her.

My light flickers as my emotions waver, and I shove the fear and doubt into a corner of my mind. Not now! Control, Lee. Control.

“Well, you are an unexpected visitor,” a voice says from directly in front of me. I can’t see anyone. Only a moment later, a female visage forms in the space two feet in front of me from the very air itself, and unlike me, as the air crystallizes, none of the ashes shift or swirl.

“Hello?” I say it with uncertainty even though this is obviously a Guardian of the Throne of Shadows. I’ve only met a handful of sylphs, and all of them were in passing. The brief experiences at the Midsummer Ball with Vesta are the clearest, and Vesta did not look like this sylph.

She looked like a person. She was slimmer than normal with an ethereal feel to her movements, but if you didn’t look too hard, you’d swear she wasn’t all that different from a High Fae.

This sylph… does not. It’s less like a person and more like a refraction of light in the shape of a woman’s silhouette.

The sylph glides closer to me, and I force myself not to retreat.

“You are unusual. You smell of Light with a touch of the forge. Yet, you wear a Steel uniform.” The silhouette becomes more sharply featured, every piece of a human face coming into focus.

It reminds me of a piece of ice forming more details from water with each word.

“Untruths. Why are you here, lightbringer? Do not feed me lies.”

I swallow hard. Darian and I are the only two people that I’ve ever heard of with Light and Steel bloodlines. It’s what would have made us valuable had we been drawn to the House of Steel as children. We’d have been unique, not useless. “I’m looking for a sylph named Vesta.”

The icy image of the sylph’s face shatters as faceless air glides even closer to me.

“Vesta? The handmaid?” The sylph’s voice and face are decidedly feminine.

Her face crystallizes a few inches from me.

“She has not been seen since… since the changing of the Crown.” Her words are like the wind, everywhere and nowhere at once.

Her lips do not move. The crystalline visage simply shatters and is reformed as the sound is made.

Again, the sylph disappears, and she reappears several feet away facing away from me.

Her voice is a soft murmur, so similar to a breeze whistling through the trees.

“A lightbringer in the Keep. A request to find the handmaid. It is just as he said it would happen. I must tell the Conduit. The Queen is gone. They’re all gone.

The Conduits are the greatest authority and cannot be ignored when there is no one else to turn to.

Vyran, why did you abandon us? I am slipping.

Trusting the Conduits is all we can do until another sits on the Throne. ”

She flickers in and out of substance throughout the hall as she speaks. Some moments, she’s inches away from me. Others, she’s nearly out of sight.

Then she appears before me, her entire body crystallized, and she says, “I am Caelia, the steward of the Keep of Shadows. Why are you looking for the handmaid?”

I frown at her sudden lucidity. Something is decidedly wrong with this sylph. “A friend of mine is looking for her.”

Caelia nods slowly. “Vesta sometimes would go to the Keep of Webs in Selithar. Maerlix would know best where she might be. He is very good at finding things, sometimes even better than the handmaid.”

I give Caelia a smile. “Thank you. I appreciate the direction.”

Caelia’s visage cracks into a smile, and then she disappears. Seconds pass, and I expect her to reappear somewhere, but she doesn’t. It feels wrong. Why would she just disappear?

I don’t know, but I want to leave. Nothing about this place feels right, and instead of waiting around for Caelia to come back, I turn around to go back to the entrance.

I don’t bother with silence on the way out. It takes every ounce of control to keep from running. My footsteps aren’t silent anymore, and the tapping of my boots against the ash-covered quartz floor echoes loudly enough that I miss the soft swirling sound.

And miss the circle of steel floating behind me.

A clicking sound as a heavy piece of metal snaps around my neck stops me, though.

I pull away immediately and feel the collar fall against my shoulders.

Immediately, I force a smile to my lips, and light should explode from me, blinding everyone in the room, but nothing happens.

My power flows to the steel collar that the sylph had put around my neck.

I snarl at her. “What have you done?”

“The Conduit of Steel ordered me to collar and capture anyone who came looking for the handmaid or the Throne. He said to look for a lightbringer.”

“Gethin Rahn told you to do this? And you did it? You realize that he’s the reason the House of Shadows was broken, don’t you? You should be fighting against him, not doing his bidding. Or maybe you’d prefer to wear a collar as well.”

Caelia disappears and reappears right in front of me, the crystal image of her face looking so much like a confused little girl that it shakes me. “Who should I listen to, lightbringer? You? He is a Conduit. You are… nothing.”

Nothing. How many times had I been told that as a child? By my father, the few times he’d seen me. By Casimir. By everyone. I spent my life around Princes and Kings, but I was only ever a playmate. My brother and I were friends that could be used against Cole.

I smirk at Caelia, and pride flows through me. “I may be nothing, but I’m not stupid enough to collar someone with Steel powers.”

I imagine my head shrinking just like it does when I’ve become a mouse to get into small areas. Half a second later, I lift the collar over my head. Without another thought, I toss it at Caelia, and my head grows back to its normal size.

She looks down at the steel ring and doesn’t seem to know what to do. “You’ve done your duty. You collared me. Now leave me alone.”

I turn around, and instead of running, I walk slowly and confidently toward the foyer of the Keep of Shadows. Vesta is not still here, but I know where to go next.

When I press my hand to the wall that is like a door to the outside of the Keep, I turn to look at Caelia one last time. She’s still standing over the collar, her entire body etched in crystalized air, and shock covers her face.

Then the pulse of power flows through me like the sound of a branch against a piece of tin, and I’m standing outside.