Page 113 of The Darkening (The Darkening)

Chapter 24

Mid-fall, he reaches for me, and our fingertips brush, once, twice; he grabs my hand and pulls me to him. Fighting the wind, I bring my hand to the cloak’s clasp and twist the ikondial. The cloak billows wide, catching the wind and slowing our fall.

We hit the ground and throw up a whirlwind of ash.

Dalca unwraps his arms from around me. I peer though the ash, at the opening a hundred feet above us. Red-tinted light falls from the opening in a single column, illuminating a platform raised high above the ground. I squint up at it, but whatever’s there can’t be seen from below.

Dalca makes for the platform, and I follow him up the stone stairs set into its side. With each step I take, a flurry of ash rises. A speck of ash lands on my palm before it wisps away into stormcloud.

I smother my gasp as I reach the top, a step after Dalca.

A stone coffin, carefully sculpted to resemble the person inside. Dalca wipes the ash from the face. The golden face is cracked, lines spiderwebbing across its eyes and lips. Familiar eyes. Lips I’ve tasted.

The coffin wears Dalca’s death mask.

Dalca stares down at it, wide-eyed. It’s not a perfect likeness; the golden mask has a cruel twist to its lips and a deep furrow between itsbrows. I rub my thumb across sharp golden cheeks, feeling lines carved thinly. Lines that curl across the cheeks, to the corners of the eyes, up the center line of the lower lip. This is Dalca the Regia.

Dalca begins to say something, but I shush him, listening hard.

There. The sound is muffled, but it’s one I know well from Amma’s. A quiet, secret sobbing.

Dalca shoots me an alarmed look.

Bending over the coffin, I touch my ear to the stone. Dalca mirrors me, his eyes locked with mine as we listen.

The sobbing comes from within; someone’s trapped inside.

Dalca rests his bloodied hands on the lid, steeling himself. I hesitate, but he shoves it open, and the stone lid crashes down in a cloud of ash.

A boy, no more than five years old, weeps inside the coffin, curled up so tight that I can’t make out his face from under his bird’s nest of black hair.

He rubs his eyes, blinking long, dark lashes, and then he tilts his head up at us. His tearstained eyes are painfully blue.

He reaches his tiny hands for us. Dalca nearly leaps back, a strange expression coloring his face.

“It’s him. The boy from before.” His whispers echo in the silence. “What is this?”

The voice rings out from everywhere, from every speck of dust, from the depths of the earth under our feet, from every dark shadow lurking in the corners of our sight.This is a test of your worth.

A serpent of ghostly pale stormcloud slithers out of the shadows. It wraps the long length of its milk-white body around the platform, encircling us once, twice, thrice. The serpent turns to us with ancient andcruel eyes, eyes I met once before at the edge of an upside-down pool. The Queen.

The serpent bends her head toward Dalca.

Tell me, princeling, who are you?

Dalca meets her scrutiny with regal composure. “I am Dalca Zabulon Illusora. I am the son of the Regia. I am the last of the Illusoras, next in line for the throne. The Wardana call me leader.”

Is that so?

“Yes.”

Dalca says nothing of the boy I know, nothing of the boy who took Pa from me, nothing of the boy who spoke of committing a thousand small evils to do what he must do, nothing of the proud boy who stole a kiss, who swept me up above the clouds, nothing of the boy brave enough to walk into the Storm to save his city.

The serpent flicks her tongue.What a hollow boy.

The child in the coffin watches, stifling his sniffles. He scrubs tears away when he catches me looking, fixing me with a scowl that speaks of lonely determination. He’s a little older than I was when Ma went into the Storm, but Dalca has at least a year on me. This is Dalca at the moment his mother became Regia, when he lost her, when he learnt what was in his future.

This is when he was last allowed to be afraid, to be just a boy.