Page 66 of The Darkening (The Darkening)

“Why did they sculpt him so young?”

Dalca pauses. “These are death masks.”

I wrap my arms around me. From his age and looks, he might’ve been Dalca’s brother, no more than a decade older. Too young to die.

Dalca moves to the other end of the room, toward the more recent Regias. A step here represents years. “Do you notice anything?”

Most of the Regias have deep frown lines. Some have Dalca’s brows, some his nose, one even has his lips. Then I see it as brows grow smoother, lips fuller, jaws sharper. “They’re dying younger.”

He nods. “And the Storm grows, and the city shrinks.”

“Why?”

We stop in front of Memnon Dagian Illusora, Dalca’s grandfather and the Regia my parents killed. “No one knows for sure. But I believe it might have something to do with the other Regia. When my ancestor combined both marks into one, I think something was left out, somethingthat weakened the Regia. Maybe there’s a better mark. One that means we can fight back the Storm.”

My head spins. It all makes sense. The ikon Dalca and Cas are after isn’t just any ikon—it’s the most important one of all. The other Regia’s mark must be what Pa knows. That mark is why Ma thought she could be Regia, a better Regia.

Dalca interrupts my thoughts. “There are written records from those generations, when the Regias were strong. They were not consumed by the Great King; instead the Great King bestowed his power upon each vessel as a gift. And, like a gift, the potential vessel had a choice of whether or not to accept. They described the moment of acceptance—the moment of becoming Regia—as a moment of perfect stillness. Of being perfectly empty and perfectly full, a moment when the tapestry of life unravels and reveals what’s beyond, a moment of being intertwined with every living thing.

“I wonder if that’s still the case. If that’s the last feeling my grandfather and mother had, before the Great King came into them.” He shrugs. “We’ll never know. But the proto-ikon you found... Its secrets may save our city.” The ikonlight shines on his face, and for a heartbeat he’s cast in gold, frozen in a death mask. This shrine for the dead isn’t just his past; it’s his future.

“Dalca...”

Dalca smiles, and the illusion breaks. “I’m sorry. These are the burdens of a Regia. I shouldn’t be putting them on you.”

I don’t smile back. “It’s my city, too.”

His smile fades, and he looks at me as though he’s drinking his fill.

I shiver, hoping I don’t look as vulnerable as I feel. I’ve forgotten the role I’m supposed to be playing.

He comes to a decision. “Let me show you something.”

He leads us out of the room, into the light of the palace. He makes for the nearest balcony, swinging open a pair of glittering glass doors and crossing to the railing.

Dalca checks the fastening of his cloak, then steps so close I can feel the heat of his body. “Hold tight.”

He pulls me in, my shoulder tucked against his chest and his arms around my waist, as the thousand-and-one-feather cloak wraps itself around us—and he leaps right over the railing and into the air.

A startled scream escapes my throat as we fall. His chest rumbles with a low laugh, but I can’t hear much over the blood pounding in my ears.

My stomach calms as we level out. We’re floating. Weightless. Wrapped up in an infinite moment. A breeze combs its fingers through my hair, but I don’t dare look.

“Open your eyes,” Dalca breathes into my ear.

From the cage of his arms, the city spreads out before me.

The second ring is a sprawl of ornate buildings studded with gardens. A small crowd holds lights in a post-stormsurge prayer. In the third, the Arvegna arena is busy with construction for the Trial. Around the Ven, Wardana in red buzz like bees. Hundreds of tiny twinkling lights mark the living, gathered in their toylike homes. Hundreds of little figures move through the streets, becoming crowds that flow like rivers between the matchbox-houses of the fourth and fifth.

The lights shrink to pinpricks as we rise higher and higher. We’re so far up that I feel like I could hold the whole of the city in my two hands. And yet the Storm still encircles us in a cage of clouds.

I grip Dalca’s waist as tight as I can, remembering my dream. This isn’t a fall I’d survive. “I won’t drop you,” Dalca promises.

He takes us higher still, into the circle of sky, above the wall of the Storm.

I hold my breath as we pass above the last of the darkness, wondering at what lies beyond. What cities and kingdoms have we been cut off from? Are there rivers thick with waterfowl, and fields lush with crops? Are there desolate mountains shrouded in a layer of deep green forests, like in my book of fairy stories?

We rise above, and it takes me a moment to understand. To make sense of the blanket of darkness that stretches as far as the eye can see.