Page 79 of The Darkening (The Darkening)

Chapter 17

Ma sits upon a throne of shadows. Her face hidden by a long veil that melts into the silvery robe that shrouds all but her thin wrists and knob-knuckled hands, both covered in burnt black scar lines.

She lifts her head, and her veil shifts, the silver of it like molten metal.

She beckons.

My body moves thickly; with great effort, one foot rises. As it falls, the shadows behind me shatter like glass, and scorching light bleeds its way in. Spiderwebs of light spread under my feet, stretching forward into the dark before me, toward Ma.

Another step and the light behind me grows blinding. Still, she beckons.

With two more steps, the edges of Ma’s robe and veil catch fire. The flames rise up the cloth, burning it away.

Through the gap in her veil, Ma’s summer-sky blue eye widens. A sense of wrongness catches in my throat. The ashes blow away; Ma sits on the Regia’s throne in all white, her dark skin gleaming with the gold lines of the Regia’s mark.

She opens her mouth, and the Great King’s voice booms forth in its deep, crackling splendor.Who are you?

My name sticks in my throat, my tongue thick and immovable. I can make no sound at all.

A little nobody.

I touch my throat—but something’s not right with my hands. I raise them. There’s no color to them, no depth. I’m a shadow.

What can a little nobody do?

I move my lips, willing words out of them, but I can make no sound, not even a wheeze.

A rumbling starts behind me. My footing slips as it grows closer.

I turn. A wall of black clouds rushes forward—I brace, twisting to see Ma one last time—but the clouds crash over me before my gaze reaches her.

My body that’s not a body—no flesh, no blood, just shadow—falls apart as the Storm devours it, as I become another part of infinite darkness.

I jolt awake, a thick-tongued wail on my lips. I rub the salt from my eyes and the tracks of tears from my cheeks. “I’m Vesper Vale,” I whisper in a voice rough with sleep. The words hang meaningless in the air of my luxuriously appointed prison. Soft early-morning light trickles in through the glass windows.

I crack my locket open to see Ma, ignoring Pa’s notebook as it tumbles onto my lap. Ma’s eyes are dark brown, same as ever. If she had become Regia, like she wanted—would the Great King have burned through her, the way he does through Dalca’s mother? If she had succeeded, would I have lost her just the same—to the Regia’s mark instead of to the Storm?

It doesn’t matter. She’s gone. Seeing Dalca with the Regia got me rattled, that’s all.

But there’s something else. The dream reminds me that there’s nothing worse than the Storm—not the Regia, not the Great King, not even betraying Pa by giving his notebook to Dalca. Stopping the Storm is everything.

If Dalca can fight the Storm with what’s in the notebook, then I have to give it to him.

Decided, I tuck Pa’s notebook inside the locket and get out of bed.

As quickly as I can, I clean myself in the bathing room. My hair is still shorter and lighter than it once was, but my old face meets me in the polished silver mirror. It seems a little too young, a little too naked.

Tucked into a shelf in the bathing room, beside a stack of towels softer than most fifth-ringer clothing, is a small selection of clothes. I dress in the simplest of the bunch; a pair of snug black pants and an overdress that belts around the waist. It’s not till I have it on that I notice the pattern of sun and stars embroidered on the neckline and down the shoulders. The sort of frippery unheard of in the fifth.

Who am I? Am I still Vesper Vale, daughter of revolutionaries, a hopeful little screwup from the fifth ring? I don’t feel like it, not wearing fine clothes, not from my plush little room in the palace, just about as far from the Storm as it’s possible to be. Not when I’ve failed Pa, again.

A firm rap comes at the door. I slip Ma’s locket under my clothes and stand. My pulse quickens as the door opens and the soft scent of honeysuckle precedes Dalca in.

The pink-gold light outlines his regal brow, traces the straight line of his nose, dips into the sharp bow of his lip. He raises his eyes to meetmine. It happens in slow motion; his dark eyelashes sweep up, his gaze tracks from the floor to my bare feet, up the length of my legs, my chest, my neck, my lips, until all of me is held captive by eyes that shine like they have drunk all the colors of dawn.

His gaze lingers on my changed face, tracing the curves of my cheeks, the line of my nose, the fullness of my lips.

I study him in turn. Dalca wears full Wardana armor, encased in a shield of blood-red. He wears the distant, polite expression of a prince, but this, too, is his armor. His hands reveal more: they tremble ever so slightly, and unthinkingly, his fingers pluck at the cord wrapped around his wrist.