I bow my head in the best imitation of Raffaele I can do. “Yes, Your Majesty,” I reply. I pause to look at both ends of the arena’s stone path. Maeve’s brothers are watching me down here too. I can see them now, barely noticeable in the night, and now and then I can see the gleam of their arrow tips fixed on me.
Maeve pulls the hood from her face. Rain soaks her hair. She takes a deep breath, almost as if she were afraid of what will happen next. She is afraid, I realize, because I can feel the fear building in her heart. In spite of everything, I recall that she has only ever brought her brother back from the dead. We are all venturing into strange territory.
“Come closer,” she commands me.
I do as she says. She gives me a long look for the first time, her eyes lingering long enough that I start to wonder whether she can see through my disguise. She pulls a knife from her belt.
Maybe she does know. And now she will kill me. I lean hesitantly away, ready to defend myself.
But Maeve instead beckons me forward again. She reaches out and grabs a lock of my soaked hair. In one deft move, she slices a length of the lock off.
“Give me your palm,” she says next.
I hold one hand out at her, palm facing up. She murmurs for me to brace myself, digs the blade into my flesh, and makes a small, deep slice. I flinch. My blood wells against her skin. The pain sparks something inside me, but I force it back down. Maeve lets my blood drip on the strands of my cut lock.
“In Beldain,” Maeve says, her voice steady and low, “when a person lies dying, we send a prayer to our patron goddess, Fortuna. We believe she goes to the Underworld as our ambassador, to speak with her sister Moritas and vouch for the life she wants to take. Holy Fortuna is the goddess of Prosperity, and Prosperity requires payment. This is what I did when I brought my brother back—a ritual prayer.” Maeve’s brows furrow in concentration. “A lock of your hair, drops of your blood. The tokens we give to bind a dead soul to a living one.”
She bends down on one knee, then presses the bloody lock against the stone. The blood smears against her fingers. She closes her eyes. I feel her energy grow, dark and pulsing. “Every life I pull back to the surface takes a piece of my own life,” she mutters. “A few lost threads of my own energy.” She turns her eyes up at me. “It will take a piece of yours too.”
I swallow. “So be it.”
She falls silent. All around us, the storm rages on, whipping at Maeve’s cloak and throwing fresh rain into my eye. I squint against it. Up on the arena’s top row, a silhouette with curls of hair turns toward us. The Windwalker, perhaps? She makes a subtle gesture, and a moment later, the wind around us dies down, pushed back by a funnel of wind that shields us in its center. The storm’s gusts rage in vain against the Windwalker’s shield. Maeve’s cloak drapes back down behind her, soaking in the rain, and I wipe water from my face.
Maeve bows her head. She stays still for a long moment. As I watch, a faint blue light starts to glow from under the edges of her hand. I can barely see it at first. But then the light begins to pulse, growing in strength from a faint, narrow outline to a soft glow that stretches all around her hand. Overhead, a streak of lightning brings with it an instant clap of thunder. It echoes around the arena.
A surge of fear emanates from Maeve now. I feel the change like water to a parched man, as intense as the storm. In order to reach the Underworld, one must gain the permission of she who walks the Underworld’s surface, Formidite, the angel of Fear, the same deity I’ve seen before in my nightmares. Somehow, I know that Maeve must be at that surface now, seeking a way in.
Something starts to pull from the depths of the arena’s lake. No, deeper than that. Deeper than the ocean, something that stretches all the way down, past the world of the living and into the realm of the dead. A darkness, something I have only sensed before in dreams. Threads of energy in the mortal world are infused with life, even the darkest, most twisted threads. But this new energy … it is something else altogether. Threads that are black, through and through, lacking the pulse of life and ice cold to the touch. My mind coils away from it—but at the same time, I hunger for it in a way I’ve never felt before.
This energy feels like … it belongs to a part of me.
Maeve shifts to press both of her hands against the ground. Out in the lake, the waters turn choppier. The waves crash against either side of the path, sending white foam up into the air. The energy from deep in the ocean starts to surge upward. It pushes past the barrier between death and life, and I gasp as the darkness permeates the water around us, staining the water with something not of this world.