Then, one day, we halt in front of a yawning cave.
It is an ominous entrance, its mouth lined with jagged rock, leading into complete and utter darkness. Still, we never would have found this place without the pull of its energy. Here, I can feel the tangible presence of the pulsing power that calls to us, the strength of it like a thousand threads tugging against every muscle in my body.
“We have to go alone,” Maeve says as she trots up beside us. “My men, they cannot follow us this way.” She nods to our horses, some of which have thin trickles of blood dripping from their nostrils. Their suffering gets worse the closer they get to the entrance. My own stallion refuses to take another step forward. I look back at Maeve’s troops. They also hang back. I’d never thought about how an energy powerful enough to affect each of the Young Elites might end up affecting common men, but now I can see it on their faces. Some have a sheen of cold sweat on their skin, while others look pale and weak. They have come as far as they can. If they enter this cave with us, they will die.
Maeve swings off her horse and nods at one of her soldiers. “Take them back with you,” she says.
The soldier hesitates. Behind him, the others shift too. “You will be left in a frozen wasteland, Your Majesty,” he replies, glancing around at us. “You—you are the Queen of Beldain. How will you make it back?”
Maeve fixes him with a hard stare. “We will find our own way,” she says. “If you join us, you will not survive. This is not a request. This is a command.”
Even then, the soldier lingers a moment longer. I find myself looking on in longing and envy, bitterness and grief. Would any of my soldiers in Kenettra be so loyal to me? Would they follow me out of love, if I did not use fear against them?
Finally, he nods and bows his head. “Yes, Your Majesty.” He places one hand over his chest, then kneels in the snow before her. “We will wait for you at the bottom of the pass. We will not leave until we see you return. Do not ask us to leave you entirely, Your Majesty.”
Maeve nods. Her hard composure cracks, the only moment I’ve ever seen it do so. She suddenly seems very young. “Very well,” she replies.
The soldier stands and shouts an order to the troops. They salute their queen before turning their horses around, making their way down the path that we’d originally come. I stand in silence, watching them go. Would my soldiers ever salute me in honor?
When the sound of hooves fades to a dull rumble, Maeve returns to join us at the entrance of the cave. No matter how hard I try to stare into it, I can’t see anything except black—it is as if there were nothingness on the other side, and we would fall into it if we enter. Raffaele stands at the edge and closes his eyes. He takes a deep breath, then shudders. He doesn’t need to speak for me to know what he is going to say. I can feel the pull. We all can.
The Dark of Night is at the end of this cave.
Teren draws his sword and a long knife, while Lucent and Magiano do the same. I stand close to Magiano as we start to walk in. Violetta’s absence is a gaping void beside me. If she were here, I would tell her to stay close. She would give me a quiet nod. But she isn’t here.
So I turn to face the darkness without her, and walk in. I am too afraid to wonder whether we will be able to walk out.
I can see nothing, at first, and it makes me hesitate with every step I take. Our footsteps echo in the darkness, coupled with the sound of metal occasionally scraping against stone. The others must be using their swords as a guide along the edge of the cave. The air is bitterly cold in here and smells of something ancient, salt and stone and wind. I gulp over and over again, trying to keep myself from thinking that the walls are caving in on us. If only I could see—if only I could see. My old fear of blindness now flares to life, taking on a shape of its own in this darkness, and I think I can see the eyes of monsters in here, their stares fixed on me.
You will never get out of here, the whispers chant, pleased at my rising terror. You will live in darkness forever, just as you deserve.
I jump when a hand, warm and callused, touches mine. “You’re all right.” Magiano’s voice comes out of the darkness like a beacon, and I turn toward him. You’re all right. You’re all right. I force the whispers in my head to repeat this, and slowly, the mantra gives me the strength to take one step after another.
After what seems like forever, my vision finally starts to adjust. I can see the subtle grooves of stone in the cave’s ceiling, looming several feet above us, and from inside the grooves comes a faint ice-blue glow. Slowly, as more of the cave comes into focus, I can see the glow emanating from nearly every crevice in the ceiling. My steps slow as I try to get a better look at it.
The light comes from millions of tiny, dangling beads of ice. They shimmer and twinkle, pulsing in a pattern, and they seem to gleam the strongest where we pass. For a moment, I forget my fear and just stand there, unable to tear my gaze away from their beauty.
“Ice faeries,” Raffaele says, his voice echoing to us from somewhere in front. “Tiny creatures of the north. They must have awoken at the ripple of our movement in the air. I have seen them described in the accounts of priests on their pilgrimages here. This is the place that travelers worship as the Dark of Night, but they go no farther.”
The glow lights our way, leading us along a trail painted by stardust.
Minutes pass. Hours. At some point, I feel the faint bite of a cold breeze against my face. We must be nearing the cave’s exit. I tense, wondering what lies on the other side. Beside me, Violetta’s ghost walks in and out of the shadows, faded and gray. The wind turns steady, until we round a curve in the cavern and find ourselves looking at an exit.
I suck in my breath at the glittering world of snow beyond it.
I have heard the myths about this place, the Dark of Night. But I am standing in front of it now, staring into an untouched, magical world. This is the entrance connecting our world with the gods. And we cannot enter without Violetta’s alignment, her link to empathy.
Raffaele stands at the entrance and reaches out a hand tentatively. He shudders, and so do I—the energy beyond this entrance is overwhelming, a million threads to every one in the mortal world, something so intense that I fear it may crush me if I dare to step through. When the priests come searching for this place, is this where they stop? Do they sit under the light of the ice faeries and admire the beads of ice dangling in the cavern? Perhaps mere mortals cannot even tell that this entrance is here. Perhaps the energy here is so strong it is lost on them.
Raffaele stands there for a long moment, hovering between one space and another. Then he looks at us. He is going to step through. “We are already ghosts,” he whispers. I open my mouth, wanting to stop him, then close it. He is right, as he always is. If this is how we must end, then so be it. Raffaele takes a deep breath, and I study his silhouette in this dim blue light, this magical realm, outlined in a halo as if for the last time. Beside me, Magiano nods and takes my hand. Maeve and Lucent stand together. Teren looks ahead without fear.
There is a space beside me where Violetta would have stood. Without her, I am less afraid of dying. Without her, the world is that much darker.
Raffaele steps through. And we follow.
It is said that the Dark of Night can be entered solely by those who have known and suffered true loss—that only through surviving such agony can a mortal understand what it is like to set foot inside a realm of the gods.
—Tales of Travelers to the Dark of Night, compiled by Ye Tsun Le
Adelina Amouteru