I forced myself to my feet and kept a hand on the side of the boulder, inching my way between the two largest ones in hopes of finding some protection from the wind. Instead I discovered a stone archway leading into a cave. It had to be the Sanctum Mukira had mentioned. Surely inside I would be safe from the curse of the cliff.
Moss had filled in cracks around the mouth of the cavern, but they deepened into intricate carvings farther in. I ran my fingers over the swirling grooves. Whoever had created them had had the luxury of time. The deeper I went, the more the outside world seemed like a nightmare I didn’t have to face just yet. I used my Sight to navigate the tunnel, hoping it would be enough to see by once the entrance disappeared from view.
I needn’t have worried. At the bottom of a spiraling set of stairs carved into the floor, the path opened into a breathtaking room with archways leading into others. I looked around with curiosity and wonder. Natural light streamed through windows embedded in the cliff side, the glass so clear it must have been crafted with magic. My Sight indicated that the other sides of the windows were enchanted to blend in with the face of the cliff; it would look like ordinary rock from outside.
Still, something about the space made me uneasy. The silence was thick enough to cut. I paced through the interconnected rooms. Every surface had been chiseled into something spectacular. Patterns of leaves twisted into animals so lifelike it seemed as though they might spring from the walls. Stone columns stretched from floor to ceiling, narrowing in the middle, some in the likenesses of creatures and others in the shapes of humans.
At the back of the cave closest to the entrance lay the pool Mukira had spoken of, the water an inky blue-black in the slanting light from outside. Beneath the water, old magic swirled and eddied, pulsing underground farther than my Sight could reach. I peered into the pool for only a moment, recoiling when my reflection gleamed back at me clearer than any looking glass I’d ever seen. It was hard enough to carry my sorrow inside, much less see it in my eyes.
A wave of emotion struck as I stepped back. I had tried so fiercely to hold together the pieces of my heart that had broken when Amalska burned, and I’d thought Ina was the only one who might help me stitch them back together. Now she was gone forever, leaving me with even deeper wounds—ones she’d salted well.
I slumped against a wall and hugged my knees to my chest as my throat tightened and tears spilled over again.
A baby. How could she not tell me she was going to have a baby? It changed everything. Her lie of omission made me question everything we’d ever had. Had I ever meant anything to her, or was the love we had no more than a fleeting summer romance? When she came to see me at winter’s end, had it truly been for the village and because she missed me, or had she been using me all along? I never should have used my gift to help her. I never would have if I’d known it would turn out like this.
I sobbed into the folds of my cloak. What would I do now?
My grief swallowed me so completely that I failed to notice the breezes eddying through the cave with increasing strength until a gust hit me so hard my head smacked against the wall. I coughed and wiped my eyes, looking around in confusion for the source of the wind. When the stars cleared from my vision, a man was shuffling toward me, still partially obscured in the shadows.
“You trespass,” his voice hissed through the cave. The chill in the words cut through me like jagged edges of broken ice.
He came into the light at a deliberate pace, his tattered robes rippling in the wind that swirled around him. In my Sight he glowed bright as a demigod, but dark tendrils laced through his aura like some kind of rot. What little hair he had left was white as fresh snow, his face lined with centuries of age. He hissed at me again in an inhuman way that froze me to the core.
I scrambled toward the path out of the cave. Gusts twisted around me and pressed on my chest, shoving me onto my back. Wisps of wind worked their way beneath my clothing and dug into me like teeth and claws.
“Get off me!” I screamed.
“Foolish child. This sacred ground is not for you.” The malice in his baritone voice was as palpable as the force of his magic.
The pressure on my chest increased, and darkness began to creep in at the edges of my vision. The wind he controlled was stealing my breath. If I didn’t do something, he would asphyxiate me. I might have welcomed death at Ina’s hands; it would have been fair after what we’d put each other through. But being destroyed by the whims of a random monster wasn’t.
My heart pounded in my chest, quick as the wings of a sparrow. I flailed desperately, only managing to scrape my wrist on a sharp rock. A hot trickle of blood ran down my fingers.
The man stopped moving toward me, the wind momentarily ebbing. I crawled backward, leaving a thin trail of blood. Some of my panic must have bled out with it, for everywhere my blood touched, it created grooves in the stone. He raised a hand again, his magic shoving me hard against the floor. My own gift pulsed at the edges of my open wound, urging me to write a way out of this situation. I held it back with all my remaining strength, no longer able to flee.
The man slowly bent down to where my blood had splattered on the floor. He touched the blood with a knobby fingertip, then brought it to his tongue.
A soft cry escaped his lips. The wind departed as swiftly as it had arrived, leaving dust to swirl through the sunbeams angling into the cave. Now that the man wasn’t attacking me, he looked much weaker. Age had hunched his shoulders, and his hands trembled with some kind of palsy.
“You taste like him,” he whispered reverently.
“Like who?” I clutched my injured wrist to my chest, terrified of what he might do next.
“Veric,” the old man said. “This is his sanctuary in which you trespass.”
“Who the Hells is Veric? And who are you?” I asked, scrambling to my feet to take advantage of the reprieve from his attack. I was getting very tired of being accused of trespassing when all I wanted was to be left alone to mourn what I’d lost.
“I am Leozoar, son of the wind and guardian of the Sanctum,” he answered.
I started. He was one of Hal’s brothers—or at least claiming to be.
“You don’t look like a demigod.” Nor did he behave like one. Not all of us were especially moral, but we generally didn’t kill the way he’d apparently been doing for generations.
“Ah, so you have the Sight, do you? How useful.” Leozoar edged closer. “The gods forsook me when I took the first life in protection of this Sanctum. But my vow was to Veric. He was my family, too. My love.” His gaze grew distant, as if looking for a memory too far away to grasp.
“I see.” Worry needled at me. Did all the death I’d caused in Amalska mean the gods had turned away from me as well? Or perhaps I’d been cursed and abandoned by them since birth. That would certainly explain a lot.
“Go to the dais and offer your blood.” Leozoar’s words sounded like a command, not a choice.
“No. I want to leave,” I said, my voice weak. The day had been long enough. I didn’t want anything to do with this wind wraith and his dark magic.
“But you have everything to lose and just as much to gain,” he said. His dark eyes grew fierce and the wind picked up again. The meaning was clear: if I didn’t obey him, he’d kill me. A tingle of fear zipped down my spine, then faded away. I barely had the energy to be afraid anymore. In a way, it was almost a relief.
“Tell me why I should,” I said.
He huffed in frustration, sending another gust through the cave. “Because I am tired of waiting here and you might hold the keys to set me free.”
I crossed my arms. “What’s in it for me?”
“Everything. Your past and your future,” he sputtered. “Do you dare dishonor the only other like you? The only one with your gifts?”
“Which gifts?” I asked, fear finally creeping its way in.
“Your ability to make the future what you wish, just as Veric could.” His hands trembled more fiercely.