She looks at me, her ruby eyes full of pain and love. “You already have,” she says, her voice fading to nothing.
Her body convulses. Elder Kauko cries out and yanks me away from the bed as flames burst from her chest, spiraling high enough to reach the ceiling. I scream, unable to look away as icicles stab their way out of her belly, her back, her neck. She makes no noise, but I am made of sound. I’m a frenzied animal, lost to reason as I try to get to her. I am so certain. So certain:
If I touch her, I can make her better.
Kauko is crushing me, his shoulder pressed over my face, his hand cupping the back of my head. He smells of sweat and blood and failure as he holds me to the floor. I stare at the hammered copper ceiling, which reflects the inferno below, the Valtia’s arched back, arms and legs flung wide, bleeding and burning and freezing.
Dying.
There’s a loud hissing sound. “Let it burn out,” I hear Elder Aleksi say. “We need to take the Saadella to the Stone Chamber. We shouldn’t have waited this long.”
Kauko’s weight lifts from me, but before I can lunge for the bed again, he and Aleksi drag me away. Sofia’s still burning, thrashing weakly. Her blood is smeared across the sheet and dripping onto the floor. The sight of her red eyes, wide open and begging for release, follows me into the antechamber. My thoughts are spinning. My body humming and buzzing. It feels like a chasm has opened inside my chest, ripping asunder what was once tightly knit. I shudder as my stomach revolts, emptying me out. Two acolytes dive for the marble floor and absorb the mess with their own robes.
Leevi shouts orders to the apprentices and acolytes as Aleksi and Kauko carry me through the domed chamber, all the way to the back, where a stone staircase leads below. Their hands are gentle but relentless. No matter which way I twist, they won’t let me escape. My Valtia. My Valtia. I scream for her over and over again until my voice is shredded. I hear mourners calling out, but I can’t make out their words. The growing void inside draws me inward, commanding all my attention while it crashes and roars like an avalanche, carving me hollow.
My feet skim the floor as the elders reach the bottom of the stairs. We’re in the catacombs now, the walls oozing with the essence of the Motherlake, blades of rock jutting from the floor and ceiling of the caverns and tunnels. The way is lit with torches, but it’s still a tomb, full of inky shadows that swim with secrets and age-old ritual. The elders finally pull me into a small, round chamber and set me down on a slab of smooth stone that takes up most of the room, leaving only a narrow aisle around the edge. The slab is neither cold nor hot. It feels like hard, unforgiving nothing beneath me.
“When the magic rises within you, don’t fight it,” Kauko says, his breath sawing from his lungs, his brow sheened with sweat. “It’s seeking its new home. It won’t hurt you.”
I kneel and look down at my hands. There’s still a faint smear of red where the Valtia’s lips touched my palm. “It killed her. It tore her apart.”
“You cannot fear the magic!” Kauko urges. “Sofia was destroyed because she made a mistake.”
I think of the bandages in the crook of her arms and how drawn she looked this afternoon. “Why did you bleed her? Are you sure that didn’t make her weaker instead of stronger?”
“I had been trying to help her maintain the balance of magic in her body by draining off some of the excess,” says Kauko. “She was not the strongest Valtia we have known, and she overestimated her power today. You will be stronger. Wiser. Better.” He hesitates when I glare at him. “She was right, Saadella, when she said the stars had foretold your power. I’m not criticizing Sofia, I’m simply—”
“Call her Valtia,” I snap. Her name on his fleshy lips is a blasphemy.
His dark eyes are full of patience and pity, which makes me want to scream. And when he starts to talk about the prophecy again, the one that foretold my birth, the power I will control, I can’t take it.
“Stop.” My palms slap against the stone and my head hangs. Is this how it’s supposed to feel? The red flame mark on my leg is sending waves of numbness along my limbs, all the way to my fingertips and toes.
“It’s happening,” Aleksi whispers eagerly.
The void inside me grows, clawing at the walls of my chest, at the soft flesh of my belly. I let out a sob. “I just want her back.” I lay my forehead on the stone as the grief eats me up.
“You must welcome the magic,” says Kauko. “Open your arms to it. Stop fighting.”
“I’m not fighting.” How can I? I’m just lying here as the emptiness devours me. I’m too desolate to fight.