Adlai was sure the Arbil pyramid had grown since she was last here. Had it always been so massive? The desert sun burned across the golden brick. It eclipsed all other buildings and dwarfed the city walls so that it seemed as if the city was merely a series of shrines gathered around it.
And if the city was so easily swallowed by it, what chance did she stand? The pyramid had been around for hundreds of years. It would stay for hundreds more.
She thought over her uncle’s plan and it fell apart in her head. Like collapsed tent poles, the covering blew off in the wind. Her uncle wouldn’t be able to find her; she’d be left alone in there, and the hooded stranger . . . he would find her, and this time he wouldn’t fail; she would die in that building.
A city guard at the gate called them over. Adlai’s heart raced. The fear wasn’t of the guard recognizing her or denying her entry; it stuttered like a panicked mouse over the moment they’d be let through and she would have nothing stopping her from going into Arbil.
A selfish, cowardly thought. Her parents were in there, that should be more than enough of a pull forward. And it was; she kept her feet moving, but she couldn’t deny the other pull, a stronger one, telling her not to go through with this.
While Erikys talked to the guard, Adlai looked over her shoulder, past the queueing crowd and out to the desert market they’d left behind. She couldn’t see her uncle, but she knew he was there somewhere. He would be following them on his own—her second shadow. A much stronger one. She didn’t doubt he was itching to leave the colorful tents and head through the city gate himself. Her uncle wouldn’t be hesitating like she was.
The guard let them pass. They made for an unremarkable couple coming into the city. Erikys in his tanned shirt and leather wristbands, and Adlai in a long skirt the color of dust tracks and a sleeveless black top. Plain and dark. Nothing like how she’d dress for stealing in the market, but she was playing by her uncle’s rules this time. It was his plan, and she’d volunteered to be a part of it.
“You don’t have to do this,” Erikys said. She glared at him, angry that he could seem to read her mind. He’d turned into a stranger for her, and she wished she could do the same, to transform into a girl he didn’t know. Preferably a girl he hadn’t kissed and made a fool of.
“You aren’t like your uncle,” he continued. “Arbil’s a hospital. Whatever you plan on doing, you’ll be putting people’s lives at risk. Sick, vulnerable lives.”
“As if you care about innocent lives,” she hissed.
He grabbed her hand. She tried to yank it away but his grip was strong and hers was trembling.
“We can still go. Leave everything behind like we planned. I don’t . . . I can’t watch you die again.”
Finally she pulled her hand away.
“We’re barely ten paces from the gate and already you’re going back on your word,” she said. “I’m not like you. My words mean something.”
“It shouldn’t be you going in there!” Erikys dragged his fingers through his hair. “I’d take anyone else.” He flushed. “You should be helping us. Your people have all these books and knowledge on shadow. We could be allies in making cures.”
She laughed. It was calming. “You’re naive if you think we’ll ever work with Arbil,” she said. It was pure naivety and she started to walk again, her steps more determined.
“If you saw the cures being made,” he said. He hadn’t moved but his voice carried over the wind. “Cures like the one that saved my brother, you’d want to be part of that. I know you would, Ads.”
Her smile was stiff and frozen across her face as she turned back to him. “Probably you’re right. You know everything about me. And I know nothing about you.”
* * *
Adlai had never been inside the Arbil pyramid before. Her father had said it would be inviting illness and death, which had of course been another lie, like the one about suraci metal being cursed, or her shadow only having one trick. All to keep her from the truth. So many lies.
She’d never been inside, but she had admired the outside from a distance. Arbil had seemed to be in the corner of her eye at all times, as much a part of the landscape as the sun in the sky.
But as beautiful as the exterior was, for some reason Adlai hadn’t expected to find it just as beautiful, even more so, inside.
It was a dark kind of beauty. Dozens and dozens of torches were fitted along the walls, making for pinpricks of starlight inside the golden brick, but the space was just too large to illuminate fully. It gave a softness to the air and drew her eyes to what things the light did pass over. Large arches and stone staircases curved playfully from one corner to the next. There was a garden in the center with water trickling down and seating arranged under the shade, miniature trees acting as privacy curtains in some areas. White stone columns were stamped from ceiling to floor with carvings that had constellations swirling around them. Bed frames had silk curtains and the marbled floor had rolls and rolls of beautifully embroidered rugs. She couldn’t believe half of what she was seeing as everything was so ostentatiously rich. Were patients sick on those rugs? Did they bleed on silk beds? The idea seemed ridiculous. This wasn’t a place for the sick; this was a palace for kings.
No, Adlai reminded herself, this isn’t a palace—it’s a prison.
Erikys led her to a staircase, this one straight instead of curved but equally daunting to climb. She was so tired. Without her shadow, her body just wanted to sleep. She blinked away the thought. But then Erikys went around the staircase and examined one of the columns it was attached to. She recognized the hero Menko’s constellation worked into the stone. He pressed on one of the stars and in the wall behind the stair a concealed door shuddered open.
Through it was a dark passageway with a fiery gleam at the end of it. Suraci. They reached a large copper cage, big enough to fit several people inside, and the lick of suraci coated the top and bottom bar.
A young boy, perhaps fourteen or fifteen years old, sat inside, bored. He glanced up at Erikys, recognition lighting his eyes before they turned quizzically to Adlai.
“Who’s she?” the boy asked.
“Madam Dressla has some questions for her,” Erikys said.
The boy didn’t lose his frown but he opened the cage for them to step inside. Given how much suraci was wrapped around the cage, he must have felt secure letting anyone inside.
With the door closed, the boy began spinning a wheel and the cage lifted from the ground. It was a slow ascension. Nerves ripped through Adlai, the only thing keeping her alert when every part of her body wanted to lie down where she was.
Great idea to do in a cage.
She focused away from the bars. Erikys was standing a touch too close. Close enough that she could see a strand of his hair loose on his collar. The kind of closeness that would have had her pulse racing just a few days ago.
It was still racing, but she put that down to being inside a cage in enemy territory without any power.
Finally the cage stopped moving, and they were locked on a new floor. One that had to be very high up on the pyramid because the darkness below her seemed to stretch on forever.
The boy opened the door and Erikys and Adlai stepped out into another dark passageway. Fire sconces lit the path ahead. Adlai looked behind her as the cage began its slow descent and felt her stomach drop with it. They had to be getting close to the gate, the one her uncle wanted her to pass through before having her shadow returned to her.
Would her uncle really be able to follow her up here? She hadn’t known about the cage. Would he be able to destroy that much suraci?
Erikys slowed his pace as they reached a corner they needed to turn. His face glowed in the torchlight.
“Adlai, whatever your uncle has planned, if it doesn’t work out and you end up . . . a subject,” he said the word carefully. “I want you to know that I’ll find a way to get you out. You can believe I don’t care about you, that I was just using you, but I won’t let them keep you here.”
She looked away from him and his burning gaze. “If you’re okay with all the other people like me being stuck here, I don’t see why I should be any different.”
He was about to say something else, but she was no longer listening. She turned the corner and gasped.
The corridor was black from the walls to the ceiling to the floor. But there was light. Glowing paint along the walls showed constellations, with planets paving their path on the floor. Mercury was in the right position to give strength to the Thinker constellation. Venus was overseeing justice by the Gallows. It didn’t look like an accurate star chart, being more of a decorative one that showed a simplified version of how the stars and planets could be read. She thought it was beautiful, until she approached the end of the corridor.
Here there was a gate with a larger-than-life dagger shot through the bars. Menko’s dagger. The one from the storybook that killed shadow wielders. Like the story, the blade was covered in flame.
Adlai shivered. The fire was a trick of the light, as the dagger’s blade was made entirely of suraci. Erikys caught her up and they walked in silence toward it. This was the gate she had to destroy.
She swallowed. She wished she was back in the desert market. Choosing marks there had been so easy. Stretching her shadow out had been second nature. What she had to do here seemed impossible, even with a god’s help.
“Back again?” There were two guards behind the gate, and one of them smiled at Erikys like they were old friends. “Can’t seem to get rid of you these days. The peace we had when you were away playing make-believe with your shadow.”
Erikys smiled, but there was a falseness to it that she could see now. “Apologies for making you get off your ass and have to lift a key to a lock. You have such demanding work, watching a gate.”
The guard, who was far from fat but rather bulked up with pure muscle, laughed as he swung a set of keys around. The other guard rolled his eyes and nodded to Adlai.
“This isn’t a bring-your-girl-to-work kind of place,” he said. “And we’ve had no mention of any visitors due.”
Erikys pointed down to his anklet. “She doesn’t bite,” he said. “Trust me, Madam Dressla will want her to be let through.”
The two guards shared a look. The muscular one shrugged and slipped a key into the lock.
A wave of heat passed over Adlai as she came through the gate.
* * *
The cold chamber had been cleaned and Corwyn had been put to rest, not on a metal table, but on the sofa by the research tomes. He had a number, but he wasn’t quite a subject. Not in the sense Subject 187 was. Subject 187 would never have his shadow returned to him for his own, but Corwyn . . . if he would only wake, Subject 198 would be the start of a whole new era.
Why won’t he resurrect?
Dressla brushed her fingers over his bare neck. It was pale as milk and made the red slash across it look more violent—like a scream coming from his throat. His bruises and cuts also remained, and this wasn’t right. This wasn’t one of the beautiful deaths her subjects were supposed to have.
The experiment should have worked. For the previous equitor she’d had to forcibly take a shadow and connect it with him. But Corwyn had been given his freely.
The ground shook suddenly and the nose ring Corwyn had stolen from her fell from his limp fingers. She turned and found Bosma hovering nearby.
“Find out what that was,” she ordered.
As her guard left, she looked across the room.
Subject 187 was as far from her as the cold chamber allowed. Corwyn’s corpse had taken over 187’s usual corner, and so the subject had taken a corner of the room that had no seating, no books—nothing but a window. She pulled her beaded shawl around her and made her way to him.
“What is it like when your shadow is returned to you?” she asked.
Subject 187 had his forehead pressed against the glass and hadn’t moved at her approach. His voice, when he spoke, sounded weary.
“It feels like you’ve been walking around naked and cold and now finally a path opens that blazes warm in front of you. You follow it.”
“Then why doesn’t he? Why are his wounds not healing? Why does he stay like that?”
The subject peeled his head away from the window. “That boy is dead. You killed him. The shadow world is for my kind. The god of Death barely tolerates us being there. He won’t accept a boy born without a shadow.”
Dressla frowned at him in puzzlement. He hadn’t struck her as the religious type.
“Do you claim a god gave you your shadow?” she said. She smiled. “If so, what does that make me?”
She wasn’t expecting an answer, but the subject shared her smile. It was the kind she hated though. A small, sad smile she’d seen so many men give her when they thought she wasn’t seeing the full picture. As though her female eyes could see only so far.
“It makes you destined for disappointment,” he said. “Eternal disappointment.”
* * *
Fear flooded through Adlai as the gates locked behind her. One of the guards caught her panicked look and shook his head at Erikys.
“You should have let the healers bring her up here. The usual way.”
Dead. They meant dead. She shivered and glanced at Erikys. If he was going to betray her, it would be now, trapped as she was in enemy territory.
“I don’t like doing things the usual way,” Erikys said. He had his back to the two guards, his hand on Adlai’s arm, and he guided her further down the hall. There were stairs at the end of it, but if she walked up there without her shadow, she might never walk down them again.
Without her shadow, she was trapped.
She stumbled and tried to pull away from him. She needed to think. If she could just get her shadow she could be strong again. His grip tightened, holding her in place and his eyes darted to find hers.
“When I release your shadow,” he said quietly, “run up those stairs and leave the guards out of it. This is just a job to them.”
She relaxed in his grip. He wasn’t trapping her here. He was keeping his word. But why was he worried for the guards?
“I’m not here to harm anyone,” she said, angry that he thought she would. “I’m here to free my people and break suraci.”
She shouldn’t have said anything. The guards might not have been able to make out her words, but she wasn’t supposed to talk back to her captor.
“Is she giving you problems, Erikys?” the larger of the guards called out to him. The other guard had sat back down at his post, but he also looked over at them.
“No more than I can handle,” Erikys said back. He should have pushed her forward, made a show of his authority, but instead he let her go. With a smile just for her, his next words were a whisper. “Then go steal freedom.”
He bent down. For a bizarre moment it looked as if he was bowing to her. She heard the confusion of the guards, the shuffling of feet moving toward them. Then it was drowned out by the rush of power that swept over her as her shadow was released.
They’ll take your shadow again if you don’t act fast, the beast whispered. Give it to me.
Manni tugged inside her shadow, his claws pressing down through it with impatience. She hesitated. Her uncle had promised her that Manni would keep her safe and destroy suraci. But giving the god her shadow would make her powerless again.
A yell brought her back to the moment. The big guard had drawn out his sword. Erikys pulled her behind him. She had to act now. Adlai closed her eyes and let her power slip into those claws.
Her shadow became a wave of darkness. It roared up from the ground and pushed toward the gate.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
Adlai snapped open her eyes. Heartbeats throbbed in her shadow. The two guards were lifted into the air and she watched with horror as they slammed into the gate.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
The heartbeats slowed. The ground shook—and then, silence. The guards hit the floor.
Adlai ran forward but it was too late to help them. She saw it in their glazed, stupefied eyes. They were dead, and the gate . . . the gate was broken through as if a giant fist had punched its center. The gleam from the fire-licking metal was gone. Dead.
Her shadow was a blaze of power, devouring the light. The corridor sank into darkness. She wanted to pull it back, to reign in her shadow and control what was happening. But she couldn’t. Her shadow was as oppressive as Libra’s sun, only she felt no heat, just a thick relentless weight to the air that seemed to scorch her flesh when she tried to pull her shadow back. She flinched and looked up at Erikys. He was crouched beside her and still had the suraci anklet open.
“Take my shadow back!” she cried.
He blinked slowly. He’d known those guards, and her shadow had just killed them. Adlai tried again to pull her shadow in. This time the darkness rolled toward her. Only her shadow wasn’t coming back to her as she’d thought. It lunged instead for Erikys.
“NO!” The scream came as a guttural call from deep inside her. A denial so strong that she thought it must change what was happening. She reached out and her fingers clawed at her shadow, desperate to drag it away from him.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
No. No. NO!
Darkness wrapped around Erikys like black velvet. A sickening silence filled the air. Finally her shadow calmed and she pulled it back, feeling the familiar power seep into her. Only she was still shaking.
Erikys lay on the ground, his curly hair mussed around his face, which was still and silent. She bent over him, pushing his hair away. His skin was cold to the touch. That was impossible though. She remembered the heat of him next to her and how he radiated warmth in his smile, in his eyes . . .
They stared at her blankly. Unseeing. But he couldn’t be dead. She wouldn’t let him be.