I slump sideways. Even if I scream myself raw, the priestesses won’t help me. They would never go against Zori’s will, even if it involves killing me. I’m too stunned to let out more than a croaking wheeze, anyway. Slowly, I sink to my knees as blood seeps between my fingers.

Zori reaches for the blade still buried in my chest. As her hand wraps around the hilt, I shake my head, begging her not to pull it out. She ignores me. The blade is sharp as a carving knife; the priestesses made sure of it, and she slides it free like it’s nothing.

The knife is replaced by a razor-sharp lance of agony. The blood doesn’t seep now; it gushes and spurts with every beat of my heart. That’s when I know it’s over. I won’t get out of this alive. They prepared me like a corpse because soon I’ll be one.

Zori watches me fruitlessly clutch my chest as my lifeblood flows between my fingers. I don’t remember lying down, but at some point I must have, because now I’m reclining on my side as bone-deep cold sinks through me. Drowsiness replaces the throbbing pain until I lose consciousness all together.

When I become aware of myself as a vessel once more—a thing with extremities and senses—there is warmth on my face and wet sand beneath my back. I open my eyes and I’m lying on a pebbled beach, frothy waves lapping the shore. A turquoise sea stretches to the horizon and a tall woman in flowing robes approaches me from the shoreline. She has black hair festooned with shells and pearls, and she’s pale. She doesn’t look much like the statues we have of her all over Lazul, so I don’t recognize her until she speaks.

“Welcome.”

I scramble up from the wet sand. “You stabbed me!”

She smiles. “Do they no longer teach acolytes the ancient rites? How can you be a corpse-waker if you have not conquered Death yourself?”

That’s when I notice the knife wound in my chest no longer hurts. I look down, expecting to find a gaping hole, but my skin is unmarked. My toes are sinking into the soft, sucking sand. I lift my head and look at Zori in horror, realizing where I am. I’m on the shore beyond our world, beyond the Endless Sea. The place we call the nextworld, the entrance to our afterlife.

This place reminds me of the few journeys I took to the eastern shore with my parents as a young girl—the cries of gulls and the frigid, deep blue of the wind-tossed Sapphire Sea. But this is a very different ocean, this tranquil blue-green mirror. It looks warm and calm.

“You spoke of your mother,” says Zori, as if getting down to business. “If you want, you may stay here and find her.”

“I know.” I’ve been memorizing the regulations since I learned to read. I stare at the calm, teal water, the cloudless sky. I imagine my mother walking toward me across the pebbled shore, the feel of her hand on my cheek, just like all the times I dreamed it. “If I stay, can I go back?”

Zori shakes her head. “You will remain dead. And if you return, you may not resurrect her.

Corpse-wakers are forbidden from raising the dead for their own benefit.”

I close my eyes and sigh. It’s not that this was unexpected. No one has ever brought someone

back from the nextworld for good.

“You won’t bring her to me here?” I ask. “Just so I can see her once more?”

She studies me, her gaze stern. “You would have to pass beyond the entrance to the

nextworld, and then you could never leave.”

Convenient. “Send me back then, if that’s all you’re good for.”

“Fine, I’ll send you back. But you will see the dead, Thedramora of Lazul, and walk among them. Death’s mark was on you before I ever touched you.” 

“Anyone with a dead parent would.”

Zori smirks, takes a step forward, and places both hands over my heart, pressing firmly. I awaken with a gasp, my lungs burning as they inflate with air. I’m back inside the dark tomb and I fumble on the packed dirt floor, rolling onto my side. The fresh warmth of the shore is gone, replaced by stale air. I put my hand inside the neck of my tunic and my fingers graze a thick scar that wasn’t there before.

When I step out of the tomb on trembling legs, Garneta and the other priestesses kneel before me, but I toss the bloody dagger onto the ground without ceremony.

“Oh, get up,” I say irritably, tired of formalities. “One of you might’ve said she was going to murder me.”

“But Your Highness, no one would go into the tomb if they knew!” Garneta sounds amused, which annoys me further. “Zori kills us all. She only brings us back if we choose for her to do so.”

So that explains why some don’t return. They don’t want to. Disgusted by this artifice, I shake my head and replace my lace veil to hide the bloodstain on my tunic.