Waves, the Ebon Sea, stretched to the horizon. Nothing, not the inside of the box, not his worst winter on the streets, could be as cold as this place, and yet he did not freeze. Instead he burned like incense, embers slowly eating away what remained of him.
He’d died, yet he could feel his heart pounding in his chest. The water whispered to him, a song, a chorus of voices. Raef could almost make out the words.
The rough stone of the shore scratched his bare feet. He felt a pang of loss for his boots. He’d finally had a new pair, one all his own, thanks to Cormac. Raef tried to laugh that he would care about such a thing here, in this most final of places, but no sound came.
The inky water brushed the silent shore. Hyperion could never come here. Every mortal had to. The fire washed through him again, bringing a ripple of agony. He wouldn’t last long. He couldn’t. More of him flaked away.
Am I dead? he wondered. It shouldn’t hurt so much to be dead.
You’re on the other side of the Door.
She stood next to him, wrapped in her cloak of starry night. Raef hadn’t seen her approach. She hadn’t been there. Then she had.
Half her face peeked through the hood. Black throughout, without a gleam, a statue carved from jet. Lightless, as she must be, in the forever night of her exile from the sky.
Lady. Raef fell to his knees.
It was her, really her—and her voice. It had been the one he’d heard in the crypt, not Sati, not a trick. She had been with him.
Raef, she said softly. My raven. Rise, child.
But the pain would not let him. His heart, broken so many times, had finally given out. It surely would have killed him, were he not already dead.
Did it work? he asked, looking up at her. Did I get it right?
Yes. Her smile wiped away so much of his agony. You brought the light to me, the fire. You have opened the way. Now I can return. You only have to give it to me and your pain will end.
Raef wanted to sigh, but he had no breath.
Good, he said. An end, once and for all.
Don’t you want to know more, to ask why I made you?
Raef gestured at the void around them, at the fire roiling inside the cage of shadow written on his skin. He pressed his hand to his heart.
I thought it was for this.
No, my gentle boy. You’ve done a terrible thing, opening yourself this way, necessary though it was. You are the door and the bridge between us, between our worlds.
What about the demons? Won’t they come back too?
Yes. Some will be good. Some will be evil and they will need to be stopped. Mortals bred with gods have always been our greatest weapons. We cannot breed with mortals as our children can, and we swore we’d have no more of our own when they banished us. Only Helios came with us, and we lost him in the war. I used what gods this world had, to make you, son of my heart. You are the child I could not bear.
I guess it no longer matters. Seth, or some other half-breed, will have to be your weapon. I am sorry to have failed you.
You, my clever boy who is not always so clever, could never, have never, failed me. Rise and I shall open the way.
Raef found the strength to obey, and she touched his heart with an obsidian finger.
All the fire in him, everything he’d carried here, the flames and anguish, left him in a rush. Now he froze, just as badly as he’d burned before.
Then he was in her arms. Phoebe lifted him as if he were tiny, a child. Sati may have given birth to him, but this was his mother, his only mother. She was so much bigger than he, growing as the fire filled her. Waxing, brightening, she carried him to a little boat shaped like the crescent moon and laid him down. He realized this was how she carried the souls, ferrying them gently to this place so they might sink into the sea and find their peace.
She took up a long pole and looked just like her statue. Raef smiled.
He’d have kissed her feet, if he’d had the strength to move.
Stars winked into being high above them. They kept lighting until more than he’d imagined possible shone above them. They began to fall, to gather, a blizzard of silver light, and in it, a stream, the road beyond. The boat began to glow, shining as she did, full of silver light.
Are you ready? Phoebe asked, a smile peeking out from her cloak of stars. Are you ready to go home?
Don’t I have to stay here? he asked, the tears leaking from his eyes as he forced them to stay open, even if it blinded him. He did not want to miss anything. He did not want to forget, even as he knew that this moment was more akin to a dream than waking. It had already begun to fade.
Have you not yet guessed? she teased. The fire cannot burn you. I made you as they made the hounds, to hold and withstand Hyperion’s flame.
That was why. That was how. He’d opened the door when the tower burned. He’d burned. That was what he hadn’t remembered. He’d come here, just long enough to escape. Then he’d slipped back into the world, into Versinae. He’d forgotten in the shock of it all.
I don’t know if I can bear it, Lady, Raef confessed. Bear living, after all that’s happened.
You can. You must, for I am not yet done with you.
Moonlight filled everything and Raef felt hot metal beneath him. He opened his eyes and found himself lying naked on the sun. It took a moment to realize that the light was merely the reflection of Hyperion on the temple’s golden dome. He lay naked atop it.
Through the oculus, he heard the crowd’s shouts and shock at the Hierarch’s actions. They were still bolting into the plaza. The sun hung overhead. Raef had only been gone a moment. He’d survived.
“Lady . . .” he prayed, his voice shaking.
The sky above him darkened. The din inside the dome and in the plaza turned to startled cries. The reflected light on the golden dome dimmed as the moon slid over Hyperion’s disk.
Raef’s skin tingled to see her hanging there, blocking the sun’s light. Out past the city walls, the Grief rose like a tide of gray. It twisted, spiraling into thick strands full of faces and shapes. The threads rose, flowing upward, weaving skeins of mist, rivers that poured through the open door.
In the sudden night, Raef felt strong.
He called his wings, stepped off the dome, and landed near the temple’s laundry yard. He tugged on a pair of breeches with little consideration for size, grabbed a shirt too small, and selected another. Dressing remained difficult. The shadowhand, especially the thumb, was not as agile as flesh.
Raef blinked. He could not be certain, but he thought he saw dozens of hands, each with an eye in the palm, grasping and reaching in the ring of sunlight that haloed Phoebe’s disk.
The last of the ghosts passed through her, and she moved, letting Hyperion back into the sky they shared.