He Who Breaks the Earth (The Gods-Touched Duology)
He Who Breaks the Earth: Chapter 9

Mateo awoke to morning light and a terrible sheen of sweat. His dreams had been full of shapeshifter bones. Human phalanges ending in long claws, a skull with a protruding muzzle attached to a human neck and spine, human ribs next to swollen humerus, radius, and ulna, with femurs thick as clubs, as if Patenga’s heart had been the only thing unchanged.

And magic. In the air, in his mouth, in his chest, in his mind. Mateo breathed in, the fullness of it intoxicating even as a memory, a dream. He’d been a fully fledged gods-touched, a force to be reckoned with down in the tomb that day when he drew in Lia’s energy.

You liked that taste of her. Well, she’s coming. She’ll be here soon.

Mateo sat up fast, pushing his covers off with an angry swipe. Normal people—even gods-touched—were alone in their own heads. But he couldn’t stop the tug of that power. The feeling of being more.

Think of what you want, Tual had said, and then take it. So different from what the gods asked for—all their rules and oaths and sacrifices. He could be more, enough to offset the sad, depleted existence Mateo had endured for most of his life.

Just take what you want.

Only now it was Willow’s voice that said it, made of ice and rotting leaves. Mateo swung his feet over the edge of his bed, stomach churning. Morning light streamed through the window, turning the lake a beautiful turquoise, bubbles rising from the depths just near the white-pebbled beach. He went to his closet to choose the perfect tunic, jacket, and boots for a day spent avoiding a little girl. Salmon and cream, red and cream… perhaps a strong sage and cream with his paisley embroidered scarf? He went to the mirror by the window for the best light as he held the scarf up against his chosen tunic, only to catch sight of something moving on the beach below—a little girl walking toward the water…

A jolt of fear stabbed through Mateo’s stomach. Did Aria not know to stay out of the water?

“Aria!” he yelled through the glass, fingers scrabbling to get it open.

Still she walked down to the white-pebbled shore, the contrast of blue water turning her copper hair to flame. He stumbled back from the window and ran, rushing through the keep, out across the courtyard, and down toward the lake. Mateo found her sitting on a rock with her little feet stuck out into the deep water because there were no shallows here.

“Aria, get out of there!” he shouted, and now his voice was far too loud. Aria startled, her eyes wide. She scuttled back from the water’s edge just as something very large drifted up in a cloud of bubbles, a mass of segmented scales churning the water into a rush that lapped clear up to the paving stones.

Mateo bent over, breathing hard after his run, Aria goggling at the place where the scaly back had been only moments before. Willow boiled up inside him, excited and horrified all at once for some reason until the snake sank back down out of sight. Oooohhhhh, she whispered.

Aria was too frightened for Mateo to wonder why a ghost would care about an ancient snake. “What in Calsta’s name was that?” the little girl yelled, mortification flooding her face when the last bit came out in a squeak.

“It’s… it’s a she.” Mateo cleared his throat, marveling at the fact that he’d run. That he could breathe at all. “Abendiza.” Another shiver from Willow at the name set his teeth on edge. “Our snake. Well, not really ours. She’s been here longer than father, even. The house is named for her. Didn’t you see the carvings in the entryway? She ate my cat when I was little. I took the poor thing into town with me, and it was batting at elsparn and—”

“I saw the carvings, not a warning sign to stay out of the water.” Aria’s skirts were wet to the knee. “Your father said I could go anywhere I wanted. Only that it wasn’t safe to leave the island.”

Mateo tried very hard not to imagine his father thinking this through, watching Aria until she went to the inviting warmth of the water and saving her just before she was dragged to the bottom as a way of proving he was trustworthy. He twisted to look up at the windows overlooking the lake, half expecting Tual to be watching from inside.

Of course he wasn’t there. Winning Aria over was the job his father had delegated to Mateo. That way, when Lia appeared with her sword, Aria would tell her to spare him.

But Mateo couldn’t do it. From the first time he’d seen her sweaty in the closed carriage, holding tight to her insults and threats so she wouldn’t cry, he couldn’t—

“Glad you got here in time?” Aria’s fists connected with his side, giving him a violent push that sent Mateo skittering sideways. “Give yourself a pat on the back and a treat.”

“I apologize.” Mateo gathered himself up, dodging backward when she started toward him again. “I assumed someone would warn you.”

“Like maybe you should have? Since it was your job to show me around? And you didn’t?” Aria glowered, advancing on him.

“You didn’t want me to show you around.” Mateo stopped retreating and glowered back, hands on his hips. “Remember?”

“Well, then leave me alone!” she spat at him. Then lowered her voice, looking sideways at the waves still washing up onto the little beach. “Unless there are more things that could eat me. Tell me about those and then leave me alone.”

Something in Mateo melted even more at that hard exterior, squaring off against him because he was the easiest one to fight. He didn’t like to think of how he would have fared at her age being taken from his home and—

Mateo frowned. That was exactly what had happened to him. He tried to tuck the thought out of sight, but it wouldn’t go.

He liked Aria. They’d spent a whole afternoon throwing flour at each other with her sister back in Chaol, and Aria had taught him a new curse—probably one she’d made up, but she’d come up with a good story to go with it. His father had said that he liked the whole family, brash threats, clenched fists, and all.

Mateo thought of Lia and how he’d liked the same things. And how he didn’t want to use Aria, didn’t want to participate in what his father had done…

And how he had to anyway. So Mateo found a smile for her that made his teeth clench. “There is maybe one other thing that might kill you, I suppose,” he said slowly.

Aria blanched, but her expression remained determined.

“But maybe not.” He shrugged. “It’s pretty interesting. Do you want to see?”

“No.” Aria’s brow puckered. “Maybe. What is it?”

“I’ll tell you when we get there. First, let’s go by the kitchen.”

“For sweets and bread and picnic things?” Aria turned her glare on the house. “You can’t make me like you by feeding me sweet rolls, Mateo. I’m old enough that it doesn’t work.”

“Who says the food is for you?” Mateo started climbing toward the back end of the house where the kitchen let out, both gratified and terrified by the patter of bare feet on paving stones behind him. “I haven’t had breakfast yet.”

It doesn’t have to be for the plan. The thought felt flimsy even unspoken in his head. Willow began to laugh her spiked, torture-garden cackles, but Mateo didn’t listen. He put a finger to his lips at the kitchen door, cracked it open, then gestured for little Aria Seystone to follow him into the danger zone.

By the time they emerged from the other side of the house, the knots tying up Mateo’s insides had loosened a little. They’d done well—he’d ended up with one of Hilaria’s sweet fig and apple rolls in one hand and a mug of camillia tea in the other (Aria had elected to forgo the tea to allow for a sweet roll in each hand).

Across the courtyard, a wagon was peeking out from just behind the stables, a tarp tied tight over the top of it. Mateo frowned. Wasn’t that the same wagon his father had guarded so fiercely on the trip down? The one with Patenga’s sword hidden in the bed. But the sword was in the antiquities room, so why was the wagon still out?

He swerved toward it, Aria skipping after him as she licked frosting from the top of her sweet rolls. Mateo peeked over the edge of the wagon where one corner of the tarp had been pulled up.

For some reason, Mateo’s heart began to race. He glanced at Aria, suddenly unsure he wanted to know what was underneath the tarp, and doubly unsure he wanted to expose Aria to whatever it was. But then he shook the thought away. Ridiculous.

He set his tea down on the driver’s bench and pulled the tarp back a little farther. The wagon bed was empty. Stained with some kind of white powder along with a few greasy-looking marks at the far end that looked uncomfortably human shaped. But that was all.

Breathing in a little too shakily, Mateo dropped the tarp and reclaimed his tea.

“You’re angry smiling.” Aria took a very large bite of her sweet roll, her mouth full enough that bits of it stuck out between her lips.

“I thought I was normal smiling.” Mateo took a sip of tea and started toward the other end of the island.

“You look extra angry when you pretend to smile, like you’re mad about whatever you’re mad about and mad about having to smile.” Aria skipped to catch up, licking the side of her sweet roll where the fig filling threatened to drip out. “What do you have to be so mad about?”

“I’m not mad. I’m scared you think I don’t know about the knife you snuck out of the kitchen.”

“I didn’t take—” Aria twisted to look back toward the open door through which Mateo could still see Hilaria happily terrorizing the staff. She must have missed them an awful lot—she’d hardly noticed the two of them stealing pastries from her cooling tray. “Calsta’s teeth, I should have thought of that.”

“Well, there’s always next time.”

“Lia’s probably most of the way here, so it doesn’t matter.” Aria took another bite, filling dribbling down her chin as she tried to talk with her mouth full. “I don’t want her to save me, exactly, but I wouldn’t mind having help getting out when it’s time to go. Master Montanne isn’t so scary, and you…” She rolled her eyes as if she didn’t have to say out loud why Lia wouldn’t replace him much of an obstacle. She lowered her voice. “But the monster that followed us here was kind of scary. Is that what you meant about something else here that could kill me?”

“The monster that… followed us?” Mateo’s arms prickled when she looked toward the bridge, her eyes wide. Had someone told her about the bodies on the road, or had she actually seen something?

“I really liked the auroshes I met back in Chaol. I let one out of its cage once, you know,” Aria said importantly, turning her back on the waving leaves and branches, the far shore dark with shadows. “All of them liked me—I could see it in their eyes, almost like they were smiling through all those teeth. The one I let out didn’t look at me twice, went straight for the meat I brought to bribe it out so I could distract everyone and get Lia away from that awful man….”

Mateo bit his lip hard, not sure he could stop himself from interrupting with questions if pain wasn’t involved. Save Lia? From… Ewan? Had Aria been there the day he attacked her? Lia’s reaction to seeing the Devoted had always confused him since she had no trouble roughing up anyone else who looked at her crosswise, but he couldn’t pretend to understand. Aria being there would have only made it worse. He tamped down the pity threatening to unfold inside him. Monster. I need to know about the monster.

“….But the one out there?” Aria shivered. “I’d wake up in the middle of the night and see it watching me through the carriage window. See it out in the trees as we passed, all bloody down its front, its horns torn off. And since we’ve been here I found…” She gulped. “A dead rat in my bed. Like it’s warning me I’m next or something. It wants me for some reason. To make Aria cakes? Maybe Aria sweet rolls?”

“Aria soup, perhaps? I think auroshes tend to have a more savory palate.” Mateo took another sip of tea, ignoring Aria’s incredulous scowl as he breathed in the flowery scent. Camillia. For anxiety and stress. But he breathed out, letting the thought go with it. A ghost from the life he didn’t remember as a Beildan healer. “A mangy auroshe, eh? You’re the only one who managed to get a look at it. Father was worried it was your sister. Or the Warlord herself.”

“If it had been Lia, both of you would be in pieces.” Aria pointed at him. “But you knew about the monster? No one said anything. I had a nightmare about it biting right through the carriage window to get me. And when I woke up, there was blood dried along the bottom of the glass.” She looked down at her hands. “It watched you too, you know. Probably would have eaten you up quick if not for your dad protecting you. It could probably smell easy prey clear from Chaol.”

“It followed us from Chaol?” Mateo turned toward the watch-tower, trying to leave the shivers behind him.

He knew which auroshe was stalking them.

The image of her blossomed in his mind, pink-tinged hide, matted hair. Lia’s hand pressed between the creature’s broken horns even as it bared its long, jagged teeth. This will keep her from hunting you, she had said. She’ll be safe here. We’ll call her Rosie.

The auroshe Lia had fought with her bare hands. The one they’d ridden out from the kennels like heroes, or maybe like the next big trend at the underground fighting ring. Person versus auroshe. At the time, Lia touching his hand and helping him bond with the auroshe had felt as if it was supposed to mean something. The two of them standing on the beach with scrapes from the battle and a stolen beast shared between them.

Now it felt like a much bloodier promise, because the thing had hunted him clear across the country. It was bonded to Lia, too—was that why it was interested in Aria?

Had Lia sent it? Could auroshes understand intent? Directions? Orders?

Mateo cursed himself for not paying attention enough to know. All Lia’s talk about auroshes had been simpering over that foul mount of hers—Vivi, her voice rounding into a croon every time she said it, as if he were a kitten instead of a monster. They’d saved Rosie—Rosie was the name Lia came up with, of all things—from the fights by accident, but if anyone knew how to use an auroshe bond to do something like retrieve a kidnapped family member from a shapeshifter, it would be Lia Seystone.

“Mateo?” Aria’s voice was cautious. “Is there a reason you’re just standing here in front of these old doors?” She narrowed her eyes, looking up at the watchtower with obvious disappointment. “You’re going to try to convince me that this is the other thing that could hurt me, aren’t you? That the roof will fall in on my head or something.”

Clearing his throat, Mateo pushed through the doors, the heavy stone sliding smoothly open as if they’d been hung and oiled the day before. “Ruins can be very dangerous.”

“Calsta’s teeth, you are the worst.” Aria rolled her eyes, though the quiet awe that followed when she stepped in after him was gratifying enough. She tipped up her chin to gape at the ceiling five stories up, beams of light shooting down from the impossible windows above. The walls were cut through with balconies, each level housing the servants, hostlers, and guards who worked in the keep, with a mosaic that spanned the hall from top to bottom depicting a vine with fruits of all kinds blossoming at different levels and little mosaic people picking them and eating them.

Mateo did his best not to stare the way Aria was, though it was difficult. The tower was one of his favorite places, an ode to what he was supposed to be. What people like him had been, what they’d done, impossible to obscure or destroy, though Devoted had tried back during the first Warlord’s time. It had always made him feel strong, as if eventually the world would have to acknowledge and accept Basists without prejudice. Energy rushing through his humors lit up the walls like rubies, diamonds, and emeralds, his magic touching each of the materials that had been shaped together to make this place into the beautiful haven it was. They’d been artists, just as he was.

But then his mind snagged on a trace of pain near the high, high ceiling. A spot in the mural too high to see clearly, but the feel of it jarred a breath from his lungs. This place had been lovingly formed, coaxed, shaped. But that one spot had been hacked away, with a new wrong stone jammed into the wound.

Just like he’d sensed in Patenga’s tomb. The touch of a shapeshifter.

It hadn’t been Devoted who had washed these floors with Basist blood. It had been a shapeshifter. One that had left her mark even on the building, apparently. His magic had been too weak to notice anything amiss until now.

Mateo turned from the light, from the bright colors, from the beauty and promise of it, his hands clenching around his teacup His long artist fingers, somehow still there after his family had cut them off, were just as wrong as whatever had been done up at the top of the tower.

“So, is this all?” Aria gave Mateo a push with her sticky hand, taking a bite from her second sweet roll and noisily chewing. “I don’t see anything dangerous.”

“You prefer auroshes watching you in the dark?” he sniped back, trying to wipe away the sticky spot she’d left on his sleeve.

Aria’s expression darkened. “You think I’m making it up? Well, let me tell you, Mateo Montanne, I hope the auroshe comes in here and tears up all your pretty clothes right where you can see before it bites your head off. If it doesn’t, I am going to get a knife from the kitchen, and I am going to wait in your room until it’s dark, and then—”

“Don’t mind us.” Mateo nodded to the two maids descending the staircase, herding Aria away from their curious stares. The little girl’s voice was echoing clear to the top floor. “She’s… just a little excited.”

“I am not excited, and you are the worst,” she yelled, yanking her arm away from him, the maids startling and walking a little faster to get past them to the entrance.

“You’re probably right about that.” He put his hands up when Aria began to steam. “I do believe you about the auroshe. It’s definitely a monster, definitely followed us, and definitely won’t come over the bridge. That’s why Abendiza is there. The snake? She keeps us safe. My father too, of course.” He hoped.

“How could your father keep me safe from himself?” Aria shot back, resisting when he tried to lead her toward the underside of the stairs, the actual thing he’d brought her to see. “He’s the only reason I’m in this position at all. Giant snakes. Wild auroshes who want to slurp up my insides. A stupid archeologist with fewer muscles than I’ve got in my little toe…!”

“Accurate. And I’m so sorry for the inconvenience, but if you’ll just come over here—”

“So you can show me more mosaics?” Aria’s voice echoed as she dodged away from him. From under the stairwell, a depiction of Abendiza stood taller than both of them, a newer addition made with tools, but still old enough that it had to have been done by one of the first high khonin families that moved in after the shapeshifter had been dealt with. It seemed impossible that Abendiza could be so old, but Mateo had never been able to think of another explanation.

“Lia said you were really fascinated by old paintings and stuff, but normal people aren’t interested in boring stuff like that, Mateo,” Aria called from across the open space, twirling in the light. “You promised me something that might eat me.”

“You shouldn’t trust people who kidnap you to keep promises.” Mateo went to the stairs on his own, making a show of waiting for a guard descending from above to exit the hall before ducking into the hidden gap between the snake’s jaws.

“Wait—Mateo?”

“Shhh!” He stuck his head back out, lowering his voice to a raspy whisper, which echoed even worse than speaking in full voice. “Do you want everyone to know about my secret door?”

Aria followed him into the hidden alcove, her eyes widening when he pressed the latch secreted between two stones. A section of wall swung inward to reveal a dark passage, crystals embedded into the ceiling giving off a soft glow for light. “Where does it go?” she asked, but then wrinkled her nose. “I guess I can’t believe anything you say.”

“How about we compromise, and I don’t tell you.” Mateo set down his teacup, wolfed down the sweet roll, then stepped into the cold light. The tunnel went down, the air cooling on Mateo’s skin as he followed the narrow switchbacks. The crystals were set haphazardly in the ceiling, some of them dark or broken so the pattern they’d made originally was long lost. Mateo could still feel them singing with Basist magic. He licked the frosting off his fingers as he walked, trailing his other hand along the wall to touch the lines that had been chiseled after the Basists had been destroyed. Mostly simple pictures, each with a name carved beneath it.

This was the keep’s mausoleum.

Many of the dead here were victims of the ridiculous “curse” on the keep. At least one death in the families who lived here every generation. Each family had fled, one after another when the supposed curse became too dear. He supposed it was easier to blame misfortune on the long-dead Basists who built the keep than to deal with the fact that people died and there was no logic to it or anything you could do about it.

Mateo couldn’t help but scoff as he passed carving after carving, as if “unexplainable” deaths across the whole Commonwealth hadn’t surged after all the Basist healers were killed. Basist books, Basist records, Basist schools, Basist art all burned to ash, then scattered to the wind. It had left a world used to magical healing scrambling to learn how bodies and illnesses worked.

When he passed a carving of a man who resembled a slightly drunken parchwolf, Mateo stopped looking, not wanting to read the names of all these people who had died hating those like him for no reason. But curse or no, the keep had claimed at least one soul every generation until the year the house had burned to the ground, killing the entire last family who lived here, along with their household.

No one had died since Mateo had lived there. That was the difference between reality and ignorance.

“Are these graves?” Aria whispered, shrinking back from the remembrances, though he didn’t miss the thread of eagerness in her voice. “There are so many of them. Probably from whatever it is you’re leading me to, right? You send people you don’t like down here and the monster eats them? I bet that was your nursemaid.” She aimed a kick at a column inscribed with Sebastian Multoi Bolera and a date about three hundred years after the last shapeshifter had been killed. “And this one was probably your cook after she made you something with no sugar,” she said as she ran a hand along the next, Isabella Gravis Bolera, with a date about twenty years later.

Aria didn’t seem to mind his silence as they continued on, keeping quiet herself until the path leveled out, stately columns carved halfway out of the rock framing the passage. Mateo could feel her thinking. Probably about stabbing things with kitchen knives or coming up with a story exciting enough to go with a secret door and a secret tunnel—

“Did Tual tell you why?” Her voice cut through his thoughts as the little glowing crystals ran out, the expanse beyond stabbed through with beams of light that only made the darkness between them and it all the darker. “The day he took me, I was teasing one of the auroshes the Warlord had quartered in our stables with a bit of steak. Suddenly Tual grabbed me around the middle and dragged me to that dratted carriage. The auroshe got the steak,” she added solemnly, as if losing it was the worst travesty of that day.

Mateo stepped into the darkness. Usually, even when he thought he knew his father’s plans, new details floated up like bodies long drowned in the river. “I don’t know why my father does anything.”

This time it wasn’t true.

“He said my family wasn’t safe. But he took me, not Father. Not Lia. Not Mother. Mother was too sick to go anywhere anyway. You saw her.” The wobble in Aria’s voice stabbed at Mateo’s stomach, and he took another step into the darkness.

“Remember?” Aria’s voice rustled like dead leaves. “It was a few days after we built forts in the kitchen, and you and Lia laughed and laughed. And you had honey in your hair and almost didn’t care that I ruined your white coat with blueberry jam? You came running in, and you were all sick, and Father and Lia were there—”

Mateo remembered. He’d found Lia sitting by her mother’s sickbed, tears in her eyes. He’d dragged her away because the Warlord was coming, minutes from discovering Lia hiding in her parents’ house. It had almost felt heroic, riding to her house with a fit coming on, even if Lia had to hold him up the whole way back to the cliff house.

Now he knew he’d only exchanged one bloody ending for Lia for a different one.

“If you hadn’t taken Lia away before the Warlord came, she would have been able to protect us.” Aria’s words clipped off. “And then you lost her somehow and took me instead.”

Mateo pressed his hands to his eyes, the darkness around him complete. Why hadn’t Mateo brought them all to the cliff manor that night? He’d known Lia’s father was in trouble with the Warlord, that Lia’s mother was ill. That Aria had nowhere to hide.

But he hadn’t done it.

Then Aria had appeared in a carriage in their company headed south with no explanation and the smell of ash on Tual’s hands.

He didn’t have to know details in order to know. But Mateo didn’t want to know.

He made for the light ahead, walking faster when the floor smoothed into glass. This was what he’d wanted to show Aria—an impossible transparent tunnel deep beneath the lake that connected the island to the cliffs. Beams of sunlight filtered in from the lake’s surface above, touching the underwater rocks and roots, trailing vines, and little flickers of movement where fish darted past the thick glass. The ancient construction was like energy around him—power left behind by what felt like the gods themselves.

“Why did he do it?” Aria asked again.

“I don’t know,” Mateo rasped. “But I hope your sister murdering my father and me will be a proper recompense.” The snarky response twisted out of his mouth before he could stop it, leaving his stomach churning. Though Mateo had spent much of his life hating Devoted for what they’d done to Basists like him, at that moment, he couldn’t blame Lia for coming after Tual.

After him.

Mateo hadn’t known that Tual’s plan was for him to fall in love with Lia, then kill her. All he’d known was that Lia was funny and strong and interesting and worth talking to. She listened. She argued back. She was beautiful. She was terrifying.

And now, so was he.

Mateo reached for the light, and it struck him too bright, turning his arms and hands a ghostly white against the shadow he cast deep into the lake below. Little green glows crowded just below him, bioluminescent creatures hiding from the sun.

Aria followed him out onto the walkway, her feet tapping against the glass faster and faster until she was running, bowling past him until she reached the next beam of sunlight. It was wavery and blue, settling around her like an aura. It suited her; Aria didn’t belong in darkness. The little green glows followed her, one thumping into the glass beneath her feet. “So where’s the thing that’s going to eat me?” she asked. “What ate everything else back in those graves?”

“Those things could do it.” He nodded toward the glow of bioluminescence wriggling beneath her. “Elsparn. They’re worse than Abendiza.”

Aria flinched when another of the things tapped on the glass beneath her feet. “Can they see me?”

“Something like that. They’re just not smart enough to figure out why they can’t bite your toes off through the glass—”

Aria gasped, tripping out of the light when something whooshed past the glass, spiraling past Mateo only to dive back down into the darkness below. Too large to believe. Too quick to see clearly.

In the creature’s wake, the little green lights had gone, and now Willow was doing something in the back of Mateo’s mind. Foaming? Writhing?

“Was that…?” Aria’s hand was clamped over her mouth.

Mateo pushed Willow’s weird fizzing in his head aside. “Abendiza, yes.”

Aria shivered, hands pressing to the glass as she peered. “And the eels?”

“I think Abendiza eats them. They aren’t really eels; they’re… something.” It tickled the back of Mateo’s mind as he said it, as if once he’d known more than to avoid elsparn. Something to do with the smell of salt, slippery skin, and dried—

He cleared his throat and closed his mind. Whoever he was before—the boy who knew what to do with fishy, flesh-eating eel-things—he was that boy no longer. “They’re in all the water channels in this area.” Mateo gestured for Aria to follow him toward the far end of the walkway, where it connected to the cliffs. “There are plenty of things that could kill you up in the cliff passages, but the first chambers past the tunnel are safe enough. There are some fossils poking out from the wall like the Basists built the whole passageway just to show them off—they’re eel-ish things like the ones in the water, but much bigger. Want to see?”

Aria was standing with her arms outstretched, looking up toward the lake’s wavering surface. “You brought me down here to see eel bones?”

“Very scary carnivorous eels.” He thought for a moment. “You could probably steal their fangs and use them to stab my eyes out or something, if that makes you feel better.”

She spun around once, watching her shadow dance below her, looking for all the world like a butterfly of coppery red and green about to be pinned into a glass shadowbox. “Why are the passages in the cliffs dangerous?”

Mateo blinked away the image of the little girl stuck under glass. “They’re full of old Basist traps. It’s kind of a labyrinth with tunnels connecting down deep in the lake, some going out to the water channels in the forest, and all these underground rivers… it would be easy to get lost and drown. We know how to control a few of the channels, like the one we came here on and the one that takes us into town. The rest… Father says there are enough waterways to link this whole forest together—some huge system that Basists built long before the shapeshifter wars.” He kept walking, rubbing a hand through his hair, then cursing himself because he’d taken the trouble to comb it into something nice, and now it probably was sticking out in all directions. “Other things that can hurt you, let me see… I mean, Father’s office is probably one to stay away from. He’s always brewing something, and half the time it’s something that could eat the flesh right off your bones. Then there’s the antiquities room—stuff we’ve dug up over the years. Father’s got all sorts of protections up to keep people from letting too much light in or accidentally bumping into the artifacts. It’s our life’s work.” He swallowed, the image of Patenga’s sword so casually laid out on a table shuddering through him.

“Abendiza doesn’t have enough eels to keep her fed in here. How does she eat?” Aria demanded, her breath fogging the glass.

I’m so hungry, Willow whispered.

Mateo rolled his eyes at the ghost, continuing toward the entrance to the cliffs. “Sometimes Abendiza disappears for a few days, so she knows the waterways better than we do, I guess. She can feed herself.”

“Wait, Mateo—” Aria’s feet tapped against the glass behind him, and Mateo could feel Willow focus on the energy pulsing through Aria—not a lot of energy, but it is there, and the little girl isn’t really using it….

Mateo frowned, walking faster. Something was wrong. The tunnel was closing in around him. He needed to get out. “Keep up, if you’re not too scared,” he called over his shoulder, trying to sound nonchalant. “I was never allowed in the cliffs when I was young, so of course I came all the time—”

But then suddenly Willow was expanding in his head, the smell of death and ash, of endings and energy crackling in his nose. Mateo wobbled, her claws like ice around his mind, tightening as he struggled to push her away. Willow! he yelled inside his head. What in Calsta’s name is wrong with you?!

“Mateo?” Aria’s voice rang in his ears, a white light erupting over the girl’s head while the rest of Mateo’s world faded to black. An aura? But he couldn’t see normal people’s auras.

I’m so hungry, Mateo, Willow crooned.

It all happened so fast.

Willow took in a great, shuddering breath—

Mateo’s vision exploded into white, a rush of energy bursting inside him, sending him staggering into the glass wall.

And then just as suddenly, the energy was gone. Mateo fell to his knees.

When his vision cleared, his eyes found Aria on the ground, crumpled like a discarded scarf. Her curls made a slash of bright red across the green glass, her eyes rolled back to show only white.

With a contented sigh, Willow relaxed her grip on Mateo. She pulled back to lick her chops after a good meal. Thank you, she whispered. I couldn’t do that with Knox.

“I’m not—what is—I would never—” Mateo stumbled forward, falling to his knees next to the little girl. “Aria?” She didn’t move, her skin tinged green by the watery light. “Aria Seystone, if this is a trick, I’ll…!”

She didn’t spring up at him with a knife or try to throw an arm around his throat to choke him to death. Aria Seystone had turned to nothing.

Mateo scooped up her limp body and started running. “Father!” he shouted, long before Tual would ever have been able to hear him. “Father, help!”