Chapter 8
“What did you do?”
The voice was barely a whisper, trembling with a fury so absolute, so suffocating, that it felt like poison in the air.
I turned around.
Julian stood five feet away. He had dropped his staff. His hands were curled into tight, shaking claws at his sides. His face was no longer that of the gentle, patient scholar who had bandaged my ribs by the fire; it was a mask of sheer, venomous rage and terrifying, desperate horror.
“You let it go,” he breathed, stepping toward me. “You had your steel at its throat, and you broke the stone. You freed it.”
“It didn't want to fight, Julian,” I said, my voice cracking, stepping back involuntarily from the cold intensity in his eyes. “It looked at me... it called me something. It wasn't an illusion. I felt it.”
“You felt nothing!” he roared, closing the distance between us, grabbing the lapels of my leather cuirass and shaking me with all the meager strength his frail body possessed. “You felt what it forced you to feel! It poisoned your mind! How could you be so stupid? How could you betray me?”
“I didn't betray you!” I cried, grabbing his wrists to stop him from tearing his own hands against my armor. “Nothing touched you! You’re safe!”
“I am not safe while you listen to them!” he screamed, his voice echoing wild and harsh across the cavern.
Then, his gaze flicked down to my hands—still gripping his wrists, holding him still with effortless, crushing power.
He looked at my stance. He looked at the shattered remnants of the five-ton basalt pillar behind me, pulverized by a single blow of an ordinary steel sword.
A sudden, sharp question broke through the fog of my confusion—a thought that had been festering in the dark corners of my mind for months, suddenly rearing its head like a striking viper.
“Julian,” I whispered, looking down at my own scarred, blood-streaked hands. “How did I do that?”
Julian’s breath caught in his throat. His eyes darted frantically, tracking my gaze to the shattered rock.
“What?” he choked out.
“How did I shatter five tons of solid basalt with an iron broadsword?” I asked, my voice dropping, filled with a sudden, icy terror. “Who taught me to move like that? When did you teach me to leap fifteen cubits without breaking my legs? You said my father was a guardsman in the capital. Guardsmen can't do this. Mortal women cannot do this.”
Julian stared at me, his face draining of whatever color remained. The frantic anger in his eyes vanished, replaced instantly by a cold, calculating panic that made my blood run cold.
“You... you were blessed,” he stammered, his fingers tightening on my tunic, his voice trembling with an unnatural, forced urgency. “The Archons. Before the capital fell, they performed a blood-rite on the surviving orphans. They infused you with the strength of the titans so you could avenge us. I told you this, Sariyah. You forgot because of the trauma. Don't you remember?”
“No,” I whispered, shaking my head slowly. “I don't remember any rite. I don't remember the capital. I don't remember anything before the day I woke up in the ash, with you holding this silver chain.”
Julian’s eyes widened in sheer, naked terror.
“Stop thinking,” he ordered, his voice dropping into a desperate, frantic hiss. “Stop questioning it! Your mind is fracturing, Sariyah! The Matriarch’s aura is leaking from the Sanctum—she’s unraveling your sanity!”
He lunged forward, not with a weapon, but with his hands, reaching frantically for the silver torc at my neck.
His ink-stained fingers clamped down on the braided metal with violent, terrified strength. He didn't just tighten it by a notch; he drove the cold silver deep into my flesh, twisting the locking mechanism with a vicious, desperate snap that brought tears of pure, blinding agony to my eyes.
“By the High Throne of Valerius,” Julian chanted in that dead, ancient tongue, his voice trembling hysterically, his forehead pressed against my cheek as he pinned the collar tight against my spine. “Silence the beast! Silence the blood! Obey the hand that holds the leash! Sleep, Sariyah! *Sleep!*”
The world shattered into white, screaming cold.
A torrent of freezing magic detonated through my nervous system, a blizzard of ice rushing down my veins, freezing my thoughts in their tracks. The memory of the bronze dragon’s tear dissolved into a smear of grey. The question about the shattered stone vanished, swallowed by a thick, suffocating darkness that rose from the base of my skull.
My knees gave out.
I collapsed onto the stone bridge, gasping for air that felt like liquid nitrogen, clutching at my throat as the silver torc burned with an agonizing, numbing frost.
Above me, Julian stood panting, his chest heaving, staring down at me with wide, crazed eyes, clutching his satchels to his chest like a man who had just narrowly escaped the jaws of a leviathan.
For three long, agonizing minutes, neither of us moved.
Then, slowly, the violent cold in my veins began to settle into a dull, compliant hush. The questions in my mind faded, leaving only a vast, empty ache, and that familiar, sickening devotion that always filled the void.
Julian dropped to his knees beside me.
He gathered me into his arms, pulling my head onto his lap, his trembling fingers stroking my soot-streaked hair with agonizing, desperate tenderness. He was crying, his tears falling onto my forehead, burning hot against my frozen skin.
“Forgive me,” he wept softly, rocking me against his chest like a frightened child. “Forgive me, Sariyah. I had to do it. You were slipping away from me. I cannot lose you. I cannot let them steal my brave, beautiful girl.”
I lay in his lap, staring blankly at the orange glow of the magma below, too exhausted, too numb to push him away.
“I’m sorry,” I croaked out, my throat raw, repeating the only words that ever made his fear subside. “I’m sorry, Julian.”
“It’s over now,” he whispered, kissing the crown of my head, his hand lingering possessively over the cold silver at my throat. “We are almost there. The Sanctum gates are just ahead. One more kill, my love. Just one more, and then we will be free.”
He helped me to my feet, his hands never once leaving my arm, guiding me forward across the bridge toward the immense, looming gates of the Sanctum of the Sleeping Matriarch—his grip tight, trembling, and utterly unwilling to let me go.
The gates of the Sanctum of the Sleeping Matriarch did not open; they parted like the colossal jaws of a forgotten god.
Two monolithic slabs of polished jet, forty cubits high and veined with threads of dormant magma, stood half-cracked before us. They were carved not with heraldry or battle hymns, but with an astronomical map of constellations that had vanished from the mortal sky five centuries ago. Between them hung an unbroken curtain of heat shimmer so intense that the air wavered like melted glass.
Julian clung to my elbow, his knuckles digging through the boiled leather of my vambrace. His teeth were chattering, despite the furnace draft spilling through the gap. Every breath he drew was a shallow, ragged rattle.
