The Shadows(218)

“Will you please open this up?”

“At once, Your Highness.”

The Chief Astrologer rushed forward, placed his palm on the wall, and the panel obligingly retracted.

“…Anointed One has arrived!”

It was mad chaos outside, people running and jumping with joy, a celebration breaking out. For a split second, she stood in the doorway, taking it all in—before remembering there was carnage in the circular room behind her.

“Come out here,” she hissed to the Astrologer.

Just as he walked through, the door shut automatically, her presence registered to the multitudes racing up and down the corridor.

Everyone stopped. Dropped to the floor. Prostrated themselves.

As the citizens began to murmur the required greeting to royalty, they clearly assumed she was the current Queen.

While that dawned on her, so did another thought. “Cleansing…” She wrenched around and forced herself to keep her voice down. “Oh, stars above, they’re going to cleanse him—quick, we must go unto the high priest!”

The Astrologer didn’t ask any questions. He just followed her as she ran through the palace. Fortunately for them, her presence carried with it a wave of genuflections, what would have been a congested trip freed up by the fact that everybody, from courtier to Primary to servant, hit the floor as soon as they saw her.

AnsLai’s sacred chamber was not far from the ceremonial hall, and when she came to it, she went to put her hand on the wall—but the Astrologer ducked in first and found the spot with his palm.

As the panel slid back, she got a look at a large naked male form stretched out on a black slab of marble, his arms down at his sides, his feet together.

AnsLai was across the way, standing before a fire pit, both palms up to the heavens as he whispered an incantation.

“Stop!” she said. “I command you to stop!”

The high priest wrenched around—and promptly dropped to his knees. “Your Highness, I thought you were still in the ritual room?”

Catra rushed over to the male who was lying with his eyes closed. “Tell me you haven’t cleansed him—”

“I have just administered the solution unto his veins—”

“Oh, no, no, no,” she said. “No!”

“Whate’er do you speak of, Your Highness?” the high priest said, straightening. “He has been on the outside for decades. He is impure to mate with your daughter—”

“He’s not the Anointed One.”

At that, the male they were discussing turned his head slowly toward her.

And that was how she finally met, after all those years, TrezLath.

“I’m so sorry,” she breathed to him, bending down and clasping his hand. “I didn’t make it in time—I’m so sorry…”

As Trez lay on the table, he could feel a burning on the inside of his forearm from where they had injected him using a surprisingly modern, human-world needle.

He would have assumed, given how ancient the ritual was, that they would have preferred some kind of reed or hand-fashioned ancient metal syringe.

But no. It was actually precisely the same kind that his Selena had been injected with.

Instantly, he had felt the poison in his veins, and, rather like the venom of a snake’s bite, it wasted no time in spreading, multiplying, taking over.

Weakened as he was from grief and exertion, he realized there was a good chance he wouldn’t survive this.

And that made him focus on the ceiling above him. Funny, whenever he’d pictured this ritual, it had always been with him tied down.

Strange where you ended up. Now, he welcomed the coming pain—because it might just be his ticket back to Selena. Gossip held that you didn’t get into the Fade if you committed suicide, but if you were killed?

Not your fault.

There was, of course, an existential issue to be reconciled: namely how the pair of them, coming from different traditions, could in fact find each other on the other side of life. If there was another side.

But if faith had any power, he was going to believe they would.

He might as well go out on that note.

Gradually, he became aware of two other presences in the room with him and AnsLai. And one of them sparkled from head to foot in a rainbow of colors.

The Queen.

She began speaking to AnsLai after the high priest bowed down to her. And then AnsLai was straightening, talking, looking alarmed … then panicked.

The Queen approached Trez—and after a lifetime of hating the female, he thought idly of reaching up and trying to strangle her.

He didn’t have the strength, however. Especially not as the pain intensified even further.

He hadn’t intended to move, but he began to writhe, his body trying to escape the poison.