Beautiful Redemption (41 page)

Light flooded into the pit, as if we really were two gladiators competing for our lives.

“I don’t want to fight. Not with you, Sarafine.”

She smiled darkly. “You really don’t know how this works, do you? The loser faces Eternal Darkness. It’s simple enough.” She sounded almost bored.

“There’s something Darker than this?”

“Much.”

“Please. I just need to get back to Lena. Your daughter. I want to make her happy. I know that doesn’t mean anything to you, and I know you’ve never wanted to make anyone happy but yourself, but it’s the only thing I want.”

“I want something, too.” She twisted the fog around her in her hands until it wasn’t fog at all but something glowing and alive—a ball of fire. She stared right at me, even though I knew she couldn’t see. “Kill Angelus.”

Sarafine started to Cast, but I couldn’t hear what she was saying. Fire shot from the base of her throne, spreading in all directions. It moved closer and closer, turning from orange to blue and purple flames as it ignited bone after bone.

I backed away from her.

Something was wrong. The fire was growing, spreading faster than I could run. She wasn’t trying to stop the flames.

She was the one making them grow.

“What are you doing?” I shouted. “Are you crazy?”

She was in the very center of the flames. “It’s a battle to the death. Absolute destruction. Only one of us can survive. And as much as I hate you, I hate Angelus more.” Sarafine raised her arms over her head, and the fire grew, as if she was pulling the flames up with her.

“Make him pay.”

Her cloak caught fire, and her hair started burning.

“You can’t just give up!” I shouted, but I didn’t know if she could hear me. I couldn’t see her anymore.

I hurled myself into the fire without thinking, falling toward her through the flames. I wasn’t sure I could stop, even if I wanted to. But I didn’t want to.

It was Sarafine or me.

Lena or Eternal Darkness.

It didn’t matter. I wasn’t going to sit there and watch anyone die chained like a dog. Not even Sarafine.

It wasn’t about her. It was about me.

I reached for the manacles around her ankles, beating on
the iron with a bone at the base of her throne. “We have to get out of here.”

The fire had completely surrounded me, when I heard the screaming. The sound tore across the barren dirt, rising into the air over the pit. It sounded like a wild animal dying. For a second, I thought I saw the distant golden spires of the Great Keep flicker at the sound of her voice through the flames.

Sarafine’s burning body arched back, writhing in pain, and started to crumble into tiny pieces of burnt skin and bone. There was nothing I could do as the flames consumed her. I wanted to close my eyes or turn away. But it seemed like someone should bear witness to her last moments. Maybe I just didn’t want her to die alone.

After a few minutes that felt more like hours, I watched as the last bits of the Darkest Caster in two worlds blew into cold white ash.

It was too late to get out.

I felt the fire crawl up my arms.

I was next.

I tried to picture Lena one last time, but I couldn’t even think. The pain was unbearable. I knew I was going to pass out. This was it.

I closed my eyes….

When I opened them again, the pit was gone, and I was standing in front of a quiet doorway in a still hallway, in a building that looked like a castle.

There was no pain.

No Sarafine.

No fire.

Exhausted, I wiped the ash out of my eyes and sank into a ball at the foot of the wooden doors. It was over. There were no bones beneath my feet, only marble tiles.

I tried to focus on the doors. They were so familiar.

I’d seen all of this before. It was even more familiar than the feeling I had when I saw Sarafine coming toward me.

Sarafine.

Where is she now? Where is her soul?

I didn’t want to think about it, and I closed my eyes and let the tears fall. Crying for her felt impossible. She was an evil monster. No one ever felt sorry for her.

So that couldn’t be it.

At least that’s what I told myself, until I stopped shaking and stood up again.

The pathways of my life had doubled back on me, as if the universe was forcing me to choose them all over again. I was standing in front of the unmistakable doorway to all other doorways, to all other places and times.

I didn’t know if I had the strength to go any farther, and I knew I didn’t have the courage to give up. I reached out and touched the carved wood of the ancient Caster doorway.

The
Temporis Porta.

CHAPTER 33

The Wayward’s Way

I
took a deep breath and tried to let the power of the
Temporis Porta
flow into me. I needed to feel something other than shock. But they felt like two regular wooden doors, even if they were about a thousand years old and framed with Niadic script, an even older lost language.

I pressed my fingers against the wood. It felt like Sarafine’s blood was on my hands in this world, as my blood had been on hers in the last. It didn’t matter if I had tried to stop her.

She had sacrificed herself so I would have a chance to make it to the Great Keep, even if hate was her only motivation. Sarafine had still given me a shot at getting back home to the people I loved.

I had to keep going. Like the officer at the Gates said, there was only one way into the one place I needed to go—the Way of the Warrior. Maybe this was how it felt.

Awful.

I tried not to think about the other thing. The fact that Sarafine’s soul was trapped in Eternal Darkness. It was hard to imagine.

I took a step back from the broad wooden doors of the
Temporis Porta.
It was identical to the doorway I found in the Caster Tunnels beneath Gatlin. The one that took me to the Far Keep for the first time. Rowan wood, carved into Caster circles.

I placed my palms against the rough exterior of the paneling.

Just like always, they gave way beneath me. I was the Wayward, and they were the Way. These doors would open for me in this world as they had in the other. They would show their pathway to me.

I pushed harder.

The doors swung open, and I stepped inside.

There were so many things I didn’t realize when I was alive. So many things I took for granted. My life didn’t seem precious when I had one.

But here, I’d fought through a mountain of bones, crossed a river, tunneled through a mountain, begged and bargained
and bartered from one world to another, to get myself this close to these doors and this room.

Now I just had to find the library.

One page in one book.

One page in
The Caster Chronicles,
and I can go home.

The nearness of it swirled in the air around me. I had experienced this feeling only once before, at the Great Barrier—another seam between worlds. Then, just like now, I had felt the power crackling in the air, too, the magic. I was in a place where great things could happen and did happen.

There were some rooms that could change the world.

Worlds.

This was one of them, with its heavy drapes and dusty portraits and dark wood and rowan doors. A place where all things were judged and punished.

Sarafine had promised that Angelus would come for me—that he had practically led me here himself. There was no use trying to hide. He was probably the reason I was sentenced to die in the first place.

If there was a way around him, a way to get to the library and
The Caster Chronicles
, I hadn’t figured it out yet. I just hoped it would come to me, the way so many ideas had in the past when my future was at stake.

The only question was, would he come first?

I decided to take my chances and try to find the library before Angelus found me. It would have been a good plan if it had actually worked out. I had barely crossed the room when I saw them.

The Council Keepers—the man with the hourglass, the albino woman, and Angelus—appeared in front of me.

Their robes fell around them, pooling at their feet, and they barely moved. I couldn’t even tell if they were breathing.

“Puer Mortalis. Is qui, unus, duplex est. Is qui mundo, qui fuit, finem attulit.”
When one spoke, all their mouths moved like they were the same person, or at least governed by the same brain. I had almost forgotten.

I didn’t say anything, and I didn’t move.

They looked at one another and spoke again. “Mortal Boy. The One Who Is Two. He Who Endeth the World That Was.”

“When you say it that way, it sounds kind of creepy.” It wasn’t Latin, but it was the best I could come up with. They didn’t respond.

I heard the murmuring of foreign voices around me and turned to see the room suddenly crowded with unfamiliar people. I looked for the telltale tattoos and gold eyes of the Dark Casters, but I was too disoriented to register anything beyond the three robed figures who stood in front of me.

“Child of Lila Evers Wate, deceased Keeper of Gatlin.” The choral voices filled the great hall like some kind of trumpet. It reminded me of Beginning Band with Miss Spider back at Jackson High, only less off-key.

“In the flesh.” I shrugged. “Or not.”

“You have taken the labyrinth and defeated the Cataclyst. Many have tried. Only you have been—” There was a hitch, a pause, like the Keepers didn’t know what to say. I took a
breath, half expecting them to say something like
exterminated
. “Victorious.”

It was almost like they couldn’t bring themselves to say the word.

“Not really. She kind of defeated herself.” I scowled at Angelus, who was standing in the center. I wanted him to look at me. I wanted him to know that I knew what he’d done to Sarafine. How he’d chained the Caster, like a dog, to a throne of bones. What kind of sick game was that?

But Angelus didn’t flinch.

I took a step closer. “Or I guess you defeated her, Angelus. At least, that’s what Sarafine said. That you enjoyed torturing her.” I looked around the room. “Is that what Keepers do around here? Because it’s not what Keepers do where I come from. Back home they’re good people, who care about things like right and wrong and good and evil and all that. Like my mom.”

I looked at the crowd behind me. “Seems like you guys are pretty messed up.”

The three spoke again, in unison. “That is not our concern.
Victori spolia sunt.
To the victor go the spoils. The debt has been paid.”

“About that—” If this was my way back to Gatlin, I wanted to know.

Angelus raised his hand, silencing me. “In return, you have gained entry to this Keep, the Warrior’s Way. You are to be commended.”

The crowd fell silent, which didn’t exactly make me feel all
that commended. More than anything, it felt like I was about to be sentenced. Or maybe that was how I was used to things going down in here.

I looked around. “It doesn’t really sound like you mean it.”

The crowd began to whisper again. The three Council Keepers stared at me. At least I think they did. It was impossible to see their eyes behind the strangely cut prism glasses, with the twisting strands of gold, silver, and copper holding them in place.