Broken Veil (Harbinger #5)(83)

She didn’t hear the kishion return, but she saw them appear from the black stairs above. Her heart was racing as she felt the inevitable approach of destruction and death.

“It is done, my prince,” said one of the kishion to Jevin.

He turned and looked down at Sera. “Your last chance, Miss Fitzempress. Release her. Or you will watch them burn.”

She felt a hand touch her arm. It was Cettie, her eyes full of hope. Cettie, who’d told her to trust. To believe.

Sera turned back to Jevin. “I will not unless the Mysteries command it of me.”

“Blind faith. Unthinking blind faith,” Jevin muttered. “I must strip away your self deception, my dear. The universe wrenches everything into chaos. Watch as Cruix Abbey is consumed. Again.”

Sera clasped her hands together, squeezing them tightly. In her heart, she issued a final plea.

I will face this awful thing if it is your will. But if you would stop this atrocity through me, then let it be done. I would sacrifice myself for my people.

Her thought went out, carried into the aether.

Jevin gazed down at her with contempt.

“Conflagrare,” he said spitefully, invoking a word of power.

A feeling of peace came over Sera’s heart. And then a wind began to howl inside the cave, the noise of it shrieking through the enclosed space. The kishion all turned, many with worried looks. Jevin’s expression shifted to a frown of concern. The noise of the wind grew louder, louder, until it made it impossible to hear anything, and a gust of wind blew out the torches. Bits of rock began to crumble and patter to the floor, and then a jolt struck the mountain—a wrenching earthquake that shook the very rock they stood on. Sera fell forward, grateful her hands were unbound so she could catch herself on the rough floor. She smelled dust and smoke, felt the impact of rocks tumbling from the ceiling and smashing onto the cave floor. Cries of terror sounded.

The blackness was absolute and terrifying, but Cettie finally reached her in the darkness. The two held each other as the room tilted and bucked. Cettie was sobbing. Sera felt a strange peacefulness despite the tumult.

Then she felt something touch her head. She couldn’t see in the darkness, but she felt the reassuring bulk of a hand. Knowledge flooded her mind. Knowledge of Leerings and how to construct them from the elements themselves. Leerings that could make sky manors, and even an abbey, fly. Rocks slammed down all around her, pulverizing one another and spattering their debris all around. One of them smashed into Will Russell, killing him instantly. Another crushed a kishion’s legs, trapping him and making him moan in pain. But none touched her.

Sera began an incantation in a language she’d never heard nor spoken before. The words came to her, borrowed from another mind. A mind she now recognized as that of Empress Maia.

A thundering crack sounded from above. Groans of pain filled the air, only to be silenced by crushing rock. The building above them had lifted into the air, exposing the inner cave to the night sky. Starlight flooded in to relieve the darkness as the hulk of rock rose higher into the jewel-strewn sky. Sera’s heart melted with relief, and she could see the look of wonder on Cettie’s face as the abbey rose higher and higher.

“There! There!” Cettie whispered in awe, pointing to the sky.

Sera didn’t understand what she saw, but it was an unraveling of sorts—the opening of a flower bud, the unfurling of banners. A prism cloud had opened above them, one that seemed to fill the entire sky overhead from one end of the horizon to the other. Streams of orange and pink light came, like the sun did when piercing clouds. Its radiance was beyond any words. There were flying cities coming through the rose-tinted portal, cities larger and more majestic than Lockhaven. Then she heard it, the music that Cettie had described to her. A chorus of ten thousand sung in brilliant harmony, dousing her with a wave of emotion so powerful it wrenched tears from her eyes.

She was gazing at a portal to Idumea. It made everything she ruled in the empire seem squalid, inferior, base. It reminded her of the vision she’d seen in the oceans of Kingfountain—her glimpse at the Deep Fathoms. But this wasn’t just a glimpse. The sky had opened wide.

“I can’t . . . can’t believe,” Sera gasped, clutching Cettie harder.

“The song,” Cettie said. “Can you hear it now? Can you?”

Sera did hear it, but she could hardly speak through the tears in her throat. She nodded, her bones shaking from the vibrations. The myriad of stars twinkled still. The veil within the universe had broken.

But not even the lights and grandeur of Idumea could prepare her for the sensation of the Knowing touching her heart. She heard its voice. Not as a thundering command. Not as a wind or as the roar of a raging fire. Not as the deep rumble of the ocean during a storm crashing against the surf. It was a still voice, a mild voice, as if it had been a whisper. It pierced her to the deepest part of her soul and made her entire body tremble.

Sera.

And what startled her even more than her name being spoken was that she felt she recognized and knew the voice. Like a memory she’d only forgotten.





CHAPTER THIRTY

JUDGMENT DAY



Sera and Cettie clung to each other, gazing in wonderment as Cruix Abbey floated toward the broken veil. Sera trembled from head to foot as the power of the Mysteries coursed through her. In her heart, she’d feared the abbey would burn as it had centuries ago. Instead, it had ascended to another realm of existence—to Idumea itself. Radiance came down from beyond the veil, washing over the mountainside, making it seem as if it were kissed by dawn. She saw the rubble of the cave around them, strewn with the bodies of dead kishion. The Prison Leering was untouched, but a kind of steam radiated from it. Fragments of boulders were all around, but none were near where she and Cettie knelt.