The Heart of Betrayal (The Remnant Chronicles #2) - Mary E. Pearson Page 0,43

steps, blessed light appeared. Dim at first, and then blazing. It was only a finger-thin gap in the stone blocks of the outer wall, but in the darkness, it shone like a blessed lantern. It illuminated the path below me, and I was able to move at a faster pace. Some of the stone steps had crumbled away, and I had to carefully ease myself down to a third or even a fourth step. I finally came to a landing that led to a dark passageway and reluctantly stepped into complete blackness again. After only a few steps, I ran into a solid wall. A dead end. It has to lead somewhere, I thought, but then remembered the haphazard construction of the entire city. I found my way back to the staircase, down more steps to another landing and dark passageway—and another dead end. My throat tightened. The musty air was suddenly choking me, and my fingers were stiff with cold. What if Kaden hadn’t come this way? What if this was one of those closed-up forgotten passageways that I’d never find my way out of again?

I closed my eyes, though it made little difference in the dark. Breathe, Lia. You haven’t made it this far for nothing. My fingers curled into fists. There was a way out, and I would find it.

I heard a noise and whirled around.

A woman stood at the other end of the passage.

I was so shocked I didn’t have the sense to be afraid at first. Her face was hazy in the shadows, and her long hair fell in twisted strands all the way to the floor.

And then I knew. Deep in my gut, I knew who she was, though all the rules of reason told me it was impossible. This was the woman I had seen in the shadows of Sanctum Hall. The woman who had watched me from the ledge. The very same woman who had sung my name from a wall thousands of years ago. The one pushed to her death, and the namesake of a kingdom determined to crush mine.

This was Venda.

I had warned Venda not to wander too far from the tribe.

A hundred times, I had warned her.

I was more her mother than her sister.

She came years after the storm.

She never felt the ground shake,

Never saw the sun turn red.

Never saw the sky go black.

Never saw fire burst on the horizon and choke the air.

She never even saw our mother. This was all she had ever known.

The scavengers lay in wait for her, and I saw Harik steal her away on his horse.

She never looked back, even when I called after her.

Don’t believe his lies, I cried, but it was too late. She was gone.

—The Last Testaments of Gaudrel

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

She looked at me, her head angled to the side, her expression unreadable—sadness, anger, relief? I wasn’t sure—and then she nodded. Ice crept through my veins. She recognized me. Her lips moved silently, mouthing my name, and then she turned away and the shadows swallowed her.

“Wait!” I called and ran after her. I searched, turning in all directions, but the stairwell and landing were empty. She was gone.

The wind, time, it circles, repeats, some swaths cutting deeper than others.

I braced myself against the wall, my head pounding, my palms damp, trying to explain her away, searching the rules of reason, but it settled into me as true and real as the chorus of cries I’d heard in the heavens the day I buried my brother. The centuries and tears had swirled with voices that couldn’t be erased, not even by death, and Venda’s was a song that couldn’t be silenced, even by being pushed from a wall. It was all as true and real as a Komizar who clutched my neck and promised to take everything.

“The rules of reason,” I whispered, a mindless chant that still tumbled from my lips. I didn’t even know what it meant anymore.

I took a shaky step forward in the dark, and my boot knocked something exactly where she had disappeared. It made a strange hollow sound. My fingers slid along the wall, and instead of more stone, I found a low wood panel. With a gentle push, I slid it open and found myself under a dark sweep of stairs in the middle of the Sanctum. Bright light splashed the hall in front of me, and I was grateful for a world of hard edges, heavy footsteps, and warm flesh. All things solid. I looked