“When it is fear itself you are chasing, neither the past nor the future can scare you away.”
— Mariska “Risk” Darkova, beast tamer
Her sister climbed these steps once.
All one thousand of them.
Now it was Risk’s turn to do it for Quinn.
Alpis perched on her shoulder. Her ever-present companion. Leaving the palace hadn’t been so difficult when the person anchoring her to that place was no longer there. Just as coming back to where it all began was not as hard as she thought it would be.
While the journey was long, she had the only thing she needed to keep her going.
Hope.
Hope that she could do it.
Hope that she would be enough.
Hope . . . it was a terrible thing. Her heart pattered in her chest as she approached the decaying statues of the ancient gods. Mazzulah seemed to stare at her. Those dark eyes watching her movements.
Risk stood at the base of the pedestal and looked up to her patron god.
Mazzulah of the dark realm.
God of beasts.
All her life, she’d run from it. From this dark god and the power they bestowed on her. She believed what the N’skari had said when they called her evil and unnatural. A beast herself. A creature to be broken and tamed.
But Quinn came for her. She showed her that she was not evil, despite being unnatural to this world all the same. She trained her to be strong of body and mind. She gave her everything . . . and Risk ruined it. She killed that noble, and Quinn died because of her actions.
No more, she chastised herself. No more would she live in fear of the dark.
She was not a creature of the light. She never had been.
“I’m coming for you,” Risk whispered.
The statue stared down at her, as if in challenge for her to do just that.
Risk walked into the temple.
It smelled acrid. The stench of death and decay and mold conjuring old memories. She closed her eyes against the onslaught.
Breathe, she commanded herself.
Risk parted her lips and ignored the scents of her shadowed past. She refused to look down the long hall toward the cage where she was kept.
No, for this she needed to go to the place where it truly began.
“The dark realm awaits you,” Alpis told her.
“I know,” she whispered back as she approached the very slab of stone that they’d tied her down on that first time. It was here that any innocence she’d clung to was stripped away. Men of the Council, of the People, of her own household . . .
They raped her.
Taking turns even when her blood ran freely across the stone.
Blood and seed.
From that seed, her nightmares were born.
Risk lifted a tentative hand and brushed it over the place she’d lain against her will. Held down as they forced themselves on her and then had the audacity to blame her for it.
For so long, she believed them true. That something about her had caused it.
That the evil in her incited the worst in them.
Even when she told herself it wasn’t, that they were simply monsters, some part of her still believed it.
Quinn freed her of that too.
Now it was her turn to do the same.
Risk stepped around the cold slab, toward the doors.
They were nearly as tall as the ceiling. Built from some black stone that shined iridescently. They had no handles. No markings. If not for their prominent placement in the temple, they’d likely be overlooked.
As long as she’d been kept here, she’d never seen them opened.
Not once.
“Those of the light cannot see them. Those of the gray cannot open them. Only those born of the dark realm can enter of their own will.” Alpis spoke in her mind with complete assurance.
She took a step toward them, her heart beating wildly in her chest.
Sweat slicked her palms as she lifted her hands.
“For Quinn,” she whispered, setting them upon the stone.
It was cold to the touch.
She pushed, using all her strength to open them.
A shrill creak of the hinges trilled through the air, but no one answered.
She blinked into the darkness.
Open air surrounded her. A dark sky with violet clouds that drifted on a frozen wind. The marble flooring continued forward in front of her, turning to stairs that ascended so high she could not see where they stopped.
“Quinn?” she called out, softly at first. A hint of something familiar brushed against her, but her sister was not there.