My gaze drifted back to the souls shrouded in mist. I figured that Eythos’s ability to know the lives of those who had died was like the names of those who’d died coming to his son to be written in the Book of the Dead. He simply knew, and I was grateful that I didn’t know anything about the souls in the mist. That the embers weren’tthatstrong in me. Ignoring theurge to use them was hard enough.
“Can they see us?” I asked.
“No. They cannot see or hear us. They cannot see each other,” Nyktos told me.
My chest became heavy. “That sounds…lonely.”
“It’s for only a brief time, one they will not remember once they pass through the Pillars.” Nyktos reached down, placing his hand over mine. The contact startled me, and I looked up at him. “Does it wear on you?” His voice was low. “The need to use the embers?”
“No.” I looked ahead.
“Liar,” he whispered, and I swore the arm around me tightened even further.
“Eythos couldn’t be near the Pillars longer than a few minutes. If that,” Nektas continued after a minute. “He would have to leave, knowing it was the only way to stop himself from using the embers. And yet, you are able to remain within their presence.”
I glanced at the draken. “I only have two embers. He was the Primal of Life. It probably doesn’t affect me as much as it did him.”
Nektas’s crimson gaze settled on me. “You carry two Primal embers in you. That is more than enough to feel the same impact as he did.”
“He speaks the truth,” Nyktos confirmed.
“How can that be possible when I don’t know anything about the souls in the mist?”
“Have you tried?”
My brows furrowed. I hadn’t, but I also hadn’t tried to use the embers. They just sort of did their thing whenever someone was dying or injured.
“You’re stronger than you realize,meyaah Liessa.” Nektas smirked as I shot him a glare.
“The embers, you mean,” I corrected him.
“He didn’t misspeak.” Nyktos’s thumb swept back and forth. “He speaks of you. Not the embers.”
I fell quiet as we continued the climb, a little relieved to know that the urge I felt to use the embers wasn’t due to my inability to control myself. And also a bit disorientated to think that I would somehow have a better handle on them thanEythos. Both Nyktos and Nektas had to be mistaken, but Nektas’s question echoed, and I found myself staring into the mist, focusing on one of the shapes. Seconds ticked by, and I…I thought the form became clearer. A head and shoulders became unmistakable. The shroud seemed to fade around the soul as the embers pulsed—
Sucking in a short breath, I quickly faced forward. Heart thumping unsteadily, I decided that I didn’t need to know if I was capable of naming the dead or seeing their lives. There was no point when the embers would soon be in Nyktos.
But the embers continued to throb.
The mist had pulled back from the road and sky, widening and spilling out over the land. Even more souls were here, but I didn’t dare look too closely into the mist.
Nektas’s chin jerked up, and I followed his gaze to see Ehthawn veer off to our left, his long wings cutting through the faint tendrils of mist.
I watched until I could no longer see him. “Where’s he going?”
“He must be checking something out,” Nyktos answered as Nektas sent him a quick glance. We crested the hill just then, the stars returned, and the Pillars came into view.
They, like everything in the Shadowlands, were made of shadowstone. Two deep black columns rose from the mist, positioned several yards apart, and they stretched so high into the now-violet-laced iron sky, I couldn’t see where they ended or if they even did. There appeared to be markings on them, similar to the ones I’d seen in the Shadow Temple. A circle with a vertical line through it. As we began to descend the hill, my attention shifted below.
The road ahead split, becoming a crossroads. The crossroads weren’t empty. Three waited on horseback. All were cloaked and hooded, wearing white. Each horse was also shrouded in the same pale color. Their cloaks and shroudsrippled gently around them, but there was no breeze.
And the horses weren’t exactly normal either.
What I could see of them beneath their shrouds reminded me of the Shades—little more than skeleton and tendon.
“That’s really unsettling,” I whispered.
Nyktos gave a rough chuckle. “That they are.”