Chapter 73. I Kept Her Hand Open in Mine While the Moon Wrapped Her in Silver

Chapter 73: 73. I Kept Her Hand Open in Mine While the Moon Wrapped Her in Silver

The storm eased slowly, like a tide going out.

The roar faded. And the wind had died.

The silver light drained down, little by little, until it was only a soft glow around Millie’s body. She hung in the air a few inches above the floor, her toes pointed downward, her arms limp at her sides, and her eyes open and blank.

Cassian rose.

He took his time. He brushed the ash from his coat with slow, careful strokes and straightened his crooked spectacles.

A long strand of honey-brown hair had come loose, and he tucked it back behind his ear. There was a smear of soot on his cheek.

And he was smiling.

It wasn’t a furious smile or a vengeful one. It was something much worse.

It was the look of a man who had been waiting a very long time for a train and had just seen it round the bend.

His whole face glowed with it. His eyes were bright and soft and almost wet, and for one awful second, I thought he might cry.

"There it is," he murmured. "Oh~! There it is...!!!"

He lifted both hands, as if in prayer.

"The moon... awakens!"

And the whole world answered him.

It began far below us, deep in the roots of the mountain, a low, rolling chime like a great bell struck underwater. Then it rose, spread, and grew.

It rushed out through the walls of the shrine, through the keep, and through the snow outside. I heard it ring from the gate, where thousands of crystals hung from the throats of the Chosen.

I heard it from the cellar, and the cave... and from a hundred villages scattered across the northern plateau.

Every crystal in the land lit up at once.

The blue Moonshards in the beasts’ spines.

The gold oathglass at the throats of the chosen.

The shards buried in the bodies of the captives, the fragments scattered in the ruins of the burned villages, and the crates of unplanted glass in the wrecked caravan at the ford.

For one long, silent heartbeat, the whole northern world glowed.

And then the sound began... a single note, deep and sweet and endless, rising from a thousand and a thousand crystals at once.

It filled the sky. And it filled the ground.

It’s to the point that it filled my skull as well.

It was the loudest and most beautiful sound I had ever heard... and it terrified me down to my bones.

Millie hung in the air at the center of it all, eyes wide, lips parted, and silver hair floating in the cold light. She did not seem to be breathing, and she did not seem to be seeing us.

I knelt there with my hand still open, and a question rose in my mind and wouldn’t go away.

’For whom?’

For whom were the crystals singing?

For the man in the white coat, smiling at the heart of his light? Or for the girl in the air?

I didn’t know... fuck! I didn’t know, and I could not move to find out.

"You may stand, Guest," Cassian said gently.

He had turned toward me. He stood in the glow of the dying column with his hands clasped before him, and he looked at me with a kind, patient, almost fatherly expression.

There was no hatred in his eyes. There was nothing in them at all but warm, quiet, genuine fondness.

"There is nothing you can do now," he said. "And I mean it truly... I am sorry."

"I would spare you this if I could."

I looked down at the hand in mine. It was sweating and shaking, and it was the only thing in the room that I was sure was real.

Millie’s fingers lay across my palm, cold as moonlight, light as a fallen leaf. And mine were still open.

The window hung at the edge of my vision, patient and cold.

[Host: Do not move.]

I could feel Sylvara behind me, rigid with fear. I could feel the crackle of a hundred thousand crystals singing in the walls.

I could feel my own heartbeat, thin and fast and failing... And I could feel everything I wanted to do, and every instinct in my body screaming at me to get up, to draw my sword... just to cut that smiling bastard’s head off.

Cassian waited. He was very good at waiting, apparently.

I... did not move.

I have never been so tired of kneeling in my life, and I have been to church.

Cassian let the silence stretch with that same kind, patient, fatherly face, and then he did something that made my blood run cold.

He lifted the great gold jewel on his chest in both hands, held it up to the pale light pouring through the dome, and let it sing.

It wasn’t a spell. And it wasn’t a word.

It was a single long note, deep and slow and almost beautiful, and it rolled out from the Throne Glass like a wave rolling out from a dropped stone.

I felt it pass through the floor and through my knees and straight up my spine.

I heard it go out through the walls of the shrine, through the keep, through the snow, and on across the whole valley, and I swear... that every crystal in the north answered it.

Behind me... Sylvara made a small, strangled sound.

I didn’t dare turn my head.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her clutch her cracked staff in both hands and bite down on her lip until a bead of blood welled up.

Her knuckles were white. Her eyes had gone wide and distant... as if somebody were pulling on a string tied to the middle of her soul.

Ding!

[Warning: Coercive resonance detected.]

[Host: Unaffected.]

[Target Millie: Protected.]

Unaffected...?

I nearly laughed because I didn’t feel unaffected at all. I felt like a man trapped inside a bell while someone beat it with a hammer.

But the note slid off me like rain off a window, and it didn’t touch the girl floating in front of me, either.

We were sitting in a ring of cold silver light that Millie’s body had thrown around us, and the Throne Glass couldn’t get through it.

Cassian noticed.

He took a step toward us, and then another, with his head tilted and his hand outstretched like a man testing a stove.

He touched the edge of the glowing circle with one fingertip. And the light flared.

He drew back his hand and examined his fingertip, which was pink, and smiled ruefully.

"Ah, I see how it is..." he said. "The moon is having a tantrum."

He said it so affectionately that I wanted to put my fist through his spectacles.

"It will soften by evening," he went on, to nobody in particular. "These things always do..."

’Time is on my side, Guest... I do hope you will forgive me if I attend to the rest of your hospitality in the meantime."

While he spoke, the circle around us began to shrink.

It drew in slowly, like a hand closing, and as it did, the light around Millie grew thicker and brighter.

Silver threads wound around her arms and legs and hair, weaving themselves into a pale, shining cocoon about the size of a doorway.

She hung inside it at the height of my waist, curled slightly, with her eyes closed and her face as calm as a sleeping child.

My hand was still held out in front of me. And her fingers were still resting in my palm.

[Hidden Trait: Stage 1 complete.]

[Host: You may move.]

I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding for what felt like an hour.

Very, very gently, I slid my hand out from under hers, and the cocoon closed over her fingertips like a flower closing at night.

Cassian watched this with great interest.

"Do take your time," he said.

He tucked the Throne Glass back into his coat and straightened his cracked spectacles. Then he walked straight toward the great round mirror above the Moon Font, and I watched him step into it.

I mean that exactly... He raised one foot and stepped into the glass the way you’d step into a pond, and the surface rippled around his body and swallowed him whole.

A moment later I heard a faint chime from a tall window on the far side of the hall, and when I turned my head, I saw a pale figure in a white coat strolling out through the glass of the window and onto a balcony beyond.

"Mirror Step," Sylvara croaked from the floor. "He walks through reflections...!"

"The fuck...?! That’s not fair," I said.

"No."

The three Chosen who had come down the shaft with him were still lying where Millie’s light had thrown them, groaning, their golden armor dented, and their crystals flickering like dying candles.

Aurelith knelt a little apart from the others with her halberd across her knees. She was breathing hard, with her honey-colored eyes unfocused, and the crystal at her throat flashed on and off.

She smiled at me. It was still a sweet smile... It was also the smile of someone who hadn’t decided yet what she was going to do.

"I should like to help you," she said politely. "I do not think I can... I am sorry."

"That’s okay," I said hoarsely. "Stay there!"

She nodded, with real gratitude, and stayed.