Asunder

“A day? A week? Five minutes?” I shrugged. “Time passes differently here, and not even at a consistent rate.”

Moriah had told me time mostly mattered to the person measuring it, which had made me laugh because she built clocks. SEDs and clocks didn’t work in here, but now I was extra aware of every second and how they carried me closer to my end.

“So what we need is someone who can make doors.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Well, yes. Pretty much.”

“Stef?” He waved in her direction. “You don’t happen to have anything on you that would make a door in the wall, do you?”

Her glower was dragon acid. “Go roll around in rosebushes, Cris.”

“I don’t think she appreciates your humor,” I muttered. As if I could blame her. At this rate, we’d be out of Janan’s way in a few days because we’d have killed one another. Well, Stef would kill me, then Cris, and then she’d be here all by herself. And I wouldn’t feel bad for her.

“Few really do.” He kept pace with me easily. “Why are you walking?”

“It feels like if I stop, then I give up. But I don’t know what to do.” My throat tightened with the confession. He was going to think I was weak, just like Stef did.

“Hey.” He tugged my arm. I stumbled and he caught me, one hand on my back. “Sorry. Hey.” He faced me, expression serious. “We’re going to find a way out, okay? And then you’ll rescue Sam from the angry mob, reclaim your books, and find a way to stop Janan from ascending.”

“So while I do all these miracles, you’ll be where?” My whole body ached, and I really wanted to lose myself in the piano, but it was gone. Smashed. And my flute? Sarit had put it in the Councilhouse, but they might have found it.

Cris said, “I’ve been remembering, too.”

I waited.

“Being here has made me remember a lot of things we’re not supposed to know. The memories are so old they feel like dreams or someone else’s life, but I know they’re real.” He looked more serious than I’d ever seen him. No hint of a smile, no friendly stance. He looked sad. “I remember what Janan said he was going to do.”

“What is that?” I whispered.

“He wants to be immortal.”

“But—”

“True immortality. Not like we are, trapped in an endless cycle of birth and death and rebirth. And not like what he is now, trapped in these walls. Before, when he was still human, there was nothing in this tower. No rooms or light or shifting walls. It was meant to be a prison.”

Even before he started switching old and newsouls, he’d been imprisoned? “Why was he here? Who put him here?” Whatever he’d done, it must have been terrible, and as far as I could see, he was only getting worse.

“Before all this”—Cris gestured around—“Janan took his best warriors on a quest for immortality.

People were so afraid of everything, like dragons and centaurs and trolls—”

“And sylph?”

Cris cocked his head. “No, we hadn’t seen sylph yet. Only after.”

“Okay.” That was odd, though. “Go on.”

“Well, he said he discovered the secret to immortality, but that phoenixes were jealous: they didn’t want anyone else to know their secret. They made this prison—and prisons all over the world—and locked Janan and his warriors away, one in each tower so they’d never band together again.”

“Phoenixes.” I’d known they were real, but I’d never heard of them making prisons or really doing much besides flying around, burning up, and rising from their own ashes. Well, Meuric had said a phoenix cursed the sylph, but Meuric had been crazy. Maybe. “The other prisons were towers, like this one? With a wall around?”

“I never saw them, but I think so. I think when we came to rescue Janan from his prison, it was just a tower and a wall.”

“Like the one you saw in the jungle.”

He nodded.

And like the one Sam had seen in the north, I guessed. But none of those towers had anything like Janan. If they did, they wouldn’t have been affected by weather and life. So what had happened to those prisons and prisoners?

Cris seemed somewhen else, heavy with his memories. “We all went to rescue Janan, but instead, he said the secret to immortality meant he had to stay in the prison—for a while. He said phoenixes had made this tower, so it was already infused with their magic. And the rest of us were to wait for his success and return.” Cris gazed around the red-lit chamber. “Can you imagine five thousand years existing only in stone, just waiting?”

“He’s eating newsouls.” I clenched my jaw. “I’m having trouble sympathizing with him.”

“I didn’t mean—” Cris lowered his eyes. “Sorry. I didn’t mean it like that. It’s just, five thousand years. That’s a long time.”

So long I could hardly imagine it. “I shouldn’t have snapped. I’m just exhausted.”

“I understand.” Cris flashed a pale smile. “Janan shed his mortality, but souls still need something to contain them.”

What did that mean for sylph, then? It seemed hard to believe that anything without a soul could love music as much as they seemed to.

“All this time, he’s been waiting, growing, gaining power. If he ascends on Soul Night and becomes truly immortal, no need to consume newsouls to survive, then he won’t need to reincarnate us.”

“What about the Hallow? Meuric said if he had the key, he would live.”

Cris smiled grimly, voice low and filled with hurt. “Why should Janan bother? We’ll be unnecessary, even Meuric and Deborl. With Janan free of the temple, there will be no need for someone to guard the key.”

The key. Another thousand questions revolved around that little box. Where had it come from? “The night of Templedark, Meuric said that birth isn’t pretty. It’s painful.”

“Add the Range caldera to that,” Cris said, “and you have—nothing. When it erupts, there will be nothing left but Janan.”

I wanted to be sick. I hadn’t even considered the caldera, but the earthquake swarms, the lake level…

The caldera beneath Range wasn’t just moving through one of its natural cycles. No, it was getting ready to erupt. There should have been lots of warning. There should have been years of evidence beforehand. But nothing about Janan was natural; the unrest in the caldera must have been his doing.

When Range erupted, the devastation would be complete. The ground would be ripped apart. Lava would pour across the forest, killing everything in its path. Ash would fill the air, blocking the sun. The world’s temperature would drop dramatically.

Not that anyone would be around to see that happen.

Heart—even Range—would be a hole in the ground.

Cris shoved his hands in his pockets, frowning at nothing. “Soul Night is still months away. There’s still time to stop him if you can escape.”

“By ‘you’ I assume you mean ‘we.’”

“No, I mean you. And Stef if she’d like to escape as well.”

From the other side of the room, Stef called, “What?” and stood. “You thought of a way out?”

Cris nodded as she rounded the stone table. “Ana, I have to confess something first.” His tone made me shiver.

“What?”

“Please understand the last thing I want to do is hurt you, but”—he glanced at Stef, who didn’t react

—“I think you need to know.”

I waited.

“Janan is using us, yes, switching oldsouls and newsouls to feed himself. But he didn’t deceive us or trap us,