Noa shook her head. It was just like Julian to fall asleep with a book, even if he couldn’t read it. She pulled the blankets over him. He didn’t stir, and she doubted he would if she yelled in his ear. The spell he’d used to turn Evert right side out had been big, and he’d take a few days to recover.
The book also did nothing strange when Noa picked it up, nor when she carried it downstairs to the lavaplace. Reckoner, slumbering beside the dying glow, let out a growl when she settled into Julian’s chair, but he went back to sleep after she let him smell her hand. Julian’s cats ignored her completely, except for one who invisibly pounced on her slipper. Noa abandoned the slipper to its fate, and it hopped onto the windowsill, where it began to molt like a strange purple bird.
Her hands shook. Perhaps it was only her imagination, but it seemed like the tower had grown darker since she had picked up the book, as if the stars gleaming through the windows had dimmed.
She ran her fingers along the spine. She didn’t know why, but holding it felt good. Right.
She opened the book.
Inside the cover was a mess of words, just as illegible as any magical language. And yet, as Noa stared at them, the words began to dance. It was as if the letters were rearranging themselves. Noa flicked to the first page, and then, slowly, dreamily, through the rest of the chapter. Whoever had written it had a fine hand, though in places—perhaps because they had been in a hurry—some words were marred with blots of ink. Noa was so intent on the book that she didn’t hear the murmuring begin again.
Now that she actually focused on it, she found that the book was not, in fact, divided into chapters, but letters—it was indeed a dictionary, filled with words that rolled strangely off Noa’s tongue. That was when she realized two things at once:
One, she was reading a magical language.
And two, the man in the gray robe was standing in front of her.
He towered over her, blocking out the light, and his face was in shadow. But it was the same man she had glimpsed before. Reckoner’s snout was practically resting on the man’s bare foot, yet the dragon gave no sign he could see him.
“W-who are you?” Noa said.
The man gave no reply. The lavalight outlined his body—there was something terribly wrong with it. His outline was smudged and frayed, with little drifting tendrils of gray, as if he were made of fog. In places he was entirely translucent. He reminded Noa of a bit of cloth left outside in the sun and rain, worn threadbare by the elements.
The man eyed Noa with a greedy interest. Shaking, she slid off the chair and backed away. But she walked into something cold and unyielding as a stone wall. She spun, and found herself staring at a woman. She was also clad in a gray robe, and in her eyes was the same hunger. She gripped Noa by the shoulder, and her fingers were cold as snow.
“Julian!” Noa screamed. She tried to wrench away, but another pair of icy hands rose out of nowhere and gripped her other arm. “Julian!”
The tower was now full of threadbare figures. Some had tendrils for arms and legs, while others were mere smudges of gray. Her screaming woke Reckoner, who gave an indignant snort. But that was the last thing she heard. A shadow rose above her that was like the shadow she had seen before, rising over Julian. It reminded her of a curtain fluttering in the breeze. It terrified and fascinated her—she wanted to reach out a hand and push it aside, to see what was behind it. But before she could do anything, the cold hands thrust her into the air, and through the darkness.
12
Noa Finds a Door under a Shadow
Noa screamed, squeezing her eyes shut. Behind the shadow, the world was cold and dark. She stumbled forward, choking. The air was thick and tasted of ash.
She opened her eyes. She was no longer in the castle. And she knew with a bone-deep certainty that she wasn’t on Astrae. All around her was a hazy darkness. Strange ruins reared up: a tower lying on its side; a cracked marble fountain; a stone archway leading to nothing.
The threadbare people shoved her along, murmuring all the while. Their voices were as frayed as the rest of them, and she could make out only the occasional word. Noa tripped over a bit of rubble. She didn’t fall normally, but drifted slowly to the ground like an autumn leaf. When she lifted her hands, they were dark with ash.
The man reached out to pull her to her feet. She let herself go limp, and then, when his grip loosened, she wrenched her arm free.
She lowered her head and ran right into the woman who was in her way. She was so frayed and translucent that she didn’t have a face. When Noa rammed into her, she drifted several yards before falling into a heap on the ground.
Noa ran.
Running wasn’t the same in this strange place, either. It was slower, and every step sent her gliding several paces through the air before her foot touched ground again. Beyond her stretched hills of shadowy sand and valleys so dark she couldn’t see the bottom, covered with ruins: houses and palaces and amphitheaters, all jumbled together as if a child had scooped them up and then smashed them onto the ground. The architecture wasn’t at all the same; some of the ruins looked Florean, while others looked foreign or impossibly ancient. Noa whirled to see if the threadbare people were following her. They were, but they
