Gesine’s brow furrows, as if she’s rifling through a catalog in her mind to compare Lucretia’s cryptic words with what she knows. Or thought she knew.
“Romeria!” Zander’s booming voice echoes with his footfalls down the winding stairwell. He comes to the base with a skid before taking in the secret vault with a cautious gaze. “Pan said you were down here. What is this place?”
“It’s where Lucretia has been waiting. She’s—” I turn back to find the sylx vanished. Not even the snake remains. I weave around the stone statues, but there’s no hint of her. “Where did she go?” There’s no way out except the stairs Zander just descended.
“It seems she’s unwilling to reveal herself for the moment,” Gesine says, also searching the shadows.
Zander slides a hand over the engraving in the stone wall. “What is this place?”
“Gesine found a book about an oracle named Lucretia who would have answers for me.” And she does. They’re just none that I expected.
And one that I dread.
It dawns on me then. “You knew, didn’t you? That’s what you’ve been searching for in the library, isn’t it? You kept saying we were running out of time. It wasn’t because of the change though, was it?”
The pained look in Gesine’s eyes answers me. “I suspected. I feared. And then when Elisaf mentioned the land outside the gates, the new blades of grass, the plants—”
“You suspected, but you didn’t say anything?” My shrill voice cracks over my anger.
“Because I did not want to alarm you needlessly.” She swallows. “I did not want to say anything until I knew for certain.”
“Knew what for certain?” Zander steps between us, alarm splashed across his face. “Would someone please enlighten me?”
Oh God. Zander … I press my hand against my roiling stomach. All this time, I’ve insisted I would never give Malachi what he wanted, I would never put Zander’s people in harm’s way, and yet I’ve done it, anyway. Stupidly, cluelessly. “We had it all wrong.”
“What do you mean?” He turns to Gesine. “What does she mean?”
“They’ve opened the nymphaeum door,” Jarek answers for us, his deep voice amplified in our hollow.
Zander stares at me like he’s been slapped.
“Ulysede,” I whisper.
He swings his focus to Gesine and rage contorts his face. “Is this true?”
“I warned you that taking the stone on Hudem might not be the only way, did I not?” Her voice is a husky whisper. “That all paths may lead to opening it?”
“Including the path you chose?” He roars, and the torches along the wall flare to three times their size. “Your insistence that we come to Stonekeep, that there was … what did you call it—a token of the nymphs’ loyalty waiting for us?” His laugh is bitter. “Suddenly sharing caves with hundreds of saplings does not sound so foreboding.”
“I did not suspect it would lead to this. But it seems we have been wrong in many things. The nymphs successfully hid what they did not wish us to see.” Gesine’s shoulders sag with a sigh. “Prophecy will always find a way.”
Silence lingers in the cave as everyone absorbs the shock.
“You should have told me. You had no right to keep me in the dark about this.” Guilt battles with anger to overwhelm my emotions.
“I was only trying to protect you. You need to focus on your training, and on uniting with Telor—”
“Fuck Telor!” I burst. “He’s the least of our problems now.”
Zander sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. “And yet he is our most immediate one. His men are arriving.”
“Already?” I thought we’d have another day.
“The first riders have been spotted.” He surveys the statues. “Wherever this Lucretia is, she will have to wait. Tell no one of this discovery, or what is coming.” He meets each of our eyes in turn. “No one.”
“So, that’s what a thousand soldiers look like?” From my vantage point within Ulysede’s tunnel entrance, the men are little more than specks in the distance as they set up camp. Smoke curls in the air where cook fires burn.
The Ybarisans stand in formation to the left of our gate. They’re more at ease now that Kienen has returned to them. If they’re curious to see what’s on the other side of this tunnel, none seem interested to mix with the Islorians to scratch that itch.