Nym's Arc

Chapter 28 of 41

King Thomas led Nym down a narrow stair to a locked room beneath the throne. There he showed her the hidden page his grandfather had torn from the prophecy. Nym read it twice. The unmaking would burn the caster to nothing. She set the page down and stared at the stone wall. Zarool was healing somewhere in the east. Someone had to unmake him. The book named her. The page named her death. "There must be another way," Nym said. "A blade, an army, anything." "You heard me in the hall," the king said. "No blade touches him. Only the unmaking." He gripped his belt. "I am sorry, child. I would spare you if I could." Titus stood in the doorway. He had followed them down without a word. He was the king's son, the prince who had brought her the green cat and taught her that calm could hold the light. Now his face was pale. "Father, there has to be more in that book," he said. "You never let anyone read all of it." Nym looked up. "He is right. I broke the seal. I have not read every page." The king hesitated, then nodded. They climbed back to the hidden library. Nym opened the prophetic book and turned past the pages she knew. Near the end she found lines the ink had faded almost to nothing. She traced them with her finger. The runes under her skin glowed gold, and the words sharpened as she touched them. She read aloud. "The light that unmakes may be shared. What one bears alone, two may bear and both survive." Her hand shook. "The power was made in my mother. It passed to me. There are two of us who carry it." Titus leaned over the page. "Then you would not cast it alone." "No," Nym said. "My mother and I together." Relief and dread came at once. She would not have to die. But she would have to ask Drasila to stand beside her against the thing that had sealed her for three hundred years. The king read the faded lines himself. His jaw worked. "My grandfather hid this too," he said quietly. "He thought one death simpler than two lives risked." The green cat slipped into the room and pressed against Nym's ankle. Its fern-colored fur brushed her boot, and the light in her hand steadied. She closed the book. "Then I need my mother," Nym said. "Not to grieve me. To fight with me." She walked to the window. Outside, the teal roofs of the castle fell away in mist. Somewhere past them Zarool grew stronger each day. She had come here to learn who she was. Now she knew the shape of it. She was one half of a weapon. The other half was her mother, and she had to convince her to face the dark a second time.