Nyxi's Arc

Chapter 8 of 8

The strip of dark still hung above them when the book turned a page on its own. Nyxi tried to speak the next word. Her mouth opened. Nothing came. The old voice had gone quiet for her. Yza knelt across from her on the broken bowl. "It will not answer you alone now," she said. "It wants two throats. Mine and yours. I carried it. It knows me." The pages had changed. The skin had thinned. A pale shape moved under it, long hair like blue smoke, eyes open from the inside of the cover. Plymaz looked once. "It is awake," he said. "It is listening back." Rylo set his axe across his knees. "Then we feed it carefully," he said. Umi watched the shape press at the page. "Pretty thing," she said. "Hungry, though." Yza placed her palm flat on the left page. Nyxi placed hers on the right. Yza read first, low and steady, her voice clean as cut glass. The old tongue rose through her and into Nyxi's mouth. Nyxi spoke the next word. The sky cracked again. A second strip of true dark slid across the stars and held. But the shape under the skin pressed harder. It opened its mouth against the page from the inside. Yza did not flinch. She kept reading. Her hand began to bleed where it touched the page. She did not lift it. The word landed. The night grew. When Nyxi looked up, Yza was still kneeling, still bleeding into the binding. "I can keep reading," Yza said, quiet. "That is what I am for now." The book had taken a reader of its own, and Nyxi could not finish the night without her.