Page 192 of The Stolen Throne
The last of our people go one direction while Cain and I head in the other to find a priestess, but there are none near the portal room. None of Tropikis’s acolytes within the main sanctuary of the temple itself.
Empty.
That’s…odd.
This isn’t like before, when Reven and I came. The place is deserted, like a tomb waiting for a body. There’s not a single person worshipping or praying or giving an offering.
“What time is it?” I ask Cain.
“Near to midnight,” he says, narrowed gaze scanning the area.
Neither of us says so, but something isn’t right about this. We close the distance to the door in a hurry, but as soon as I’m outside, I pause on the large stone stairs leading down to the streets.
It’s silent.
Inside the temple, I didn’t notice as much because the walls muffled the noise, but outside, it’s strange not hearing the beat of the drums after so many days with it. Is it odd that I sort of miss the sound?
The streets are also no longer crowded. No more revelers or dancers. Like Cain said, they’ve all packed up and gone home.
“It wasn’t like this when I came in.” Tension laces his words. “There were still people out here. This is…” He shakes his head.
I roll my shoulders. If Cain is wary, I should be, too. “Maybe they meant it, about the quiet time with loved ones.”
He nods slowly. “We should get back to the palace. Now.”
Good plan.
A creeping sense of wrongness notches higher with every building, every block we pass. We’re about halfway through the city when a sound we’re now familiar with clangs through the streets. The ring of a heavy metal palace gate dropping closed. Then another. And another. Clang. Clang. Clang. Cain and I both falter and look at each other.
“I thought the king was done sending his power out,” I say. “Did we miss the horns?”
He shakes his head. “I don’t think so.”
We keep going, hurried as we cut a path through the city.
“This is wrong,” Cain mutters under his breath. “There’s something off.”
“Yeah.”
A ruckus reaches us before we round the corner that leads to the front gate of the palace. There, a handful of the last of the Wanderers and Vanished to come through the portal are gathered in a packed group, banging at the bars of the fortified gate. Achlys is with them, but not Horus or Bene.
“What happened?” Cain demands of one of his people.
“I don’t know. The gates shut before we got here.”
She hardly finishes speaking before a single bell tolls. The jarring sound rings through the empty streets. Lonely, like a funeral bell.
Achlys gives a sudden pained gasp. “It can’t be.”
We swing around to look at her. I wouldn’t have thought it possible with her pale skin, but she’s gone even whiter, even her freckles go chalky. “The Rites,” she whispers. Then snaps her gaze to me. “What night of the Rites is it?”
I frown but then remember she’s from Tropikis. “The unmasking happened earlier, and now the quiet time with loved…” I trail off at her expression.
What could be so horrible about quiet time with loved ones that it makes her look like that?
The bell tolls a second time.
Achlys’s hand flies up over her heart. “Heavens help us. We need to get somewhere we can barricade inside. The healed are coming.”
