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“Yeah.” I turn back to the path. “King Nyctarian is taken with the liminal, at the moment.”

His steps falter. “The Dark King is most taken with vanishing points and the infinite.”

The very idea hurts my brain. “Well, his interests have changed.”

“Or his sithe has changed and forced his interests to shift with them,” Kelaros murmurs.

Could the rift be warping the Dark Spire, and King Nyctarian is hiding it by pretending that transitional spaces are his newest obsession?

The surrounding crystal vibrates, humming a note that sets my teeth on edge, and fractured light multiplies our shadows on the walls until an army of silhouettes surrounds us.

I back away. “Save the speculation for later.”

Kelaros inclines his head. “Of course.”

A sound like shattering glass echoes, and a new path opens, lined with thorns of pure crystal, glistening with moisture that steams in the cold.

I stare at it. “You have got to be kidding.”

Kelaros flashes a toothy smile. “Are you afraid?”

I study the thorns that dangle from the ceiling. “I’m certainly not eager.”

“Wise.” He steps ahead, and the thorns curl away from him, clearing a path. “It’s good you have me along.”

The deeper we go, the heavier the court’s attention grows as it follows us, both curious and hungry. It stretches and contracts around us, testing its own strength after centuries of sleep.

A shudder goes through me. I don’t want to be here when this thing awakens.

The corridor narrows, crystal thorns bleeding away to smooth, white stone veined with opal. Longing surges through me, winding tight around my throat until my breath falters, while visions of strangers and places I’ve never walked shimmer at the edges of sight, all steeped in a yearning so desperate it threatens to drown me.

Not mine. Never mine.

I slap my palm against the wall, and the stones pulse, warm and almost alive.

“What is this?” The words scrape past the tightness in my throat.

Kelaros stands motionless. “The court remembers.”

“Remembers what?”

“Everything.” He trails his fingers along an opal vein. “What was lost. What could have been. The only way to escape these pockets of memory is to keep moving.”

The longing intensifies, pulling at a loneliness buried deep inside me. I force myself to breathe through it, cataloging the physical symptoms of increased heart rate, constricted throat, and the prickling heat behind my eyes to remind myself these feelings aren’t mine.

The corridor spills into a large room where the ceiling soars, chunks missing where bites have been taken from the stone. Water drips from above, but instead of falling, it spirals in slow motion, each droplet catching light and splintering it into rainbows.

As I cross the threshold, the longing snaps off, and grief slams down, so heavy my knees almost fold. It fills my limbs with lead and bows my back, demanding I lie down and die like everyone who once lived here.

“Gods,” I gasp, the word muffled by all the sorrow.

Crystal formations ring the chamber, each one a figure frozen in motion. The nearest, a featureless woman, stands with her arms outstretched, forever reaching for something beyond her grasp. The water droplets touch the figures and slide down, leaving glowing purple trails in the dim light.

My chest seizes as memories not my own flicker through my mind of a court full of laughter and light, now silent and empty. A throne abandoned. Children with skin shifting through every color, running through halls that crumbled away centuries ago.

Kelaros moves ahead, untouched by the grief that threatens to drive me to my knees. “Keep moving. It gets worse if you linger.”

I follow, boots splashing through puddles. The grief clings to me, a second skin, seeping into my pores and tangling in my hair.