“It will be a wonderful addition to your satchel,” I say.

Something about my tone sobers her. “Is something wrong?”

“No,” I’m quick to say. “But I haven’t spent much time praying lately, so I’m going upstream a ways for privacy. I’ll keep the camp in sight.”

“I’ll come find you when lunch is ready.”

“No! I mean, I might be longer than that. I have a lot on my mind.” Truly, I am the worst liar in all of Joya d’Arena.

But she just shrugs. “In that case, I’ll save some for you.”

“Thank you.” I wish I could lean down and hug her, but I dare not arouse suspicion by making a big deal out of what should be a very small good-bye. As I turn my back, I hear the scrape-scrape of her grinding stone.

I’m barely out of sight of the camp when Storm melts from the trees to join me. Wordlessly we clamber upstream, and we navigate the jungle trash with agonizing slowness because of our need for stealth. Eventually we pass the pool where Mara and I bathed, and the terrain grows rocky and steep until we are scrambling over moss-covered boulders, using palm trees for leverage that have found stubborn rootholds in deep crevices and patches of mud.

The zafira calls to me; I feel it as surely as a lasso around the waist, pulling tighter and more agonizingly with every step. I pray as I walk, and soothing warmth spreads through my abdomen to take the edge off the pain.

The stream dead-ends at a small lake shadowed at the base of one of the mountains. A waterfall rushes down the side of the mountain and crashes into the lake, a faint rainbow shimmering in its white spray. I look up, up, up—but the source of the waterfall is hidden in the clouds.

I stare at the cliffs ahead of us, dismayed, for there is nowhere to go. Yet the zafira continues to tug at me.

“Another test,” Storm says.

“I’ve climbed cliffs before, but those are impossible. Too slick and steep. Too high.”

“Don’t be stupid,” he says.

I open my mouth to insult him right back, but hesitate. He’s right. I need to think differently.

I take a deep breath and focus hard on the tug. It leads straight across the lake to the cliffs. The base is blurred by mist. Just maybe, a ledge lurks behind the water fog. Or boulders. Something we can use to get a better look.

“We need to go around the lake,” I say. “Get to the other side.”

“Yes,” he says, his eyes distant. “I think so too.” Surrounded by jungle foliage, his eyes are greener than ever, like the sun shining through emeralds. I shudder as I turn to lead the way.

The boulders edging the lake are black and porous and sharp, and as I use my hands to climb, the soft pads of my fingers are scraped raw. Movement catches my eye. I peer into the crystal water—it’s deep and shadowy, but something swims down there, something large.

I lean closer. It darts away and disappears beneath an underwater overhang. I stare at the spot it vacated, puzzled, as the silt it churned up diffuses to the bottom. The creature was larger than a tuna, but I could have sworn I saw stubby legs and a long, whipping tail. Maybe I imagined it.

“Something wrong?” Storm asks.

“This is a very strange place,” I say as I continue on. But I keep a close eye on the water’s edge.

Mist from the waterfall settles in my hair, on my clothes, on my skin. As we approach, the mist turns to spray, then stinging needles of water, and the air is so drenched that I can’t see but a few hand spans in front of me. The waterfall booms around us, whipping up a fierce wind. I’m careful to place my hands and feet just so on the slippery rocks, testing each step, each handhold, before taking another.

And finally we can go no farther. We stand on a slight lip between the cliff and the lake, the waterfall before us. There are not enough handholds. No way to climb. Storm yells something, but his voice is whisked away by the merciless water.

Think, Elisa.

I gaze at the cliff face, blinking through water. It’s black with wetness, save for a few mossy outcroppings. Stubborn ferns curl out of rocky grooves, straining for sunshine. Vines, choking in parasitic night bloomers, drip down the side and swish back and forth in the water-churned wind, brushing the surface of the lake.

The vines. I peer closer. A darkness lies behind them—something darker than wet rock. I push the vines aside.

It’s a cave, or maybe a tunnel, curving behind the waterfall into utter blackness. The tugging at my Godstone leaves no doubt that we must go inside.

I curse myself for not bringing my tinderbox, but then I realize that in this wetness, nothing would catch fire anyway. We’ll have to feel our way along in the dark and trust my stone to guide us. It’s a test, after all. It’s supposed to be difficult.

But no, we do have a source of light. I grab a handful of vines and yank hard until they pull free. I wrap them several times around my forearm. Storm understands instantly and does the same. Then we step into the cave.

The noise of the waterfall becomes echoing and hollow and so, so much louder. A few more steps take us behind a wall of white water. Soft daylight barely penetrates, giving the fall a crystal sheen, and I’m suddenly thinking of Hector, wishing he was here to see something so beautiful.

I clench my jaw and turn away from the waterfall, into the tunnel. The light grows dimmer as we walk. The tunnel is just high enough for me to stand upright, which means Storm has to stoop. Gradually, though, the night bloomers wrapped around my arms unfurl and begin to glow, faintly at first but with increasing determination, until we can see several paces in every direction.

The tunnel is obviously unnatural. The walls are too perfect, too polished, the floor too even. It slopes slightly upward, and rivulets of water trickle past us to empty into the lake.

Our path curves to the left. We round the corner, and the light from our vines catches on a bit of unevenness in the wall. My heart hammers with a sense of familiarity.

Lichen grows over the unevenness, fanning out in rings of yellow and brown. I reach up with my fingers and scrape it away to reveal script carved into the wall. The Lengua Classica. An ancient style of writing. The gate that leads to life is narrow and small so that few find it.

“It’s the same,” I say to Storm, and my voice echoes. “The same as the tunnel leading to your cavern in the Wallows.”

“Yes,” he says. “That holy passage has long been associated with the zafira. I used to climb up to the tunnel and look at it. I would sit there for hours, hoping God would reveal something to me.”

I look at him sharply. He just admitted that he climbed up into the tunnel.

He returns my gaze, his eyes wide with wonder, and I notice, unaccountably, how the roots of his falsely dark hair shimmer gold in the soft light. “Yes, I know the tunnel leads up to the catacombs,” he says. “But no, I’m not the one who tried to kill you that day. Truly, I am Your Majesty’s loyal subject.”

“Do you know who did?”

“No.”

“But you’ve been pursuing the zafira for a long time. Even in your exile, you thought about it.”

“Yes.”

Something clicks into place. “Is this your redemption, Storm? Do you hope that by finding the zafira, you can be reconciled to your people? Hailed as a hero? Your death sentence commuted?”

He turns away. “I don’t know,” he whispers. “Maybe.”

“And would you betray me for the same purpose? If you handed over the only living Godstone, would you receive a hero’s welcome?”

He shoves me aside and continues down the tunnel. But I understand him a little now, and I’ve observed he avoids answering to keep from telling a lie.

Chilled—and maybe a little relieved to finally know for sure—I hurry after him.

Our path grows steep, steep, steeper. The smooth floor gives way to perfectly sculpted steps and sudden switchbacks. My thighs burn, my heart pounds, and my breath comes fast as we climb ever upward. It’s drier now, and creatures scuttle away at irregular intervals as we approach. I imagine crabs. Or cave scorpions. Or maybe rats with nails long enough to scrape the stone. Whatever they are, they disappear before the arc of our fading light can reach them.

It seems that hours pass, or days. I find myself stepping in time to my heartbeat, which is huge in my chest and throat. My lungs burn, and the tug on my Godstone has become a fire in my belly. Surely we are near the top of the spire by now. Surely we are at the top of the world.

We round another switchback to find the vaguest hint of light. As one, we hurry forward, desperate to lose these walls. The light strengthens. One more corner, and light explodes full in our faces. I blink and raise my forearm against it.

The night bloomers snap closed. Gradually my eyes adjust, and I lower my arm.

We look out over a high mountain valley, green and gently rolling, hemmed in by summits that catch the clouds. They are the same mountains I saw from the ship, I’m sure of it. But now I view them from the other side, and from so much higher up.

Exactly five narrow peaks jut into the sky—the holy number of perfection. One is a little shorter and squatter than the others, like a thumb, and with a start I realize that from a certain angle, I could almost imagine I’m staring at God’s righteous right hand, and the streams cutting through the valley are the creases of his cupped palm.

It’s a huger, greener version of Lutián’s Hand of God sculpture in Brisadulce.

Storm clutches at his chest, and his breathing comes hard, but not, I think, from exertion. The astonishment in his face is stunning to see; it shifts his angled lines into something a little wilder and nearly beautiful.

“You’re sensing it very strongly now,” I observe.

“Oh, yes. It’s almost painful. We’re supposed to go down into that valley.”

I peer down at the incline in dismay. It’s too steep to descend safely. Maybe by using the vines and ferns that hug the slope, we can lower ourselves gradually.

“There,” Storm says. “Steps cut into the rock.”

I look in the direction he’s pointing and decide that calling them “steps” is generous. They are more like handholds, overgrown with moss. After scraping the dying night-bloomer vines from my forearms, I scoot down, lodging my heels into the indentions, clutching plants for support.

Sharp pain pierces my finger, and I yank my hand back. A drop of blood wells on my forefinger. With my other hand, I push aside a fern frond to see what pricked me.

A rose vine, not quite blooming. Deepest red peeks from budding green tips. Thorns wrap around the stems, much longer and harder than those of common roses.

Tears spring to my eyes, for I feel like God has given me a gift.

I have no priest to guide my prayer, no sizzling altar to accept my blood, no acolyte to bathe my wound with witch hazel. But I can’t help but feel that this moment was meant to be, somehow, and so I decide to do what I always do when I am pricked by a sacrament rose: pray and ask a blessing.

In the past, I have asked for courage. Or wisdom. This time, I close my eyes and mutter, “Please, God. Give me power.”

I open my eyes, turn my finger over, and let the drop of blood fall to the earth.

Something rumbles—whether it is the world around me or the prayer inside me I cannot tell—and the earth tilts. The air shifts, like a desert mirage, and for the briefest instance, I see lines of shimmering light, Godstone blue and thin as threads. They race from all directions through the mountain peaks, across the valley, to meet at a central point where they are sucked into the ground.

I blink, and the vision is gone, leaving me breathless and puzzled and frightened.

“What just happened?” Storm demands. “You fed the earth a bit of your blood. I felt it move.”

“I’m not sure. I saw something strange. Lines of power. But they’re gone now.”

He stares at me suspiciously. “Let’s go. I become impatient.”

It doesn’t take long to reach the valley floor, which is a good thing given how my legs are shaking from exertion. There are no palm trees here, just sprawling cypress and towering eucalyptus and a tree I’ve never seen before, with such huge broad leaves that a single leaf would cover my whole body. Birds flit among the branches; dappled light catches on them and shoots away in prismatic facets. It’s so startlingly odd that I peer closer.

No, not birds. They’re giant insects, as large as ospreys, with downy white abdomens and gossamer wings.

Misgiving thumps in my chest. This valley has a wrongness to it. It is alien. Other.

And there is something about it that inspires silence. We move quietly, as if in expectation, or perhaps reverence. Piles of stone like crumbling altars litter the forest floor, some as tall as I am, covered in green lichen and dust. A cypress tree clings stubbornly to the side of one, its roots prying open cracks in stone.

We round a bend and find another pile, but this one is as tall as a tree and square shaped, with arched openings for windows. A ruined building. I look around in awe at the other piles. Ruins, all of them. This was once a city of stone, its shape now worn down by sun and wind and tree roots and time.

“This must be centuries old,” I breathe.

“Several millennia,” Storm says, and there is a quiet sadness in his voice I’ve never heard before.

I regard him sharply. “That’s impossible. God brought people to this world—”

“Yes, yes, he rescued you from the dying world with his righteous right hand less than two thousand years ago. I’ve heard you tell it.” The anger in his voice is palpable. “Little queen, don’t you realize? We Inviernos have always been here.”

I stare at him agape, even as the rightness of his words spark inside me. Behind him, one of the insect birds flits through the branches of a eucalyptus, alights atop the ruined building, and begins to groom its rainbow wing with a spindly black leg.