Total pages in book: 151
Estimated words: 147649 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 738(@200wpm)___ 591(@250wpm)___ 492(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 147649 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 738(@200wpm)___ 591(@250wpm)___ 492(@300wpm)
I sigh as I make my way through the unfamiliar shadow forest that lives in the shadow tomb. And when I get to the stoa, there is even a shadow statue of Pell that I hadn’t paid attention to before.
And you know what’s funny? Well, actually, it’s creepy. This one looks just like my Pell. It’s not some Egyptian copy from antiquity. It’s him.
This is a very bad sign and little ideas are starting to form in my head. Even though I do my best to push them all back down, there they are.
There has to be a reason why the statue of Pell in the shadow world of the Bottoms is the one you know and love. There has to be a reason for this.
It’s logic.
But I’m in a magical copy of Saint Mark’s Sanctuary filled with tombs and prisoners, so perhaps, just this one time, I don’t have to follow the logic.
That’s what I’m going with when I step out of the tomb.
And realistically, it shouldn’t work. I should be thinking very hard about that statue of Pell. But my brain just kinda stops working when I take in the tombs.
Well, lack of tombs. Because they’re gone. Not gone gone. But… a disaster. It’s a fuckin’ disaster. Everything has crumbled. Not a single tomb is left—
Oh, but I’m wrong.
There is one.
The black one with the gold dome roof. It looks just as new now as the day it got here. There’s not even snow on the dome.
And it’s freezing. Snowing, actually.
It doesn’t snow inside the walls of Saint Mark’s. It’s been a perfect, late-spring afternoon temperature ever since I first walked through the front gate.
One word begins running races through my mind on repeat.
No. No, no. no.
And then one name, out loud. “Callistina!”
I look around, my heart beating—thumping—inside my chest. And then I scream it. “Callistina!” I pause to listen like… maybe she’s still here. Among the snow drifts, and debris, and ruins. “Callistina!” I yell it again.
Because it can’t end this way. It cannot end this way. Not after I met her. Not after I saw her as a teenager. As an older sister. Not after I learned all the things that matter and make a difference.
And I get it. That supportive older sister was not who she was when I sent her down here. And even back then, she was, quite frankly, selling me into an arranged marriage that would’ve ended with a godling baby that would’ve been used for magical purposes. But it’s not like Callistina was in control of any of that.
She wasn’t anyone special that day. Just another older sister.
She wasn’t anyone special until I disappeared.
But to be fair, when we finally did meet again, I wasn’t the baby sister who got yanked through a magical door nineteen years ago, either. And what was she supposed to think all these years? I was taken by the eros. I skipped storylines. What happened to me that day changed the course of worlds, and gods, and monsters, and… well, everything.
And none of it was my fault, but none of it was her fault, either.
I’m the one who spit out clues at the last minute. I’m the one who told her about Pia, and the curse, and the bag of rings. All she did was use the information I gave her.
If I was the one left behind, wouldn’t I have done the same thing too?
Wouldn’t I have spent all the days that came after trying to figure out what the fuck just happened?
They must’ve substituted Callistina for me. They must’ve sent her to Vinca. To be with Tarq. To maybe have his baby too. I don’t know for sure. Perhaps they did have a baby. But if they did, it wasn’t the godling they were planning. Because if it was, they wouldn’t need me, would they?
There is a crumbled pedestal that once held a statue of some prisoner monster that is mostly standing. I pick my way through the snow, careful, even though I have hooves, and then climb on top of it to get a better look.
The wind is cold and bitter. And this is when I notice that I’m wearing the slutty schoolgirl outfit, even though I’m still in my monster form. That’s kinda weird, but even so I am thankful for the leather jacket as I scan the remnants of Saint Mark’s. Even from up here, there’s really nothing to see. It’s just snowdrifts over ruins.
My gaze inevitably falls on the black tomb near the cathedral and that’s when reality sinks in. Because the cathedral is in ruins too.
I look over my shoulder, jump down, run to the top of the hill. There’s not even a remnant of my cottage. Not even a brick.
I want to search for Callistina. I want to pretend there’s hope. But there isn’t.