his hands suddenly numb, and he almost dropped the stone. “How—” he began to ask, then amended, “This isn't possible.” Heat flushed through him again at the memory of his elemental “hand” around the seridi's throat. He'd been ready to kill her, to end a person's—if even a feathered one's—life with his own hands. And now his thoughts strayed beyond reality. He searched the tree line below with his eyes, looking for something stable, dreading that he would find it melting before him.
* You're going to hurt my feelings. * Ruby's sharp humor was there, soaring into the emptiness he still hadn't fully accepted with her death. It was too good to be true, and he knew it.
A darker possibility loomed then and hardened his thoughts. Someone had captured Ruby's voice somehow, or the stone played off of his own memories.
“126 degrees east by 37 degrees north,” he said.
* The gateway to the Last Cove, theoretically, * she replied promptly. * And you're not supposed to be talking about it. *
“When I sailed with the Viere that first summer, we hit a squall off of the Imerian Coast—”
* And the winds knocked open that silly cage of songbirds Vell bought in Astera. He was hysterical for three days and never did forgive my mother for making him keep them abovedecks. *
Only a handful of people would have known the answers to either of those, and only Ruby would know both. The Starhunter had been inside his head, but had never pulled or answered his own deep memories. That didn't necessarily mean she couldn't…
“I saw you die,” he said, finally. In his mind he saw the small honor guard of gryphons carrying her silk-swathed body off for transport to her family's ship.
* It's strange, * she said, her already-remote voice for a moment more distant, * I don't remember dying. I remember giving you the prism key, then…falling asleep? And then waking up to the sunlight here on this ridge. *
“Giving me the what?” The strange phrase jolted him momentarily out of his melancholy.
* The prism key. * Hazily, an image of the sun ruby brushed his mind, and suddenly Ruby's voice grew hazy also. * Wait…we never called it that. A…sun ruby? Why would we call the prism key a sun ruby? An evocative name, to be sure, but inaccurate… *
The change in her tone raised the hair on the back of Vidarian's neck. Meanwhile, the gem—a “prism key”?—seemed to glow brighter. Vidarian stared into it, trying to divine its nature as he had never quite done before. Almost, he could see threads of light deep within the stone, crisscrossing into an infinite fabric. Was this what Ruby had seen, looking into the gem on those cold nights across the mountains? Had it pulled at her mind the way it now pulled at his?
Now the ruby seemed to be glowing brightly indeed, and it took him several long moments to notice that it was the sky growing darker. With a jolt he realized he should be getting back to the camp—and the memory of how he'd stormed off, and why, brought a fresh flush of guilt creeping through his veins.
* Oh, come now. You need to stone up, * Ruby said, and the vulgar image that came with it raised his ire, as surely it was meant to. When Vidarian grudgingly showed her what he'd done with his mind—something he could now do, as he once had with Ariadel, and always with the gryphons—he expected the memory to quiet her. Instead, she still simmered with impatience. * And if you had killed her—what then? Perhaps it would have been mercy. *
Her logic—a pirate logic, one that sealed her identity for him at last—both chilled and reassured him. There was no escaping the weakness he felt at having lost control over himself, but it was Altair's reaction that brought on the guilt full-force and sent him spiraling into dark thoughts.
Vidarian sensed Ruby preparing another poignant image and so preemptively levered himself to his feet, shaking out limbs that had grown cold on the damp ridge.
But there was still one thing.
“Ruby, I'm—”
* Save it, * she cut him off crisply. * To apologize is to tell me I was not in control of my own decisions and fate. You wouldn't want to do that, would you? *
He tried and failed three times to reply, then finally said: “So there's nothing…?”
* I didn't say that. *
The strangeness of the conversation settled on his