The Shattered Sun Read online

  Dedication

  For Grandma Diane—

  I’m sorry I made so many characters.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Part One Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Part Two Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Part Three Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Also by Rachel Dunne

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Prologue

  Memories surfaced like waves as he slept, cresting and curling and retreating. It was a strange thing, to have memories that were not your own.

  Etarro sat in one of his hiding spots—or, more accurately, one of his sister’s hiding spots that he’d discovered and claimed, since she used it so little. Still, Avorra knew right where to find him, and she peered under the stone overhang to meet his eyes.

  “What happened?” she asked. She knew he hid only if something had happened that made him want to be away from all people. Usually he could stand the company of others, but not always. She knew when he wanted to be alone, and mostly she didn’t let it happen, because she also knew he didn’t really want to be alone.

  “I went outside,” Etarro said, not meeting her eyes, shrugging one shoulder as though it were nothing.

  Avorra saw through it, of course. “You went to watch the sunrise,” she said flatly. It was never overt, but there was always disapproval in her voice when the topic came up. “Who caught you this time?”

  Embarrassment made his cheeks burn, and they burned brighter with the anger that he had to feel embarrassed about something he shouldn’t be embarrassed about. “Valrik,” he muttered, and hunched his shoulders against his sister’s laugh.

  “Uniro himself caught you at it? I’m sure he had plenty of words for you . . .”

  “He did,” Etarro said shortly.

  “Ah, Brother . . .” Surprisingly, Avorra began to wedge herself into the cubby beside him, squeezing and wriggling until they both somehow managed to fit into the hiding place. She clasped his hand, and their shoulders pressed together, and she leaned her head against his. “You’ve got a choice to make. You can learn to love the moon as much as you love the sun—they’ll accept that. They’ll love that. Or—” She squeezed her fingers around his, and he felt her cheek pull up in a smile. “Or you’ll have to learn to be sneakier.”

  The dream receded as Fratarro woke, leaving him holding one hand to his head in long silence. He was used to sleeping—he had spent long centuries doing little else—but he was not used to dreaming. Dreaming was for mortals. A god did not need to dream.

  But his mortal body, the one he had taken—borrowed, he had tried to tell himself for a while, but the lie rang hollow—from a boy named Etarro, was still full of dreams, full of the shining memories of a young life.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered, even knowing it meant nothing.

  Fratarro stood, because there had to be more that he could do with this second chance than sleeping and wallowing. There had to be a reason he had been freed, a reason he had stolen this body and stolen the boy Etarro’s chance at making any more memories.

  The hallways were short, and barely higher than his head. It had taken so much work to make them even that high, but he knew his sister would not be reduced to crawling. Fratarro had poured buckets of sweat, and he’d bitten his lip so hard it covered his chin in blood—something that had startled him badly afterward—but he’d managed to make this shelter for them, a place far beneath the earth. Far from prying eyes, and far from the place where their old bodies still lay imprisoned.

  They were both careful to never point out how much their new home looked like a prison.

  Walking tired him; he was more tired now than in all the centuries he had been forced into sleeping. Just the act of leaving his old body to take a new one, of rising to freedom, might have been enough to exhaust him for days, but they had immediately ousted the sun, and all of their own power had not been enough to accomplish that. They’d had to steal the power needed for it, and sapped all their own strength in the process. He’d not yet recovered.

  He found Sororra pacing, and it was still unsettling to attach her name to the girl’s body she had stolen—the twin of the one he wore. The girl’s name had been Avorra, and Fratarro had so many memories of her that were not his own. He was still, too, getting used to the strange double vision that overlaid his sister’s true form atop the mortal body: a shining pillar of light, compacted and compressed and forced into a too-small vessel. The world itself would be too small to contain Sororra.

  The room had little space for pacing, forcing her to make short circles and tight turns, for a great white mound lay against the wall. It lifted its head when Fratarro entered, reptilian features shifting in a way that most would not recognize as a smile. Straz, first of the mravigi, who had so loyally guarded the Twins for centuries—and how could he not have, when Fratarro was his creator, Sororra his defender? Straz was too old and dignified for something like joy, but he glowed with pride each time he saw the Twins.

  Fratarro gave him a tired smile in return, and then called softly, “Sister.”

  She hadn’t noticed him, and her shoulders went stiff as her head swung around to face him. “How are you feeling?” A smile that was mostly a mask plastered itself on her face. She didn’t mean for him to, but Fratarro saw the way her eyes flickered down to his hand—his left hand, that hung open-fingered at his side. It wasn’t for more than a second, was hardly even noticeable, but these mortal bodies were so unsubtle.

  He curled his fingers into a fist, but only the right hand managed it. The left hand stayed still, unmoving, unresponsive. Sororra saw that, too, and Fratarro saw disappointment wash over her face.

  Fratarro gave her a weak smile, so brittle it felt like it would shatter. “Any other ideas?” he asked. Nothing they had tried so far had given him the use of his left hand—the hand which, on his real body, his old body, had been destroyed by an enterprising group of traitors. He’d used his stolen power to seal off the damage and keep the destroyed hand from eternally leeching his power away, but ever since he had risen from imprisonment to take this new form, the left hand had been useless and unusable.

  Fratarro’s power had always been to shape—to make something where there had been nothing, to pull b
eauty from ugliness, to change and twist and unfurl. His power had been to create with his hands—and now. Now it was hand. It should not have been so, it felt disproportionate, but its absence had locked away half his power. His shaping was weak and ineffective, and left him sweaty and weeping and cursing.

  And because they were tied together, two halves of a whole, Fratarro’s weakness made Sororra weak, too. He knew weakness was one thing she could not abide.

  She walked the short distance to stand before him and took his left hand, the useless one, using her own fingers to curl his into a fist. She held his hand there, between their stolen host bodies, and said soothingly, “I promised you I would make this right. Do you still have faith in me?”

  Before their Parents had cast them out, they had shaped the world to their will, and their will had always been one. They had lasted centuries, trapped far beneath the earth with nothing but each other. Together, they had removed the sun. There was nothing they could not accomplish, so long as they had each other. Fratarro had always believed it to be so.

  “I do,” he said, because it was what she needed to hear. She needed his trust, and his belief that she could fix everything. They relied on each other as much as anything. It was how their Parents had shaped them. He would always ask for her protection, because she needed to protect him; she would always press him to creation, to creativity, because she knew shaping ran through his blood. They were two halves of a whole, and they would bend the world for the other—had bent the world.

  “Soon,” Sororra murmured, fury and longing mixing in her voice, “you will make something beautiful from this miserable world. I vow it.”

  Fratarro reached up with his good hand to cover hers, squeezing lightly. “I know,” he said, hoping it was true.

  Etarro stood watching the sunrise from a secret door his sister had shown him, one she swore was never used, was entirely unknown. So far no one had caught him at it, and he took a different path to the door every time so that no one would be able to find a pattern in his wanderings. They thought him a strange boy—let them wonder where he went, so long as they never found him.

  Avorra would always find him.

  She stood by his side, watching the sun climb above the treetops far below their feet. It made her uncomfortable, that was clear enough, but she didn’t chide him or leave him. Only after the sun was more than halfway past the horizon did she ask him, “Why?”

  Because his heart was full of a simple joy, and because the sun still shone in his eyes, Etarro answered her truthfully. “Because one day we won’t see it anymore. And I think it will be one day soon. And I want to remember.” He swallowed the sudden prickle of tears, and for the first time didn’t swallow the words he’d always been too scared to speak: “I want to remember the reason we’ll have to die when that day comes.”

  Avorra didn’t answer him—not with words, at least. After a long, silent moment, she reached out and twined her fingers through his, and they watched together until the sun’s belly cleared the horizon.

  Part One

  When the Long Night comes, there will be peace. All will thrive without the disapproving eye of the sun.

  —The Fall and the Rise

  Chapter One

  The grass was just the right height that it tickled against Anddyr’s elbows as he walked along through the unending darkness, and it made him want to scream. There was no time for screaming, though. He had to keep walking, they had to get as far away as they could. That was what the others kept telling him, at least.

  “I shouldn’t be here,” he said. He never meant to speak aloud, didn’t know he did it half the time, but they all told him he had a bad habit of mumbling. It came out of him like a gut-punched whine, sounds he couldn’t help making. “I should have stayed.” The unrelenting darkness made it easier to sink into the miserable puddle he kept shoring up with guilt and grief. The darkness made it easier to pretend he was alone, abandoned as he rightly deserved to be. “I made the wrong choice.”

  And then the grass tickled his elbow just right, and a shrieking laugh burst out of him.

  Rora turned and thumped him on the shoulder, none too gently. She had impeccable aim, considering the darkness, but Anddyr supposed she was used to working in the dark. He’d seen the Canals. He’d heard enough of her brother Aro’s stories. Or it was possible she’d been aiming for his face, and the darkness truly did throw off her aim.

  She was just a dim, silent outline in the darkness, lit around the edges by faint starlight and nothing more. Still, Anddyr couldn’t look away from her. Even in the unending night, he saw her clear as daylight. If he focused on her, he could ignore the tickling grass, ignore the Long Night itself. Looking at her, he could sink quickly back into his misery.

  I made the wrong choice.

  The thought played through Anddyr’s head like a tide: rising to a scream, crashing and shattering, and then leaving nothing save a deceptively calm surface, until it rose screaming once more. It drowned out everything else, no room for anything but the thought and the emptiness it left in its wake.

  He stared at the back of Rora’s head, watched her march stubbornly on ahead of him, and his hands groped uselessly at his sides. It had seemed such a simple choice at the time. He’d seen Rora’s face in his mind, clear as he could now, and not choosing her had seemed such an intolerable thing. It was Rora. He could face any wrath, for her. He could face the end of the world.

  He’d seen the Twins rise in their new bodies, gods freed from their centuries-long imprisonment. And because of Anddyr, the Twins hadn’t taken Rora and her brother as hosts—instead they’d done the very thing Anddyr had been meant to prevent, and stolen the bodies of a different set of twins. Etarro and Avorra had been groomed from birth for that very purpose, to become hosts to their godly counterparts, and at least one of them had gone to it willingly enough. But Anddyr had seen Etarro’s face, his gaze stretching across the distance, and the boy had been almost unrecognizable. Lost inside himself, or cast out . . . gone . . .

  Etarro had been the closest thing Anddyr had to a friend inside Mount Raturo. A sweet boy, painfully intelligent, and more insightful than he had any right to be. He’d given Anddyr a stuffed horse named Sooty. Etarro had freed him from the drug-locked prison that Joros had made for him, given Anddyr the chance to fight for his own wretched life. Etarro had given him everything.

  And now he was gone, because, to Anddyr, Etarro hadn’t seemed an important enough choice. That alone felt like ten belly punches, to his mind-stomach and his real stomach.

  Maybe it would have been bearable, if not for Rora being so—

  “Shut your fecking hole,” she growled at him, like a wolf in the night scenting its prey. He didn’t know he’d been mumbling again.

  Maybe it wouldn’t feel so much like the wrong choice if she didn’t hate him so much.

  A pained groan boiled out from behind Anddyr, which brought Rora to a sudden stop—Anddyr learned that when he ran directly into her. She was so much shorter than he that he almost went tumbling over her completely, but her helpful shove kept him on his feet. In the darkness of the night without end, Anddyr could see so little . . . but he could see the stars in her eyes. He wasn’t sure which burned more furiously. There was anger and sadness there, and a small lost part of him ached for her, wanted to reach out and comfort her—and yet. I made the wrong choice. It was no less true. She still made him hurt, but there was a new layer to the pain. She, so heartless and cold and distant, was still here with him, throwing her anger like a fist, while a boy’s sad soft smile was gone from the world. And that was Anddyr’s doing, his choice. Perhaps her wrath was his punishment, for choosing so poorly. If that was the case, then maybe she was exactly what he deserved.

  The groan again, and the sadness in Rora’s eyes briefly flickered stronger. But it vanished when she turned away, her footsteps whispering through the tall grass. It was left to Anddyr to deal with. It wasn’t fair, but nothing was.

&nb
sp; Anddyr turned away from the dark outline of her, turned instead to the very similar, groaning outline huddling behind him. If Rora was his punishment for choosing her, then this was a different kind of punishment . . . but a punishment all the same.

  Looking at Aro, her brother, was like staring into a mirror that looked a decade into the past. Once, Anddyr had been just as Aro was now: shaking, twitching, wide-eyed in terror and need. Truth be told, it hadn’t been so long ago that Anddyr was just like him, a slavering mess, but it was worst early on. The mind-twisting drug got easier to bear over the years.

  Anddyr walked to the younger man’s side, put an arm around his hunched shoulders. Aro was taller than Rora, but otherwise the two of them had been made on the same loom, their eyes full of the same stars. “You’re all right,” Anddyr lied. “Remember what I said before?” Aro just mumbled, shuddered inside the ring of Anddyr’s arm. Anddyr jostled him a little to get his attention. “Come now. Remember it? You said you would remember.”

  Voice shaking as badly as his limbs, Aro said slowly, “It will pass. And I’ll be better.”

  “That’s right,” Anddyr said in his best encouraging voice. Those were the same lies he told himself, and they’d always made him feel better. They weren’t entirely lies either—occasionally, mixed in with feeling like he was about to die or feeling so awful that he wanted to die, Anddyr felt like his old self, before Raturo, before Joros, before the foul black paste that had twisted his mind. It would be the same for Aro. He’d only gotten one dose of skura, but that was enough of the drug to do its nasty work. Anddyr would make sure that no more of it twisted Aro’s mind further, but Rora’s brother had already become an abacus, the measure of his days balanced in madness and sanity until the days reached their end. Anddyr was still trying to decide how to tell Aro that he’d now have a much shorter life than he might have expected, but that conversation might remind Aro that it was Anddyr who had done this to him.