Every muscle winds tight with anticipation.
Another vibration, hardly more noticeable than the first.
An innate?
I clasp my trembling fingers over my heart, forcing myself to take shallow breaths.
Whatever it is… it isn’t my shadows.
No.
It’s faint… cold… distant.
Like it’stryingto reach me and somehow can’t. Or perhaps it’swaking.Either way, it’s unfamiliar. Reminiscent of my shadows, yet radically different. It feelsbroader,largerthan my shadows had.
I hesitate to test the theory.
But unfurl my fingers and open a palm anyway.
Reaching inward, in the same way I would reach for my shadows, a sparkling tingle dances across my fingertips. I gasp, destroying the brief connection.
Heart-pounding silence stretches on before the vibration returns—a glacial, glittering thing—and it buries itself into the base of my skull. Unlike my shadows, there isn’t a demand tokill. No desire tofeedand sow death. No mischievous, demonic beck and call.
But there isanger.
It floods my chest, squeezing my lungs, and threatens to crush my heart. It’s a desperate rage I’ve felt once before—when I challenged Netharis, more than ready to find my final death.
Firm hands land upon my shoulders,yankingme backward. Bitter cold seizes my body and I squeeze my eyes shut, gasping for air, needing to feed air-starved lungs. The same breath is knockedfrom me as pain streaks up my right side, my ears set to ringing.
Lungs burning, I cough, quickly realizing I’ve been thrown to the floor. Rolling onto my stomach, I force my eyes open and find myself beside the tub, on the soaked tile of the bathing room. Ice cracks and flakes over my skin, falling to the floor and as the ringing fades, Oraphia’s shrill screaming replaces the piercing sound.
“Raevi! Raevi, I got her!” she shouts. A warm towel lands on my back and hands work their way under my arms. “Stoke the fire!”
I don’t understand.
And gods, does my mind feel groggy.
What in the absolute impshit is happening?
Wasn’t I upon the balcony?
With the raven?
With Oraphia’s firm guidance, I’m pulled to my feet and her concerned brown eyes appear before mine as she wraps the towel tight around me. There’s fear in her stare—what is she scared of?
What did I do?
“Come on,” she urges, swinging behind me. She pushes me forward and my foot lands upon something jagged.
My knee nearly buckles as I recoil and step aside, catching sight of jagged shards of ice upon the tile.
I don’t understand the ice.
Sitting in a tub for far too long doesn’t freeze the water.
“Mind your step,” Oraphia says hastily and returns to commandeering me out of the bathing room.
She’s strangely strong for such a creature.
