How dark was her soul, Kinlear wondered, for her to look at her own son like she hated him?
The vision shifted, tugging him away.
He smiled as he felt his fall end with athump,and then he was on Six’s back with Ezer...soaring towards the Acolyte’s domain.
He expected it to stop there, as it always did.
He expected to wake up, and be back in his normal body, weak and hardly recovered with fading stasis runes upon his skin.
But tonight, when he and Ezer soared through the shadowstorm, the feeling of raw magic upon his skin...
The vision kept going.
And Kinlear saw beyond the veil of the Acolyte’s power for the very first time.
It was magnificent, the world of the Sawteeth. It went on forever, jagged black, snow-capped mountains as far as he could see. Beautiful, with flocks of raphons that tore through the sky. They were such powerful, lithe predators, and someday soon, Six would grow to be just like them.
The wind was so cold it bit like a frozen blade, so that every breath ached him. There was not a soft landing place, nor an open valley to coast down upon, like the base of the Citadel’s cliffs.
Menacing, this place.
A nightmare incarnate.
But in front of him, on Six’s back...Ezer was not afraid.
She belonged here. She was suited for this cold sky, this unforgiving landscape...
The vision shifted, and they were no longer in the sky. Now, they stood together in the darkness. It was lit by purple light, a soft, otherworldly glow that—his eyes widened – came from an enormous black door at the back of a cave.
The Acolyte’s domain.
They’d made it.
The answer to the kingdom’s questions was just on the other side. There were strange markings on the walls all around them, shapes he didn’t know to be runes, but as he looked at them...
He sensed that he’d seen them before. That they were a strange, different sort of magic, the kind that danced instead of marched, and he wanted to know them.
He longed to...but not yet.
“You gave her to me, Kinlear,” Ezer whispered.
Her hand was on his chest, just over his hammering heart, and the pressure of that touch? Gods, he wanted more. She was talking about Six, and he could see tears of joy shining in her eyes. “Youare the reason she is free.”
He’d give her anything. Anything she wanted, if she would just keep touching him, talking to him, looking up at him likethis.
Like she loved him.
She loved him, oh gods, she loved him, and it was everything he’d ever wanted from someone.
Not even Soraya had looked at him like this.
Like he was a treasure. Something to be kept close and held dear.
He slid his hand atop hers. His heartbeat crashed against her palm, and she pressed even closer to him, bridging the gap.
“A lifetime in the Citadel,” Kinlear said, “andyouare the greatest thing that’s ever happened to me. Do you know that?”
He coughed, but she didn’t flinch. She just blinked up at him, as if she were hanging on his every word.
