I harness the heartstone’s power just in case I need it.
He ignores her cry, clearly enjoying her current location. “Lady Indira, you need to know that for the last fifteen years I made my bed wherever I found it.” He pats the floor with his free hand. “This patch of rock looks pretty good to me.”
She hurls the jug handle at the far wall where it shatters. She shrieks again. “You…!” But she immediately drops her head to his and kisses him fiercely. Drawing breath, she declares, “Now we are married. And you will never break my heart again, Grievous Erit.”
“Never,” he whispers, drawing her close.
My heart glows—so do the heartstones. I reach for the door handle, prepared to shut it this time, but not before I make my presence known. “When you’re finished, you will come back to the deep springs with us, Grievous Indira. You have wings to heal.”
She looks up, startled by my presence and my order. She seems speechless for the first time. “Yes, Supreme Incorruptible.”
“Good. Now I’m going for a very long walk… around your freezing mountain and I won’t be back for some time.”
Their happiness follows me out. I close the door behind me. It’s time to get a handle on the power in the heartstones. Most importantly, I need to figure out how to fly, because Erit will need to fly Indira back, and I can’t ask one of the females to carry me.
I pick my way along the uneven surface of the steep pathway. I don’t exactly want to take an ungraceful tumble the wrong way down the street. There are eyes everywhere in this village. I can’t see any of the females but I sense them watching me as I go.
What I really need is to find a place that’s safe to test my power. All my attempts to draw on the heartstones to warm myself are failing. The Queen’s heart always made me cold, not warm, and Baelen is not here to balance me out. I’m not worried about freezing to death—surely Virtuous will kick in before that happens?—but I’d rather not feel so miserable. I shudder so hard that I have to pause in the middle of the walkway, rubbing my arms.
I hurry to the top of the rise where the trees thicken and I follow the pathway through them. The exercise warms me a little and walking uphill forces me to focus on my breathing. It takes over half an hour to reach the highest peak, a jagged patch of rock with a lone tree. There are no caves or openings. As I emerge from the darkness below, the sudden sunlight and the view are breathtaking.
On the sunlit side, the mountains of Erador rise up like giants in the distance, but as I turn, the view changes. On the shadowed side—the side of the village—the wastelands are a bleak reminder that our world has deadly edges. So are the talon crows, gliding closer than before but still very far away.
I find a jutting rock, choosing to turn my back on the wastelands and face the sun’s warmth instead. I peer up at the heartstones floating around me like a halo, wondering how to trigger them individually. When I first tethered them to me, I thought I heard them speak as if they each had voices. Closing my eyes, I try to block everything out including the sunlight flaring beyond my eyelids.
Incorruptible’s chill is by far the strongest, drowning everything else out. I try to listen beyond her, but she buzzes even louder in my ears. I shake my head, trying to dislodge the noise. So impossible. I can’t even sense the other heartstones over her increasing shriek—
Pain explodes in my shoulder. A sharp object rakes across my shoulder blade, lodging in the bone and lifting me upward, tearing through sinew and muscle.
My eyes shoot open and a scream burns through my lungs as sharp feathers slice across my cheek.
