Light parted the veil an instant later.
It slammed into the cold entombing me with a suddenness that made my head burn and throb. The darkness around my vision caved in completely.
When I finally blinked back into awareness, I found myself cradled against Aleksander’s chest. His light hovered around us, its warmth coaxing my lungs into deeper, steadier breaths.
Breathe.
I hated it. Hatedhimand everything else in that moment.
But I knew I had to inhale, no matter the heaviness.
After several moments, his face grew clearer. The room took on a clearer shape, too, though it continued to spin around us. I clenched his shirt, trying to make the churning stop. Once it did, I fought my way out of his embrace and back onto my feet, taking in my surroundings, searching for the sentier.
It was gone.
The light surrounding Aleks and me had spread throughout much of the room, gathering toward a single scrap of wispy white cloth in the very center of the floor. It looked like the same material the sentier’s robes had been made from.
Eamon was staring at that scrap, his brow furrowed in concern, while Thalia was circling the room, her staff clenched tightly in her hands.
Zayn was avoiding looking at any of us.
And I realized, all at once, what had happened: Aleksander’s light hadobliteratedthe sentier.
His hand, pressing against the small of my back, nearly made me jump. “Are you okay?”
I nodded. But I felt strange as I stared at all that remained of the sentier. Oddly…drained. As if pieces of me had been obliterated along with it.
And I wasn’t sure how to get those pieces back.
FOURTEEN
Nova
“Irecognized the first image that flashed through the sentier’s memories,” I told the others. “I’m sure of it.”
We were back in the Rivenholt Palace, gathered in the courtyard outside my brother’s room. Tall hedges rose on either side of us. A vine-draped fence with a wrought-iron gate blocked off a third side. An exceptionally private space, yet I couldn’t help the hush of my voice, nor the paranoid glances I kept darting toward the shadows just beyond the reach of the lanterns’ glow.
“And you’re certain it was somewhere in the Above?” my brother asked.
“Yes. I used to practice magic within the white trees of that grove; the small forest around it is usually called the Hollow Wood, though it has an older name I can’t remember. Orin always said the grove was the safest place to practice, because something about the soil and air made it resistant to any potentially wayward spells. And he once mentioned that it wasalso warded against watchful eyes—even divine ones. Whatever that meant.”
“…The placewheregods forget?” Aleks wondered.
My pulse quickened. “It’s not far from Rose Point.”
Bastian paced along the flagstones, his expression unreadable.
Phantom let out a restless grumble, rubbing his face against my leg. He was still annoyed about being left behind on another excursion to Midna.
I knew he would insist on joining me on any trip I might take to the Above, too. The thought alone made me nervous. He was so much more solid in Noctaris—and for good reason; before we’d found our way into this realm, he’d spent much of his existence in the Above as a ghost of the dog I’d been given as a child. He’d ‘died’ there, but my magic had managed to sustain his life-force because he was avaehound—born of the energy of Noctaris and shaped by the hands of former Shadow Vaelora. That link to the Vaelora made him resilient and capable of existing in multiple realms, in multiple forms, but he was truly meant to residehere.
We had that in common.
And I wasn’t sure I was ready to venture back into the light of Soltaris, with or without him.
But it was looking as though we might not have a choice.
“Let’s see what information we can gather about this grove, then,” said my brother with a pointed look in Eamon’s direction. “If some of us have to pay a visit to the Above, then so be it. But no decisions need to be made tonight.”
