“I’ve been telling you all along. Tymon and I have been here with Kimber, and this is why we know she is the Breaker.”
“You should have dragged us here.” Mistress Ophelia was unmoving as her eyes roamed the walls.
“No, I shouldn’t have. You needed to come and see for yourselves. This is what the Breaking Cave does when Kimber is present. It is nothing when she is not here.”
Raising my hand, I waited for someone to notice me. It took a long minute until Mistress Maurielle laughed and motioned me to put my hand down.
“What is it, Kimber?”
“What does Breaker of the Spine even mean?”
“It’s literal,” Mistress Maurielle said. “The magic has chosen you to change our world, to bring down the Spine that divides S’Kir—the druids from the vampires.”
“Bring down the Spine? How in the name of seven hells am I supposed to do that?” I jabbed my finger up toward the ceiling. “There are leagues of rock above us. Reaching so high even the best mountaineer cannot cross it. I’m supposed to destroy this withwhat? How? The spine is three hundred thirty leagues long!”
“Magic,” Mistress Sona answered.
Tossing my hands in the air, the crystals around me responded with a sad, minor tone chime and a flash of red of anger and green of frustration. “What does that mean? The magic this, the magic that! I don’t know what’s going on around me! I was a teacher until a few weeks ago! I’m not a wielder. I’m not a strategist. I need help. I need someone to explain all this to me!”
The mountain gave a frightening rumble around us, and a few of the dark rocks on the wall chipped and fell to the ground.
The other masters ducked and started to run for the entrance, but I was angry and irrational.
“Stop it!” I screamed. “You picked me! I didn’t want this! Stop trying to scare me! I’m trying to understand!”
The tremor halted.
My legs gave out. I landed flat on my backside.
The sobs burst out of me, and I couldn’t stop them.
Mistress Ophelia was the first to move again, rushing over to me. In a shocking move, she swooped down and gathered me into her arms.
She was the last I expected this from.
“Child, child. Take a deep breath; calm yourself.”
“I’m not a child.” I smeared the tears off my cheek.
Her fingers brushed my chin and lifted my gaze to hers. “To a twenty-one-hundred-year-old temple master, you most certainly are.”
“The mountain listened to me.” I was still trembling.
“Yes, I know. That’s because you’re the Breaker of the Spine. This is why this cavern listens to you.”
“But what does that mean?”
“It means you will bring this mountain down. You will tumble it from its heights to the ground again. There may be tall hills and a few rocky peaks, but the division between us and the vampires will end when you bring the Spine to the ground.”
Lunella broke from the group by the exit. “Your magic has alwaysbeenyour magic, my dear. What you said in the garden has made us all realize women who are not of the temple have never been taught with a Triium. Ever. They are all students of the male.”
Mistresses Sona and Maurielle also walked back in, Mistress Sona moving closer to me.
“You have made us realize we have a great, untapped force out there,” she said. “Vast, in fact.”
“…force?” I could hear my own surprise.
“Yes. Force.” Mistress Neves ran her hand over the cloudy, dim crystals. “We have known that things were going to change for a while now. Dreams, precognitions, visions, foretelling… all the different ways we can see and be told of the future. They have all been pointing us toward a great upheaval in S’Kir.”
