“Later.”
“Definitely.”
In that instant, I felt so much I couldn’t bear it.
When I watched my mother die, the last bit of her leaving while she kept her eyes locked on mine, I swore I’d never let another person touch my soul. If you loved someone,he’duse them. And with each death, more of me would leach away until there was nothing left but a shell he could fill with his malice.
But I loved the woman in my dream above all others. More than my own life. I’d give anything—anything—to protect her.
Mist blasted across the dream, covering it and the feelings, and I jolted back into the person I’d been since she brought me back from the ether.
Cold and unfeeling.
But the longing still crept along the edges of my mind, a pulsating thing that ached for me to consume it.
Frustration roared through me. The feelings were gone as if they’d slipped through my scrambling fingers. Why couldn’t I hold onto them?
I could not—would not—go to her until I could pour out my love for her, until I could feel it blazing across my soul for eternity. It wouldn’t be fair, and if nothing else, I knew it would kill me to hurt her.
Perhaps my memory was coming back. I needed to relax and allow it to happen.
For now, it was time to swallow my court’s core—wrest it away from the monster who’d stolen part of it to claim as his own. This was the inheritance from my mother and every Weldsbane high lord and lady who’d come before me. They watched with ghostly eyes, and I hoped they felt even a tiny spark of approval for what I would soon do.
I dressed in a simple tunic and pants and left all my weapons inside the manor. They wouldn’t be welcome or needed where I was going.
With Tempest’s pabrilleen pendant clutched in my hand, I flitted to the entrance of the vast cavern system networkingdeep within the Barrenfall Mountain range on one edge of Weldsbane.
Darkness still bathed the world, but where I was going, daylight would not matter.
It was time to enter the home of the trolls.
36
TEMPEST
Ishould sleep. I’d need my strength and all my wits if I was going to swallow my court’s core tomorrow. Aunt Vera hadn’t given many clues about what I could expect. Perhaps she would tomorrow, or she didn’t know. Without a true elder, there was no one to guide me.
I would step into the void blindly.
Others had done it before me, and I’d do all I could not to disappoint them.
I sat on the edge of the bed. So much to do and so little time to do it. The feeling that Ivenrail, High Advisor Adwarin, and Kerune were on their way to Lydel with a vast army swarming beside them kept slamming through me. How would I take all the clues I’d been given and bunch them together into something that could restore balance to this world? The weight of everyone’s expectations for me threatened to drag me to theground, and I wasn’t sure I was strong enough to get back to my feet.
Leaving the bed, I limped across the room, stopping only to stare at the carved wooden dragon sitting on the low table in front of a sofa. It remained motionless, and I’d concluded I’d imagined it moving. Something like that wasn’t possible. It was a pretty gift, something he’d made, and I loved it because it reminded me of Seevar. I lifted it and tipped it this way and that, but it remained as frozen as the people lining the streets of Lydel.
I placed it back on the table and I would’ve gone to Drask, but he slept on his perch, his head tucked beneath his wing. He also needed to rest.
Slumping on the sofa, I stared at the coals rippling red, orange, and gold below the fireplace grate, my mind blurring.
I dozed . . . And woke, my arms jolting outward. The coals hadn’t changed in the fireplace, telling me I’d only slept a short time. Yet I felt refreshed.
The riddle kept swarming through my mind, stinging each time I tried to put it aside. Iasar and Amronth wouldn’t have gifted it to me if I didn’t need to solve it.
A blade will be forged in light, torn away from thorn’s blight,
And veiled beneath the gaze of eternal right.
At the fortress,the beginning of the riddle had flashed through my mind when I stared into the winged dreg’s eyes.
